History's Alternative Caesars

In current studies of ancient history, a line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar may function as a title ¹ or a motto; ² the play may perhaps also serve as a foil for a scholar’s own historical construction ³ or ornament the introduction of a work. ⁴ But the preoccupation of Caesar historians with Shakespeare rarely transcends such illustrative decorations. ⁵ Instead, they strive primarily to emancipate themselves from the heroes in their very own field of research, especially from Theodor Mommsen, whose idealized image of Caesar—as created in his Noble Prize winning Römische Geschichte—has remained a central reference point from which scholars have to distinguish themselves even nowadays; ⁶ or they prefer to turn for inspiration to Bertolt Brecht’s Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar. ⁷ Of course, Shakespeare has an established position in studies dedicated to the change of Caesar’s image over the centuries, as in Friedrich Gundolf’s classic ⁸ and in Karl Christ’s solid survey of a few years ago. ⁹ But in this line of research, too, the focus is not on the Renaissance and on early modern times, but on post-Caesarean antiquity ¹⁰ and, in the context of the debate on Caesarism, on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ¹¹