ABSTRACT
Caesarism was a major theme in European political culture between the mid-XIX century and the early XX century; the figure of Julius Caesar played a distinctive and far-reaching role in the political and ideological discourse developed by Fascism, especially in the 1930s. Caesarism also plays, as is well known, a distinctive and prominent role in Gramsci's thought, and the influence of contemporary events is apparent in his engagement with this issue. This chapter discusses Caesarism from two standpoints: as a major theme in modern political culture, with which Gramsci had to engage in earnest, and as an historiographical category that can shed light on the history of late Republican Rome in its own right. Close attention is paid to the sources of Gramsci's knowledge of Roman history before his incarceration and to the debate on Caesar and Caesarism with which he engaged in the Prison Notebooks. The role of Julius Caesar as a major historical problem in the development of Italian ‘cosmopolitism’ receives especially close attention: the notion of ‘progressive Caesarism’ is best understood against the background of Gramsci's wider reflection on the original characters of Italian history.
