166 Ideals in the Modern World
Plutarch’s Caesar aspires to renown. Crossing the Alps, Caesar
and his retinue pass through a tiny out- of- the- way village where the
people are miserable— hungry and soiled. His men joke about
whether there is a great deal of competition for high offi ce there, or
whether there are major feuds among the most formidable men. Says
Caesar, “For my part I would rather be the fi rst man among these
fellows than the second man in Rome.” At another point, Caesar is
found brooding on Alexander (who attempted to model his life on
the life of Achilles) and his massive achievements as warrior and
general. Caesar is in tears. “Do you think,” he says to his friends,
“that I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander
at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time
done nothing that is memorable?” (206).
When Caesar becomes a general in the Gallic wars, he achieves
almost astonishing victories. He comes up with brilliant strategies
for battling far more numerous enemies. But his powers do not end
there. He is also a warrior, and like Alexander he fi ghts at the head
of his troops. He takes all the risks his men do and shares their lives
in camp. Says Plutarch, “There was no danger to which he did not
willingly expose himself, no labor from which he pleaded an exemp-
tion” (210). Though he was not born with a strong constitution,
Caesar’s will is fi erce. He used war, Plutarch says, as a physic against
his maladies. “By indefatigable journeys, coarse diet, frequent
lodging in the fi eld, and continual laborious exercise, he strug gled
with his diseases and fortifi ed his body against all attacks” (210).
Caesar the warrior is stunningly successful. As Plutarch puts it:
“He had not pursued the wars in Gaul full ten years when he had
taken by storm above eight hundred towns, subdued three hundred
states, and of the three millions of men, who made up the gross
sum of those with whom at several times he engaged, he had killed
one million and taken captive a second” (209).