THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WORLD LEADERS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

enemies. “Et tu, Brute” (“You too, Brutus”) was Caesar’s
expression of his particular anguish at being stabbed by a
man whom he had forgiven, trusted, and loved.

Accomplishments

Caesar changed the course of the history of the Greco-
Roman world decisively and irreversibly, and even today
many people are familiar with his name as a title signifying
a ruler who is in some sense uniquely supreme or para-
mount—the meaning of Kaiser in German, tsar in the
Slavonic languages, and qays·ar in the languages of the
Islamic world.
Caesar is recognized for reforming the Roman calen-
dar, which was inaccurate and manipulated for political
purposes; the Roman month Quintilis, in which he was
born, was renamed July in his honour. Caesar’s calendar,
the Julian calendar, was established in the year 46 BCE
and is used by some Eastern Orthodox Christian churches
for their liturgical year. And the Gregorian calendar, now
in widespread use throughout the world, is the Julian,
slightly corrected by Pope Gregory XIII.
Caesar was a master public speaker and was well known
for his writings, although most of his material has been
lost. Only his accounts of the Gallic War and the Roman
Civil War survive. All Caesar’s speeches and writings appar-
ently served political purposes. His accounts of his wars
are subtly contrived to make the unsuspecting reader see
Caesar’s acts in the light that Caesar chooses. The accounts
are written in the form of terse, dry, factual reports that
look impersonal and objective; yet every recorded fact
has been carefully selected and presented. The mark of
Caesar’s genius in his writings is that, although they were
written for propaganda, they are nevertheless of outstand-
ing literary merit.