Talk:Gaius Julius Caesar (governor of Asia)

Disputed

The only sources I am aware of for Caesar's father are:

• Plutarch, who says that his sister Julia married Marius (Caesar 1), and that Aurelia was Caesar's mother (Caesar 9)

• Suetonius, who says that he reached the rank of praetor and died when Caesar was sixteen (Julius 1), that his wife was Aurelia and he had a daughter called Julia (Julius 74), and that he employed Gnipho as Caesar's tutor (Lives of Eminent Grammarians 7)

• Pliny the Elder, who says he died suddenly in Rome while putting on his shoes one morning (Natural History 7.54)

There may well be others, but I have been unable to find them, and the "unreferenced" tag has failed to spur anyone to produce them. The inclusion of the phrase "Upon his return to the Italian Peninsula, he found it far different from the one he knew" makes me suspect someone's been using historical fiction as a source. We need references for:

1. The date of his birth, quaestorship and praetorship
2. His governorship of Asia
3. Gnaeus Julius Caesar being his younger son
4. His other daughter
5. Marius taking on a father-figure role to Caesar

If no references are forthcoming, these details should be deleted. --Nicknack009 01:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• (1) The birth, as is often the case with Roman senators, can be guestimated within a few years from the career, in this case the praetorship (which will be held no earlier than the 40th year). (2) The governorship of Asia (which will have begun while praetor) is found in Inschriften von Priene no. 111; the date is controversial, however. Sumner (Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 1978) dated it to late 90s; Brennan (Praetorship in the Roman Republic, OUP 2000, p. 553) to early 90s. I'll have to double check on 3,4, 5. semper fictilis 01:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• More on (1). The quaestorship and praetorship are also mentioned in Inscript. Ital. 13.3.51-2, an important discussion of which was made by Broughton in AJA 52 [1948] 328-9 (available in JSTOR). semper fictilis 02:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Text of I. Ital. 13.3.51-2

A lot of what we know of the career of the father is from these two inscriptions (square brackets are what are supplied by Broughton:

• IIt. 13.3.51 (as supplemented by Broughton AJA 52 [1948] 328):

[C. Iulius C. f. L. n.] Caesar / [pater divi Iul]i / [tr. mil. xvir. agr. dand. adtr. iu]dic. q. pr. / [inter cives et peregrinos, pro]cos in Asia;

translation: [C. Julius] Caesar, [son of Gaius, grandson of Lucius], [military tribune, decemvir for giving, distributing, and] jud[ging lands], quaestor, praetor / [between citizens and foreigners], [pro]consul in Asia

• IIt. 13.3.7 (supplements of Broughton AJA 52 [1948] 329):

[C. Iu]lius [C. f. Caesar] / pater di[vi Iuli] / [p]r. q. tr. [mil., xvir] / [c]olonos Cerce[inam deduxit].

translation: [C. Ju]ius [Caesar, son of Gaius], father of the divine [Julius], [p]raetor, quaestor, [military] tribune, [decemvir], he [settled] colonists at Ceri[na].

(I've tried to give a sense in the translation as to what is visible and what is supplied by Broughton.) I hope this helps. semper fictilis 02:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. I've added the ancient refs, and it's a much better article now. --Nicknack009 20:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed - if Caesar's father's grandfather was called Lucius, then the article Gaius Julius Caesar is inaccurate. --Nicknack009 21:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The translation says that he was proconsul of Asia, right? Doesn't that mean he had to have been elected consul at some point in his life, at least, according my understanding? The sources say he only reached the rank of praetor. --Knjaz Aranath 14:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it was regularly the case in this period that praetors, at the end of their term as praetor, would be prorogued as proconsul. semper fictilis 22:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, ok. I didn't realise. Thanks for clearing that up. I'm learning about the late Republic at the moment, so that confused me a little. Knjaz Aranath 14:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The name of this article

The title of this article should be changed more in line with standard practice in Roman history. Usually men with the same name (and there are lots of them) are differentiated in modern history books by adding their highest magistracy. In this case, this means renaming this article, e.g., Gaius Julius Caesar (pr. c. 99) semper fictilis 02:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it needs a better title, although since the date of his praetorship isn't known, how about Gaius Julius Caesar (d. 85 BC)? --Nicknack009 20:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it makes it hard to be consistent. The other way is to use the Pauly-Wissowa numbering. (PW is an enormous classical encyclopedia in German; its articles for every different Julius gets a different number.) semper fictilis 20:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Given the number of Romans with the same name, absolute consistency is going to be impossible to achieve - clarity and accuracy may be the best we can manage. Following Pauly-Wissowa might make things consistent, but it would mean a lot of work for the few editors who have access to it and can read the German well enough to distinguish between people of the same name. --Nicknack009 21:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

If we're going to use rank to distinguish them, the highest rank he held was proconsul. Is the sequence of proconsuls of Asia well-enough known to estimate when he held that position? --Nicknack009 21:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Before Sulla, proconsulships began during the year of the praetorship--so that's no help. In any case, the practice in publications seems to be only to use city offices this way--consul, praetor, trib. pl., etc. Look at this google books search to get an idea. semper fictilis 01:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Who link

I reverted an edit that reverted the introduction of GJC's appearance in some Dr. Who media or other. It's an accepted convention that relevant "X in popular culture" sections are perfectly acceptable in articles, and this case was no different. Ford MF (talk) 18:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)