# What's the Big Deal About Caesar? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 7, 2021, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279 "2021-09-07T23:12:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/21 "2021-09-08T02:26:09Z")
Sorry @Exapno_Mapcase I think we double posted. But you bring up a good point too. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/22 "2021-09-08T02:28:26Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > _Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Third Edition_ (c) 1996, 1994, 1991, 1988 by Simon &Schuster, Inc. ☆ _Caesar salad_ [so named in honor of (Gaius) Julius CAESAR by Giacomo Junia, Italian-American chef in Chicago, who invented it c. 1903] Odd, you’ve got a Chicago chef named in that reference, whereas all the explanations I’ve seen of the origin of the Caesar salad attribute it to the San Diego/Tijuana restaurateur Caesar Cardini. [Here’s the obituary](https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2003-09-15-0309150108-story.html) of Cardini’s daughter and business partner, which tells a little more about the conflicting stories of the invention of the Caesar salad. AFAICT, as Exapno\_Mapcase notes, all the recorded descriptions of Caesar salad in the early 20th century are attributing its invention to Cardini’s restaurant in the 1920s. References to Giacomo Junia’s claim to be its original inventor a couple of decades previously all seem to post-date the media buzz around the Cardini version. In fact, does anybody have any cites for the actual existence of a Chicago chef named Giacomo Junia, other than the oft-repeated report of this salad invention claim? I haven’t found any. But the existence of Caesar Cardini and his association with the eponymous salad is quite well documented. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/23 "2021-09-08T02:39:28Z")
In fact, [this site claims](https://caesarsaladprincess.com/2021/05/23/caesar-salad-true-of-false/) that “Giacomo Junia” and his alleged 1903 invention of the salad is completely mythical, and links to what purports to be a more detailed debunking of it: unfortunately, the link is broken. So yeah, at this point I’m thinking that probably Webster’s just plain fell for an urban legend here. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/24 "2021-09-08T02:54:48Z")
> [@Kimera757](#): > > His vanity probably drove him to be ambitious. When the poor have cried, Caesar has wept. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. But Kimera757 says he was ambitious, and Kimera757 is an honourable man. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/25 "2021-09-08T03:24:37Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > And let’s bear in mind that for a lifetime pre-Julius, while Rome had become the Hegemon of the Mediterranean Basin, the Republic itself had become a sociopolitical dumpster fire, so the Romans sort of accepted it getting put out of its misery. Well plenty of people blamed Caesar personally for collapsing the republic (some of them were mad enough about it to get quite stabby) despite the fact the republic was not exactly in rude health. What was a bigger factor in accepting its end was the many years of brutal civil war that Caesar triggered and continued after his death. By the end of it most Romans were happy to accept the blatant lie that Augustus was not a king in all but name, if it meant avoiding another round of civil war . Personally I don’t buy the “the republic was doomed so it’s better someone competent seized power” argument. Sure it may have been doomed, but we don’t know that, plenty of people were doing there darndest to reform it (including Pompie) I’d they’d had a few years without Caesar crossing the Rubicon, who knows how it would have turned out? ---
**Author:** ![anny\_m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@anny\_m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anny_m)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/26 "2021-09-08T03:24:58Z")
I’m surprised no one brought up caesarean section, which may or may not have been named after him. [This site](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cesarean/part1.html) refutes the story that Caesar himself was born surgically, but that story has been around a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/27 "2021-09-08T04:41:32Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > and links to what purports to be a more detailed debunking of it: unfortunately, the link is broken. [archive.org has it](https://web.archive.org/web/20210416120150/https://classicsandiego.com/2021/01/caesars-salad-the-myth-of-giacomo-junia/). The Giacomo Junia story seems to have been made up from whole cloth in the book _Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices, Volume 2_. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/28 "2021-09-08T05:44:08Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Well plenty of people blamed Caesar personally for collapsing the republic ( **some of them were mad enough about it to get quite stabby** ) Caesar, while presiding at the Circus, takes note that there is some discontent: [![](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DHMFWLn3OkI/WVTDlmCKUbI/AAAAAAAETeU/2V62jGyoSK4niFZEWX6tqwKp5XTzL9qTQCLcBGAs/s1600/004_037.jpg) ](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DHMFWLn3OkI/WVTDlmCKUbI/AAAAAAAETeU/2V62jGyoSK4niFZEWX6tqwKp5XTzL9qTQCLcBGAs/s1600/004_037.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/29 "2021-09-08T06:12:45Z")
> [@anny\_m](#): > > I’m surprised no one brought up caesarean section, I was going to, but I was slow getting to this thread. But yes, Julius was so awesome he himself performed the first Cesarian section on his own birth, then sewed up his mother. True story.\* \*not ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/30 "2021-09-08T06:19:54Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Sure it may have been doomed, but we don’t know that, plenty of people were doing there darndest to reform it (including Pompie) I Pompey was a lifetime supporter of the the Optimates party. He was not a reformer. He was ‘doing his darndest’ to keep the elite in power. The people who opposed Caesar were part of the corrupt and incompetent elite that Caesar was trying to suppress. If you doubt that the Republic had become corrupt and unpopular, I suggest that you read up on the history of civil conflict in the Republic during the whole century before Caesar’s assassination - the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Sulla, Catiline, the Populares and the Optimates, and the widespread grievances among ordinary people against the Republican government. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/31 "2021-09-08T14:52:31Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Is joke, yes? Caesar salad AFAICT is named after its inventor, 20th-c. restaurateur Caesar Cardini. > > Yes, the fact that a 20th-century Italian guy is named “Caesar” is in itself a testament to the prestige of the title, but it’s not quite the same as actually naming a 20th-century dish for Julius directly. who lived and worked in Tijuana Mexico, of all places. The hotel where he invented the salad is still there, at least according to our taxi driver as we drove past it. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/32 "2021-09-08T15:14:35Z")
I’m not even sure how much the Ancient Roman Republic would ever be classified as a truly representative government at any point to be honest. We know obviously that in the early Republic it wasn’t even close to anything we’d recognize as democratic in a legal sense; the Patrician class were the only ones who could hold Consulships and Senate seats. With the creation of the Tribunes began a long, 200+ year process of rebalance between the Patricians and the Plebs, but even that is hard to identify as a purely democratic revolution. The popular conception has always been that the Patricians were the few ultra-wealthy landed gentry, and the Plebs were the mass of commoners, in a typical aristocrat/peasant dichotomy. That may have been true in the period of the Roman Kingdom and in the very early Republic, but wasn’t really true much after that. Virtually every prominent Roman politician or leader of the Plebeian class in Roman history was a member of the upper tiers of the Plebeian classes (in the complex Roman class system there were the broad, birthright classes of Patrician/Pleb, but the property-based classes reflected by what order you belonged to in the _Centuriate Assembly_), Rome was always dominated in a quasi-oligarchical fashion by the very wealthy and powerful, whether the individuals who were wielding power at any given time belonged to a Patrician or a Plebeian gens never really changed that reality. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/33 "2021-09-08T15:26:36Z")
Those seeking political power, which is always power over others, like to point to and venerate historical authoritarians to justify their own rule. So it is not surprising that those in power used a particular take on Caesar to justify and mystify their own authoritarianism. It has a certain parallel with the divine right of kings. That we are all taught such stuff at an early age is insidious. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/34 "2021-09-08T15:28:38Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Julius was so awesome he himself performed the first Cesarian section on his own birth, then sewed up his mother. Yes, but his greatest feat was persuading his mother to swallow the knife. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/35 "2021-09-08T17:12:51Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Yes, but his greatest feat was persuading his mother to swallow the knife… Hail, Caesar! ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/36 "2021-09-08T17:25:40Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > One other reason Caesar is so remembered is that, like Churchill, he wrote his history. He not only wrote his own history, but was in fact the first person to ever write a book. Before Caeser, people used scrolls for writing. Caeser was the inventor of the codex, which is what we now refer to as a (paper) book. > [@Tamerlane](#): > > I’d probably amend that to well above average. World-class, really. It would be one thing to dismiss his victories against the Celts/Germans, but it should be noted he was consistently and occasionally spectacularly effective against the best army of the day - his own 😉 . It’s a lot harder to ignore his record against his Roman opponents, in which he appears to have very often been mildly to severely outnumbered. And while you can say he had the benefit of a quality general staff, he fought against them as well. Like his highly regarded former lieutenant in Gaul, Titus Labienus. Right. And IIRC he was one of only two people, along with William the Conqueror, who successfully invaded England. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/37 "2021-09-08T17:33:50Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Right. And IIRC he was one of only two people, along with William the Conqueror, who successfully invaded England. He left though with all the Roman troops, and the Romans’s invaded it again later to gather it under Roman rule, so presumably those later invaders deserve a mention. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/38 "2021-09-08T17:37:03Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > He not only wrote his own history, but was in fact the first person to ever write a book. Before Caeser, people used scrolls for writing. Caeser was the inventor of the codex, which is what we now refer to as a (paper) book. ? Do you have a cite for that? [This discussion of the history of the codex](https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/06/the-beginnings-of-the-codex.html), for example, seems to date the origins of the Latin codex quite a bit later than Julius Caesar. Even Wikipedia seems to [find the attribution to Caesar dubious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll): > [@](#): > > The _codex_ form of the book—that is, folding a scroll into pages, which made reading and handling the document much easier—appears during the Roman period. Stemming from a passage in Suetonius’ _Divus Julius_ (56.6), legend has it that Julius Caesar was the first to fold scrolls, concertina-fashion, for dispatches to his forces campaigning in Gaul. But the precise meaning of the passage is by no means clear. As C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat point out, the idea that “Julius Caesar may have been the inventor of the codex… is indeed a fascinating proposition; but in view of the uncertainties surrounding the passage, it is doubtful whether any such conclusion can be drawn”. What the evidence of surviving early codices does make clear is that Christians were among the earliest to make widespread use of the [codex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex). ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/39 "2021-09-08T17:55:18Z")
> [@naita](#): > > > [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > > > Right. And IIRC he was one of only two people, along with William the Conqueror, who successfully invaded England. > > He left though with all the Roman troops, and the Romans’s invaded it again later to gather it under Roman rule, so presumably those later invaders deserve a mention. It was basically a 40 year process to bring modern day England under Roman rule, started by Emperor Claudius. By around 40 years later the border with “Pictland” in the North was decently well delineated by the Stanegate road ( [Stanegate - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanegate)) which was situated a little south of where Hadrian eventually built his famous wall. I also would contest that only the Romans and William the Conqueror have successfully invaded England. While we don’t have surviving record of their annals, we know factually that the Germanic invasions were successful and saw the ruling class of England (made up of the Romano-British) be replaced by Saxons/Angles/Jutes over lordship and heavy intermixing between those Germanic peoples and the resident population of the country. As best we can tell this wasn’t a single one-off invasion but a long period of invasions and migrations. [Previous popular wisdom held that the Celtic/Roman Britons were totally supplanted by the Germanic tribes, being pushed to remnant populations in places like Cornwall / Wales / Pictland, but modern scholarship highly suggests it wasn’t really like that, and more likely that there was large scale German settlement under Germanic rulers that live alongside existing Briton settlement, and that the common folk heavily intermarried with a large scale of cultural fusion, albeit Old English that emerged was a decidedly Germanic language so the linguistic aspect was German dominated.] Then too the Viking invasions that began in the 9th century with the Great Heathen Army saw hundreds of years of Scandinavian control of large swathes of the country. While that settlement was eventually pushed out politically and the remaining “Danes” were either assimilated or killed off in events like the St. Brice’s Day Massacre (in which Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred “the Unready” ordered the mass execution of every Dane found within the Kingdom of England.) ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279/40 "2021-09-08T18:22:32Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Even Wikipedia seems to [find the attribution to Caesar dubious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroll): I looked up the passage in Suetonius. The meaning is certainly debatable, but my understanding is that he’s saying that Caesar wrote his letters to the Senate on scrolls that unrolled from left to right, with the text in columns or ‘pages’ (like a Torah scroll), whereas previously they had been sent on scrolls that unrolled top to bottom, with the writing in the other direction across the whole width of the scroll. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-big-deal-about-caesar/950279.md?page=3)