Divine Iulius
In the past 2000 years historians and artists alike have been going back to Iulius Caesar, meaning to bring into life the “great man," who cast a shadow not only on his contemporary rivals, also reaching into later centuries. Antiquity has bequeathed to us a rich portrait of Caesar and it is not easy to answer the question what his charisma consisted in. One important component of his myth is his relationship to gods as well as to religious cult. He did not oppose, in fact, he sometimes consciously furthered the legitimisation of his power by means of religion. It cannot be precluded that he was affected by the religious way of legitimising power known from the Orient which seemed to be especially amplified in the Hellenistic divine kingdoms. It cannot be argued on the basis of sources that he should have striven to win royal title or divine reverence. Thanks to his realistic political finesse, he considered old Roman traditions, although the determined defenders of Roman republic strove to denounce his activities. He based his own political line on the traditional Roman catch phrases such as dignitas, popular sovereignty, misericordia, liberalitas, dementia, within the framework of the Epicurean thought that after anarchy, undisturbed prosperity is usually guaranteed by an outstanding personality. By means of his exceptional charisma, he was always capable of achieving something new; it is hardly a coincidence that his opponents found no other way to defeat him than murdering him.
