Ambition In Julius Caesar's Death

On Caesar’s Death
Fellow citizens, good Romans, the struggle between our emotions: love, passion and anger that fill our souls and sweep us away, and our thoughts: the cold, calculated reasoning that threatens to separate us from those pesky emotions, is a struggle we all must contend with. In other words, we must make sense of the struggle between our hearts and our minds. That is certainly a battle I have fought myself in my relationships with my friends and family. Yet in the end, I have found that the heart must triumph. As a humble citizen of Rome, I do not know much of complicated politics and the sort. I may be old, but I have experienced many periods of change in Rome. I can only say this: through all my years of quietly making a living

Then, I suppose we must first define ambition. The conspirators view ambition as greed for power. If that is the case, then it would be foolish to call Caesar ambitious. It was heard from Casca and even Antony himself that at the Feast of Lupercal, Antony “thrice presented him [Caesar] a kingly crown, / Which he did thrice refuse” (Shakespeare 3.2. 95-96). Caesar refused to call himself a king or submit to greed. Even with the prospect of being crowned a king placed before him not once, but three times, he still denied the idea. If Caesar was really so ambitious as the conspirators claim he was, then he would not have turned away this opportunity to gain power. Indeed, Caesar was actually quite humble. Even if he was ambitious, he desired success not for himself, but for the people of Rome. The conspirators have a skewed definition of ambition. Caesar’s sort of ambition was not greed or selfishness, but the honorable kind of ambition that inspires men to reach for their goals. The Rome we love and know today would not be so grand if Caesar had not taken measures to reorganize the city. Caesar, who traveled extensively, drew inspiration from different parts of the world and brought those ideas back to Rome. Look at all of the construction that has been going on here lately. The Forum Julium allows for more lawcourt space, and the Saepta Julia provides us with a larger voting area. I even heard that before his death, Caesar wished to “build a grand temple of Mars, a theatre that would rival Pompey’s, and a library that would rival Alexandria’s” (Fife). It is a pity that he will not see the completion of those projects. Caesar had a sense of determination, a strong will, and the drive to achieve his goals, otherwise known as true ambition. Caesar used this determination toward creating a better Rome. After seeing the other great cities in the