Caesar’s Women is the story of Gaius Julius Caesar’s rise to prominence in his world, beginning with his return to Rome in 68BC prepared to dominate a new battlefield - the Roman Forum. The wars he fights within it are waged with words, plots, schemes, metaphorical assassination. But Caesar sets out to prove that he is the master of this battlefield too, one he shares with other men like Cicero and Pompey the Great.
Penned inside Rome for ten years, he also conquers Rome’s noblewomen. Among his victims is the powerful and vindictive Servilia, mother of Brutus; their passionate, enduring and destructive affair is a major influence in the shaping of Brutus’s future life. Then there are the women to whom Caesar is patriarch: his mother, his daughter, and Rome’s revered Vestal Virgins. Yet the one thing he never gives to any of the women who love him or want him is himself. To Caesar, love is just another weapon in his political arsenal. He is as willing to sacrifice his daughter on the altar of his ambition as he is read to seize other means of moving towards his ultimate goal - to be the greatest of all.
