Hello and welcome to this episode of Epoch where I should be continuing once again my

story my narrative of the decline of fall of the Roman Republic.

Now last time I finished talking about Pompey and the Pirates now I'm going to switch

over to the story of Caesar.

I'm going to talk all about the life of the young Caesar and try and bring that

thread of the narrative up to speed. Going to be using almost as you, or exclusively,

Plutarch again, because he's the only real

with the best source on the early life of Caesar.

So let's dive right in. First, before I actually start reading from Plutarch, I want to say a few words in general about Caesar, how you can view Caesar. Like a lot of people in history, particularly ancient history, it's possible,

very, very possible, to have two completely different views of the man.

In more modern history, it's a bit more difficult. when someone's fully in the light of history so to speak

Somebody like Stalin or Hitler or Margaret Thatcher or Ken Livingston.

There's so much information about them.

There's so much in their own words, so much footage.

And it's known so well exactly what they did and when and all that kind of thing

that it's it's more difficult to have completely polarised different views of

them. What you see is after what you get. You have to really sort of do mental acrobatics to come to a completely different conclusion about the type of man styling was, for example.

Yeah, it's still possible. Revisionists to do it. But when you go back into the depths of time,

when you go back to ancient history really, where you've only got a small number of sources,

the counter arguments, the revisionist types of history, can be much more convincing.

And in fact there are lots of figures, we can have two completely different views of them and they're both kind of valid.

For example, the idea of Alexander the Great, one that he's just a shining hero,

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