As urban warfare erupted in Alexandria, the pair began a romance while besieged in the palace for six months.Īround the time Caesar returned to Rome, Cleopatra gave birth to a boy believed to be his son. Caesar promptly executed Pompey’s assassins and sided with Cleopatra in Egypt’s civil war.Īccording to the ancient historian Plutarch, Caesar had the 21-year-old Cleopatra transported into the royal palace where he had taken residence by having her smuggled inside a linen sack filled with dirty laundry. When he presented Caesar with Pompey’s severed head upon his arrival in Alexandria, the reaction wasn’t gratitude it was horror. After the young king drowned in the Nile River while fleeing the battle, Caesar installed Cleopatra and her 12-year-old half-brother, Ptolemy XIV, as co-regents, but the queen held the true power.īut Ptolemy gravely miscalculated. When Roman reinforcements arrived in early 47 B.C., Caesar’s forces defeated Ptolemy’s army in the Battle of the Nile. Ptolemy, it turned out, sought Caesar’s support in Egypt’s own civil war-one that had pitted him against his co-regent and sister, Cleopatra VII. But before he could even step ashore, he was assassinated at the behest of the teenaged pharaoh Ptolemy XIII. Although outnumbered, Caesar’s legions defeated Pompey’s army in a decisive battle at Pharsalus, Greece, in 48 B.C., prompting Pompey to flee to Egypt. Forces supporting Caesar on one side and Pompey on the other battled as far away as Spain, Greece and North Africa. Instead, in 49 B.C., Caesar brazenly led a legion across the Rubicon River, which divided Gaul and Rome, sparking a civil war. When Pompey’s supporters in the Roman Senate demanded that Caesar disband his army and return to Rome as a civilian, he refused. He also earned the jealousy of Pompey, his former political ally in the First Triumvirate who effectively ran Rome.

Through his masterful battlefield tactics and willingness to fight in combat, Caesar earned the respect and loyalty of his soldiers. He started a civil war by ‘crossing the Rubicon.’ These initial incursions into Britain laid the foundation for Rome’s eventual conquest of much of the island.

Later that year, the Roman general commanded the first of two expeditions across the English Channel. Then, Roman troops marched across the waterway for the first time ever to subdue German tribes threatening eastern Gaul. In 55 B.C., Caesar’s army built a timber bridge spanning the Rhine River in just 10 days-a marvel of military engineering. During the bloody eight-year Gallic Wars, his legions conquered local tribes in present-day France, Belgium and Switzerland. After being appointed governor of Rome’s northern territory of Gaul in 58 B.C., Caesar vastly extended the boundaries of the Roman Republic across Europe, all the way to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and English Channel.

Best julius caesar coin