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Maria Wyke. Caesar in the USA. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. xii + 306 pp.
$39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-27391-7.
Reviewed by John Poirot (Louisiana State University)
Published on H-War (December, 2014)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
The Many Roles of the American Caesar
later chapters, however, Caesar moves out of the classroom and into the political sphere. This shift allows Wyke
to draw on a variety of “nontraditional” sources, such
as theatrical productions, films, television series, comic
books, and advertisements. Wyke’s treatment of these
sources is both informative and engaging. For each of
these sources, she includes a compelling summary and
analysis—and, whenever possible, pictures or other types
of visual evidence. Caesar in the USA is filled with photographs of stage productions, film stills, political cartoons, and comic strips. Wyke’s wide array of sources
makes her narrow, academic topic seem vivid and approachable. Thanks to her choice and masterful treatment of source material, Wyke has managed to produce
one of academic publishing’s eusive missing links: a book
which is scholarly but also accessible to lay readers. Caesar in the USA strikes a fine balance between academic
and popular history.
Maria Wyke’s Caesar in the USA (2012) is one of the
latest books on the reception of ancient Rome in American society. Wyke admits that her book’s topic has already received considerable attention from other scholars and political commentators. Recent works in this field
of study include: L. T. Pearcy’s The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (2005), C. Murphy’s
Are We Rome? : The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of
America (2007), M. Malamud’s Ancient Rome and Modern America (2009), and C. J. Richard’s The Golden Age
of Classics in America: Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum
United States (2009). However, Wyke has carved out her
own niche in this crowded field by focusing exclusively
on Julius Caesar’s cultural impact on the United States in
the twentieth century. Wyke’s monograph traces the development of Caesar’s image from World War I (when the
Roman general’s war commentaries were primarily the
bane of American schoolchildren everywhere) to the Iraq
War (when political pundits more often invoked Caesar’s
image as shorthand for the executive overreach of American presidents). Caesar in the USA argues that classical
Rome’s most famous general and dictator has played a
key part—either as the hero or as the villain—in shaping
modern America’s political discourse.
Part 1 of Caesar in the USA, which Wyke simply titles
“Education,” includes the first three chapters. In chapters
1 and 2 Wyke examines how the shift from an agrarian
to urban economy, as well as widespread immigration,
sparked an explosion of Latin study in U.S. schools at
the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time one
in two high school students studied Latin, and the language was considered “a gateway to full participation in
American life and a path to social advancement” (p. 21).
In their second year (known as the “Caesar Year”), high
school students primarily studied Caesar’s Gallic Wars
because of the regularity of its syntax and the simplicity
Despite its snappy title, Wyke’s book is, first and foremost, a detailed academic examination of Caesar’s role
in U.S. culture. The work’s early chapters, which explore the use of Caesar in the American classroom, rely
heavily on pedagogical articles and Latin textbooks from
the early twentieth century for their source material. In
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of its grammar. Latin instructors focused on the dictator’s war commentary, too, because it paired well with
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which students also read in
their second-year English classes. During the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, Americans often cast Caesar as
a villain, a tyrant who destroyed the democratic institutions of the Roman Republic. But Wyke points out that, at
the start of twentieth century, educators frequently minimized Caesar’s tyrant persona, as well as the general’s
war atrocities in Gaul. Caesar was instead employed as
a model for young American men. In their second year
students more often confronted a Caesar whom teachers and textbooks portrayed as a military genius and political hero. Popular histories and historical fiction novels, like T. Rice Holmes’ Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul (1899)
and A. C. Whitehead’s The Standard-Bearer (1914), supplemented this in-class portrait of the Roman dictator by
contributing to Caesar’s aura as a virile, John Waynetype figure.
nological disciplines. Wyke attributes Caesar’s decline,
in part, to less stringent college entrance requirements;
however, she also states: “[For] many practitioners of a
classical education in American high schools in the 1920s,
teaching Caesar’s Gallic Wars … was too big of a risk.
Lauding Caesar would only provide progressive educators with further evidence that the study of Latin was
more likely to destroy than build faith in democratic freedoms, and more likely to break than to make the best type
of man.… Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar has remained a
staple of the American high-school curriculum throughout the course of the twentieth century and on into the
twenty-first. But Caesar’s De bello Gallico has never regained the extraordinary degree of attention and sheer
admiration that it commanded in the United States in the
early years of the twentieth century” (p. 97). Yet starting
in the 1930s, as the popularity of Caesar and Latin faded
from schools, the Roman dictator found a new home in
the contentious world of American political discourse.
In her third chapter Wyke explores Caesar’s reception in the United States during the First World War.
She contends that “historical events (like assassinations
and war, whether civil or foreign) [stimulated] a sudden escalation of interest in and topical use for the Roman statesman, both in and outside of the high-school
classroom” (p. 68). During WWI, the Gallic War seemed
especially topical to American commentators: the Allies were fighting in France (Gaul) against the Germans,
whose emperor had taken the title “Kaiser.” Some U.S.
reporters therefore adopted the French view and interpreted the Great War as a French/Gallic struggle for freedom against German/Roman imperialism. At the same
time American movie producers, such as Enrico Guazzoni, began importing popular European films based on
the Roman dictator’s life. Guazzoni’s Caius Julius Caesar (1914) contained undertones of Italy’s burgeoning nationalist movement, which made it appeal to many Italian
Americans. For distribution across the United States, the
film’s more “morally questionable” elements (e.g., Caesar’s affair with Servilia) were heavily edited to appeal to
Anglo-American audiences’ stricter sense of social propriety. Wyke notes that the film won widespread acclaim
in the United States for its potential as a pedagogical tool.
Part 2 of Wyke’s monograph, which is titled “Political
Culture,” covers the final four chapters. It traces the use
of Caesar in the American press and U.S. politics from the
interwar years to the early twenty-first century (1920s2008). Chapter 4 examines how Mussolini’s Roman revival in Italy prompted heated debate among pro- and
antifascist groups in the United States. The American
journalist George Seldes’s popular antifascist book Sawdust Caesar: the Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism
(1935) argued the Mussolini was rewriting history to his
benefit, and Orson Welles’s New York stage play Julius
Caesar: Death of a Dictator (1937) used modern, fasciststyle costumes and lighting reminiscent of Nazi rallies to
warn its audience about the insidious dangers of dictatorship. Following Seldes and Welles’s lead, the American press started to invoke Caesar whenever it wished to
identify “home-grown” threats to American democracy.
Reporters frequently called the New York mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano “Little Caesar” because he tried to set
up a criminal organization based on a military hierarchy.
In addition, the Louisiana senator Huey P. Long, who became the de facto political boss of his state in the 1930s,
was commonly referred to in the press as the “despot of
the delta” and “Caesar of the bayous.”
Despite the image boost Caesar received from WWI
and the new medium of cinema, the Roman statesman’s
popularity in the United States began to wane in the
1920s. By that decade, only one quarter of high school
students studied Latin. Because of the Great War, some
critics questioned whether high schools and universities
should put more effort into teaching scientific and tech-
In her fifth chapter Wyke describes how, in the years
immediately following World War II (1945-55), Caesar
found his way into the popular culture and new media
of the age: television (CBS’s Julius Caesar, 1949) and
comic books (Classics Illustrated’s Julius Caesar, 1950).
Yet some writers were still tempted to redefine Caesar’s
political persona during this period. Will Durant’s his2
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torical study Caesar and Christ (1944) recast Caesar as
a progressive hero (à la FDR) who “dreamt of the capture of Parthia and its riches as a means to end economic depression and ensure world peace” (p. 132),
and Thorton Wilder’s historical novel The Ides of March
(1948) portrayed Caesar as a postwar champion of existentialist philosophy. In spite of these attempts, Caesar was still most frequently employed as a prop to
warn against the dangers of totalitarianism. For example,
Wyke dedicates considerable space to analyzing MGM’s
Julius Caesar(1953), which starred Marlon Brando as
Antony. Wyke argues that the film’s producers intended
the movie as a warning against the demagoguery of not
only the National Socialists and Stalinism abroad, but
also the Red Scare and McCarthyism at home.
sparked considerable debate among traditional and nontraditional theater critics.
In her book’s final chapter Wyke argues that, although the specter of Caesar and Rome faded in the last
quarter of the twentieth century (between the Ford and
Clinton presidencies), George W. Bush’s presidency—
and especially the start of the Iraq War—vigorously revived references to the dictator and Roman Empire in
American political discourse. Wykes explains that, after 9/11, many neoconservatives argued that an interventionist foreign policy and an “American Empire” (Pax
Americana) were good for the world. In response, liberals began likening Bush to Caesar in articles and political cartoons, and the Iraq War became Bush’s “Rubicon”
in the press. Wyke believes that American commentaChapter 6 examines Caesar’s role during the Cold tors were so comfortable using these classical references
War (1956-89), when critics on both the left and right because over “the course of the twentieth century, the
of the political spectrum believed American presidents Roman dictator [had already] achieved wide diffusion in
were accruing too much power. During this period, pres- American education, political and social discourse, and
idents who consolidated executive power were accused mass cultural production and had become thoroughly
of “Caesarism.” Critics depicted Lyndon B. Johnson, for Americanized” (p. 197).
instance, as Caesar in political cartoons to suggest that
Wyke’s narrow chronological focus may disappoint
he was waging a private war in Vietnam. Arthur M.
readers
who wish to learn about Caesar’s reception in the
Schlesinger’s The Imperial Presidency (1973) claimed that
United
States
prior to the twentieth century. Although
“The Cold War … had provided American presidents
Caesar’s legacy had a powerful influence on Americans
with the opportunity routinely to exercise almost royal
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Wyke’s book
prerogatives in the field of foreign affairs…. The ’Imperial Presidency’ had reached its apogee in the twen- provides only a cursory survey of those periods. This is
tieth century during Richard M. Nixon’s administration. only a minor criticism, however. Navigating the comIn [Schlesinger’s] view, Congress had surrendered the plex world of the classical tradition’s reception in the
power to make war to President Truman in 1950, while United States can be a difficult task, and Caesar in the
USA does an excellent job within its chosen chronologNixon’s mode of governance involved additionally the
ical scope. Wyke can make Caesar seem at once elusystematic restriction of the two other major powers held
by Congress—the power of the purse, and of oversight sive and ubiquitous. She jumps—sometimes rapidly—
and investigation” (p. 191). However, Wyke also notes back and forth between discussions of theater/film prothat Caesar’s image remained a prominent part of Amer- ductions and pedagogical/political articles. At one moican life because of the political assassinations and the ment, she casts Caesar as the hero; at another, as the villain. Doing so occasionally leaves the reader feeling a bit
culture wars of the 1960s. Advertisements for Stuart
disoriented. Wyke’s Caesar appears rather schizophrenic
Burge’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Caesar (1970)
included pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther at times. But, then again, this pattern is Wyke’s point.
King, and John F. and Bobby Kennedy to make the play Over the course of the twentieth century in the United
seem more relevant for its modern American audience. States, Caesar has played many roles. Sometimes these
And Joseph Papp’s revival of Julius Caesar in 1979, with roles are confusing; sometimes they are even contradictory. But they are all part of what has turned one of
its all-black-and-Hispanic Shakespeare repertory troupe,
Rome’s greatest statesman into an “American” Caesar.
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Citation: John Poirot. Review of Wyke, Maria, Caesar in the USA. H-War, H-Net Reviews. December, 2014.
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URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=41062
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoncommercialNo Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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