History of Julius Ceasar

Key notes: According to, Based on, Per, Said, Citing author, stated…

Julius Caesar. (2009). history.com

The statesman and general Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) expanded the Roman Republic through a

series of battles across Europe before declaring himself dictator for life. He died famously on the

steps of the Senate at the hands of political rivals. Julius Caesar is often remembered as one of

the greatest military minds in history and credited with laying the foundation for the Roman

Empire. Julius Caesar, one of the world’s greatest military leaders, was born into a senatorial,

patrician family and was the nephew of another famous Roman general, Marius. After the death

of Marius and the rise of Sulla, Caesar’s life was for a time in jeopardy, but in the early 60s b.c.

he launched his own successful political and military career. Rising rapidly, he campaigned

successfully for the consulship in 60 b.c. and struck a deal with two of Rome’s leading figures,

Pompey the Great and Crassus. Together the three of them became known as the First

Triumvirate and controlled Rome throughout the 50s b.c., until Caesar and Pompey, after

Crassus’s death, went to war against one another in 49 b.c. “Unlike in the Shakespeare play,

Caesar's last words were not "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?”) (History.com, 2009).”

Instead they were reported as "You, too, my child?”During the heyday of the First Triumvirate,

Caesar devoted his energies to the conquest of Gaul (modern France). After serving as consul in

59 b.c., Caesar became governor of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul (northern Italy and southern

France, respectively). In 58, when the Helvetii in Switzerland attempted to migrate into central

Gaul, Caesar decided that they would be a threat to the Roman province, and in a great battle he
stopped their advance and sent them back into their homeland. In the meantime he had become

friendly with the chieftains of central Gaul, and they urged him to protect them against a German

invader from across the Rhine, Ariovistus. So, in the summer of 58, after defeating the

Helvetians, Caesar marched against the Germans and drove them out of Gaul.

Caesar was by then inextricably involved in the affairs of Gaul. Over the next several years, in a

series of brilliant campaigns, the Roman general conquered all of Gaul and made it a Roman

province. The conquest required several difficult battles in northern Gaul and the crossing of the

Rhine over a trestle bridge constructed by Roman engineers. In the summers of 55 and 54 b.c.,

Caesar sailed across the English Channel, thereby securing his northern flank along the Rhine in

Gaul by precluding a Celtic attack from across the Channel, though Britain did not become a

Roman province for another hundred years. After dealing with a major revolt by Gallic

chieftains, including Caesar’s famous siege of Vercingetorix’s bastion at Alesia in 52 b.c., the

Roman leader brought resistance to an end in 51 and 50 b.c.

Early in 49, as his command in Gaul was coming to an end, Caesar began civil war with his old

associate, Pompey the Great, who had allied himself with the Roman Senate against Caesar. In a

surprising blitzkrieg, Caesar invaded Italy and drove Pompey into Macedonia in less than

seventy days. Since Pompey had a fleet and Caesar did not, Caesar decided to attack Spain,

where Pompey had strong support, while Caesar’s men constructed warships. Victorious in

Spain, Caesar then sailed to Macedonia, but he could not dislodge Pompey from his base at

Dyrrhachium (modern Durazzo). Caesar finally raised the siege, fell back into central Greece,

and defeated Pompey, who had pursued him, at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 b.c.

Caesar was then drawn into an affair with Cleopatra in Egypt and finally had to fight two more

battles with the Pompeians, one in North Africa (Thapsus, 46 b.c.) and another in Spain (Munda,
45 b.c.). Triumphant all over the Mediterranean, the great general was assassinated by political

rivals on the Ides of March in 44 b.c., as he prepared an invasion of the Parthian Empire. His

generalship was characterized by boldness, decisiveness, and a sometimes reckless willingness to

move ahead of his supply lines.

History of Malcolm X

(Hahn, S., 2012). MALCOLM X died in a hail of assassin's gunfire at the Audubon Ballroom in

February 1965, the mainstream media in the United States was quick to suggest that he reaped the

harvest of bloodshed he had brazenly sown. Calling him an "extremist," "a demagogue," a "racist,"

and a "spiritual desperado," commentators often insisted that Malcolm advocated the use of

violence, regarded whites as "devils," and was an embodiment--as a television series on the Nation

of Islam had put it in 1959--of the "hate that hate produced." At best, the press acknowledged

Malcolm's oratorical skills and razor-sharp intelligence, and found him to be personally impressive

but politically misguided; at worst, they regarded him as an opportunist and religious zealot intent

on stirring the cauldron of racial conflict, the polar opposite of the increasingly admired Reverend

Martin Luther King Jr.

Several months later, with the posthumous publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X

(produced in collaboration with Alex Haley), a more complex portrait began to emerge. It depicted

a life of major and unexpected transformations, from a young street-hustling, drug-peddling

burglar to a born-again member of the Nation of Islam and finally to an activist whose

simultaneous spiritual and political reawakenings tragically presaged his death. The vehicle of this

veritable transubstantiation was the penitentiary to which he was confined for seven years and

where, owing to the initiatives of a fellow inmate and family members, Malcolm embarked on a
journey of re-education, which included his embrace of the spiritual guidance of Elijah

Muhammad.

EARL LITTLE WAS NOT a model father; he physically abused his wife and children. But

Malcolm appears to have escaped much of this cruelty, and was instead introduced to his father's

political passions. Although Earl drilled all of his children in Garveyite principles and spoke to

them regularly about "what was going on in the Caribbean area and parts of Africa," he often

brought Malcolm with him to UNIA meetings, where his enthusiasm and leadership were amply

on display. "The meetings always closed up," Malcolm later wrote, "with my father saying several

times and the people chanting after him, 'Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will!'"

The political life continued to be a peripatetic one for the Littles. They moved from Omaha to

Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to East Chicago, in Indiana, and then from East Chicago to Lansing,

Michigan. There Earl bought a small farmhouse for the family, and not only mobilized support for

the UNIA in the area but also helped to transport the UNIA faithful from many of Michigan's small

towns to larger assemblies in nearby Detroit, by then a hub of Garveyism and black working-class

activism more generally. But Earl's political troubles also worsened. White neighbors tried to have

the Littles evicted and, failing, firebombed their house. Earl thought to put his carpentry skills to

use in building a new house in another part of town, though not before being legally

outmaneuvered. Not surprisingly, Louisa sensed the peril they were in and begged Earl to exercise

vigilance. It was to no avail. In September 1931, off to run an errand across town, Earl met a

violent death under suspicious circumstances that the local police ruled accidental. Malcolm was

all of six years old.

Earl Little's death threw his family into desperate circumstances. Louisa would end up

institutionalized (Marable speculates this may have encouraged Malcolm to believe that women
were by nature weak and unreliable), and Malcolm was placed in a juvenile home near Lansing,

by which time he had earned the nickname "Red" owing to his hair color. Into this maelstrom,

sometime in late 1939 or 1940, stepped Malcolm's half-sister Ella, who had been born and

abandoned by Earl in Georgia, and later moved to Boston. Having heard of the family's troubles,

she took it upon herself to see how the children were faring. By early 1941, she brought Malcolm

(the youngest at age fifteen) back east with her, beginning what Marable calls the "first major

reinvention" in Malcolm's life.

But if Malcolm was not quite a full-fledged criminal, theft did prove to be an important way of

getting by. When, especially down on his luck, he returned to Boston in late 1945, he formed a

gang that included his white girlfriend and her younger sister to rob homes in affluent

neighborhoods. Careless in fencing some of the stolen goods, Malcolm was caught and convicted

after the girlfriend turned state's evidence (which further stimulated his misogynist tendencies).

The court, amused neither by Malcolm's exploits nor by his involvement with "white girls," threw

the book at him, imposing four concurrent eight-to-ten year sentences and three concurrent six-to-

eight year sentences on burglary and weapons charges. By the spring of 1946, he was doing time

in the wretched Charlestown State Prison, among the oldest penitentiaries in the world.

II.

TWO SIGNIFICANT THINGS happened to Malcolm Little while he served out his prison terms.

The first was that he met a fellow inmate, twenty years his senior, named John Elton Bembry, who

introduced him to a new world of ideas and self-discipline. Convicted of burglary like Malcolm,

Bembry's knowledge ranged so widely that Malcolm--obviously intellectually inclined--was

nothing short of awestruck and envious; even some of the prison guards eagerly sought to hear

Bembry speak. Recognizing the connection, Bembry encouraged Malcolm to enroll in

correspondence courses and make use of the small prison library. Malcolm responded with avidity,

completing the requirements for university extension courses, studying Latin and German, reading

in linguistics and etymology, and memorizing word definitions in the dictionary. In the process he

gained in self-confidence, and determined to change his life.

A letter from Malcolm's brother Philbert in early 1948 set the direction of change. Philbert

explained that he and the other members of the Little family had become members of the Nation

of Islam, and hoped that Malcolm would join them. Initially Malcolm scoffed, later joking that

Philbert "was forever joining something," but the family refused to relent. His brother Reginald

and his sister Hilda soon visited Malcolm in prison, told him more about the Nation and their

attraction to it, and urged him to contact the supreme leader known as Elijah Muhammad. Long a

non-believer, Malcolm was increasingly impressed by his siblings' devotion, and by the Nation's

project of enabling African Americans--especially the men--to find dignity and self-respect. When

he finally decided to embrace the Nation, his commitment to it was already very deep.

The Littles' gravitation to the Nation of Islam was less surprising than it may seem. Scholars have

demonstrated that Islam established a broader base among African Americans, from early on, than

has previously been imagined, and by the second decade of the twentieth century a North

Carolinian calling himself Noble Drew Ali founded the Moorish Science Temple of America, with

an initial base in Newark, New Jersey. The organization then established temples in Philadelphia,

Baltimore, Richmond, Petersburg, Cleveland, Youngstown, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Lansing--

all cities where the UNIA had popular followings--and seems to have attracted Garveyites as the

UNIA began to unravel in the late 1920s.

He became something of an evangelist-in-training while in prison, developing his indictments of

white supremacy, sharpening his critiques of Western institutions and values, and honing a
distinctive speaking style marked by some of the cadences of jazz. He also began to convert a few

of his fellow inmates to the Nation, and by the time of his release on parole in the summer of 1952

he was signing his name "Malcolm X."

Although he initially found work at a Ford assembly plant (and became a member of the United

Auto Workers), within a year Malcolm became assistant minister at the Nation's Detroit Temple

No. 1. He then moved on to Boston, Philadelphia, and Harlem, where, in 1954, he was named

minister of Temple No. 7. His travels and his sense of commitment seemed reminiscent of his

father's, but his skills and his stature as an organizer clearly set him apart.

When Malcolm left prison and took the ministerial path, the Nation of Islam was struggling with

a tiny membership and a problematic message--not so much in its spiritual orientation, its

Manichean theology, or its ideas of community as in its rejection of worldly engagement. Elijah

Muhammad strongly discouraged civic and political involvement, whether public protests against

Jim Crow or even voter registration, and counseled a full withdrawal from the life of civil society.

In part this reflected Muhammad's opposition to integrationism, and in part his fears about losing

power over the membership; but the timing of his secessionist doctrine was not very good, given

the upsurge in civil rights activism that was spreading among African Americans, north and south.

Malcolm contributed a new energy and dedication, a clear-minded outlook, and a deep charisma

to the cause, and they proved increasingly irresistible. He brought his prison learning to bear in

constructing a historical narrative of white sin and black resistance, his Garveyite perspectives in

representing racial destiny and empowerment, and his street wisdom in communicating with his

audiences. Tall, lean, handsome, strait-laced, and savvy, Malcolm became the Nation's most

magnetic figure. He helped boost membership from around 1,200 in 1953 to around 6,000 in 1955,
and then to as many as 75,000 in 1961. It was nothing short of astonishing, and it put the Nation

on the political map of the United States.

Malcolm's organizational gifts were related to an evolving worldview that took notice of the

changing political pulse in black America and the intensifying struggles against Western

colonialism across the globe. This is where Marable allows us to see the intellectual growth and

dexterity that make Malcolm such a significant figure of the mid-twentieth century. Malcolm was

extremely demanding of Nation members while holding himself to the strictest standards of

comportment. As Louis Farrakhan (at the time known as Louis X) recalled, "I never saw Malcolm

smoke. I never heard Malcolm curse. I never saw Malcolm wink at a woman. I never saw Malcolm

eat in between meals. He ate one meal a day. He got up at 5 o'clock in the morning to say his

prayers. I never saw Malcolm late for an appointment. Malcolm was like a clock." And Malcolm's

sermons usually had political resonance: rather than simply confining himself to the doctrines of

Elijah Muhammad or to the Garveyite principles of his father, he wrestled with the implications

of an explosive world around him.

Malcolm took special notice when, in 1955, representatives from twenty-nine African and Asian

countries, many of them newly independent, met in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss political

cooperation at a time when the Cold War was intensifying, hatching a non-aligned movement.

Here, he imagined, were possibilities for unifying African Americans with followers of Islam

elsewhere in the world. He quickly called for "a Bandung Conference in Harlem." "More than any

other NOI leader," Marable writes, Malcolm "recognized the religious and political significance

of Bandung."

Before long, Malcolm became even more engaged in the tumultuous political atmosphere of

Harlem. Reacting to the beating of several black men, including two Nation members, by New
York police in the spring of 1957, Malcolm succeeded in mobilizing several thousand local blacks,

conducting a march down Lenox Avenue, and pressing the police to provide medical treatment for

one of the victims. So formidable was Malcolm's demeanor and so orderly was the demonstration

that one of the police officers gasped, "No one man should have that much power." Eventually bail

was posted, the arrested men were acquitted in court, and the NYPD was forced to pay more than

$70,000 in damages, the largest police brutality settlement ever awarded in the city. Malcolm now

saw that the Nation would only grow by becoming immersed in the daily struggles of the black

community. Unfortunately, this epiphany put him on a collision course with Elijah Muhammad

and many of the Nation's members. To the end, Malcolm--unlike King--regarded himself as

something of an outsider to the country in which he lived, as "a person of African descent who

happened to be a United States citizen." What he offered was not, like King, a narrative of political

realization and redemption, but a withering critique of an American racism that was structurally

embedded. It remained a disconcerting and pessimistic perspective. And critics could sensibly

argue that, in resisting integrationism, Malcolm never identified a realistic way forward for African

Americans in a society in which they were a distinct minority (Hahn, S., 2012).

Comparison
Reference:

Julius Caesar. (2009). history.com Staff. Retrieved From:

http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/julius-caesar. Access Date: January 24, 2018.

Publisher: A+E Networks

Baker, H. J. (2012). Manning Marable. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. African American

Review, (1-2), 239.

Hahn, S. (2012). IF X, THEN WHY?. New Republic, 243(6), 37.