Caesarism, Charisma and Fate: Historical Sources and Modern Resonances in the Work of Max Weber

For many centuries, Julius Caesar was a name that evoked strong feelings among educated people. Some were favorable but others, came from the point of view of "political republicanism" that envisaged Caesar as a historical symbol for some of the most dangerous tendencies a policy could experience: corruption, demagogy, usurpation. Peter Baehr examines the reception of Caesar in republican thought until the eighteenth century and his transformation in the nineteenth when he enjoyed a major historiographical and cultural rehabilitation. Book jacket.