Julius Caesar

We reviewed a little bit on the Gracchus brothers, talking about the Latifundia.

Notes
Proletarians-the lowest class of the Roman Citizens

With the changes in Rome's society and politics, the character of its armies and their commanders also changed. Instead of the farmer-soldiers of old, it was now landless and property less proletarians who were drafted to fill the ranks of the legions. This new type of soldier proved just as courageous and tough as the old one, and throughout the first century B.C., Rome's empire expanded faster than ever. But Rome's citizen-soldiers were now "semi professionals" who fought largely in the hope of bettering themselves through pay, loot, promotion, and above all grants of land or money to provide them with a living when they were discharged . And small farms for veterans were precisely what the senate had shown itself too greedy and shortsighted to provide.

Julius Caesar came from an old patrician family that had come down in the world, and he entered the city's politics as a young man determined to regain the fame and power of his ancestors. In 60 BC he began to collaborate with Pompey, an officer promoted by Sulla who had conquered many eastern Mediterranean lands. The two allies formed a triumvirate(three-man board), together with another former henchman of Sulla, Marcus Crassus, that was for a time the dominant political force in Rome.
Caesar won an appointment as proconsul of a province that included the southern regions of Gaul, a territory stretching all the way from northern Italy and the Mediterranean coast to the Rhine River and the Atlantic Ocean. The Gauls, as the inhabitants were called, were a branch of the Celtic peoples, the predominant barbarian ethnic group across most of western Europe and the British Isles.

Crassus had led an army to crushing defeat by the neighboring empire of Parthia, while Pompey had stayed in Rome, growing increasingly jealous of Caesar's success. Finally, with Pompey's support, the Senate ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome.

Rubicon- A big decision that you make where you can't go back(in general)

Pompey was hastily commissioned to defend the Senate, but his forces were no match for Caesar's veterans. Forced to flee from Italy, Pompey was later defeated by Caesar in Greece and murdered in Egypt, where he had taken refuge. After subduing supporters of Pompey and other opponents, the Senate now hailed him, however reluctantly, the Father of the Fatherland- a title recently invented for the Republic's most admired statesman. The people's assemblies continued to exist, but they did little more than endorse Caesar's propels.

Caesar extended Roman citizenship to parts of Gaul and Spain and appointed citizens from the provinces to the Senate. He gave the Romans splendid public buildings and roads, and introduced reforms into every department of administration.