Why is there more media about Caesar than about Alexander?

[Snowygerry]

His single most famous quote is probably veni, vidi, vici.

Here's known for another quote, often the beginning of popular, written history in these parts :

Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Sort of lacks the punch of veni vidi vici.

He was famous in the Renaissance for both his great deeds and his self promotion. Here's Shakespeare: With what his valour did enrich his wit, His wit set down to make his valour live

 

[Kyriakos]

Eureka, it wouldn't make sense to compare Giannis to Archimedes either, they sort of are known for different things. Ceasar and Alexander, on the other hand, are easy to compare - and Alexander was far more important for world history.

 

[MontyJava]

Apparently, this was worth its own thread

This isn't something that can plausibly occur

Doesn't that make it more exotic and extravagant as a story? GoT got big, but it's not because you can just easily murder entire ruling families at dinner parties these days. People want something different and yet mostly historical. A period in time from the far past, where things were different, and people operated a lot "closer to the metal" in terms of raw human experience than in modern, wholly institutionalized and legalistic societies.

...couldn't find anything in particular to say about it- and was very quickly overshadowed by Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven as a template for heavy-handed historical analogies about American foreign policy.​

These "relevance" thematics aren't remotely necessary for good fiction, though, and much of the best fiction avoids them entirely. I'm a bit annoyed at how many writers have to hamfist modern political arguments into their works. History can stand on its own, and in good hands it does, even on TV. I don't recall many modern political themes from Rome, GoT, The Last Kingdom, Outlaw King, or even Deadwood. If they existed, they weren't central and I'm foggily remembering them I suppose.

Really, whoever wrote seasons 1-6 of Game of Thrones should probably make that their next project.

We'd spend the entire series developing Macedonian and Greek politics, Alexander would finally set off for Anatolia, and then he'd fight the Granicus, where Darius would die, at which point the entire Persian empire would simply collapse, and then Alex would turn around and raze all of Greece for not believing in him. Of course, the story would stop at him crossing the Hellespont, because the author would just abandon the project to write an extended fanfic of the Iliad or something instead.

...according to Plutarch, he had been warned that harm would come to him no later than the Ides of March​

Things I don't believe happened for $500. Those guys loved to dramatize and moralize. Alex's death leaves so much up to the writer. There's endless potential for plots and drama there. It doesn't need to be "and he got the flu, the end".

Caesar's books survive largely because of their usefulness in teaching Latin,

I took Latin. Never touched him. Cicero and Sallust, Lucretius and Vergil, Ovid and Horace. No Caesar. Sad for me. Also probably should've picked Spanish, but that's another discussion all itself.

 

[Sofista]

I took Latin. Never touched him. Cicero and Sallust, Lucretius and Vergil, Ovid and Horace. No Caesar. Sad for me. Also probably should've picked Spanish, but that's another discussion all itself.

I studied Latin for five long years, in high school. He was a bit like the easy level.

Whenever our teacher announced whom were be about to translate that day, we'd wait holding our breath. Then we'd react. If it was Ceasar, there would be much rejoicing: yeah, good old Ceasar, always straightforward. But if it happened to be folks like Cicero and Sallust, we'd all despair and wonder why the Heavens were punishing us...

 

[Traitorfish]

Apparently, this was worth its own thread
Doesn't that make it more exotic and extravagant as a story? GoT got big, but it's not because you can just easily murder entire ruling families at dinner parties these days. People want something different and yet mostly historical. A period in time from the far past, where things were different, and people operated a lot "closer to the metal" in terms of raw human experience than in modern, wholly institutionalized and legalistic societies.

...couldn't find anything in particular to say about it- and was very quickly overshadowed by Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven as a template for heavy-handed historical analogies about American foreign policy.​

These "relevance" thematics aren't remotely necessary for good fiction, though, and much of the best fiction avoids them entirely. I'm a bit annoyed at how many writers have to hamfist modern political arguments into their works. History can stand on its own, and in good hands it does, even on TV. I don't recall many modern political themes from Rome, GoT, The Last Kingdom, Outlaw King, or even Deadwood. If they existed, they weren't central and I'm foggily remembering them I suppose.

Contemporary resonance doesn't imply direct analogies for present-day political events (and such attempts tend to up clumsy and awkward), but they speak to contemporary anxieties about power, authority, legitimacy and justice. Game of Thrones isn't compelling because it functions as an analogy for contemporary political issues- it doesn't- but because it depicts characters grappling with power and legitimacy in ways which feel familiar. The historical and pseudo-historical settings allow characters to act without the same restraints as contemporary people, but that isn't intended to distance the audience from the characters, it is intended to draw them closer by dramatising what is usually too muddled and messy to talk about clearly.

Western fiction has historically found the late Roman Republic more conducive to that sort of storytelling than late Classical Greece, and I don't think it's a massive leap to conclude that this is because the former narrative depicts events which are in their outlines and the narrative themes they present far more familiar to the history of the modern West, and closer still to the anxieties of the modern West, than the narrative of the latter.