Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most  grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and  The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches  ever written. As literature, they are representative of the finest  expressions of Latin prose in its "golden" age, a benchmark of elegant  style and masculine brevity imitated by young schoolboys for centuries.

One  of the most daring and brilliant generals of all time, Julius Caesar  combined the elements of tactical genius with the shrewdness of a master  politician. He was an astute judge of men's character - their strengths  and weaknesses. Whenever possible, he exercised restraint and mercy  even when his worst enemies were in his power. But he also knew when and  how to mete out stern punishment and his swift retaliations became a  hallmark of his career. With his charismatic leadership, his powerful  intellect and his magnetic personal charm, Julius Caesar became the idol  of men and women everywhere. The fanatic loyalty of his troops and the  adulation of the Roman public propelled him to the pinnacle of power.  Historian Will Durant called him "the most complete man that antiquity  produced."

Follow along in this recording as Julius Caesar in 50  B.C. undertakes the awesome enterprise of subduing savage Gaul, an area  roughly the size of Texas. That task was barely completed before his  enemies in Rome struck, igniting the bloody Civil War that engulfed most  of the Roman Empire and afterward left Caesar in supreme power.