rival patrician factions for their trouble; however, their significance was that they established a precedent for seeking popular support as a strategy of political reform (Wells 386) and as a means of breaking the power monopoly of the senate (Gardner, Introduction, CG 11). The relevance of the Gracchi to the present research is that Julius Caesar, like the Gracchi only with more success, courted popular support as a strategy for strengthening his own political capital. In the polarized political climate of Rome, however, any conceptualization of popular government implied that civil war would be required to implement it. That of course is just what happened, and Caesar was the pivotal figure around which a decisive, though protracted, civil war had the effect of transforming the shape of Roman governance and history.
An appreciation of the historical context for the rise of Julius Caesar is necessary for any meaningful evaluation of Caesar's life and work. In the first century B.C., Roman law, state, and society, as a practical matter were shifting away
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