ourted 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 from the Twelve Tables, which had codified for some nearly centuries the rule of Roman procedure and which had a connection with religious observance dating back to the seventh-century B.C. promulgation of the first Roman laws by Numa Pompilius, to whom Plutarch attributes the institution of the Vestal Virgins and Roman priesthood orders (Plutarch 46-52). The Twelve Tables, says Gibbon, "
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