How Julius Caesar Changed Rome

1. The Rome Caesar was born into

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in Rome in 100 BCE, into a family that claimed descent from the goddess Venus but that had little money and less power. The Rome of his youth was a republic in crisis. Its empire had grown to cover the Mediterranean world, but its government had not grown with it: it was still run by a Senate of wealthy men and by magistrates elected for a single year, and the system was breaking under the strain. Armies were loyal to their generals rather than to the state, the poor of the city depended on free grain and on the patronage of rich men, and political life was marked by violence. In Caesar's lifetime, the generals Marius and Sulla had fought a civil war, Sulla had marched on Rome itself, and thousands of Romans had been killed in purges.

Caesar entered politics in this world, and he learned its rules early. He was elected to the offices of the Republic in turn: quaestor in 69 BCE, aedile in 65 BCE, pontifex maximus, the chief priest of Rome, in 63 BCE, and praetor in 62 BCE. He spent money lavishly to win popularity, borrowing heavily to stage games and public works, and he built a reputation as a man who favoured the common people against the Senate. He also survived danger: as a young man he was captured by pirates, and after his release he raised a fleet, captured them and had them executed, a story he told for the rest of his life as proof of his nerve. He served in Spain as a governor and won a military triumph, and by the age of forty he was one of the most prominent men in Rome.

In 60 BCE Caesar formed an alliance with the two most powerful men in Rome, the general Pompey and the wealthy Crassus, an arrangement his enemies called the First Triumvirate. With their support he was elected consul for 59 BCE, the highest office in the Republic, and he used the year to pass land reforms and to secure for himself a command in Gaul, the region that is now France, Belgium and parts of Germany and Switzerland. The command was to last for five years, later extended to ten, and it gave him an army, a province to govern, and the chance to win the military glory that Roman politics demanded. It also took him away from Rome for almost a decade, and when he returned, the Republic would be changed beyond recognition.

2. The conquest of Gaul

Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, from 58 to 50 BCE, were the making of his reputation and the foundation of his power. In eight years of fighting he conquered the whole of the region, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the English Channel, defeating the Helvetii, the Belgae, the Veneti and other peoples, and he was the first Roman general to cross the Rhine into Germany and to invade Britain, which he did twice, in 55 and 54 BCE. The conquest added a vast territory to the Roman world, and it made Gaul, which would become one of the most prosperous and most Romanised parts of the empire, a part of Roman civilisation for the next five centuries. It also made Caesar rich, because the spoils of war and the sale of captives into slavery brought him enormous wealth, and it made him famous, because he wrote his own account of the campaigns, the Commentaries on the Gallic War, and sent it back to Rome to be read by the public.

The Commentaries are one of the most important sources for Caesar's life, and one of the most misleading. Written in a plain, clear Latin that was meant to be read by ordinary Romans, they present Caesar as a calm, rational commander who fights only when he must and who treats his enemies fairly. Modern historians read them more carefully: Caesar was writing to justify a war that many senators regarded as unnecessary and aggressive, and he had every reason to present himself in the best possible light. The campaigns were brutal by modern standards, and ancient sources report that very large numbers of Gauls were killed or enslaved, with figures of more than a million killed and a similar number enslaved, figures that modern historians regard as exaggerated but that show the scale of the war. The conquest of Gaul was a triumph of Roman arms, and it was also a war of aggression that destroyed whole peoples, and both facts belong in any honest account of it.

Caesar's success in Gaul also changed the balance of power in Rome. His army was loyal to him personally, his wealth allowed him to buy support, and his fame made him the most popular man in Rome. His enemies in the Senate, led by Cato the Younger, feared that he would use his power to make himself a tyrant, and they allied themselves with Pompey, who had once been Caesar's ally and was now his rival. The alliance between Caesar and Pompey had been sealed by the marriage of Caesar's daughter Julia to Pompey, but Julia died in 54 BCE and Crassus was killed in the east in 53 BCE, and the triumvirate fell apart. By 50 BCE the Senate, encouraged by Pompey, ordered Caesar to give up his command and return to Rome as a private citizen, where he would face prosecution by his enemies. Caesar had to choose between obeying and losing everything, or defying the Senate and starting a war.

3. Crossing the Rubicon

In January 49 BCE Caesar made his choice. He marched his army across the Rubicon, the small river that marked the boundary between his province and Italy proper, an act that Roman law regarded as rebellion, because no general was permitted to bring an army into Italy. The phrase crossing the Rubicon has passed into English as a way of describing a decision from which there is no turning back, and Caesar is reported to have said, as he crossed, that the die was cast. Pompey and the Senate fled Rome, and Caesar marched south, taking city after city without a battle, because the towns opened their gates to him and the soldiers sent against him went over to his side. Within sixty days he was master of Italy, and within a year he had defeated Pompey's forces in Spain.

The civil war that followed was fought across the Mediterranean world. Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalus in Greece in 48 BCE, and Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was murdered on the orders of the young king Ptolemy. Caesar followed him to Egypt, where he became involved with Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, and where he intervened in the civil war between Cleopatra and her brother. He then campaigned in Asia Minor, in Africa and in Spain, defeating the remaining forces of his enemies, and in 45 BCE he returned to Rome as the undisputed master of the Roman world. The war had lasted four years, and it had shown that the Republic could no longer govern its own empire: its armies obeyed generals, not the Senate, and the man who commanded the best army commanded Rome.

Caesar's victory was followed by clemency, a policy that was unusual in Roman civil wars and that he made a point of advertising. He pardoned his enemies, including men who had fought against him, and he appointed them to offices. His supporters praised this as generosity, and as proof that he wanted to heal the Republic rather than to rule it by terror. His critics said that the clemency was a tactic, a way of showing that resistance was pointless, and that it did not change the fact that he had seized power by force. Both views have evidence behind them, and the question of whether Caesar's clemency was sincere is one of the many questions about him that the sources do not settle. What is certain is that it did not save him: the men he pardoned included some of those who would later take part in his murder.

4. Dictator and reformer

As dictator, a title the Romans had once given to a single man for a short period in an emergency, Caesar set about reforming the Roman state. He was first made dictator for ten years and then, in February 44 BCE, dictator for life. He extended Roman citizenship to people in Gaul and in other provinces, he reformed the administration of the provinces, he founded colonies for his veterans in Italy and overseas, and he reformed the calendar, replacing the old Roman calendar, which had drifted out of line with the seasons, with the Julian calendar, based on the advice of the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes. The Julian calendar, with its year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a leap day every four years, remained in use for more than sixteen centuries, and the calendar used today, the Gregorian calendar, is a refinement of it. The month of July is named after Caesar himself.

He also reformed the city of Rome, planning a new forum, a new senate house and a new basilica, and he reformed the grain dole, the free distribution of grain to the poor of the city, reducing the number of recipients and so reducing the cost to the state. He reformed the law, the tax system and the organisation of the provinces, and he planned further projects, including a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth and a campaign against the Parthians in the east. His reforms were practical, and they addressed real problems: the calendar was broken, the provinces were badly governed, the city was overcrowded, and the Republic's institutions were not designed for an empire. Supporters of Caesar argue that these reforms show he was a statesman who understood what Rome needed and who did what the Senate had failed to do for a generation.

Critics of Caesar argue that the reforms were beside the point, because the real question was not what he did but how he did it. He held power without being elected to it, he treated the Senate with contempt, and he accepted honours that no Roman had accepted before, including a golden chair in the Senate and the right to wear the purple robe of a king. He placed his own statue among those of the kings of Rome, and he allowed his image to appear on coins, a privilege previously reserved for gods. His enemies said that he meant to make himself king, and that the reforms were a cover for tyranny. His supporters replied that he had refused the crown when it was offered to him at a public ceremony, and that he had no intention of becoming king. The truth is probably that Caesar himself did not know what he wanted to become, and that the ambiguity was part of the danger: no one, including Caesar, knew where his power would end.

5. The Ides of March

On 15 March 44 BCE, the Ides of March in the Roman calendar, Caesar was murdered in the Senate house by a group of about sixty senators, led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. He was stabbed twenty-three times, and he died at the foot of a statue of Pompey, his old rival. The conspirators believed that by killing him they would restore the Republic, and they expected the people of Rome to thank them. Instead, the city was thrown into chaos. Caesar's will, which left money to every citizen of Rome and gave his gardens to the public, was read aloud, and his funeral, at which his friend Mark Antony spoke, turned the crowd against the conspirators, who fled the city. Within two years the Republic was at war again, and within fifteen years it was gone for good, replaced by the empire that Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian, who became the emperor Augustus, would create.

The assassination is one of the most famous events in history, and it has been retold in plays, films and novels, most famously in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, written more than fifteen hundred years later. Shakespeare's version, in which Caesar says Et tu, Brute, and then falls, is fiction: the historical Caesar probably said nothing, or spoke in Greek, and the words Shakespeare gave him were invented. The play's picture of the conspiracy, as a struggle between honourable men who feared tyranny and an ambitious man who wanted a crown, has shaped how the public thinks about Caesar ever since, but historians are more cautious. The conspirators included men who had personal grievances, men who had been pardoned by Caesar and resented the pardon, and men who hoped to gain power themselves. Brutus, the most famous of them, was a man of high principle who had also borrowed money at high rates of interest and who had fought against Caesar before being pardoned. The motives were mixed, as human motives usually are.

Caesar's death did not save the Republic, and it did not destroy his legacy. His heir Octavian used his name and his memory to build the empire, and his reforms, including the calendar, survived him. The conspirators were defeated and killed, and the Roman world moved on to a new form of government, one in which a single man ruled and the Senate advised. The assassination is best understood not as a turning point that changed the course of history, but as a symptom of a Republic that had already failed, and as the last act of a political system that could no longer govern the empire it had created.

6. Reformer or tyrant? The two views

Historians have argued about Caesar for two thousand years, and the argument comes down to a single question: was he a reformer who saved Rome, or a tyrant who destroyed its freedom. The case for Caesar as a reformer is strong. The Republic was already broken when he crossed the Rubicon: its armies were loyal to generals, its politics were violent, and its institutions could not govern an empire. Caesar's reforms — the calendar, the extension of citizenship, the reorganisation of the provinces, the founding of colonies — addressed real problems, and they lasted. The empire that followed him was more stable and more prosperous than the late Republic had been, and the peace that Augustus built was built on Caesar's foundations. On this view, Caesar did what had to be done, and the men who killed him were defending a system that had already failed.

The case against Caesar is also strong. He seized power by force, he broke the law to do it, and he held power without the consent of the governed. He destroyed the tradition that no Roman should rule alone, and he opened the way for the emperors who followed him, some of whom were cruel and incompetent in ways that Caesar was not. He waged a war of aggression in Gaul that killed and enslaved very large numbers of people, and he did so for his own glory and profit. On this view, his reforms were the work of a dictator, and they do not excuse the dictatorship, because the question is not whether a ruler is competent but whether a people should be ruled by one man at all. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing a century later, put the point in the mouth of a British chieftain: they make a desert and call it peace.

Both views have evidence, and both are part of how Caesar should be understood. The sources themselves are divided: Caesar's own writings present him as a reluctant warrior and a generous victor, while his enemies, including the orator Cicero, present him as a danger to the state, and later writers, including Suetonius and Plutarch, mix admiration with criticism. The fairest approach is to hold both views at once: Caesar was a brilliant general and a capable reformer, and he was also a man who destroyed the Republic to save it, and whose success made it impossible for the Republic to return. That contradiction is the reason he is still argued about, and it is the reason his life remains worth studying.

7. The legacy: the name that became a title

Caesar's legacy is visible in the world we live in. His name became a title: the German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar both come from Caesar, and the word caesar was used for centuries to mean emperor. The month of July is named after him, and the calendar he created was used for more than sixteen centuries. His writings, the Commentaries on the Gallic War and on the Civil War, are still read in schools as models of clear Latin prose, and they are still the most important source for the history of the period, even though they were written by a man defending his own actions. His life has been retold in plays, operas, films and novels, and his assassination has become a symbol of political murder, invoked whenever a leader is killed by those around him.

His deeper legacy is the empire that followed him. The Roman Empire, which lasted in the west for another four centuries and in the east for another thousand years, was built on the foundations Caesar laid: the provinces he conquered, the citizenship he extended, the calendar he reformed, and the idea that a single man could rule the Roman world. The empire spread Roman law, Roman engineering and the Latin language across Europe, North Africa and the Near East, and the languages of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Romania all descend from Latin. The law of many modern countries descends from Roman law, and the idea of a republic, which Caesar is accused of destroying, survived as an ideal that later generations would revive. In that sense, Caesar's legacy is double: he ended the Republic, and he created the conditions in which its ideals would be remembered.

Finally, Caesar's legacy is the question he left behind, and it is a question that is still asked today: when a political system stops working, is it better to reform it from within, or to break it and build something new, and who decides. Caesar decided for himself, and the consequences were the death of the Republic and the birth of the empire. Whether he was right is a question that has no final answer, and that is why his life is still argued about two thousand years after his death. He changed Rome, and through Rome he changed the world, and the argument about how he did it is part of what he left us.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Julius Caesar
• Wikipedia — Julius Caesar
• Wikipedia — Gallic Wars
• World History Encyclopedia — Julius Caesar
• Wikipedia — Assassination of Julius Caesar

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• Who Is Virat Kohli? — Virat Kohli is India's modern batting great, the record holder for ODI centuries and a World Cup winner, still active in one-day cricket in 2026.
• Who Is Vladimir Putin? — Vladimir Putin has led Russia since 2000 — as president and, for four years, as prime minister. This explains his rise, his rule and his role in the world.
• Who Is Warren Buffett? — Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway from a struggling textile mill into a vast conglomerate, and his letters taught generations value investing.
• Who Is Wasim Akram? — Wasim Akram is Pakistan's greatest fast bowler, the first to 500 ODI wickets and hero of the 1992 World Cup final, famed as the master of swing.
• Who Is Xi Jinping? — Xi Jinping has led China since 2012 as general secretary of the Communist Party and since 2013 as president, shaping its policies and vision.
• Who Is Zinedine Zidane? — Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup as a player and three Champions Leagues as a manager, and in July 2026 was appointed head coach of France.
• Who Was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rose from a poor boyhood in Rameswaram to lead India's space and missile programmes, then served as the country's 11th president.
• Who Was Abdul Sattar Edhi? — Abdul Sattar Edhi built Pakistan's largest welfare network from a single free dispensary. This explains his life, his foundation and his legacy.
• Who Was Abdus Salam? — Abdus Salam won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for unifying two forces of nature. This explains his science, his institutions and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Abraham Lincoln? — Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union through the Civil War and ended slavery. This explains his rise, his presidency and his contested legacy.
• Who Was Ada Lovelace? — Ada Lovelace published the first program for a programmable machine in 1843. This explains her notes, her vision of computing and the debate over her role.
• Who Was Adolf Hitler? — Adolf Hitler led the Nazi Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945, started the Second World War in Europe and was central to the Holocaust.
• Who Was Alan Turing? — Alan Turing defined modern computing, broke German naval Enigma and proposed the Turing test. This explains his science, his war work and his tragic end.
• Who Was Albert Einstein? — Albert Einstein rewrote physics with relativity and won the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect. This explains his ideas, his life and his legacy.
• Who Was Alexander Graham Bell? — Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. This explains his work with the deaf, the patent fight and his wider inventions.
• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.