Here we are in July, a month
that has great significance for our family: we have so many birthdays this
month. It is, of course, named after Julius Caesar, a general and member of the
first triumvirate, assassinated for his imperial ambitions; those ambitions
were realized afterwards by his family in the person of his great-nephew and
adopted heir, Octavian (Augustus). In 44 BC, the Roman Senate (in a bit of political
toadying) voted to rename the month Quintilius (then the fifth month in Roman
reckoning and Julius’s birth month) in his honor, as a backhanded compliment to
Augustus (who after he died got his own month), ostensibly in honor of
Julius’s calendar reform; i. e., the Julian Calendar.
Although most famously
re-imagined in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,
George Bernard Shaw gave his own interpretation of him as a sort of Superman, a
superior but misunderstood man with a vision of uniting the world for its own
good. His 1898 play Caesar and Cleopatra, was made into a 1945 color
film (Shaw only died in 1950), starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Raines in the
title roles. It also had Ernest Thesiger (Dr. Pretorius) and Michael Rennie
(Klaatu) in lesser roles. The lavish production was seen as a financial disappointment
at the time, as it failed to make back its enormous budget. It was popular, but
never seems to have reached that ubiquitous ‘classic’ status; still, it is a
minor prestigious film and enormously entertaining to watch. And in honor of
July and ‘the divine Julius,’ it is today’s Wideo Wednesday.
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