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Barry Strauss on the death of Caesar
Cornell’s Barry Strauss, quite literally, wrote the book on the death of Caesar. We spoke with him about Roman politics and contemporary analogies for this week’s podcast.
About Barry Strauss:
Barry Strauss is a classicist and a military and naval historian and consultant. As the Series Editor of the Princeton History of the Ancient World and author of seven books on ancient History, Professor Strauss is a recognized authority on the subject of leadership and the lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the greatest political and military leaders of the ancient world (Caesar, Hannibal, Alexander among many others).
He is a former director of Cornell’s Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, where he studied modern engagements from Bosnia to Iraq and from Afghanistan to Europe. He is an expert on military strategy. He is currently director as well as a founder of Cornell’s Program on Freedom and Free Societies, which investigates challenges to constitutional liberty at home and abroad. He holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Korea Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the American Academy in Rome, among others and is the recipient of Cornell’s Clark (now Russell) Award for Excellence in Teaching. In recognition of his scholarship, he received he received the Lucio Colletti Journalism Prize for literature and he was named an Honorary Citizen of Salamis, Greece.
His Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece—and Western Civilization was named one of the best books of 2004 by the Washington Post. His Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership was named one of the best books of 2012 by Bloomberg. His latest book, The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, (Simon & Schuster, March 2015) has been hailed as “clear and compelling” by TIME, “brilliant” by the Wall Street Journal, “engrossing, exhaustive yet surprisingly easy to read” by Barrons, and “an absolutely marvelous read” by The Times of London.
Professor Strauss recently completed six years as Chair of Cornell’s Department of History. On leave in academic year 2016-2017, he is writing a book on leadership lessons from Roman emperors. He will be a visitor at research institutions in Italy and the United States.
