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Julius Caesar’s Midlife Crisis
And how it relates to our own
Midlife crisis is a dirty term. It is looked at with discouragement and mockery because it can lead people to do foolish or brash things. Anyone who buys a new car in their early 40s is accused of falling prey to the crisis. In reality, the midlife crisis is a cry for more and can be a powerful moment of change in a person’s life.
Midlife crises are nothing new. They have been around since the beginning of time. They are nothing to be ashamed of, and they happen to everyone at least once.
At its heart, the midlife crisis is an inflection point. It is a moment in life when people stop and look back and ask themselves a series of questions. Am I where I want to be? Is this how I thought my life would turn out? Do I have any major regrets? Would I have done anything differently? Could my life have turned out better?
Even Julius Caesar, one of the world’s most prolific historical figures, had a midlife crisis. If Caesar can have a midlife crisis, so too can everyone else.
The story goes that during his travels, Julius Caesar came across a statue of Alexander the Great. During Caesar’s life, Alexander was venerated as a sort of saint. He had ushered in the Helenization of the Mediterranean basin. His conquests set the stage for the rise of Rome and the spread of Greek language and culture, which came to dominate the entire region for centuries to come. It is not a stretch to say that without Alexander the Great, there would be no Roman Empire.
When Julius Caesar saw the statue of Alexander the Great, he was 32 or 33 years old. That might seem a bit young for a midlife crisis, but these things happen to everyone at different moments. When he laid eyes upon the statue of Alexander, either sitting stately on a throne or wielding a spear with godlike prowess, he burst into tears. These were not tears of sorrow or tears of joy. They were tears of bitterness.
You see, at the age of 33, Alexander had already conquered the whole world. He had waged war for a dozen years straight before dying the ultimate hero. At the age of 33, Julius Caesar was only a mid-level governor of Roman Spain. He had not achieved even a fraction of what Alexander had. But he wanted to. At this point in his…
