Is Caesar's birth year more certain now than it was when disputed by Mommsen?
score:10
No new evidence on Caesar himself has emerged and it is unlikely that any direct evidence will emerge. However, historians have been writing a lot since Mommsen's time, with contributions about this particular question in 1914 and in 1917 (Mommsen died in 1903). The upshot is that Mommsen was probably wrong.
Note that Mommsen already had plenty of evidence and chose not to believe that evidence. In your quote, he cites three independent sources all saying Caesar was born in 100 BCE, but suggests they may have copied from a common source. All three lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, so 100-200 years after Caesar died (about as close in time to Caesar as we are to Mommsen), and likely had very good sources on the dates of Caesar's life. Now, while it is possible that they were wrong nevertheless, a historian claiming this should provide very strong evidence supporting that claim. Mommsen does not. His only point is that Caesar took certain offices 2 years earlier than the official age.
It turns out, however, that this was not uncommon in Caesar's time. Lily Ross Taylor, writing in 1941, summarizes the evidence as follows:
His quaestorship should be assigned to the year 69. The general opinion of scholars that the office should be placed in 68 is based on a misconception of the provincial quaestor's term of service. If the ancient sources are right in indicating that Caesar was born in 100 B.C., this was the year when Caesar became eligible for the office. Since a man of his ambition would hardly have delayed his candidacy for the magistracy which brought with it admission to the senate, the year of Caesar's quaestorship is in itself an argument for accepting 100 B.C. as the date of Caesar's birth. After his quaestorship (here I follow a suggestion of Deutsch) I believe that Caesar received a dispensation from the laws which enabled him to sue for the three higher offices two years before the legal age. I have argued that such dispensations were commoner in the Republic than has been generally believed and that the legislation of Cornelius in 67 made it easier for Caesar, who was now a vigorous opponent of the ruling nobility, to secure such a privilege.
More post
- 📝 What did Winston Churchill mean by this quote?
- 📝 Noble hierarchy in the early middle ages
- 📝 How much influence did the Zimmerman Telegram have?
- 📝 What is the purpose of this Roman siege tactic as shown in this Illustration?
- 📝 Was there a Princess of Wales between 1727 and 1736?
- 📝 What were the individual soldiers motivated by during World War 1?
- 📝 Why did the movement that initiated the Stockholm appeal never condemned Soviet atomic experiments?
- 📝 Why are there shields present on the sides of Henry VIII ships, did they serve any function or was it pure decoration?
- 📝 Are there some concrete examples of the pre-1962 Soviet complaints in re CORONA spy satellites?
- 📝 Do the Federalist papers ever mention the Native Americans in any substantative way?
- 📝 Why were Morocco and Tunisia made a French protectorate, but Algeria annexed as part of France?
- 📝 Who was the real first president of the United states of america?
- 📝 Jerusalem 1187: How would Saladin's army have laid siege to the walls?
- 📝 The fate of children fathered by US Soldiers in the UK during WW2
- 📝 Why did the Dutch, French & British acquire minor colonies in South America?
- 📝 Who were the nine founding railroad members of the Chicago union stock yard?
- 📝 Does special perception of rhyme by humans indicate importance of poetry in prehistoric era?
- 📝 When a wattle-and-daub construction was demolished, how did they recycle or dispose of the materials?
- 📝 Where was the furthest extent of Arabian trade explorations?
- 📝 Identify the era or any other clues from this soldier's picture?
- 📝 What was the conspiratorial name of Roman Stanislaw Dmowski?
- 📝 What is the history of bauxite mining in South America?
- 📝 How did Germany survive on the Eastern Front of WW2 for so long?
- 📝 What is this 18th or 19th century muzzle gun recently used in a robbery?
- 📝 Did the North give the South its debt after Civil War ended?
- 📝 What proportion of the population of Soviet Union were taken into custody by the state during Stalin's time?
- 📝 How do we know that prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies were egalitarian?
- 📝 What did medieval European knights do if they were defeated in battle?
- 📝 What does this source "IAA iii" mean? Which book?
- 📝 How was the border between Vichy and German Occupied France decided?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Is Caesar's birth year more certain now than it was when disputed by Mommsen?
- 📝 When was Silver ever more valuable than Gold?
- 📝 Is it true that there are more slaves in the world now than ever at one point in history?
- 📝 Why was sugar cultivation more profitable in the Caribbean/Brazil than West Africa?
- 📝 During feudalism in Europe, was one's allegiance to the lord more or less important than the allegiance to the king?
- 📝 At the Battle of Zama, was the Roman army more "native" than the Carthaginian?
- 📝 Why was ancient Christianity more successful than the Roman pantheon and Judaism in gaining followers?
- 📝 Was the Macedonian phalanx more effective than hoplites?
- 📝 Was there a time when it was easier for slaves than citizens to access state-sponsored medical facilities in Ancient Rome?
- 📝 Was Ashoka motivated more by economics rather than religion in giving up war?
- 📝 Why does Brazil have many more Italian descendants than the U.S. or Argentina when the latter two received more Italian immigrants?
- 📝 When did the Royal Navy start to fill a given rank of admiral with more than one officer?
- 📝 Was there more than one way for anti-aircraft fire to shoot down a dive bomber in World War II
- 📝 Why was East Asia more religiously tolerant than Europe in medieval time?
- 📝 When was the last time there were border controls, customs, or border patrols inside what is now the contiguous US?
- 📝 When was the deadliest year in human history in absolute terms?
- 📝 When and why did single deity religions become more popular than multi deity religions?
- 📝 Have there been known instances in history when a queen consort slept with someone other than her husband, and no one got hurt? How was that possible?
- 📝 During the 1850’s and 60’s, was the free North (and its cause in the U.S. Civil War) considered more virtuous than the slave-holding South?
- 📝 Was a technological advantage more effective in European warfare than in China's history?
- 📝 When did Byzantines become more Greek than Roman?
- 📝 Why was agriculture more conducive to slavery in U.S. South than the North?
- 📝 Was the 1939 Red Army more disciplined / better behaved than the 1943-1945 Red Army?
- 📝 Why do more historians state Rome was a superpower, than Persia?
- 📝 Was Nebuchadnezzar made King in a year other than 605 BC?
- 📝 Did Cato the Elder think destruction of Carthage was more important than anything else for Rome?
- 📝 Was Textile Armour More Effective at Stopping Arrows than Mail?
- 📝 Was "Street" more common than the abbreviated "St." in pre-1910 American newspapers?
- 📝 Did Helsinki have higher standards of living than Saint Petersburg when it was a part of the Russian Empire?
- 📝 When was the term for WW2 first used and was it more popular in, say, US before Europe?