Julius Caesar was not born by Caesarean section, and other tidied-up legends
In Caesar's day the operation was fatal to the mother, yet Aurelia lived for decades after his birth. The fifty-talent pirate ransom is likely literary decoration, and Sulla's famous warning that the boy contained many Mariuses is apocryphal. The real young Caesar was a promising aristocrat whose early career repeatedly nearly stalled.
Caesar was born on 12 or 13 July 100 BC into the patrician Julii, who claimed descent from Aeneas and hence from the goddess Venus. Ancient pedigree had not brought the family much power, though his aunt's marriage to the formidable Gaius Marius helped. As a teenager he was named priest of Jupiter and married Cornelia, daughter of the dominant politician Cinna; the priesthood's taboos would have barred a political career, suggesting little was expected of him.
Sulla's victory in 82 BC changed that. Ordered to divorce Cornelia, Caesar refused and went into hiding until relatives and the Vestal Virgins negotiated a compromise: he lost the priesthood but kept his wife. He then served in Asia, winning the civic crown at the siege of Mytilene for saving a fellow citizen's life, an honour that gave him a taste for recognition. Back in Rome he tried prosecuting Sullan grandees with mixed success, then set off to study rhetoric in Rhodes with Apollonius Molon. On the way pirates captured him; the tale of his returning to execute them grew in retelling, and they were probably sold as slaves.
His rise followed the usual ladder. In 69 BC, as quaestor, he gained a lifelong Senate seat, and he displayed Marius's images at his aunt Julia's funeral, a gesture Plutarch treats as provocative though such displays had become common. Cornelia died soon after giving birth to Julia, his only legitimate child. As aedile in 65 BC he staged lavish games and restored Marius's victory monuments, not overnight as Plutarch has it, since that would have required hiring and paying workmen.
From 60 BC he joined Pompey and Crassus in the First Triumvirate. His conquest of Gaul, finished by 51 BC, included an invasion of Britain and a bridge over the Rhine. Ordered to give up his command, he crossed the Rubicon in January 49 BC, won the ensuing civil war, and introduced the Julian calendar. Proclaimed dictator in perpetuity, he was assassinated by senators led by Brutus and Cassius on 15 March 44 BC. His adopted heir Octavian became Augustus, and his name lives on in Kaiser and Tsar.
Source: Julius Caesar
