Was Julius Caesar Born by Caesarean Section?

Silver denarius of Julius Caesar, featuring an allusion to his name in the form of an elephant.

As the old joke goes, the short answer to this is 'no'. The long answer is 'nooooooo'. But alongside inventing a salad and adding new months to the calendar (he actually took one away), is the claim that Julius Caesar was born by caesarean section just another myth?

Julius Caesar was born on either the 12th or 13th of July in (probably) 100 BC in the Suburra, a vast, sprawling, slumlike area of ancient Rome, and he was not delivered via caesarean section. The practice of cutting a baby from the mother during childbirth predates Caesar's birth by some time, although when it was first carried out is uncertain. What is certain is that the legendary second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius (715–673 BC), introduced a Lex Regia (Royal Law), which later became the Lex Caesarea (Imperial Law), which specified that the fetuses of mothers who had died during childbirth should be removed.

Immediately, there's a problem, as not only did Julius Caesar's mother, Aurelia, survive his birth, but she also lived happily into her 60s, dying in 54 BC.

Whilst the practice of removing the fetus during birth was not uncommon, it was only ever a last resort to either try and save the fetus or to separate the mother and child after both had died. There is no recorded instance in ancient history of a mother surviving a caesarean section or one being performed on a live mother. The first example in history of a mother surviving the procedure wasn't until the 16th Century, and even in the early 20th Century, the procedure was hazardous.

So the chances of Julius Caesar having been born by c-section are almost zero. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 7.7) suggests that Caesar was born "a caeso matris utero" (because he was cut from his mother's womb), which seems to be the origin of the legend, but the connection of the name Caesar to the term caesarean seems to be a great example of reverse etymology. The caesarean section might not be named after Julius Caesar, but he might be named after the caesarean section.

This opens up another avenue of exploration for us - Where does the name 'Caesar" come from?

The name of a Roman citizen had three components: the praenomen, the nomen and the cognomen. Praenomina were personal names chosen for children by their parents, just like first names are today. The nomen was the family or 'tribe' name referring to the 'gens' to which the family belonged; in Caesar's case, the gens Julii. The cognomen originated as a nickname given to individuals in the early republic, but as time went on and families split into various branches, it increasingly became a hereditary marker of identity.

Most famous Romans are known by their cognomen, but there is no hard and fast rule over how a person should be referred to. While men like Caesar, Augustus, and Cicero are all known by their cognomen, others, such as Tiberius or Titus, are known by their praenomen, and others still, like the writer Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus), are known by their nomen.

A woman had only one name: the feminine form of her father's nomen. In the late republic, it became the practice for a noblewoman to take a second name derived from her father's cognomen; thus, the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus, who went on to marry Augustus, was called Livia Drusilla.

However, as things changed, girls were given names that did not emanate from their father's family. Caligula's sisters were called Agrippina, Drusilla and Livilla, rather than all being named Julia, for example.

Slaves had only one name. If freed, a male slave would tend to adopt his former owner's praenomen and nomen and retain the name his master had given him as a cognomen. One way of identifying a freedman by name alone was that he might have a first name of German tribal origin and the cognomen of a wealthy and prominent local family.

The gens Julia was an ancient patrician family with mythological origins tracing back to Iulus, the son of Aeneas, and hence to the goddess Venus. However, the specific branch bearing the cognomen "Caesar" emerges more tangibly in the historical record from the second century BC. The earliest securely attested member of the Julii Caesares is Sextus Julius Caesar, praetor in 208 BC, mentioned by Livy (Ab urbe condita, 27.6.1), though it is uncertain whether he bore the cognomen "Caesar" at that time. Clearer attestation comes with Lucius Julius Caesar, consul in 90 BC, whose name appears in multiple inscriptions and literary texts (e.g., Cicero, Pro Plancio 22).

The form "Caesar" appears in epigraphic sources such as the Fasti Capitolini and Republican-era inscriptions (CIL I2 583). These confirm that the name was well established by the time of Gaius Julius Caesar's rise. Although the name was not uniquely remarkable within the wider pool of Roman cognomina, its association with the Julii family would be radically transformed by Gaius Julius Caesar's lifetime.

Gaius Julius Caesar himself is said to have propagated the theory that his cognomen derived from a Punic or Moorish word for "elephant." This claim is most famously connected to the denarius he issued in 49 BC, during the civil war, which depicts an elephant trampling a serpent with the legend "CAESAR" below. Although the coin lacks any direct textual explanation, its iconography has been interpreted by some ancient writers and modern numismatists as symbolic of Caesar's power over evil (serpent) or a pun on his name (RRC 443/1; see also Dio Cassius, Roman History, 41.1).

The belief that "Caesar" meant "elephant" in a foreign language—likely Punic or a Numidian dialect—was apparently supported by Julius Caesar himself, according to a now-lost passage noted in later sources (see Servius, ad Aeneid 1.286). However, no direct evidence from Punic or Numidian inscriptions confirms that "caesar" meant "elephant". Furthermore, the North African languages attested in inscriptions and glosses do not provide a cognate to support the etymology.

Nevertheless, the symbolic power of the elephant on the coinage, combined with Caesar's own apparent claim, suggests that he intended to popularise this association. The denarius was minted at a critical political moment, coinciding with Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon and the beginning of civil war. The elephant, a creature associated with Hannibal and African campaigns, may have carried multiple layers of meaning: dominance over the East, martial prowess, and a genealogical statement of sorts.

It is not implausible that linguistic borrowings from Punic or Numidian could have entered Latin via contact in Sicily, Sardinia, or North Africa, particularly after the Punic Wars. Epigraphic finds, including Latin-Punic bilingual inscriptions (e.g., the Tabula Sulcitana), show that such cultural contact did occur (CIL X 7852). However, these inscriptions do not attest any connection between the word for "elephant" in Punic and the form "caesar." In Punic, the word for elephant is more likely to have been derived from the Semitic root p-r-h, related to the Hebrew pil and Aramaic pilā, none of which resemble "caesar."

Therefore, although Carthaginian or Numidian contact might have offered a plausible channel for loanwords, the etymology lacks epigraphic support. Julius Caesar's claim appears more as a rhetorical flourish or dynastic mythmaking than a substantiated linguistic origin.

A more systematic ancient discussion of the origin of "Caesar" is provided by Pliny the Elder in Natural History, Book VII, 7. Pliny lists four possible origins for the name:

1. That the first Caesar was born by caesarean section (a caeso matris utero);

2. That he had a thick head of hair (caesaries);

3. That he had grey eyes (oculis caesiis);

4. That he killed an elephant in battle (elephantem occiderat).

Pliny does not endorse one theory definitively, nor does he assign names or dates to the original bearer of the cognomen. Instead, he presents them as traditional explanations. The first, linking the name to caesarean birth, is etymologically attractive but medically implausible for antiquity, since such operations were fatal to the mother and only performed post-mortem. The Latin verb caedere (to cut) is the root here, and while it aligns with the idea of cutting the womb, there is no known epigraphic or literary support for this as the origin of a personal name within the Julii.

The second and third explanations rely on physical features—caesaries (long or luxuriant hair) and caesius (blue-grey eyes). Both are linguistically possible. The adjective caesius is attested in Latin poetry (e.g., Vergil, Eclogues, 2.20) and could plausibly give rise to a cognomen. However, neither Pliny nor any other ancient author provides an individual example of a Julius Caesar who was known for these traits. The fourth theory, about the elephant, dovetails with Caesar's own claim and the coinage, but again lacks corroborative evidence.

What is notable in Pliny's presentation is the sense of ambiguity and accumulated tradition. The multiplicity of explanations suggests that even by the early Imperial period, the name's origin was unclear, and various etiological myths had arisen to fill the gap.

Some antiquarians have speculated about a possible Oscan or Sabellian origin of "Caesar," especially given the close relationship between early Roman patrician families and Italic neighbours. The Oscan language, an Italic tongue related to Latin but with distinctive vocabulary, was widely spoken in Samnium and Campania until the late republic. Inscriptions in Oscan (e.g., the Tabula Bantina) show a range of cognomina, but no form resembling "Caesar" appears with any regularity (Buck, 1904).

There is no primary Oscan or Umbrian epigraphic evidence that links a form such as caesar, kaisar, or any related morphology to a known word or title. Given the absence of the name in Italic-language inscriptions and the fact that the Julii were firmly Roman rather than Sabine or Oscan in origin, this theory does not hold weight on primary evidence alone.

Having scrutinised the primary literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence, it becomes clear that the origin of the cognomen "Caesar" was already obscure to the Romans themselves. The earliest known bearers of the name offer no indication of its meaning. Julius Caesar's own promotion of the elephant-meaning theory is supported only by coinage and anecdotal references, with no Punic or Numidian linguistic corroboration. Pliny the Elder's multiple theories—birth by cutting, hairiness, eye colour, and elephant-slaying—are diverse and largely anecdotal. Only the derivations from caesaries or caesius have direct lexical support in Latin, though no ancient testimony ties them to specific individuals.

The absence of evidence from Oscan or other Italic languages, combined with the lack of relevant bilingual inscriptions, makes non-Latin origins unlikely. No theory is thoroughly satisfying, but among the ancient claims, the Latin lexical derivations (hair or eye colour) remain the most linguistically plausible, even if unsupported by biographical detail. In the end, "Caesar" remains a name whose fame far outstrips its known etymology and whose historical power may have depended more on the deeds of its most famous bearer than on the meaning of the word itself.

References and Further Reading

Cicero. (n.d.). Pro Plancio.

Dio Cassius. (n.d.). Roman History.

Livy. (n.d.). Ab urbe condita.

Pliny the Elder. (n.d.). Naturalis Historia, Book VII.

RRC = Crawford, M. H. (1974). Roman Republican Coinage. Cambridge University Press.

Servius. (n.d.). Commentary on Vergil's Aeneid, ad 1.286.

Vergil. (n.d.). Eclogues.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) I2, 583.

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) X, 7852.

Buck, C. D. (1904). A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian. Ginn and Company.