When a famous character of the past is depicted in a novel, where do you start?  Normally the proscribed path would be to research the history books, find out where he or she first comes to the attention of the historians and start your story there.  However, with some historical figures that means that you don’t pick up their story until they are approaching middle age, and you learn nothing of what shaped their character or motivated them through their youth.  That’s certainly the case with Julius Caesar; by the time he started conquering Gaul he was already in his forties and often bemoaned the fact that Alexander the Great managed to achieve so much – he conquered all the lands from Greece to India – by the age of thirty. So rather than wait until Julius Caesar has become a successful Senator and skillful politician, Conn Iggulden, in his novel ‘Gates of Rome’ has gone right back to the beginning and starts his story when Julius – or Gaius as he goes by then …