Santiago Posteguillo, on the border that changed the world: "Julius Caesar was not a dictator because a dictator never forgives his enemies."

At the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine rivers, Julius Caesar ordered his engineer Vitruvius to build a bridge with two objectives. The first was to overcome a colossal obstacle without resorting to barges to transport his troops to the eastern side. The second, equally important, was to deal a blow to the Germanic tribes in the psychological warfare he was waging with them. To impress them with Roman expertise. The engineer was given a deadline for its construction: 10 days.
To fully appreciate the challenge, one must understand that Caesar's troops were under enemy surveillance, the topographical difficulties, and the technical means of the first century BC. Achieving this with the technological advances of 2025 would have been complicated, just imagine. But the Romans of that time, as Indro Montanelli would describe in his History of Rome , were serious business, nothing like the nonsense and improvisation they project today.
The legionaries followed their engineer's instructions and felled the tallest yew, oak, and beech trees from the riverbank forests. They mounted giant pile drivers on rafts to forcefully pound the piles into the riverbed. To shore up the structure, the builders used iron rivets placed at the top of each trunk, acting like a safety belt to withstand the impact of the pile drivers. All that remained was to cover the skeleton.
Within the agreed timeframe, the Roman army had built a bridge capable of withstanding the passage of legions, cavalry, and chariots across a vast river. There's no doubt that FC Barcelona, trapped in the eternal construction of the Camp Nou, could have benefited from a Vitruvius. It must not be forgotten that the Rhine, apart from its flow, was a waterway of enormous importance, originating in the Alps and flowing into the North Sea over a distance of 1,200 kilometers. But Caesar did something even more audacious than building a bridge at that speed: just two weeks after its construction, he ordered it destroyed. It was a further display of power. The enemy would know that only they were capable of rebuilding it, something they did months later.
"For many centuries, this point has been a European border of friction. Perhaps if Caesar had had time to cross the Rhine a third time, the history of the continent would have changed," says Santiago Posteguillo (Valencia, 1967), describing the episode he narrates in his book from a viewpoint overlooking the German city of Koblenz.
After Roma soy yo and Maldita Roma , Posteguillo publishes on Tuesday The Three Worlds (Ediciones B), the latest novel in his great saga dedicated to Julius Caesar. This installment of more than 1,000 pages has three settings: Gaul, a territory always hostile to the Romans; Rome, a divided Republic filled with intrigue; and Egypt, gripped by a fierce dynastic struggle. "Three distinct worlds that coexist and head toward a single destiny, at the center of which is Caesar," says the writer.
The exact location of the bridge over the Rhine is unknown, but it is believed to have been near present-day Koblenz, 92 kilometers from Cologne. A beautiful border town that bears the scars of centuries of conflict, from the Roman invasion to the World Wars, including the Thirty Years' War and the Napoleonic campaigns .
Posteguillo, the best-selling historical novel author in Spanish with more than five million readers, has chosen both Koblenz and Trier—the pinnacle of Roman civilization in German territory—to represent one of the aspects he emphasizes most in his new book: Gaul was not a territory that only encompassed present-day France—perhaps the great Asterix fostered this reductionist and Francophile vision—but also included Belgium, Holland, part of Germany, and northern Italy. An extension that underscores the significance of what the Roman achieved in so few years. "Caesar forged the West and changed the world," he concludes.
- By today's standards, how would we describe the political Julius Caesar?
- Caesar is a very complex figure who thought of the benefit of the people and sought to make improvements in the face of the senatorial aristocratic minority. He attempted this through legal means and later in the courts. The opposition forced him to employ other means, such as his own defense. In his policies, he championed public works, while Pompey championed spectacles.
- If it had been taught in schools that Gaul occupied such a vast territory, perhaps we would have saved ourselves from many wars in Europe.
- That's right. I wanted to come here to show how important this point in history is, because this frontier hasn't been digested. This happens when you go from having far-sighted statesmen like Caesar to politicians who fit Churchill 's definition, which says that a politician is someone who thinks about the next election, while a statesman thinks about the next generation.
- The political struggles that César experienced make the current ones seem like a kindergarten.
- But there is a nuance: it is true that in that Rome, politicians hated each other and sometimes bent the law to their advantage, but they never stopped respecting it.
- No one can doubt the charisma of Caesar's character, but I don't know if the "good guys" in the fight were actually Cicero and Cato, who aspired to defend the Republic and prevent its destruction.
- I don't share that idea. What Cicero and Cato really defend is a late-republican structure that has moved away from the early Roman Republic. Why? Because after the Second Punic War, Rome became the great power of the Mediterranean. In other words, it began to receive enormous wealth. What happened is that all this income wasn't distributed equally: a small aristocracy benefited while the people didn't improve their conditions. Inequality between social classes widened. The agrarian reforms that had been attempted previously failed, and the tribunes who promoted them were assassinated for trying to change things. The system collapsed during Caesar's reign. In reality, Cicero and Cato defended the existing senatorial oligarchy, which is what would provoke a military confrontation.
- Politics aside, what continues to grow is tech billionaires' fascination with Ancient Rome. Elon Musk spreads theories about the fall of the Empire on social media while dressed in Roman armor, Mark Zuckerberg wears his hair Roman-style and is a fan of Emperor Augustus. What's going on?
- I see this passion as logical because it comes from people who have developed a tremendous ambition to influence the world. They choose ancient Rome because it represents the most structured and developed model of antiquity.
- In this novel, we see the first signs of Caesar's military genius in Gaul, and the figure of a teenage Cleopatra appears, although they haven't yet met. Tell me a cliché rooted in popular culture about them that you'd like to debunk.
- One would be the image of Caesar as a dictator, at least in the eyes of the 21st century. What does a dictator do in our time? Eliminate the opposition. However, Caesar does the opposite. He defeats, shows mercy, and reinserts his enemies into politics. He is not responsible for the Civil War, and crossing the Rubicon is a response to a coup d'état by Pompey, for whom he never held a personal grudge. We must not forget that Pompey was the husband of his daughter and always treated her with great consideration until his death. Who assassinates Caesar? Those he had forgiven. I think it is very relevant to emphasize that his political generosity was extraordinary. Regarding Cleopatra, I would refute her reputation as a promiscuous woman. That image took root because of Augustus' propaganda campaign to discredit her and the son she had with Caesar.
For Posteguillo, the before and after of a historical figure is always reflected in a key moment, be it crossing the Rubicon or a battle, but the importance of a personal event that influences one's spirit to take on these great challenges is almost never given the importance that sometimes remains a footnote in a biography. "That's why, in The Three Worlds , I constantly wanted to combine the public and private aspects of the characters' lives," he says.
The style of her saga dedicated to Julius Caesar borrows heavily from two works of English literature, which she admits to having studied with devotion and which reflect this side of her that looks both inward and outward. One is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens , for how it narrates a great historical process like the French Revolution from the private lives of its protagonists, and the other is Middlemarch , the novel that Mary Anne Evans wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, which combines the personal stories of its characters with the transformation that a provincial town is undergoing.

"Silicon Valley billionaires' fascination with Rome stems from their tremendous ambition to influence the world."
- Does a bestselling author like yourself feel a lot of pressure when releasing a book for fear of failing to meet expectations from your previous release?
- There's pressure. When you write, you want to connect with readers, but you don't know if you'll achieve that with the new book. That makes me dizzy. It's true that when you reach a certain level of popularity, it's coupled with, let's say, artistic pressure, a series of financial issues, which create a different kind of dizziness.
- Now that it's almost a year since the flood, which struck you in Paiporta just 50 meters from the fateful Poyo ravine, how do you think César would have dealt with that disaster?
- Much more efficiently. In Paiporta, there are bridges still unfinished a year later, and César demonstrated that he was capable of building one over the Rhine in 10 days.
- Perhaps we missed a Vitruvius. Do you confirm what you said in the Senate about the role of politicians?
- There are many Vitruvians in Spain; what's lacking is political will. I'm not saying nothing has been done, but unfortunately, I stand by everything I said . The Dana required top-notch politicians, and I give the ones we have a score of, at most, a two. Not one has passed.
elmundo