| abstract | - Edward Sallow, who would be known as Caesar, was born in 2226. His family once lived near the Boneyard until his father was killed by raiders when he was two years old, forcing his mother and him to flee - eventually finding sanctuary with the Followers of the Apocalypse in 2231. He received a free education from the Followers and eventually became a full member - a scribe specializing in anthropology and linguistics (though he is also well-versed in modern history, as evidenced by his knowledge of the Enclave). In 2246, at the age of twenty, Sallow and Bill Calhoun, a fellow Follower, were sent east to study tribal dialects (which he considers, in hindsight, a waste of time). He was instructed to meet with a Mormon missionary named Joshua Graham who was a tribal specialist. They then embarked on a journey to the region known formerly as Arizona as part of a nine-person expedition. During this expedition, they also discovered a cache of books about Ancient Rome. While he had known some basic facts about ancient history, these books shed new light on some of the details. Reading first The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and then Julius Caesar's own Commentarii, personal accounts of his military conquests, changed his life and was the starting point of his grand plan. He intended to use the Commentarii as a blueprint - after all, which illiterate tribal would know that he was not the original Caesar, and his "Rome" was merely a copy of a civilization long gone.
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