In Julius Cæsar the curious combination of two names, both significant of hair, the one shaggy and the other soft, is the more striking, as the appellation of one who, as his medals and busts have sufficiently made known, was bald... (What Is Your Name?, Moody, 1863)

CÆSAR.  The family name of a branch of the Julian house or clan in Rome.  Though it is traceable from B.C. 501, it did not gain extensive celebrity till it was borne by Caius Julius Cæsar, who ranks with Alexander the Great and Napoleon as one of the three most remarkable conquerors the civilised world has produced.  On the assassination of Julius Cæsar, B.C. 44, his will requested his grand-nephew Augustus, to assume the name of Cæsar.  Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus, and Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, who followed in succession, were all entitled by relationship to the great dictator to bear the family name; the seven succeeding emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Nerva—assumed it, so that it is customary to speak of the twelve Cæsars.  From having been the name of one mighty conqueror and then of a series of emperors, the name Cæsar became the type or symbol of the civil power in general, and it is continually used in this sense in discussions as to the relative domains of civil and ecclesiastical rulers (cf. Matt. xxii. 17, 21; Mark xii. 14, 16, 17; Luke xx. 22, 24, 25).
    The name Cæsar is applied in the New Testament to—
    (1) The first Roman emperor, Augustus Cæsar [Cæsar Augustus] (Luke ii. 1).
    (2) The second Roman emperor, Tiberius Cæsar (q.v.) (Matt. xxii. 17; Mark xii. 14; Luke iii. 1; xx. 21, 22; John xix. 12).
    (3) The fourth Roman emperor, Claudius (q.v.) (Acts xvii. 7 [?]).
    (4) The fifth Roman emperor, Nero (Acts xxv. 12, 21; xxvi. 32; Phil. iv. 22).  His predecessor, Claudius, had been married to a woman—Messalina—who ultimately proved a shameless profligate.  She had borne him a son named Britannicus, and a daughter called Octavia.  When she was put to death, he married next his niece Agrippina, a widow with a son called Lucius Domitius.  The first ambition of this new profligate was to get her son married to Octavia, and appointed successor to the empire.  She was successful, Lucius being adopted by the emperor under the changed name of Nero.  Then, after a time, Claudius was poisoned, and Nero in A.D. 54 became emperor of Rome, any rivalry from Britannicus being soon terminated by his assassination.  Nero was a monster of lust and cruelty, though, perhaps, his crimes have been exaggerated.  In the tenth year of his reign, A.D. 64, a great fire broke out at Rome, in large measure destroying three of the fourteen districts into which the city was divided.  The emperor was believed, apparently on insufficient evidence, to have been himself the incendiary, and was in consequence in danger of his life.  To screen himself, he falsely accused the Christians of having caused the fire, and put many of them to cruel deaths, tradition adding that both Paul and Peter were among the sufferers.  Nero is the "lion" of 2 Tim. iv. 17.  Finding that he was deserted by his troops, and that he would soon be put to death, he anticipated his fate.  Like Saul, he attempted suicide, and, failing, induced one of his supporters to complete the act of slaughter.  He died A.D. 68, in the thirty-second year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign. (The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual, Hunter, 1894)