I'm not sure this is really answerable, but...was he just the guy trying to be king and a guy who wrote a bit of his own history when he died, or was something unique? Certainly there had been dictators before, and men who conquered more territory. I wonder if so much of his standing in the popular culture is the great sort of final rupture of the Republic following his death moreso than his own individual accomplishments.

I suppose this sort of buts up against "great man or trends-and-forces" arguments and hypothetical belly gazing... But given what had happened over the past generation, the republic was probably going away. Was Caesar indispensable, or do we overestimate his importance versus his contemporaries in modern culture?