Caesar And Civilization

Jack Havig reflects that Julius Caesar, butchering and subjugating to further his political career, laid the keel of Western civilization which gave the world -

Chartres Cathedral
St. Francis of Assisi
penicillin
Bach
the Bill of Rights
Rembrandt
astronomy
Shakespeare
an end to chattel slavery
Goethe
genetics
Einstein
woman suffrage
Jane Addams
man's footprints on the moon
man's vision turned to the stars
the nuclear warhead
totalitarianism
the automobile
the Fourth Crusade

Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XII, p. 138.

(I am not going to link to the Wiki articles for all these items but they are all worth googling.)