[HN Gopher] The conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar ___________________________________________________________________ The conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar Author : bryanrasmussen Score : 36 points Date : 2022-03-20 09:37 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com) | mkl wrote: | https://archive.ph/uAUsz | ykevinator2 wrote: | Thanks | Koshkin wrote: | I keep reminding myself that Julius was his last (family) name, | and that his first (personal) name was Gaius. | smegsicle wrote: | where of course his second 'last name' of CAESAR was a | 'cognomen', a sort of family nickname | vagabund wrote: | It sometimes fills me with awe that artifacts like the Eid Mar | coins, born out of a history defining moment without equal, two | millennia ago, not only persist but can be viewed by the public | for a paltry sum. There's just a certain enchantment in having | that history and its attendant mythology embodied in a physical | object. | mproud wrote: | Might I recommend Historia Civilis and its affectionate use of | colored squares: | | https://youtu.be/9XBxMk_plhA | abalaji wrote: | Historia Civilis really is one of the most spectacular YouTube | channels out there. Not much other content out there compares | to his high quality research coupled with fantastic | storytelling. | | Once you've exhausted all of his videos, though, I would | recommend Mike Duncan's History of Rome, an equally compelling | podcast that cover Rome's rise in 753 b.c.e. to it's "fall" in | 476 c.e. [1] | | [1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of- | rome/id... | denkmoon wrote: | In a vaguely similar vein I've really been enjoying the | "toldinstone" channel recently, | https://www.youtube.com/c/toldinstone | vondur wrote: | I noticed that they mentioned that Caesar's health may have been | declining at this point. It should be noted that Ceasar was | planning an invasion of the Dacians and the Parthian Empire at | the time of his death. Hence the reason to assassinate him before | he left Rome. Fairly remarkable for a man of his age to be | leading such a long military campaign. | B1FF_PSUVM wrote: | Just this week, I came across this: | | "You are afraid of the one -- I, of the few. We agree perfectly | that the many should have a full fair and perfect Representation. | -- You are Apprehensive of Monarchy; I, of Aristocracy. I would | therefore have given more Power to the President and less to the | Senate." | | -- John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 6 Dec. 1787 | darrenf wrote: | Honestly my first thought upon seeing the name Julius Caesar is | always to think of the English cricketer of the 1800s[0]. I | suspect this places me in a minority of one. | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar_(cricketer) | saghm wrote: | I always think of the baseball player Calvin Coolidge Julius | Caesar Tuskahoma McLish | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_McLish). Apparently his dad | wanted to make up for not getting to name his older siblings, | so he gave him as many names as possible. | abalaji wrote: | No way you're serious; even as an ardent cricket fan I'd never | heard of him. | darrenf wrote: | I am serious. I live in the town where he lived, walk past | his grave frequently, and drink in the pub (The Cricketers, | Farncombe) where he worked as landlord. The other Caesar has | no such presence in my daily life! | B1FF_PSUVM wrote: | > The other Caesar has no such presence in my daily life! | | Apart from having set up the modern calendar (slightly | adjusted in the XVII century) and having a whole month | named after him, and a few other minor things such as the | original conquest of Britain ... | | "... what have the Romans done for us?" | abalaji wrote: | Well, I'll be--that's definitely fair enough! | lordnacho wrote: | I think of the Brazilian goalkeeper. | ralmidani wrote: | (Paywalled) | | You too, Nat Geo? | edgyquant wrote: | Not a subscriber so can't read, but when I see Caesar hit the | front page, I upvote. | | I think we can't stress the story of Caesar enough in our era of | demagoguery. A look into Rome at the time paints a picture of | Caesar, like a lot of populists we've seen since 2015, wasn't | actually wrong about a lot of his complaints. The senate was a | corrupt, spoiled, bunch who only cared so much for the Republican | because it provided them a ton of power within a very powerful | polity; and it was there's the way a child thinks his parents | back yard is theirs. | | They believed themselves entitled to enrichment on the backs of | plebs and to top that off it was still a very real political idea | (and movement) that Rome allowing the peasants both political | power bringing them into the legions was a grave mistake that | desperately needed undone (similar, but to a much greater extent, | than the ultraconservatives who think giving the vote to women | and African Americans is a grave mistake.) | | So it was easy for Caesar to point at these senators and say all | of these things, because they were true. It's analogous to the | way someone like Trump or Bernie Sanders used sound byte rhetoric | to play up peoples emotions. The promises they made (whether or | not they believe in them is irrelevant) are second to emotions | running high. | | That Caesar may not have cared about the plebs is irrelevant, | indeed it could have all been a personal vendetta dating back to | the prescriptions imposed on him and his mother after Sulla took | power. | | Sorry for this rant, I've spent the last few years thinking about | this and how to better tell the story in a way that fits nicely | with current times and trends. I believe when the story of Caesar | is told it usually plays up the tragedy of Brutus or Caesar, both | of whom were what were consider tyrants today, when there's a | very real political message that is very important we understand | today. | mishftw wrote: | I was listening to Dan Snow's History Hit podcast [0] where | there was a guest episode on oligarchs & oligarchy in general. | They mentioned Caesar because he was also an oligarch, like | most of the other generals/Senators of Rome. Jeff Winters also | wrote a book on this topic [1]. | | Caesar threatened the oligarchs of Rome by crossing the Rubicon | with his legions which was heavily frowned upon by the others. | Caesar threatened their power structure for sure and likely led | to his death. | | [0] https://podfollow.com/dan-snows-history- | hit/episode/94f58a73... [1] | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11598740-oligarchy | edgyquant wrote: | I'd say it takes two to tango. Caesar didn't cross the | Rubicon with his legions because he was a mustache twirling | villain. He did so because the Roman senators (rightly) | feared any man who commanded the respect of a large portion | of the legions. Caesar has just pacified one Romes oldest | fears, the Gauls, and the people loved him for it. He was | told to disband his legions and return to face the senate, a | move which certainly mean death, so he did what anyone who | wanted to keep living: he invaded. | | I really wouldn't say Caesar's death had anything to do with | oligarchs. Sure he threaten their business interests but what | he did was so much worse in their eyes. Remember Rome was | built on overthrowing a tyrant, the Senators believed any man | who refused to disband his army was an aspiring King and | aspiring kings can't be allowed to live. | | Of course Caesar was an aspiring king after the Rubicon, | whether he was before will be debates too the end of time, | having triumphs where he tested how king like he could act to | his subjects (Mike Duncan has an episode on this where he | says, "the Roman's could learn to love autoarchy, but they | wouldn't accept monarchy.) | reducesuffering wrote: | > The senate was a corrupt, spoiled, bunch who only cared so | much for the Republican because it provided them a ton of power | within a very powerful polity; and it was there's the way a | child thinks his parents back yard is theirs. | | It's a story as old as time. 1,500 years later down the road | it's the Medici, nobility, and Signoria of the "Republic" of | Florence. | agumonkey wrote: | for some reason https://archive.ph/uAUsz does have the whole | article | crate_barre wrote: | If we want to go full throttle with the analogues to today, | Ceasers journal entries would be read out loud in the public | forum where large crowds gathered to hear it (as good a tweet | as you can get). He specifically tried to reach the plebs. | edgyquant wrote: | Of course. Plebs are focused on working the land etc they | don't have time for a full education into the political | machinery of Rome they would need to understand in order to | grasp the nuances of the problems of their day. So they | outsource their grievances to a guy from that world who says | he knows how to fix all their problems, it's easy even, if it | weren't for the pesky Senators. | | This is exactly like what we've seen in recent years (really | it's been seen time and time again.) I tried to leave out any | names or obvious events other than to explain the rhetorical | behavior they usually share. | | I will say that it doesn't take an ignorant person to fall | victim to populism. I initially went head first into Bernie | as "my guy" (not that I'm some genius, mind you.) Coming from | a lower middle class white family he basically told me | everything I wanted to hear in 2016. | | It's easy identifying a given problem but one thing I've come | to try and understand is that if I ever have an idea that | seems simple, it's best to try and figure out why it is it | hasn't been solved yet. For any given issue (be it enterprise | or political) there have probably been incredibly intelligent | people, smarter than me for sure, who've tried to solve it | and were unable to. | andrekandre wrote: | > he basically told me everything I wanted to hear in 2016 | ... > it's best to try and figure out why it is it | hasn't been solved yet | | is the implication that bernie was just in it for himself? | or just foolish for believing he could do what he said? | hoten wrote: | > That Caesar may not have cared about the plebs is irrelevant, | indeed it could have all been a personal vendetta dating back | to the prescriptions imposed on him and his mother after Sulla | took power. | | No doubt he rode the waves of populism, but I wouldn't write | off entirely that he actually did care, on some level, about | the poorer class. He did grow up in that world himself (of | course he came from a rich family, but his mother raised him in | Subura, a poor part of Rome, where her business was), and when | he first returned to Rome after Sulla was out of the picture he | chose (well, probably had to, not having money) to live in the | same place he grew up. I'm speculating, but it seems likely | that rubbing shoulders with the lower class for most of his | formative years suggests his later advocacy for their | advancement in society may be somewhat genuine. | [deleted] | rkk3 wrote: | Too much modern romanticization. Cassius and Brutus chose to | assassinate Caesar because his consolidation of power meant they | couldn't have grand political careers, it was a fundamentally | selfish-act & power grab that we've projected enlightenment | reasoning on. | | Strongly recommend. 'Caesar, Life of a Colossus' by Adrian | Goldsworthy | goto11 wrote: | How do we know the motives of Brutus? | zozbot234 wrote: | It was not really a matter of enlightenment reasoning, but | republican traditions that the Romans of their time would have | been highly familiar with. Caesar had himself proclaimed | "dictator for life for the purpose of reforming the state" only | a few months prior to being killed, basically repeating what | the by-then hated and vilified Sulla had done roughly a | generation earlier (except that even Sulla had not dared to | demand a _lifetime_ appointment, this was evidently Caesar 's | idea). This post on the ACOUP blog goes in more detail wrt. the | legal implications of that kind of move, which by that time had | become quite clear to the Romans themselves: | https://acoup.blog/2022/03/18/collections-the-roman-dictator... | vagabund wrote: | Plutarch's nearly contemporaneous account cites republican | virtues as Brutus' motive, and Cassius' more personal [0]. It's | quite hard to psychoanalyze figures that lived and died two | millennia ago, but the political-ethical explanation of the | event isn't an enlightenment invention. | | [0] | https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/... | 29athrowaway wrote: | Many titles are derived from Caesar: Kaisar/Kaisaras, Tsar/Czar, | Qays'r/Qas'r, etc. | hoten wrote: | Not just derived, but some of these can be seen as a claim to a | title (in that, there can only be one). That becomes | interesting when multiple people/institutions have claimed it | at the same time. For example: the Ottoman Empire and the | Catholic Church. When the ottomans sacked Constantinople, the | Sultan Mehmed assumed the title Ceaser. Interestingly, although | they adopted the title officially and used it a lot internally, | for diplomatic purposes they would massage the wording a bit | when conversing with western countries under the influence of | the Church. [1] | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_claim_to_Roman_success... | abalaji wrote: | It is said that the night before Julius Ceaser's death, he broke | bread with Decimus (an original conspirator) and Lepidus. The | conversation of "what's the best way to die" was brought up. | After some pontificating on the part of Decimus and Lepidus, | Ceaser spoke up and said: "It would be best to die suddenly and | unexpectedly." | | In the end, I guess he was right, we're still talking about his | assassination 2000 years later. | mannykannot wrote: | I found this engrossing: Edward Watts on the End of the Roman | Republic and Lessons for Democracy - episode 37 of Sean Carroll's | Mindscape podcast. It is about the Roman Republic's unusual (both | in its time and as compared to to today) democratic institutions, | and their decline as the republic stumbled towards autocracy. | | https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/03/11/epis... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-21 23:00 UTC)