[HN Gopher] What was the impact of Julius Caesar's murder?
___________________________________________________________________
What was the impact of Julius Caesar's murder?
Author : diodorus
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-03-16 05:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| jmyeet wrote:
| Recommendation: the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin [1].
| He has a series on the Kings of Ancient Persia and an episode on
| Caesar's conquest of Gaul.
|
| Dan talks about this concept a lot. In his words, who invented
| the light bulb doesn't matter. If someone didn't do it someone
| else would. But what is far more interesting are these turning
| points in history that could've completely changed the course of
| civilization.
|
| What if Alexander the Great hadn't died? Dan mentions one of the
| Kings of Persia was responsible for rebuilding the Temple of
| Solomon without which Judaism may well have died out. Then we may
| not have had it, Christianity or Islam. What would the world be
| like then? Persia came very close to conquering Greece. Roman
| culture and development was heavily influenced by Greece. The
| entire of European history turned on that moment. Or the Mongols
| who turned back from conquering Europe to choose a new Khan.
|
| It's fun to theorize about these events but the best we can do is
| guess as to the immediate aftermath. The ripple effets mean
| modern history would be completely unrecognizable.
|
| [1]: https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
| optimalsolver wrote:
| A gold coin celebrating the assassination of Julius Caesar
| recently sold for 3 million USD:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Gold/comments/jl1wls/an_ultrarare_c...
| michalu wrote:
| For those who only know the story of Brutus (the leader of
| assassins whom apparently Caesar didn't expect to be his traitor)
| there was another Brutus the most famous one in Rome who in the
| early times of Rome, when it was still a kingdom, killed a tyrant
| and that put down the foundation of roman republic.
|
| This guys, Lucius Junius Brutus, was a hero of the republic and
| his killing of then king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus regarded as a
| great, inspiring act.
|
| Romans according to legends swore to never have a king again. For
| that reason there was never a king in the empire but an emperor
| who was not de jure a king, he just held all the leading
| political functions at once :).
|
| So these assassins who killed Caesar saw themselves as heroes,
| they didn't think they'll be regarded as criminals and condemned
| but expected to be the saviours of the republic and remembered
| for ages to come.
|
| Later in the revolutionary years, when e.g. french republicans
| were slaying king they too looked up to the legend of the very
| first Brutus and saw themselves not merely assassins but heroes
| of the people.
|
| In the case of the very first Brutus, they swore to kill the king
| after he raped and killed one of his companions wife, one can
| definitely argue he was a heroic figure. In the case of latter
| wannabe Brutuses it's very clear they aimed for power consciously
| or subconsciously hiding behind ideals. The subsequent genocides
| and thefts of property like in the case of French revolution or
| Lenin's who even died of syphilis are just too obvious.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Lucretia, according to sources including Livy, explicitly
| wasn't killed. She specifically stayed alive so that she could
| live to tell Brutus et. al of Tarquinus's rape.
| orwin wrote:
| You know that's not what happened during the French revolution,
| right? Like, at all. Most representatives wanted to keep it
| alive after he was captured in Varennes. They wanted an
| English-style monarchy, with a stronger parlement
|
| If he had not conspired against France with the Hapsburgs, and
| let letters proving he was actively participating in the war
| effort to trap and kill his own citizens (or rather subjects),
| the representatives would just have kept him under house arrest
| until the end of the Austrian, Prussian, Spanish, Italian and
| English aggression (they had no casus belli BTW, maybe the
| Austrian could justify one, but this was an illegal aggression,
| I refute the name of first coalition war).
|
| And had he not done it, 'la montagne' would not have taken
| control of the parlement, Paris' sans culottes would not have
| been radicalized as much, there would have been less deaths in
| province. Also, he was one of the investigator of foreign
| aggression, so less war, less death on the battlefield.
|
| Also, had the pope kept his army in his pants, other Italian
| and Iberic Nations would have too, and at most the cardinals
| would have taken an haircut (given the amount they stole, it
| was only right), and most catholic churches would suffer as
| much as protestant temple : nothing.
|
| I don't know how you draw parallel between Caesar assassination
| and Louis XVI lawful execution.
| michalu wrote:
| You are naive to believe regicide was not the end goal of the
| revolution. Every revolution desires to destroy the previous.
| That's the philosophical basis. As for wanting to emulate
| Cromwell, as far as I know Charles I was also executed. Of
| course, you can't commit such act without a good excuse, how
| else are you going to sell it to the people but we can just
| speculate now. I've drawn a parallel between regicide of
| Tarquiniuses assassins and the murderers of lawful king of
| France (where by the way there is none, one can argue Lucious
| Brutus was a hero, nothing like the murderers of french
| king). You can google Brutus and french revolution and you'll
| see I haven't just came up with it.
|
| Having spent some time in France it always amazed me how they
| so uncritically celebrate that genocide and many are even
| proud of it (few can tell why beyond the couple of slogans
| taught in schools).
| chernevik wrote:
| Yes, the excesses of the French Revolution were entirely
| caused by Louis XVI.
|
| The lengths to which people will go to justify revolutionary
| slaughter are really something.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Hold up though. Russian's massacred in one day at Praga
| 20,000 people. That's basically the lower estimate of the
| death toll from 'The Terror'. Yet I don't see historians
| nor pundits observe such an act as deligitimizing of
| Tsarist Russia in the way they often see 'The Terror' as
| some kind of slam dunk against The French Republicans. That
| kind of slaughter was just one among many perpetrated by
| monarchies all over Europe against people who were often
| not even a significant threat in any real way to the
| perpetrating institutions. 'The Terror' on the other hand
| was happening at a time when the French Republic was in
| fact fighting for its existence. Every power in Europe
| wished to see it fail. There were active conspiracies to
| sabatoge it. There was an active rebellion in The Vendee.
| The revolutionary government was loaded with people
| brilliant and egotistical all vying for more influence.
| It's not paranoia if people are actually out to get you.
|
| I'm not defending 'The Terror' but trying to place it in
| context. If we are going to do history in context, we have
| to see it much more as part-in-parcel of the circumstances
| surrounding it. My point is that it is sooooooo discussed
| even while we jot down the political violence of other
| powers as mete footnotes even while being more justifiable
| and smaller in scope than those.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| TBH No one expects anything positive from Russia, a
| benighted Oriental tyranny that changed its outer faces,
| but never its brutal core.
|
| France is home to the Enlightement, though; subsequently,
| they tend to be held to a higher standard of conduct.
| orwin wrote:
| Not what I'm saying. His death was caused by the discovery
| of letters proving he instigated the foreign aggressions
| and the slaughter of French citizen (I use your words, as
| most French deaths of this period of time were caused by
| the coalition army).
|
| At the times, traitors were killed. He was a traitor, he
| was killed.
|
| This destroyed the Kingdom of France (or was the last nail
| in the coffin), precipited the formation of the first
| French republic under pressure of Paris citizens who had
| been betrayed twice (at least, depending on how you count)
| and were becoming even more violent. Of course the first
| republic was violent, considering how it was created.
|
| And BTW, you could consider the revolution ended there,
| with the fall of the kingdom of France, before the Vendee
| war and what's called 'la terreur'. Most considered at the
| time that the revolution ended in 1789, before the monarchy
| betrayed everyone (twice). Everything else was to keep the
| French constitution ("All men are born free and equal in
| rights").
|
| You can read Jean Clement Martin if you want more details.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| For me one of the most interesting hypotheticals is that at the
| time of his death Julius was preparing for an invasion of
| Parthia.
|
| Crassus had failed before him and Marc Antony would fail after
| him, and that probably contributed in o his fall as much as
| anything. Augustus saw these lessons and wisely decided not to
| risk an invasion of Parthia and instead reached a negotiated
| settlement.
|
| It would be about 150 years before Trajan lead a successful
| invasion of Parthia.
|
| With regards to Julius, Alexander was his idol, and I am sure he
| would have loved to emulate him in conquering the lands of the
| Persian Empire (now ruled by Parthia). Julius was also one of the
| great generals of history and it would have been interesting to
| see how it would have gone.
|
| A Roman Empire extending East into the heartland of the old
| Persian Empire would have been interesting. It might have led to
| actual direct contact between the Roman and Chinese Han courts.
| djur wrote:
| I don't see any viable way for Julius Caesar to succeed in
| Parthia. Compared to the Gauls, Parthia was far more
| politically cohesive, had better trained and equipped soldiers,
| and presented more logistical difficulties (Antony benefited a
| lot from having Cleopatra's support and still failed). Fighting
| a long and grueling war like that so far away from Rome would
| have meant leaving his domestic political situation in the
| hands of his allies -- and he didn't really have anybody
| capable he could trust to do that.
| vondur wrote:
| The Roman general Ventidius defeated the Parthians and could
| have possibly invaded Parthian territory, but chose not to.
| Probably done to not outshine his boss Marc Antony. Caesar
| was still a good military leader at the time, but was 60
| years old at this point. He also was planning to punish the
| Dacians on the way over. The Dacian's would be a persistent
| problem for the Roman's until their eventual conquest by the
| Emperor Trajan over 150 years later.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| Parthia did have a weakness in that the Parthians were seen
| as interlopers by the Persians whom they ruled over. The
| Sassanians who followed them were far more unified as they
| were actually Persian and able to claim the heritage of the
| Achaemenids(the Persian Empire of Cyrus, Darius, etc).
|
| In addition, the Parthian capitals were fairly far West.
| Trajan was able able to successfully invade Parthia.
|
| My guess would be that Julius was a good enough general to
| successfully invade Parthia, like Trajan and extract some
| concessions.
|
| The big question is if he could have actually conquered
| Persia. This is one instance where the centralization of
| Persia may have been able to play into his hands. If you look
| at Alexander's conquest after a few decisive victories in
| pitched battles, he was able to conquer Persia. Same with the
| later Muslim conquest of Persia, where decisive pitched
| battles delivered large chunks of Persian territories to the
| Muslims.
|
| So while definitely not easy, I don't think it was
| impossible, and Julius was one of the greatest generals of
| Antiquity, so it certainly would have been interesting to see
| if he could have done it.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Caesar wanted to do a lap around the Black Sea after defeating
| the Parthians and work his way home through what was then
| Sythia.
|
| Depending on how far they got, and there's more than a good
| chance that the Parthians may have destroyed any army sent
| against them. If not, then the Romans would have had to face
| the steppe horse archers a few hundred years earlier than
| otherwise. And that would never be easy.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| His plan was to recreate Alexander's invasion of the Indus.
|
| He would have failed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _[Caesar's] plan was to recreate Alexander's invasion of
| the Indus_
|
| Source?
| andrepd wrote:
| Re: Rome and Han China. This channel is great, and they have a
| video about the first-hand accounts of meetings between the
| East and the West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3senO4JZ0
| hackandthink wrote:
| "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of
| Ancient Rome" by Michael Parenti is worth reading.
|
| Though I don't agree with it, I can't stand this cruel
| imperialist.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37811.The_Assassination_...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's an interesting book about how things were headed south
| long before the events everyone knows about:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Before-Beginning-Roman-Republic...
| thom wrote:
| The late Republic is one of the most fascinating periods of
| history you can study, not least because the sources are so rich
| (albeit largely written by a bunch of self-aggrandizing
| aristocrats or their lackeys). But Caesar was largely a symptom
| of its decline and everyone can choose the seeds of destruction
| according to their tastes. Was it the First Slave Revolt, the
| Gracchi, the Social War, Marius, Sulla, the triumvirate, the
| optimates? Was it the lack of a common enemy after the sacks of
| Carthage and Corinth? Was it the unresolved tensions left over
| from the Conflict of Orders? Probably all of them, and you're
| just left to marvel, as Polybius did, that the Romans had a
| system that held the competing tensions in some sort of balance
| for as long as it did.
|
| The angle I've most enjoyed lately is applying the framework from
| Robin Markwica's "Logic of Affect" to many of the figures in the
| build up to the civil war. Erich Gruen's "The Last Generation of
| the Roman Republic" is also very interesting, in that he portrays
| most Republican institutions (and even Caesar and Pompey's
| relationship) functioning quite well fairly late on. The entire
| standoff seemed so unnecessary and avoidable, but there's too
| much power and prestige at stake by the end for anybody to budge.
| Were I to point the finger at one man it would be Cato the
| Younger, but as I say, it's all personal taste at this point.
| arpowers wrote:
| Cato the younger for forcing Caesar to cross the Rubicon?
| thom wrote:
| Yes. By refusing to come to an entirely reasonable settlement
| which allowed Caesar to return from Gaul peacefully and
| without being prosecuted. By working tirelessly to put a
| wedge between Pompey and Caesar.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| This is the primary reason the United States has a long
| tradition of not prosecuting former Presidents, even ones
| that were provably guilty of crimes.
|
| Unfortunately, the lesson of this cautionary tale from
| antiquity seems to have been forgotten.
| duxup wrote:
| > has a long tradition of not prosecuting former
| Presidents
|
| Has this ever been tested often?
|
| The President generally has a lot of legal immunity and
| latitude.
|
| I don't think that's "tradition" where people choose not
| to prosecute the president, it's just the law. Exceed
| that and every president is potentially at risk...
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Has this ever been tested often?
|
| Nixon comes to mind immediately. He was formally pardoned
| just to make sure he wasn't prosecuted.
|
| Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were impeached (though
| not removed from office), but were never prosecuted for
| the (alleged) crimes that led to impeachment.
|
| The Harding administration was notoriously corrupt, and
| he would almost certainly have been impeached had he not
| died in office.
|
| Reagan was accused of violating the law in the Iran-
| Contra affair, but was never prosecuted.
|
| There are undoubtedly other examples that aren't coming
| to mind immediately, but yeah, I'd say the principle has
| been fairly well tested.
|
| To turn it around, no former President has _ever_ been
| prosecuted after leaving office, to my knowledge, and it
| wasn 't because none of them committed crimes.
| duxup wrote:
| I've heard of those, but I haven't heard of the rule.
| fsckboy wrote:
| he said "former president" and you are saying
| "president". not the same thing.
|
| the important difference is that the president has a lot
| of power while in office, pardon power, and many
| immunities. If a president is "corrupt", their power is
| great, their prosecution will be very difficult, but
| there is a reason to want to stop them.
|
| A former president has lost those powers and immunities,
| and in the same sense is also "no longer a threat", so in
| most cases it's not "necessary" to take legal steps to
| stop them from further crimes or transgressions.
|
| And in both cases, the due to the nature of politics,
| there is a desire to avoid feeding the political hunger
| for revenge thru malicious prosecution. Both sides have
| found it in their interest to let the wounded political
| warriors retire from the field, and focus the fight to
| those remaining.
| duxup wrote:
| Just a typo on my part.
| fatneckbeard wrote:
| it's almost like assassinating people doesn't solve problems.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Ecept for all the times it does. Not advocating it but
| repression in fact works. Romam reactionaries maintianed their
| wealth and influence for several hundred years by stabbing
| anyone who challenged it.
| akira2501 wrote:
| That's not "solving problems." That's simply "maintaining the
| status quo in the face of opposition."
| [deleted]
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Except if you see "the problem" as ingrate agitators, it
| very much is "solving problems". I'm not making a moral
| argument for political violence. But we live in an era with
| a peculiar recent history and we tell ourselves a
| progressive story of hope, triumph of justice, rule of law
| and non-violence based on that recent history. But if we
| look more broadly at history, we see powers which endure a
| long time on oppression and occasional mild reform or
| compromise. It tells a different story which I think we
| should be congizant of and which should make us guard more
| jealously democracy and less certain of its security in
| moral rightnes.
|
| People can take power and dominate you, your family and
| everyone you know. And the "moral arch of history" will
| fuck itself off for 1000 years with only a sting of martyrs
| to its credit.
| VLM wrote:
| Their cultural technology grew to allow them to concentrate power
| beyond a stable level, result, turmoil. Even the most powerful
| guy in the civilization could get assassinated.
| chernevik wrote:
| Yes, Caesar's death opened the field for Octavian. But Octavian
| was such a political genius that we can easily imagine him
| assuming dictatorial power after Caesar no matter how long the
| latter lived, and institutionalizing in substantially the same
| form.
| lisper wrote:
| This article filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Roman
| history, in particular, the significant role Augustus played in
| cementing the dictatorship established by Julius.
|
| The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago and
| what is happening in the U.S. today are getting really scary.
| californiadreem wrote:
| The Founding Fathers of the United States were directly
| inspired by the Roman Republic. The notion that the Republic
| would ultimately devolve (or evolve, given your perspective)
| into Empire was not a foreign notion to them.
|
| I don't necessarily think that they understood the extent to
| which the acquisition of land, power, and resources by
| corporations might mimic the destructive influence of the
| latifundia of the late Roman Republic, but still the end result
| will likely be the same: land reform by a populare (i.e. Peace,
| Land, Bread).
|
| Under the Julian land reform program, Caesar proposed to:
|
| * Distribute public lands to poor and landless citizens: Caesar
| proposed to distribute public lands to poor and landless
| citizens, who would be allowed to cultivate the land in
| exchange for paying a small rent to the state.
|
| * Restrict the size of private estates: Caesar proposed to
| limit the amount of land that could be held by any one
| individual, in order to prevent the accumulation of vast
| estates by the wealthy elite. This would help to ensure that
| there was enough land available for small farmers and other
| citizens.
|
| * Create colonies for veterans and landless citizens: Caesar
| proposed to create new colonies in Italy and other parts of the
| Roman world, where veterans and landless citizens could be
| settled and given land to cultivate.
|
| Given the current crises in housing, climate, self-confidence,
| and employment amongst the proles, a similar platform is likely
| to emerge. Unfortunately, given the same stridency in those
| with wealth and status, similar obstacles are also likely to
| prevent the pressure valve of nihilistic desperation from being
| released, with likely destructive results.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| > Restrict the size of private estates: Caesar proposed to
| limit the amount of land that could be held by any one
| individual, in order to prevent the accumulation of vast
| estates by the wealthy elite.
|
| And would he have given up his Spanish silver mines?
|
| > This would help to ensure that there was enough land
| available for small farmers and other citizens.
|
| It would also -- totally coincidentally -- ensure that the
| competing powerful families would not remain strong enough to
| threaten Caesar but I'm sure that wasn't his intention.
| Caesar was an honourable man, after all.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Yet another entrant to the Roman whataboutism parade. Sure.
| You win. Whatever. Caesar was a ruthless plutocrat that so-
| everly unjustly denuded those poor, poor Roman Opimates of
| their fortunes and prestige to prevent them from opposing
| Rex Caesar by giving land to the poor and veterans,
| reforming the calendar, spending endless years on military
| campaigns to expand Rome's wealth, and granting citizenship
| to non-Italics, then letting everyone who hated him come
| back if they wouldn't try to kill him. I hear Cato the
| Younger quite virtuously hated Mondays. Dies Lunae delendae
| sunt. etc. etc.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Alea iacta est
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Lmao we can't go one thread without an american making it about
| trump
| zabzonk wrote:
| > The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago
| and what is happening in the U.S. today
|
| such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is
| claudius?
| prewett wrote:
| Not OP, but I see the situation more as 100 years before
| Caesar. You had competing interests but inability
| (unwillingness?) to compromise. Various people tried
| increasingly heavy-handed solutions, including the populist
| Gracchi brothers, and then Sulla entering Rome with his
| legions (forbidden) three years of military dictatorship--
| after which he resigned and went home.
|
| We seem to be at the potential start of that process. The
| morals/ethics of the coastal elites from the rural population
| have diverged to the point where, with Social Justice
| (differing from social justice) they may not be compatible,
| but both sides are trying to enforce their morality on the
| other. (Although I think the push for change is essentially
| from the coasts and the rural morality is on an offensive-
| defense.) So you get the rise of populist Trump and the far
| right to oppose the push from the far left. Trump isn't
| equivalent to anyone in Rome, but the situation has a similar
| flavor. (Also, the situation described by Plato in the
| Republic, where he says democracy results in chaos, causing
| people to want a dictator to restore order, although we have
| not got there yet.)
| thom wrote:
| For what it's worth, one Roman figure who had an insanely
| engorged ego, relied on huge loans for his business
| dealings, and assigned Rome's decay to a shadowy cabal of
| deep-state paedophiles, was Cicero.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > inability (unwillingness?) to compromise.
|
| I think the basic story of the late Republic is one of a
| political-economy which needed to change but which could
| not. Romes successes had rewritten the fundamental
| realities of its means and relations of production but the
| political system gave an effective veto power to people who
| refused to see this and instead wished to blame cultural
| changes and a decline in traditional virtue for the
| troubles.
|
| This delusion was a borderline mental illness. These people
| loved Rome's martial history and wanted to keep armies in
| the field as much as anyone, yet opposed opening the
| cavalry to non-yeomen despite the deleterious impacts it
| had on the rural upper class and the decreasing ability of
| the Romans to field these kind of patriotic cavalry.
|
| These people benefited in multitude ways from the influx of
| slave labor. But they resisted any effort to enfranchise
| now underemployed Romans, settling instead to doll them
| grain. Even as this destroyed the
|
| These people leveraged their neighbor Italians to win
| profitable war after profitable war and resisted giving
| them the privileges of citizenship until forced at the
| point of a spear.
|
| And all the while, any type of reform which had the
| aesthetic of appearing against traditional Roman virtue was
| resisted entirely by the traditional aristocrats. Until of
| course Marius, many of whose reforms were so practical that
| not even a nostalgia trip like Sulla could bring himself to
| turn them all back.
|
| I think the moral of the fall of Rome is not about a lack
| of compromise but about what happens when your political
| system ceases to be able to address the fundamental issues
| that are undermining it. The end of the Poland-Lithuania is
| another such example.
| thom wrote:
| The Marian reforms were very practical, but they also set
| the scene for later generations of armies that felt bound
| more to their general than to Rome itself. There's a
| reason Augustus nearly bankrupted the state
| professionalizing the army.
|
| But I broadly agree with your point - the tensions that
| brought the Republic down had been festering for hundreds
| of years.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > But I broadly agree with your point - the tensions that
| brought the Republic down had been festering for hundreds
| of years.
|
| That's true but not my specific point. My specific point
| is that the above comment is extolling a milk-toast "both
| sides" view of the breakdown of the Roman Republic that
| simply isn't supported by fact. The problems facing Rome
| were plainly due to changes in geo-poltical and economic
| circumstances. Many of these changes in circumstances
| were themselves created by action of the basic structures
| of Roman society and the successes they had achieved.
|
| All resistance to addressing those changes in any manner,
| big or small, can be laid at the feet of an out of touch
| group of traditional aristocrats who would not abide Rome
| in any form besides the mythological form they believe it
| had in the early Republic. These people essentially held
| a veto to any "legitimate" challenge and used violence in
| successive circumstances where they feared an
| "illegitimate" challenge.
| thom wrote:
| Totally agree that there wasn't much for the plebs to
| compromise on and I hope I'm not both-sidesing here, just
| pointing out that the tradition of violence around any
| proposed land reforms goes back hundreds of years, indeed
| all the way to the very first proposed agrarian laws of
| 486BC. The patrician class was conservative and backward-
| looking by its very nature, and the Roman form of
| government was almost _explicitly_ created to reach
| stalemate rather than solve problems in one side's favour
| (tribunes had the veto too, except as you point out for a
| few years under Sulla). Obviously in practice that meant
| the oligarchy had the better part of the deal. But that
| wasn't necessarily a _new_ tension. So what changed that
| these old grievances ended up shattering the Republic?
| usrusr wrote:
| I read it with a slightly wider scope for "today": when you
| have reached the point where you need to include the middle
| initial to tell presidents apart you aren't that far from
| just incrementing a counter...
| mongol wrote:
| Indeed. Even from the outside I can see similarities with
| family dynasties in the political elites. We have the
| Kennedys, Bush, Clintons, and who knows what will become of
| the Trump family going forward.
| simonh wrote:
| Clunck-click with every trip hopefully.
|
| Edit: British humour. Started as car seat belt promotion
| videos, but now used to refer to someone being in prison.
| dustincoates wrote:
| If that were true, Jeb! or Hillary would be president right
| now. As it stands, the Clinton and Bush names are not
| winning anyone office right now, and the most prominent
| Kennedy politician right now is arguably an anti-vax
| conspiracy theorist.
| lisper wrote:
| Well, it's obviously not an exact replay with a one-to-one
| mapping of today's characters onto those of 2000 years ago. I
| guess I'd map Trump onto Caesar (though he seems more like a
| Mussolini than a Caesar -- funny how Italy seems to breed
| dictators), his defeat in 2020 onto Caesar's assassination,
| with the concomitant premature sigh of relief breathed by the
| proponents of democracy, and DeSantis, if he wins in '24, as
| Augustus.
|
| From TFA: "The third impact was the realisation of a new
| reality. Caesar's teenage adopted son took over where his
| father had left off. The power of a popular name to motivate
| soldiers and the poor left his killers amazed."
|
| I would not be surprised to see an analogous sentence being
| written ten years from now, something like, "DeSantis took
| over where Trump had left off. The power of MAGA ideology to
| motivate a large portion of the public left the Democrats
| amazed (and permanently out of power)."
| cowpig wrote:
| > The murder of Caesar marked the beginning of a long and
| protracted civil war
|
| I don't see how you can look at the events leading up to the
| murder of Julius Caesar as anything but a civil war. He literally
| led roman armies into battle against roman armies controlled by
| opposing political interests.
|
| > The death of Caesar did not provoke the end of the Republic
|
| The amount of political power concentrated in the single
| dictator-for-life changed dramatically after this. If you want to
| call a system in which one person has dictatorial power a
| republic because they will lose that dictatorial power via
| assassination or revolt if they are awful enough at their job for
| long enough (e.g. Nero) then basically anything is a republic.
| ithkuil wrote:
| But since he "won" one would have expected that to mean peace
| from that point on, except he hasn't really won since
| eventually he got himself killed.
|
| Like many things, it's all about perspectives, long term vs
| short term focus, counterfactuals, and an occasional dose of
| contrarianism, which always fueled the attempt of essayists to
| raise above the noise (by being noisier)
| thom wrote:
| If there's one thing the entirety of Roman history tells us,
| it's that managing succession is incredibly difficult. It was
| by no means the rule that someone 'winning' meant things were
| about to get peaceful (or at least, not until they'd killed
| off all their rivals, siblings, or whoever else they chose to
| proscribe).
| ithkuil wrote:
| Which is why modern democracy must be treasured for all its
| faults.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Their argument isn't that the republic continued on into the
| empire, but that it was already dead to other things. For
| example, if a system where an unelected triumvirate holds all
| the political power is a republic, basically anything is a
| republic.
| chasil wrote:
| The definition of a republic is itself a nebulous thing.
|
| One definition is simply a government that does not have a
| king. Another is the lack of inherited office.
|
| The triumvirates appear to have satisfied both of these
| simple requirements.
| User23 wrote:
| > I don't see how you can look at the events leading up to the
| murder of Julius Caesar as anything but a civil war. He
| literally led roman armies into battle against roman armies
| controlled by opposing political interests.
|
| Arguably the protracted civil war goes back to Sulla.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Long and protracted is possibly the salient phrase. Julius
| Caesar's civil war with Pompey was neither long nor protracted
| and never actually involved the populus of Italy, let alone
| Rome.
|
| Pompey abandoned Italy effectively as soon as Caesar entered
| Italy. Pompey's Macedonian strategy ultimately failed as soon
| as it was contested. Sure, there were the Spanish interludes,
| but beyond the Senate's abdication of Italy, Caesar was
| extremely forgiving to his opponents, the institutions of the
| Republic continued, and ultimately the struggles never reached
| Italy proper until after his death.
|
| So I can definitely see why the author might emphasize the
| continued violence of the second Triumvirate ahead of the
| breaking up of the first.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The institutions continued. The institutions continued under
| Augustus, too. But that's like saying that China and
| Venezuela are democracies because they have elections.
|
| The Roman Republic was dead when Caesar won the civil war.
| The trappings remained, but the Republic was dead.
| (Seriously, could the people - or even the Senate - have
| voted Julius Caesar out? No, Caesar was there because of his
| armies, not because of the popular vote. So it wasn't a
| republic. In a republic, you can lose elections and be out of
| power.)
| thom wrote:
| Caesar was pretty popular, and ignoring that ignores many
| of the dynamics (reaching back to Marius at least, but
| really all the way to the Conflict of the Orders) that
| actually governed Roman politics. At the time he came to
| power, Rome was ruled by an oligarchy, and many of the
| instruments of political representation for the people had
| been co-opted by the aristocracy. Not to say his intentions
| were at all pure, but neither were those of any of his
| contemporaries.
| staunch wrote:
| > _The Roman Republic was dead when Caesar won the civil
| war_
|
| The Republic had been in trouble for a long time. IMHO it
| officially died as soon as the First Triumvirate was
| created. Rome was in complete control of just three people
| for many years.
|
| Pompey was the leading figure of the First Triumvirate, so
| arguably he deserves more blame than even Caesar for the
| downfall. The fact that more senators chose him over Caesar
| says very little about how truly republican any of them
| were by that point.
|
| The war between Caesar's party and Pompey's party was
| really just a battle for who would be Dictator for life.
| Neither of them had any intention of handing real power
| back, because they could honestly tell themselves it was
| unlikely to fall into any better hands.
|
| Had he won, Pompey would have continued to (through
| military threats) control the Senate the same way he had
| for many years prior to the civil war.
| cdogl wrote:
| Tell that to the PRC.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I _am_ telling that to the PRC.
| californiadreem wrote:
| If inability to remove the Consul (or Dictator) via from
| office via elections is what qualifies as the death of the
| Republic, then it died with Marius, Sulla, or Pompey.
| Laying the death at Caesar's feet is ridiculous.
|
| Caesar was popular. He was murdered by a coalition of
| unpopular and disaffected Pompeiians and noveau riche both
| enabled by Caesar's clemency and largess. He was accorded
| his honors, powers, and cult status legally. If your notion
| that a Republic isn't a Republic because popular
| representatives can't be voted out (because the people
| don't _want_ to vote them out), then Republics and
| Democracies don 't exist at all and all you have is
| rhetoric.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > If inability to remove the Consul (or Dictator) via
| from office via elections is what qualifies as the death
| of the Republic, then it died with Marius, Sulla, or
| Pompey.
|
| Right. Arguably the Republic had been on life support for
| decades, even before Marius and Sulla.
|
| Some argue that the fundamental issue was a coordination
| problem. The civic institutions that had worked
| reasonably well when Rome was merely the capital of an
| Italian agricultural reason began to fail miserably as
| Rome changed into an empire where communication between
| outlying regions and the capital took weeks or months.
| The proconsul/propraetor system, which came about fairly
| late in the Roman Republic, was an attempt to mitigate
| this, by providing an on-site official with authority
| ("imperium"). In practice, the promagistrates generally
| looked on their one year terms as a license to loot the
| province, squeezing out as many taxes and bribes as they
| could collect. This did not endear them with the locals.
|
| By contrast, an emperor usually wanted to remain in power
| for a long time (most of them did not, but they wanted
| to), and could spread their looting out over a longer
| period of time, and have it carried out by local
| officials they could make and break at will.
| qwytw wrote:
| > was merely the capital of an Italian
|
| Arguably (considering the causes and outcomes of the
| Social War) it didn't even function that well in that
| regard. It was a city state which suddenly (in a couple
| generations) became a global empire.
|
| > an emperor
|
| Did an emperor even need to loot that much? He did not
| have to spend enormous amounts of money for electoral
| campaigns or directly compete with his peers in other
| ways. Arguably the interests of the emperor were
| inherently aligned with that of the state unlike that of
| elected magistrates who were ussually much more concerned
| about their political success and accumulating wealth
| (which I guess is pretty much what you're saying..)
| peterfirefly wrote:
| > Arguably the interests of the emperor were inherently
| aligned with that of the state unlike that of elected
| magistrates who were ussually much more concerned about
| their political success and accumulating wealth (which I
| guess is pretty much what you're saying..)
|
| Roving bandits vs. stationary bandits.
| pakyr wrote:
| Caesar had multiple Tribunes of the Plebs (who had far
| more electoral legitimacy than Caesar ever did, being
| elected by the Plebeian Assembly) removed from office. To
| pretend that he never did anything blatantly undemocratic
| is false.
| [deleted]
| californiadreem wrote:
| Name them and why they were removed according to the
| extant historians.
| pakyr wrote:
| I've gotta say, your tone is quite grating, but fine,
| I'll play along.
|
| He removed two tribunes in the runup to his assassination
| (Gaius Marullus and Lucius Flavus) after they had a few
| citizens arrested for calling Caesar 'King' as he greeted
| them. He also had Publius Sestus removed, ostensibly on
| charges of inciting violence (but more motivated by
| opposition to his land redistribution), during one of his
| earlier consulships. I suppose you would argue all of
| this was justified, but my point is that no matter how
| you slice it, Tribunes of the Plebs were far more
| democratically accountable to the people and had far more
| electoral legitimacy than Caesar ever did (having been
| declared dictator for life by a thoroughly undemocratic
| institution, the Senate). Tribunes served for a year, and
| if the plebs actually disapproved of their conduct, they
| could have chosen someone else. The Plebeian Assembly's
| ability to elect their Tribunes was, after all, one of
| the few powers left to them after Sulla's reforms.
|
| I guess a modern analogue would be a Supreme Court
| justice declaring they are working in the interests of
| the people, ruling that all corporations above a certain
| size must be dissolved, then removing from office members
| of Congress that try to impeach them. You might argue
| that they're acting in the interests of the people (in
| their own judgement), but it would be indisputably
| undemocratic nonetheless.
|
| Edit: forgot to mention in my little analogy, of course,
| that the Supreme Court justice is also a four star
| general with the military at their beck and call.
| californiadreem wrote:
| >You might argue that they're acting in the interests of
| the people (in their own judgement), but it would be
| indisputably undemocratic nonetheless.
|
| That's a fair assessment of my position. I view the
| criticism that the most successful populares consul of
| Rome was "undemocratic" while being consul and dictator
| of a Republic constituted and elected on the basis of
| property and nepotism to be entirely ridiculous when the
| "undemocratic" criticism is the removal of Tribunes doing
| things directly in opposition of the actual interest of
| the plebs. Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy enriching
| themselves as career politicians while the cities and
| countryside decay meet with my equal disdain.
|
| In short, if isolated demands for rigor abound when
| dealing with procedural rules and precedent, I will ally
| with those trying to prevent fires rather than those that
| simply talk until time runs out (but Cato was a virtuous
| man).
| 8note wrote:
| That popularity beyond being removed of course, came
| after most of the people who didn't support him were dead
| californiadreem wrote:
| Who do you mean? Do you mean Pompey (who was
| independently killed by Egyptians), Cato (killed himself
| rather than be pardoned), Ahenobarbus (was defeated,
| tried to kill himself, then was pardoned by Caesar only
| to fight again and be defeated again and killed in
| battle), Labienus (defeated, pardoned, killed in battle),
| Cicero (defected to the Pompeiians and was actively
| solicited by Caesar to return to public service, never
| punished by Caesar), Petreius and Juba (fought a suicidal
| dual with a slave killing the victor). Whom else am I
| missing? I'm curious as to whom you mean.
|
| Or do you mean the very _alive_ and formerly Pompeiian
| Senators that Caesar enriched and restored to office that
| ultimately killed him out of pride?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| OK, but what if Caesar lost his popularity? (The crowd
| was fickle, after all.) Would he have accepted being
| voted out of office? Or would he have used the army to
| remain in power?
|
| The question is not whether Caesar was popular. The
| question is whether he could have been removed from power
| by political means if the people had wanted to.
|
| The Republic didn't die with Caesar's assassination. It
| died when he took his army into Italy.
|
| Or it died earlier than that. You want to say it died
| with Marius and Sulla? Sure, I can go there.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Hot take: The Republic was always a
| plutocratic/hoplocratic oligarchy where real power was
| only superficially related to formal process. Talking
| about when it "died" is mostly debate about how to
| selectively romanticize its "life".
|
| But, romanticizing either the Republic or the Empire or
| both has been (and remains) pretty foundational to
| political society and national identity for a wide swathe
| of the world...
| californiadreem wrote:
| >The question is not whether Caesar was popular. The
| question is whether he could have been removed from power
| by political means if the people had wanted to.
|
| This plays into the status games endemic to late
| Republics. To quote another maligned general that was
| merciful to the vanquished and cruel to the recalcitrant:
| "Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like
| the man who would keep all wine out of the country, lest
| men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and
| unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty
| upon a supposition he may abuse it."
|
| Caesar didn't proscribe his opponents. They killed
| themselves rather than be in sufferance of his mercy. He
| didn't attempt to become king or imperator. Augustus
| grasped his "inheritance" himself. Caesar revelled in his
| _well-earned_ and _legally-entitled_ glory that
| overshadowed those of his older, wealthier peers. What he
| did extralegally in the aftermath of the civil war, like
| Augustus, he did to conform with the facade of legality
| to protect the commonweal. Like Cicero, he lived to take
| the blame of necessity personally. Had he failed in the
| public eye is a pointless exercise however; He did not
| fail.
|
| It's informative to ask: Was FDR a dictator? He had an
| unprecedented scope of power, illegally enlarged the
| executive branch multiple times, engaged in extralegal
| economic redistribution, defied informal term limits, and
| was beloved by the masses.
|
| Yet, if FDR had lost any of his presidential campaigns,
| would he have left office and transitioned accordingly?
| There's not a shred, not a whisp, of evidence to suggest
| otherwise.
|
| Sometimes, and I know well that we live in all too human
| times that make such people and their circumstances
| mythical, people _do_ struggle to do good for their _own_
| honor and the sake of the public good.
|
| To crib from the eulogy of a would-be American Caesar,
| executed amidst similarly trying times: "Few men are
| willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the
| censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.
| Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle
| or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital
| quality for those who seek to change a world that yields
| most painfully to change."
| pakyr wrote:
| > It's informative to ask: Was FDR a dictator? He had an
| unprecedented scope of power, illegally enlarged the
| executive branch multiple times, engaged in extralegal
| economic redistribution, defied informal term limits, and
| was beloved by the masses.
|
| Drawing an equivalency between FDR, who was repeatedly
| reelected by huge majorities after his terms expired, and
| did comply with the rulings of a hostile Supreme Court
| after failing to outmaneuver them, to Caesar, who had
| himself declared dictator for life by the Senate (itself
| hardly a democratic institution), and removed multiple
| Tribunes from office who had more electoral legitimacy
| than he did, is a bit of a reach.
| californiadreem wrote:
| In May 1937, Associate Justice Owen Roberts, who had
| previously been a reliable conservative vote on the
| Court, voted with the liberal wing of the Court in
| upholding a state minimum wage law. This unexpected
| switch gave the Court a 5-4 majority in favor of
| upholding the New Deal legislation, and effectively ended
| Roosevelt's plans to expand the Court.
|
| It's absolutely ludicrous to say he outmaneuvered them.
| Roberts _conceded_ and FDR abandoned his plans to pack
| the court.
| pakyr wrote:
| FDR did not abandon his plans because of a change in the
| court's jurisprudence. He abandoned them because he ran
| into insurmountable opposition from his own party that
| killed the plan. The House Judiciary chairman called it
| unconstitutional, for example, and it repeatedly failed
| votes in the Senate Judiciary committee. It had been made
| abundantly clear by mid-year that the bill had no chance
| of passing, hence its failure; otherwise, he would have
| pushed for it regardless of what the court ruled in _West
| Coast Hotel_. Even still, he complied with prior court
| rulings that had struck down parts of the New Deal after
| his efforts failed.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Do you think that Caesar was unlimited _de facto_ in what
| he could put forth whereas FDR was circumscribed?
| pakyr wrote:
| I think Caesar had carte blanche control over his
| soldiers, and FDR didn't (which I, and I think even he,
| would agree was a good thing). I think FDR was elected to
| a preexisting constitutional office for a predefined term
| by the people of the nation, while Caesar had himself ad-
| hoc declared 'Dictator for life' by an undemocratic
| Senate he effectively held at sword point. I think that
| that FDR operated under restrictions (which he did at
| times try to loosen, with varying degrees of success),
| while Caesar had virtually none (save for factors that
| motivated some of his policymaking, such as keeping those
| soldiers happy).
|
| Obviously you believe in populism, economic and/or
| otherwise, so I suppose you think it is a good thing that
| someone like Caesar was able to act largely without
| restrictions in implementing his plans; I don't think a
| lack of checks is a good thing, even if I believe the
| policy being implemented is itself good (though Caesar
| did do things I think were wrong, particularly on the
| military front, Gaul, etc.). I guess that's just a
| difference of opinion that we have.
| californiadreem wrote:
| I disagree that Caesar had total control over his
| soldiers. Labienus and Antony alone among his legates
| shows that loyalty to Caesar had very real limits that
| could either turn into antipathy or debauchery. The
| diadem incident showed that whatever the intent was,
| Caesar was limited in what he could do.
|
| I don't believe that violation of precedent leads to
| positive outcomes and that each violation destroys its
| own foundation, but I also believe that slavish adherence
| to a stultified and failing system of precedence leads to
| outcomes that mimic the proverb "the strong do what they
| can and the weak suffer what they must." Lawfare is
| another kind of civic death, as Cato demonstrated
| multiple times. So if you want to call opposition to
| terminal ossification "populism" then sure, you've got
| me.
| pakyr wrote:
| > The diadem incident showed that whatever the intent
| was, Caesar was limited in what he could do.
|
| I largely think this is a good place to leave this
| conversation, but I can't help but point out that when
| the limit is 'you can't openly declare yourself king in a
| nation whose fundamental character is defined as
| opposition to monarchy', there isn't much of a real
| limit.
| qwytw wrote:
| > revelled in his well-earned and legally-entitled glory
| that
|
| That's really a heavily biased claim. First of all
| Cesar's invasion of Gaul was actual illegal. The stuff he
| did there even shocked some of the ussually bloodthirsty
| Roman aristocrats. Regardless of whether he felt what the
| senate did was just or not his refusal to give up his
| governorship and the subsequent march on Rome was in no
| way legal.
|
| His position of dictator was only legal because Ceasar
| passed laws making it legal. Dictator for life was never
| a constitutional office in Rome (besides the two times
| when rebelling general lead his army into the city and
| forced the senate/assembly to appoint him as one).
|
| Term limits were fundamental part of Roman Consitution
| and the Republic. While Cesar did not call himself king
| he was one effectively.
|
| After he was assassinated the office of Dictator was
| officially abolished. And basically equated to that of
| King (any person who attempted to make himself dictator
| could be executed without a trial). You know who proposed
| this law? Mark Anthony...
|
| Actually Augustus position was legalistically more
| legitimate (obviously it's only semantics at this point)
| sensing that Ceasar made mistake appointed himself
| dictator Augustus had the senate grant him a bunch of
| separate offices and special powers but he never legally
| held absolute power in the same way Ceasar did and
| maintained the illusion that the Republic was still in
| place.
|
| > Was FDR a dictator?
|
| FDR did not conquer Washington DC with an army. But yeah
| I guess it's a scale. Ceasar was much, much closer to
| being an absolute ruler than Roosevelt was. Roosevelt
| could not legally not execute any American citizen he
| wanted (Ceasar could even if he ussually chose not to do
| this)
|
| > "Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery"
|
| Caesar was a glory seeking opportunist (just like almost
| every other Roman politician...) and a war criminal even
| if a brilliant general. I'm not saying his opponents were
| any better but I really don't understand in what way did
| Ceasar display "Moral courage"?
| roundandround wrote:
| The paper ends with the claim that the conspirators
| destroyed the republic but as you said it was already
| dead. Given that countries like the US like to draw
| parallels to Rome, I think it is an important message
| that normal people dont accept the late society with a
| consolidating dictator as a republic. Killing Caesar was
| a noble act, but it apparently required killing his
| adoptive son too. We can only learn from history if we
| listen to it without falling into a Stockholm syndrome
| like a scholar that specializes in one of the monsters.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it apparently required killing his adoptive son too_
|
| This is the wrong lesson! Killing Caesar wasn't a
| solution. Hell, Caesar might have been the only one who
| could have fixed the system.
| roundandround wrote:
| I saw a speech from Gaddafi that he was going to
| gradually reform Libya.. It is an often repeated lie that
| institutions are going to magically transform themselves
| to no longer be shaped by being suck ups to dictators as
| soon as a dictator wills it.
| recuter wrote:
| > Killing Caesar was a noble act Friends,
| Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to
| bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that
| men do lives after them; The good is oft interred
| with their bones; So let it be with Caesar.
| The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was
| ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
| And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here,
| under leave of Brutus and the rest- For Brutus is
| an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable
| men- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
| He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But
| Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an
| honourable man. He hath brought many captives
| home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers
| fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When
| that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
| Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet
| Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an
| honourable man. You all did see that on the
| Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
| Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet
| Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an
| honourable man. I speak not to disprove what
| Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do
| know. You all did love him once, not without
| cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for
| him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish
| beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with
| me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
| And I must pause till it come back to me.
| californiadreem wrote:
| Nobility implies _sacrifice_. Cassius, Brutus, et. al
| sacrificed nothing except the hard-fought stability and
| foundational reform that _Caesar_ was in the process of
| providing. If honor can be accorded to jealous rentiers
| guarding latifundia and Old Money engaging in
| institutional revanchism, then yes, America should learn
| from history and what happens to tyrants given time.
|
| As far as hamfisted comparisons between Trump to Caesar
| go, Trump is no Caesar. He lacks gall, youth, tribute,
| loyalty, and competence. The only connection he has is
| the theatricality of those that floundered in the wake of
| Caesar & Augustus.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Cassius, Brutus, et. al sacrificed nothing_
|
| Bedsides their standing, wealth and lives?
| coliveira wrote:
| The US is in the same situation, except that it is not a
| personal dictatorship. It has a two-party dictatorship, and
| what unites them is the unwavering support for the foreign
| imperialism. Any party/candidate that breaks with the
| foreign imperialism will be labeled an enemy of the state.
| In this sense, democracy is dead in America too since the
| cold war.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what unites them is the unwavering support for the
| foreign imperialism_
|
| This is a dated political model.
| shipman05 wrote:
| Having foreign policy you disagree with does not make
| America non-democratic. There are many areas in which the
| American government doesn't seem to represent the will of
| the people, but military spending and interventionism are
| broadly popular.
|
| Now, if you want to argue that people have been duped
| into holding beliefs contrary to their own best
| interests, I think you could make a strong argument. But
| that's not the same thing as saying that the government
| doesn't reflect the beliefs they DO hold.
| staunch wrote:
| > _Julius Caesar 's civil war with Pompey was neither long
| nor protracted..._
|
| Compared to what? It was nearly two years just for the
| portion with Pompey.
|
| > _.. and never actually involved the populus of Italy, let
| alone Rome._
|
| Of course it did involve a great many people from Italy and a
| great many Romans.
|
| > _Pompey 's Macedonian strategy ultimately failed as soon as
| it was contested._
|
| It failed after very nearly succeeding multiple times and
| after months of skirmishes, sieges, storming of cities, back-
| and-forth trench warfare on huge scale, and marches with
| counter-marches. It was a slugfest between the largest and
| most modern forces of the day.
| californiadreem wrote:
| >Compared to what? It was nearly two years just for the
| portion with Pompey.
|
| The period prior to Caesar (i.e. Marius, Sulla, and
| Catalinean period, etc.) and the post-Caesarian civil wars?
|
| >Of course it did involve a great many people from Italy
| and a great many Romans.
|
| Show me a serious battle in Italy or a battle in Rome that
| resulted in serious destruction or disruption to the
| operations of Rome and the Italic peoples as a result of
| Caesar's civil war. Corfinium? Brundisium? It's nothing.
|
| > It failed after very nearly succeeding multiple times and
| after months of skirmishes, sieges, storming of cities,
| back-and-forth trench warfare on huge scale, and marches
| and counter-marches. It was a slug fest between large
| forces.
|
| It was a handful of battles and sieges. It's nothing
| compared to other campaigns. It's hard to believe that
| you're not actively being disingenuous rather than
| incidentally illiterate in regards to the broader
| historical context.
| staunch wrote:
| > _Show me a serious battle in Italy or a battle in Rome
| that resulted in serious destruction as a result of
| Caesar 's civil war._
|
| The people fighting in Spain, Greece, and Africa were
| largely Italian Romans or non-Italian Romans or allies.
| Caesar and Pompey were Italian Romans. It was in every
| way a civil war of Romans. What difference does it make
| that, for logistical reasons, the battles took place
| outside of Italy proper?
|
| > _It was a handful of battles and sieges. It 's nothing
| compared to other campaigns._
|
| Greece was the hardest campaign of Caesar's life. For the
| first time, he was fighting a complete military peer that
| had more resources, more soldiers, and more money. Pompey
| even had important Gallic leaders and Caesar's #2
| (Labienus) leading a much larger cavalry force. Pompey's
| army matched and beat Caesar's in siege warfare.
|
| Caesar almost lost multiple times and was beaten and in
| retreat when he turned around to fight and win at
| Pharsalus. Had Pompey avoided a full scale engagement,
| it's very likely that he would have won.
| californiadreem wrote:
| >The people fighting in Spain, Greece, and Africa were
| largely Italian Romans or non-Italian Romans or allies.
| Caesar and Pompey were Italian Romans. It was in every
| way a civil war of Romans. What difference does it make
| that, for logistical reasons, the battles took place
| outside of Italy proper?
|
| The non-soldiery weren't involved, a total war wasn't
| invoked, and proscriptions were largely absent? Come on.
|
| >Caesar almost lost multiple times and was beaten and in
| retreat when he turned around to fight and win at
| Pharsalus. Had Pompey avoided a full scale engagement,
| it's very likely that he would have won.
|
| This is absolutely irrelevant. Your counterfactuals
| concerning a mythical _competent_ Pompey are pointless.
| He didn 't win. He fled Italy, fled Macedonia, and died
| commensurate to his honor and integrity. In a small boat,
| by foreign underlings.
|
| The civil wars that _actually_ impacted the peoples of
| Italy and Rome, as in proscriptions, institutional and
| physical damage, preceded and followed Caesar. The lull
| was enabled and continued _by_ Caesar, sabotaged by such
| _heroes_ of the Republic as the _sole_ consul Pompous,
| sorry _Pompeius_ , Magnus.
| DenisM wrote:
| > It's hard to believe that you're not actively being
| disingenuous rather than incidentally illiterate in
| regards to the broader historical context.
|
| Please don't. The rules specifically discourage this.
|
| _Assume good faith._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| californiadreem wrote:
| I'm being _accurate_. Mindlessly sending an antagonistic
| reply without giving due consideration to what was
| actually said is more antithetical to norms of good faith
| than stating that this is occurring.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > He literally led roman armies into battle against roman
| armies controlled by opposing political interests.
|
| Yes, but he had offered a truce to the senate before it came to
| that. What he wanted was to extend is governorship in Gaul.
| This would have given him legal protection from his enemies in
| the senate and kept him somewhat distanced from roman politics
| for the duration.
|
| The senate pressed for this outcome. They got more than they
| bargained for.
| baron816 wrote:
| Isn't it strange that we still look upon the Roman Empire
| favorably? The basis of it was chattel slavery and genocide. They
| deserve to be in the same bucket as Nazi Germany.
| d0mine wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that it is more cruel than its
| contemporaries?
| [deleted]
| shp0ngle wrote:
| (ignore this comment)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Julius Caesar was neither the first nor the last leader to be
| assassinated in Roman history, but his is the only death that
| still reverberates.
|
| The context is Roman leaders, of which Christ isn't one. Don't
| go looking for unnecessary offense.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Hah. I will delete the comment, the header was out if context
| mongol wrote:
| You are thinking of the death of Jesus? Yes you have a point.
| He was a leader in Roman history, even though he was not a
| Roman leader
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