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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, o

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.

roundandround 4y ago
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.
- californiadreem 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    > Cassius, Brutus, et. al sacrificed nothing Bedsides their standing, wealth and lives?
  - shjake 4y ago
    Ceasar was a glory seeking political opportunist and a war criminal. You’re right the second part probably does not apply to Trump… > hard-fought stability and foundational reform that Caesar was in the process of providing. Yes just like any dictator. Augustus ended up learning from Caesars mistakes and at the built much more stable foundations than Caesar ever could. Caesar was just a second Sulla. Obviously he was much less bloodthirsty and cruel from the perspective of his fellow Romans (Gauls and Germans are subhumans so who cares about them). However he suffered from the same savior/messiah complex that Sulla did, believing he alone could reform and save the republic. Well he didn’t and he couldn’t anyway..
- recuter 4y ago
  > 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.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    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.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  > 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 4y ago
    > 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.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
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.
- californiadreem 4y ago
  >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."
8note 4y ago
That popularity beyond being removed of course, came after most of the people who didn't support him were dead
- californiadreem 4y ago
  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?
calgarymicro 4y ago
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 4y ago
  [deleted]
- californiadreem 4y ago
  Name them and why they were removed according to the extant historians.
  - calgarymicro 4y ago
    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.

roundandround 4y ago

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.

californiadreem 4y ago
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 4y ago
  > Cassius, Brutus, et. al sacrificed nothing Bedsides their standing, wealth and lives?
- shjake 4y ago
  Ceasar was a glory seeking political opportunist and a war criminal. You’re right the second part probably does not apply to Trump… > hard-fought stability and foundational reform that Caesar was in the process of providing. Yes just like any dictator. Augustus ended up learning from Caesars mistakes and at the built much more stable foundations than Caesar ever could. Caesar was just a second Sulla. Obviously he was much less bloodthirsty and cruel from the perspective of his fellow Romans (Gauls and Germans are subhumans so who cares about them). However he suffered from the same savior/messiah complex that Sulla did, believing he alone could reform and save the republic. Well he didn’t and he couldn’t anyway..
recuter 4y ago
> 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.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  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.

Turing_Machine 4y ago

> 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 4y ago
> 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 4y ago
  > 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.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

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.

californiadreem 4y ago
>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."

8note 4y ago

That popularity beyond being removed of course, came after most of the people who didn't support him were dead

californiadreem 4y ago
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?

calgarymicro 4y ago

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 4y ago
[deleted]
californiadreem 4y ago
Name them and why they were removed according to the extant historians.
- calgarymicro 4y ago
  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.