r/AskHistorians • u/NeilWiltshire • Apr 13 '16
Why was Julius Caesar considered a Tyrant, and how exactly did he bring down the Republic?
I asked this question a month ago but didn't get a response so thought I'd try again!
For more context, I've just finished reading Tom Holland's Rubicon which is the first and only thing I've ever read on Ancient Rome.
I feel that he spent a huge amount of time giving a general narrative of the history of the Republic, focussing a lot on the generation preceding Caesar and then Pompey & Caesar.
I feel I have a pretty decent grasp of events and some of the indirect causes of the fall, e.g. the precedents set by Sulla and his civil wars vs Marius etc etc.
I also understand the narrative around Caesar's rise to prominence, his early political wins, his proconsulship and general amazing winning of glory in Gaul.
But I felt like he (Holland) really raced through the next phase and even though I've literally just read it, I don't really have an appreciation for why Caesar felt he had to march into Rome to defend himself, or why Pompey was opposed to him at this time (although I get that much of the Gallic wars were illegal - is that all it is?).
I also don't have an appreciation for the narrative after Caesar defeated Pompey - how /why did he end up dictator for life and what was the impact of this? Holland mentions this only as an after thought and all of a sudden Caesar has all of Rome in his palm and he's a living God, er what? Did normal Roman's generally think this good or bad? Why was he considered a tyrant?
I know I'm asking a lot here but if someone could help slot these things into place that would be great. I did do a search on here but the topics relating to Caesar are so many and so spurious its easier to ask a new question. That said I'm happy to be pointed to some other thread if someone knows about one.
Many thanks.
6
u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Apr 13 '16
Frankly, besides what /u/LegalAction says, I think you'd be best served just reading a better book. Rubicon really isn't very good, and Holland simply doesn't understand the way that politics within the city worked, which leads to serious issues when he tries to suggest causality and stuff like that. I'd recommend Meier's book, which /u/LegalAction already mentioned (although for some reason Meier doesn't include any references, which I still don't understand) or Gelzer's, but both of those are probably going to be way to hard to understand if Rubicon was the only thing you've ever read on Roman history. Goldsworthy's book on Caesar is an okay place to start, much better than Holland at least, although Goldsworthy also doesn't really understand Roman politics as well as he makes out. But reading a better book would definitely help in the understanding of the period, you've asked so many questions that I don't think it's even possible to provide you with an answer that will satisfy you on here, and a lot of your questions would be answered perfectly well by simply reading something better
2
u/letram13 Apr 14 '16
I love Life of a Colossus, but I love genuine history of ancient rome more. What would you recommend? (I can go pretty deep on the dense historical stuff, my major was Classical Civilizations). You say Goldsworthy doesn't understand Roman Politics as well as he makes out. How so? Genuinely curious, just looking to learn.
2
u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Apr 14 '16
Goldsworthy's really a military historian, he cares more about the minutiae of military campaigns than the constant shifting of political ties. His book is excellent and includes the best descriptions of Caesar's campaigns, but there are better works to understand Caesar's actual political career. Personally I like Gelzer's biography for various reasons, others might recommend Meier. Both are good, and both have different views of Caesar's political career.
1
u/LegalAction Apr 14 '16
Just in the interest fairness, Badian wrote a 20 page review of Meier. E. Badian Review of Meier 1982 in Gnomon 62 (1990) 22-39. I have yet to work up the guts to read it, but I imagine it's scathing.
1
u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Apr 14 '16
I can't imagine that it's real favorable, my dad says that Badian gave him a very stern talk about that book once. Badian reviews are so entertaining to read, though, I should get around to reading it one day
1
u/letram13 Apr 14 '16
Sweet. Thanks. Any other random history books you recommend? Any topic just something you may like.
1
u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Apr 14 '16
Oh I dunno. I've been doing a lot of work on collegia recently for my thesis, so Tatum's book on Publius Clodius has been on my mind a lot these days. There's so much out there it's not really easy to just pull out recommendations!
1
u/letram13 Apr 14 '16
Cool thanks. I always have that problem to when asking for recommendations because my interest is so broad too. I'm always just looking for something to read related to history. To bad Latin and Greek were to hard to learn lol
2
u/NeilWiltshire Apr 14 '16
Fair enough, that makes sense, thanks for contributing. Has anyone read the new book from Mary Beard; SPQR? Was browsing in the bookshop recently and it seemed like it could be a good place to (re)start for a general history.
3
u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Apr 14 '16
I haven't read it yet, although I've heard very good things about it. Mary Beard has written a lot of popular history works but she really is a real classicist, which is always good. Most of the reviews of it are pretty silly, they talk about Beard as "revising" and "rewriting" Roman history--she's not doing anything of the kind, it's just that pop history books rarely use material more recent than about 1960 or so. A lot of what she's saying is uncontested, it's just that no pop history has said it before because of the way pop Roman history works (I'm thinking in particular of her description of Actium as an unexciting shitshow, which literally comes out of Syme, from 1939. There's nothing at all controversial or revisionist about what she says there, it's just that no pop history so far has even seemed to be aware of Syme's monumental work). My adviser has read most of it, he was quite impressed by it
10
u/LegalAction Apr 13 '16 edited May 30 '18
I'm just going to get this out of the way. Burn that book! Burn it with fire!
That's all the emotion I can muster on the topic anymore. Holland has a crowd of critics around here (I'm one!) that go after him for anything from political soap boxing to lack of detail to being flat out wrong on things we know. You can run a search and get plenty of criticism.
There are also some people around here who think for all his faults he's a good introductory text.
I'm not going to go through that argument again; you should be able to find it easily with a search. I think it came up in a thread last week, for instance.
Ok, on to the real question. Why was Caesar a tyrant, and how did he end the republic?
Second one first. The assumption here is that Caesar ended the republic. I don't think that's clear. There are several points at which people might argue the Republic fell. Here's Tacitus' sketch of Roman history from the beginning of his Annals:
The point, it seems to me, is that the introduction of the title Princeps is the point that Tacitus takes as a strong break with Roman tradition (Augustus didn't really introduce the title, but whatevs, Tacitus). Later on he mentions Brutus and Cassius as having the last army of the republic, after Actium the old morality died, Augustus revolutionized the state, things went from bad to worse. Woe is Tacitus!
But that's just one perspective. Velleius Paterculus knew Tiberius and served under Tiberius, and he thought he lived in a republic. He is often accused of being a shill for Tiberius, and certainly he understands a res publica to be something different that Cicero would have thought it was, but I am nervous about dismissing him as a propagandist or a political newb - I would rather take him at his word and as a representative of the senatorial class of the first century AD.
On the other hand, Cicero as early as 55 seems to think the republic is on its deathbed if not already buried. this is from a letter he wrote to Lentulus Spinther:
Modern scholars have a whole list of potential dates for the end of the Republic. I would suggest the republic ended with the passage of the lex de imperio Vespasiani in 70 AD, that assigned powers and titles to Vespasian in a legal context which had been informal or held piecemeal by the Julio-Claudians, but I'm a bit out in left field with that opinion. Others say crossing the Rubicon in 49 BC, the assassination in 44, Actium, 31, or 29, or 27.
So we have a number of possible dates for the ending of the republic, only a few of which involve Caesar.
Why was he a tyrant? It's pretty clear to me it was his treatment of the senate. When the senate wouldn't work with him he turned to the assemblies to get his legislation passed, he was monopolizing offices - he was consul a shocking number of times, extraordinary dictatorships, so on and so forth. He didn't stand up once to greet senators in the forum. He added more magistrates, so those honors were not as exclusive as they once had been. Not to say that the senate had always dominated political life in Rome, but Caesar did a lot to make the senate accessible to a wider group of people and would find ways around them if he had to.
You must remember though that Caesar had his own senatorial friends; he wasn't operating alone against the entire Roman political system.
Meier thought the only way the republic could be saved from the administrative mess it had become after Sulla was for Caesar to do his thing and retire - Cassius and Brutus, in this view, put the nail in the republic's coffin when they stabbed Caesar.I think Meier's phrase was something like "the assassination of Caesar wasn't just a sin, it was a mistake." Anyway, whether you think Caesar deserves the title "tyrant" I think will depend on your own politics more than the historical facts.EDIT two years later: I misremembered Meier's position: he rejects the position that the Republic could be saved if Caesar managed to retire. He just gave that position such a nice turn of phrase that's what stuck in my mind.