Ancient and ArchaeologyΜύ permalink
Ceasar? Whats going on in his head?
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Message 1.Μύ
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Tuesday, 10th July 2007
Of late I've been inflicting the end of the republic on myself.
I am stalling a bit at the moment trying to figure out what Ceasar is up to. What was motivating him.
Is he trying to set himself up as a king?
Is he trying to set a standard so high that like Alexander anyone who follows him is going to have to measure himself against him?
Why at the end does he dismiss his bodyguards and stick with just his lictors? Overconfidence? A deathwish?
What is there in the original source material that could throw some light on what he was upto?
Whats everyone elses idea on this? -
Message 2
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 10th July 2007
The 'king' thing is a possibility, but I reckon it was a notion fuelled as much by his opposition's strong suspicions in that regard as by any long held plan of his own. I reckon in other words the more he was accused of it the more the idea grew on him - though tellingly he stopped short of a declaration to that end (in fact he rather publicly showed his refusal with Anthony's help). Ultimately the guy never lost faith in populism, and if the popular view was that kingship was a no-no Caesar was all too happy to bend to it.
The Alexandrian comparison fits with the idea we have of his ego, but I doubt even Caesar set more store on posterity and how he would be viewed by it as any of his peers (or at least would have accepted such a comparison as a bonus). As a populist and a politician first and foremost his ambitions never strayed far from the immediate future and he was the first to admit himself that he owed success as much to luck as to design.
The trusting in luck thing seems to have become a bit of a trademark with him, though I doubt that he seriously expected to be assassinated in the manner that he was by the people who did it. Maybe he thought that the forthcoming eastern expedition that he was about to embark on would buy him a little more time before he needed to face such prospects. It wasn't the first time he had miscalculated other people's intentions however - just a rather unfortunate time to get it so wrong. -
Message 3
Posted by priscilla (U1793779) on Tuesday, 10th July 2007
A vey, very interesting man, Caesar. Possibly he felt his friends had the same dedicated blind loyalty of the 10th and that he was inviolate.
Then there is this ancestry matter of being decended from the gods - concocted though it was, did he believe it?
Ever the opportunist who could think on his feet, I wonder if he ever had a long term plan.
Being carried along by the main current of popular appeal (which he had long nurtured)he seemed to bask in glory. Taking Gaul, after all, was the only way he could get that coverted triumph; Pompey had already enjoyed 6 of those.
P. -
Message 4
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
Hi Nordmann.
With the very public declining of the crown.
One of the books "Rubicon" seems to caste this as a bit of a toe dipping exercise. if the crowd had screamed for him to accept then he would have had a new hat to go with the boots, so to speak. The crowd didnt, so he declines it.
Too an extent i'm struggling because I cant get my head round the social structures not so much the classes but things like in sparing his enemies in a way he was almost insulting them? certainly compromising their social positions in reducing them to accepting his mercy? Trusting to luck? yes I can see that but this wasnt a man that got by purely on his luck there was a considerable amount of intelligence and cunning at work as well. It seems odd that he decided to cock it up at that stage? Unless he really thought that he had intimidated the Senate to the extent that he could get away with what he wanted and no one would make a move against him.
Maybe he was relying on the ghost of Sulla to do the intimidation for him? Something along the lines of I might be a barsteward but I'm not that big a barstweard. but I could be if I wanted. Memories of Sulla's Proscriptions are pretty fresh. may be he's banking on people accepting him simply because he's not that bad compared to what had gone before?
He's going up in my estimation the more I read about him. -
Message 5
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
IMO he wasn't that bad an option compared to his opposition - a senatorial clique fronted by Pompey which was hell bent on re-establishing all the rules favouring their preservation and their remove from plebian control (the big - and hypocritical - exception being Pompey's own troops and veterans who were promised much by way of Italian land grants that were not only unprecedented in their severity with regard to confiscation rights but illegal according to any and all republican laws). Caesar calculated that territorial expansionism would offset the huge cost in extending such offers to as great a slice of the population as possible, and this above all other things taxed his mind, I think, when he was assassinated. The eastern venture he planned would, he estimated, more than compensate for the grudges and hard feelings the civil war had engendered. I think Brutus & Co thought the same thing - hence the premature urgency of their actions (assassination with no real 'plan' how to deal with the political fallout).
Having said that though I doubt very much if Caesar himself had an escape clause in place either in his strategies. Success would have led to a system where dissemination of authority back down to and through the traditional ranks would have been harder and harder to guarantee should he opt to 'retire'. He was heading for the role of emperor and knew it as well as any of his opposition - I am just not sure that it was one that he really would have relished very much. -
Message 6
Posted by priscilla (U1793779) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
Had he not already acquired a golden chair - which dismayed the Senate? I've recently read this and am uncertain if that is a truth.
....he could not have retired... he did not like have any successors. Rather contemporary really, arriving on the crest of popular appeal with lots of ideas but no long term game plan.
Like BTTDP, I too have a grudging respect for several aspects of the man - but not his somewhat J. Archer-like audacity, perhaps. However, I intrude on an interesting dialogue - pleae continue it.
Regards to both,
P. -
Message 7
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
Hi, Priscilla.
Please feel free to chip in I'm on the early days of studying this so anything you can add would be apreciated.
I dont think that he planned on retiring just then. and am heavily split in my mind over king ships being a final aim. I do think that he wanted to stand head and shoulders above not just his contemparies but any likley successor as well. At that point then he might start looking arround for a succcessor. I tend to agree with what Nordmann said about King ship being the end result even if it wasnt the intended one. The more I read the more intresting he becomes. I wouldnt want to use him as a role model though and your comparisson with Tory boy is a fairly good one both chancers with a way with words.
Well got to get back to Rubicon. -
Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
Well actually I would draw a real distinction between king and emperor as I'm sure he did too (and they all did afterwards). The whole idea with 'emperor' was that the essential structure of the republic's administration could, at least superficially, remain the same. Even as late as Nero's time (and particularly in the early years of his reign) the senate and consuls were almost as powerful as, and regained much of the function of, their republican counterparts. Technically the emperor was not even as powerful as the 'dictator' had been under republican rule, and it was open abuse of the privileges of the office that created the notion of 'emperor' that we now ascribe as typical - and which indeed became a norm as time progressed. From demagogue to demi-god, you might say.
Caesar had no qualms about acquiring the role of dictator and using that power, but like Sulla, he also firmly believed that he was using it to re-establish the 'true' republican ideals, and if you give the man credit for astuteness and holding to his principles, then the assumption should be that Caesar would have tried to return the administration to something resembling traditional republican rule, even if it's contituents would be very much people and laws to his taste. His famous 'mercy towards enemies' was itself an extension of a very old republican tenet, that convicted felons of Roman citizenship should suffer no greater fate than a denial of access to the machinery of power. Caesar in fact acknowledged those who had opposed him 'in good faith' (just as the senate had often done in the past with convicted malcreants), and his clemency therefore was actually a public display of how his 'new republic' would welcome division as long at it was practised by people who had the republic's interests at heart.
To me therefore it was the ultimate irony that he was loathed for holding opposite ideals, and by people whose respect for the republic extended only to how far it could serve their ambitions. Of his assassins there was probably not one who would have been really missed had Caesar exacted a Sulla-like revenge on them after their capitulations in the Pompeian war. But Caesar had recognised their patrician stature, their potential to hold the fabric of the republic together should they be allowed to continue in public life, and their proof through their continued existence that his notions extended beyond mere personal aggrandisement.
As regards the Archer analogy - beyond ego it doesn't apply, I think. And when it comes to ego Caesar's was no bigger than many others at that level of Roman society. All of them had been educated to believe that they and their peers WERE the republic, and that therefore their personal ambitions were almost indistinguishable from those of the state itself. These were not public servants by any stretch of the imagination, and it was Caesar's dabbling in such Graccian notions that earned him the enmity, and his fate at the hands of, those like him whose egos outweighed in importance (at least to them) the general good of the state itself. They might not have understood themselves just what was dangerous about the man (the allegation that he was harming the republic was a little rich, and seen as such even then), but in killing Caesar I believe they extinguished one of Rome's rare opportunities to draw nearer to something akin to democracy. We'll never know how far he would have gone in that respect, but his enlargement of the senate, the praetorship, the aediles and the quaestorship, as well as his extension of citizenship to slaves, Spaniards, Gauls and others suggests he was committed to creating a meritocracy of sorts, and a strong electoral base upon which it could function. Hardly the acts of a wannabe emperor, I would say, let alone a would-be king. -
Message 9
Posted by priscilla (U1793779) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
Hi nordman,
Interesting judgment. Citizenship for slaves - taken during his campaigns in Iberia and Gaul, I assume, this is news to me. Did Rome have a 'metic' status? How was this policy revealed? My reference books are limited in this area.
I've long wondered if singular consulship was the opportunity he needed most - backed by popular strength along with high regard for the aristocratic establishment; we'll never know.
At my level of historical knowledge - he comes across as adept at 'thinking on his feet' - and ably so; ie highly intelligent - along with blind spots for those whom he really liked. I cannot see him becoming like Sulla.... on the other hand the manner with which he dealt with those pirates who held him hostage in his youth is telling.
The JA illusion was part jest.
Of all the interesting characters in history Caesar intrigues me the most. And like Dan, he becomes so the more I read.
Regards to both P. -
Message 10
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007
One of Caesar's last decrees was the enforced manumission of slaves employed on the vast estates in the Latinate territories surrounding Rome (the decree extended further but this was its principle objective). The effect was to turn them into wage earners - and the effect of this was to syphon off moneys hitherto being accrued by the estate owners and reinject it into the local economy. A form of tax on the rich rather than a humanitarian gesture.
But it was in keeping with his other social reforms regarding public subsidy. He slashed the dole of bread and wheat but made it eminently more possible to buy it, having introduced price controls and (through the manumission orders amongst other things) a sustainable market in which it could be sold. -
Message 11
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Friday, 13th July 2007
Hi Nordmann.
I will try to shake the image of Jeffery Archer running round Kings Cross station wrapped in a bed sheet while being pursued by a mob of M.P's armed with kebab knives out of my mind.
have you read the biograpy of Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy. I ask because it was the only one Smiths had and Ive dropped a tenner on it in paper back I'd like to think I havent completely wasted my money.
I can see a lot to admire in the republic. or at least I'm begining to see why DL is so enamoured with it. But I find it hard to imagine that the whole social structure at the high levels is so individually based. Personal success, really is almost everything to them. But at the same time too much success gets you killed. Its like watching a bucket of crabs. Alliances change and shift everyones jockying for position.
Going back to what you said about Caesar freeing the slaves around Rome. Wouldnt that have made the freed slaves his clients? It would have made for a massive power base surrounding the city? -
Message 12
Posted by priscilla (U1793779) on Friday, 13th July 2007
... if not a power base a pain iin it. Following manumission, recent memory of their homes many would haave hiked it back home I suspect. Not an easy bunch to deal with - hence Galatia. Even St Paul found them a trial there and sent a snotty letter.
Not quite in the white sheet vein this one but close by nordman's historical standards, I suppose.
Re books. I have a first edition John Buchan - I doubt they ran to a second. He should have stopped at the 40th step.
I still enjoy my Michael Grant books on Caesar... the cover of one has GJC with a sardonic smile, just like JA.
Can you, nordman, suggest better reads? Not if yu are still hanging about the bar trying to get a fiver loan - forget I asked.
Haven't stopped laughing about your thanking god that you are an atheist - on the other board.
Regards P. -
Message 13
Posted by Richie (U1238064) on Friday, 13th July 2007
Dan, I've just bought the Goldsworthy book as well so I'm hoping that its a good background text
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Message 14
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 13th July 2007
It's one of the better ones. If you'd never read about Caesar before I think it would be even better - AG places great store on emphasising that historical events did not take place with an inevitability that retrospect lends them. He gets that across very well in the book, which is just the right tone for dealing with a subject whose own obsessive belief in good fortune was one of his more charming (if ultimately fatally misplaced) qualities.
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Message 15
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 13th July 2007
Personal success, really is almost everything to them. But at the same time too much success gets you killed. Its like watching a bucket of crabs.
Μύ
The contract was simple - use the system by all means to generate 'autorictas' but get out before you think you're bigger than it. If circumstances allowed that you use it a little longer than normally allowed, then be sure to placate everyone with promises to get out of it as soon as possible.
The republic's machinery depended on a huge throughput of ambitious and eligible men in an administration that provided few opportunities by way of key appointments. As long as the annual nature of those key appointments was honoured there was just about enough available 'autorictas' to satisfy demand. The flow could be tampered with, but the senate and those who called themselves the "boni" saw themselves as staunch defenders of that supply. Their enmity was earned by anyone who got uppity, hence Marius' and Sulla's resorting to such extreme measures to allow the contract to be changed for their benefit. Likewise those who tried to shift electoral power into an area of the population over which senatorial authority held little sway would also get short shrift. Technically the senate was primarily an advisory body and was very nervous at having this deceit exposed through being ignored by a populist.
Caesar, towards the end of his life, had been judged to have offended on all these scores. What's worse, his ambivalence over his own stranglehold on appointments (not least his own) was simply too much for the old guard to bear. Mind you, he had actually done quite an impressive job in winning them around to at least accepting his perpetual consulship as a reality, and all without subjecting the uppermost social class to the reign of terror that they had had good grounds to fear during the civil war - in fact a 'reign of anticlimax' after all the horror predictions would be more apt a description of his extended consulship. But that was never going to be enough to assuage the 'boni' (their own nickname for themselves - I imagine most ordinary Romans knew them as the 'chinless wonderi') who stood to lose most through his reforms simply because they had been the ones to gain most for least effort before them.
The freeing of slaves was not in the spirit of Abe Lincoln, William Wilberforce et al - it was simply an enforced accounts adjustment in the bookkeeping of the big estates. The last thing Caesar needed was more clients - more money yes, and more control over revenue collection yes, but pauper clients? No thanks. He'd enough of them in his own family, he would have said!
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