The Moral of Caesar [The Republic Was Dead Already]

The New Criterion ^ | May 2015 | Roger Kimball

[Avoiding_Sulla]

I found this account well worth the read.

It left me wondering if the review was written by a moderate resigned to the fate he sees coming but dares not predict. If so, perhaps he's laying out the fate of moderates in the hopes that the extremists will have mercy on him because he helped becalm their adversaries, whichever side lost.

[dp0622]

“No country was ever saved by good men,” Horace Walpole once observed, “because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.”///

No fears. I’m not a good man and I’m on your side :)

[9thLife]

gawd I just read your profile. Pretty prescient.

[sauropod]

read

[central_va]

The Roman Republic had to change if it was going to endure. That insight escaped the wit of the conspirators and their allies. A look at the world today suggests that this is a paradox we neglect at our peril.

The writer is a fascist.

[Billthedrill]

The assassination was, in perspective, also the last act in the Marius vs Sulla war, a war that saw the aristocracy decimated (in the precise sense of the word) and as such highly sensitive to the rise of new autocrats no matter how articulate - he was a superb orator, even by the standards of the time - and militarily brilliant. There was a great deal of backstabbing prior to his return from the Gallic Wars, and had he not brought an army with him he might simply have been killed out of hand. Political wonks like to boast that politics is a blood sport here in 21st-century America, but we’re pussycats compared to those guys.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Not a good thing. Having been prescient of what we are witnessing leaves the seer feeling like Cassandra. Having been able to see what’s coming, but having been proven powerless to avert it, is no blessing.

[Pollster1]

The parallels between the days in which Caesar was assassinated and our times worry me. I am doing what I can (very little) to protect our God-given rights that are supposed to be given legal protection as the "supreme law of the land", but I believe the Bill or Rights is already beyond saving. That makes me sad, but I don't see any other future for Obama's America.

When a decent person faces ten years in prison for possession of an antique pistol in New Jersey, the Second Amendment is dead.

When a wedding photographer, a wedding cake baker, and other individuals are compelled by government force to engage in expressive acts that violate both their religious beliefs and their freedom of speech, the First Amendment is dead.

When individuals are compelled to pay for abortion against their will and in violation of deeply-held religious beliefs or face excessive fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Eighth Amendment is dead.

When most of the Bill of Rights receives as little respect as the above amendments, and when promising to find ways around these fundamental protections automatically gathers nearly 50% of the vote, America is facing a clear and present danger. We can hope to delay the reckoning until decent Americans are ready, but I am not convinced that the trend is in our direction. In any case, that reckoning is inevitable. We can, perhaps, influence the timing; nothing more. I am not convinced that the America emerging on the other side of that transition will be better. I am, however, certain that it will be different in unpredictable ways.

No doubt, the transition will be far worse for America's domestic enemies than it is for patriots. That is no comfort to me. I don't wish them ill. I just wish they would develop a sense of morality and self-reliance.

[Sherman Logan]

Why?

The author’s conclusion is quite inarguable about the Roman Republic. You apparently think it isn’t true today.

Do you seriously think we can struggle on as we are today indefinitely?

[9thLife]

I get it.

Global communist state next.

[Jacquerie]

If you haven't read Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, I think you would enjoy it.

Dictators Necessary to Keep Free Republics

[Sherman Logan]

Like Marius and Sulla before him, Caesar was able to control Rome because he controlled the army. His legions were loyal first of all to him, not to Rome.

Quite true.

However, it is simply untrue that Caesar controlled "the army."

He controlled the legions he had led to victory in Gaul. They were superbly trained and intensely loyal to Caesar.

But there were lots and lots of other legions scattered around the empire. Haven't attempted to add them up, but it's probable legions loyal to others outnumbered Caesar's legions, at the start of the war, by 3 or 4 to 1, or more.

Caesar, being a truly great general, bashed around the empire for several years taking out these armies in detail, and adding their defeated soldiers to his own.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

” and adding their defeated soldiers to his own.”

You’re right. If you read the rest of the article, Kimball makes note of it.

He uses Brutus as an example. He had fought with Pompey, was pardoned by Caesar and joined his forces. But that was also one of the things that led to Caesar’s downfall — the resentment that came with the pardons.

Kimball goes on to note that subsequent to Caesar, later dictators were far more brutal with former adversaries.

[expat2]

However, the other legions were, as you say, dispersed widely throughout the empire while Caesar’s legions were right there in Rome, the center of the Empire. That is a huge difference in effectiveness.

[Sherman Logan]

I suspect the pardons inevitably carried an implication Caesar was the better man, which of course he was. He excelled far beyond any of his contemporaries at everything he did. He even contended head to head with Cicero in eloquence.

What the aristos who killed Caesar probably resented more than anything was that he truly was the superior man, which is what aristo means. They were jealous more than anything.

I’m reading a book about the various civil wars that followed his murder. Really, really bloody. Not a lot of clemency going on.

There’s an old saying that he who strikes the King had better kill him. Caesar learned that the King had better kill those who strike him, or they’ll take another try.

But the author is right that the Republic was dead. Killed by the very aristos who were supposedly trying to save it. The last 100 years of the Republic reads like nothing so much as an empire ruled by competing mafia dons.

[IronJack]

That moderates suffer under most revolutions is borne out by historical characters like the Girondins of France, Alexander Kerensky of Russia, and Shaipur Bakhtiar (and even Hashemi Rafsanjani) of Iran.

It is to our eternal credit that our own Revolution did NOT swing to the extremists, but settled on a manageable middle ground almost from the start.

It is only nowadays that the New Revolution must embrace the extremes, since moderation in the pursuit of liberty is no longer a virtue.

[Sherman Logan]

Went back and looked at the major battles of Caesar’s Civil War.

In almost every battle he fought, he was heavily outnumbered, often by 2:1 or more. Didn’t matter, he won every battle. No wonder his soldiers idolized him.

When Caesar wasn’t in personal command, his legates often got their butts kicked.

[expat2]

No question, he was a great gemeral.

[central_va]

Oh I get it. You hate the republic - long live the empire. Figured as a Lincoln Cultist you’d think like that.

[Sherman Logan]

Nothing against the Republic, as such, simply its degradation of the last century or so. Even in its heyday, it wasn’t really a republic in the sense we think of it. It installed Romans as the masters over the rest of the world, rather than aristos or kings as the masters over Rome. It was also intensely aristocratic at all times, with the proviso that over a generation or two New Men could become Romans and aristos.

But the Republic of the last century or so was a disaster. It was dead in any meaningful sense long before Caesar and Augustus put it out of its misery.

Here’s what that last century mostly consisted of: Roman political/military leaders used the legions of the Republic to invade neighbors, conquer and loot them, then use the money and power thus generated to fight each other over who would control the corpse of the Republic. Those with slightly lesser ambitions used their governorships (after being praetor or consul) to loot their provinces, using the most appalling methods (torture, death by starvation, selling entire populations into slavery, etc.). They had to, since they’d financed their political careers by borrowing, and their governorships were their only opportunity to pay back their debts and build a nest egg to support them the rest of their lives.

Was a (generally) benign Empire preferable? You betcha, for 99% of the populace. Most of the crimes of the “bad” emperors affected almost entirely the Roman aristos, leaving the vast majority of the people mostly alone, with the empire’s governors much less oppressive, on the whole, than those of the later republic.

Roman history is fascinating. It’s like a fun-house image of our own society. Largely because we’re descended from a hybrid of Rome and Christianity. Roman society is what we’d be without the ideals of Christianity.