Julius Caesar began his career as an adherent of Marius's popular party. However, Caesar allied with Pompey and Crassus in the First Triumvirate (60). This enabled him to win command in Gaul. "Cisalpine" Gaul, in northern Italy, was already Roman. "Transalpine" Gaul, beyond the Alps, he conquered from 58 to 51. This gave him a large and loyal army, with which he invaded Italy in 49, when he crossed the Rubicon River, the boundary of his command.

By 44 BC, he had defeated Pompey (at Pharsalus, 48), dallied with Cleopatra, married her as a second wife (rather shocking to the Romans), and consolidated his position as de facto monarch. This was the Roman Empire in most essentials, though disposing of final opposition and the definitive forms of Imperial power had to be engineered by Augustus, who also had to defeat Caesar's own friend and adherent, M. Antonius M.f. -- Marc Anthony, who famously succeeded Caesar in the arms of Cleopatra.

The cause of the Republican assassins of Caesar ended at the battle of Philippi in 42. Most notable among the assassins was Brutus, Marcus Iunius Brutus, "the noblest Roman of them all." Although Brutus's name meant "heavy" or "immovable," and was used to mean dull or stupid, and is now used to mean brutal ("You brute!" -- indeed, "brutal" is just the adj. brutalis from brutus), it was a cognômen of the gens Iunius and recalls the name of the first Consul of the Republic, L. Iunius M.f. Brutus.

Brutus was widely respected for his conscientiousness, integrity, and patriotism -- though Cicero thought him guilty of extortion. He joined Pompey but was pardoned by Caesar after Pharsalus. His adherence to the plot against Caesar gave it most of its moral weight. When Caesar saw that Brutus was among his attackers on the Ides of March, he reportedly lost heart. Suetonius, C. Suetonius Tranquillus ["The Deified Julius," Lives of the Caesars], reports that Caesar said nothing during the attack, "though some have written" that he said to Brutus, ; kaì sù téknon? "And you, child?" in Greek [Loeb Classical Library, Suetonius, Volume I, Harvard, 1913, 1998, p.140-141 -- Shakespeare puts it, loosely, in Latin, Et tu, Brute?].

This phrase, among other things, continues to fuel speculation that Brutus was actually Caesar's own natural son, a twist that puts the whole business in an even more tragic light than it already has. Although driven out of Rome by riots, in 43 the Senate itself rewarded Brutus with a proconsular command in the Balkans. Nevertheless, the matter would be settled by force, and after the defeat by Anthony and Octavian at Philippi, Brutus committed suicide. The Roman Republic thus may be said to have ended with a Iunius Brutus the way it had begun with a Iunius Brutus.

So, we must ask, what went wrong with the Roman Republic? From Polybius to Machiavelli and beyond, it was admired as a system of government, and it did have a good run, but in the end it unquestionably failed. What happened?

Machiavelli, in a tradition from the Greeks to the present, thought that that the Roman Republic worked because of a mixture of institutions, designed to correct each other and limit the abuses that various pure forms of government would have. Thus, he believed that Monarchy alone led to Tyranny, Aristocracy alone let to Oligarchy, and Democracy alone led to Anarchy. The Republic included a (limited) Monarchical power in the Consuls, Aristocratic power in the Senate, and Democratic power in the Tribunes and other institutions of the Plebs. We have other features, such as the custom for most of the Republic that one Consul would be from the Patrician/Senatorial class, while the other would be a Pleb.

Since, for at least the last century, most trendy political opinion has despised the principles of limited government and naively imagined that the more democracy the better, most recent judgment about the Roman Republic would be that it was insufficiently democratic. Indeed, a great deal of the political conflict through the whole history of the Republic was in the direction of greater democracy, of greater power for the Plebs; and for the last century, from Marius to Caesar, there was a virtual, and sometimes very real, civil war between Senatorial and Popular factions.

That was perhaps initiated by the two Gracchi brothers, Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (Tribune 133) and C. Sempronius Gracchus (Tribune 123 & 122). A land reform bill, trying to redistribute agricultural holdings to small farmers, instead of their being worked by slaves for landlords, got Tiberius lynched by Senatorial opponents. Gaius continued with other democratizing proposals but also provoked, for the time being, successful opposition. Their cause, however, continued and would be championed, not always consistently, by Marius and Caesar.

The trouble with viewing this history as a simple Aristocracy vs. Democracy morality play is that in winning, the leader of the Popular faction, Julius Caesar, did not usher in utopian Democracy but simply dictatorship and then a very durable Monarchy. Disturbingly, this is no less than what Plato would have predicted for the outcome of democratization.

The key to all this is the prinicple of rent-seeking, the desire to live off one's capital, off the labor of others, or off pseudo-property created by political fiat (e.g. monopolies, unnecessary offices, etc.). With the cynicism of politicians, this is obvious. Even uncynical politicians, who may be above mere power seeking, inevitably pass from the scene and are rapidly replaced by more mercenary and venal successors.

Roman politicians are rarely either purely idealistic or completely cynical. Whether someone like Caesar thought he was doing good or was simply out for himself is a good question. They were rarely unwilling to employ the support of the opposition if circumstances warranted or allowed it.

None of this is suprising. More importantly, however, is the fact that democracy can also easily become a form of rent-seeking, with politicians promising benefits in general. The triumph of Caesar and the Empire depended, in a sense, on the essential tendency of democracy, even if the forms and functions of democracy were overriden and gradually eliminated. The means of this triumph can be summed up in a familiar phrase: Panem et Circenses, "Bread and Circuses." Free food and free entertainment.

The population of Rome, and later of Constantinople, was favored with a free ration -- one reason why Augustus kept Egypt, with its agricultural productivity, as his personal possession. This meant that large parts of the populations of the metropolitan cities of the Roman Empire didn't need to work much for a living and were provided with something else to do. The loss of productivity, creativity, and enterprise can hardly be imagined.

The migration of power and intiative out of Rome itself, however, does not surprise. The state was much better off once that happened, and the simple conclusion that Rome "fell" because of the corruption of "bread and circuses" is falsified by the actually survival, not the "fall," of the Empire -- something serious historians, and not just superficial writers, often forget. The subsequent loss of North Africa and then Egypt, the breadbaskets of the Empire, eventually ended the possibility of free rations -- though, at the same time, such reductions in territory greatly limited the resources available for recovery.

The institutions under which this all happened, however admired by Machiavelli or others, obviously allowed for their degeneration. The principles were not wrong, but their weaknesses can be identified. When military commands were political offices, the danger of a successful general, with loyal troops, using his army for his own political purposes became very great. Caesar could cross the Rubicon because his men were willing to obey illegal orders and because there was no army or commander his equal in his way.

In comparison to such a general, who might hold a command for years, the power of the legal Executives of the state, the Consuls, was paltry. With this in mind, one understands why the President of the United States, in office for a substantial four years, is Constitutionally the Commander-in-Chief over armed forces whose own tradition is apolitical. The political appointment of generals, especially in the Civil War, has existed in American history, but successful generals, from the Civil War on, have tended to be career military professionals. Generals dissatisfied with political decisions concerning them, like Robert E. Lee, Joseph Stillwell, or Douglas McArthur, might complain, but would end up doing nothing worse than resigning. Also, a modern army is so dependent on its logistical support, ultimately back to civilian sources, that no general really commands an independent force.

Thomas Jefferson said that when he was young, he and his friends used to say, "Where annual election ends, tyranny begins." He was unhappy with how long the term of the President was, was appalled at the term of a Senator (six years), but was terrified that the President could be elected over and over again. What frightened him so was the example of Poland, where the election of the Kings of Poland had come entirely under the control of foreign powers. As it happened, for more than the first century of American history, all the Presidents who might have successfully run for a third term -- Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Grant -- declined to do so. The precedent of Washington, who could easily have been President, or King, for Life, came to be viewed as morally binding.

Thus, the Julius Caesar of American history was no general but a President, the one who broke with Washington's precedent (literally becoming President for Life), and the one who turned government into a promise of ever increasing benefits, rations, and subsidies. This was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the damage done to American government is still evident, not just in the rent-seeking practices that now overwhelm political life, but in the respect paid to Roosevelt by both Democrats and Republicans. Neither Party intends to reverse the principle, ennunciated in their day by Hamilton and rejected by Jefferson and Madison, but embraced by Roosevelt, that the United States Government can tax and spend money for any purpose, as long as this can be construed as promoting the "general welfare." Free benefits for everyone would certainly produce a kind of "general welfare," except for the effects produced similar to the Panem et Circenses. Again the damage to productivity, creativity, and enterprise can only be vaguely estimated, though the decline in all of these in countries, like France, where taxation and welfare provisions are much greater than in the United States, is obvious to anyone who cares to look. While dictatorship is not an immediate threat, we already see one interesting effect, where aggitation for more democracy and honest elections has led to a law, passed by Congress, approved by the President, and allowed by the Supreme Court, that prohibits criticism of candidates for federal office in advertisements purchased by advocacy groups. This grotesquely abridges the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and is rather obviously motivated, like most campaign "reform" laws, by the desire to protect politicians from criticism. Avenues thus open to real tyranny and perhaps even to real Caesars, leaving us with no confidence that modern Democracies, or even the Great Republic itself, might not go the way of the Respublica Romana.

As Caesar was rising to power, one of his most vocal critics was Cato the Younger, M. Procius Cato. Cato originally opposed all the Triumvirs; but as hope for withstanding Caesar focused on Pompey, he threw his lot with that faction. Cato ended up holding Utica in North Africa (hence the informal agnômen "Uticensis") under Q. Caecilius Q.f. Metellus Pius Scipio (Consul with Pompey in 52), who fled there after Pharsalus. Caesar invaded North Africa in 46 and defeated the Pompeian forces at Thapsus. Metellus and Cato both committed suicide. Cato's defense of the Republic was remembered in the British Whig politics of the 18th century. Joseph Addison (1672-1719, admired more than Locke by Hume) wrote a play, Cato: A Tragedy, in 1713:

While Cato lives, Caesar will blush to see

Mankind enslaved, and be ashamed of empire.

[Act IV, scene iv]

This was followed by a series of 138 letters under the pseudonym "Cato," published by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, between 1720 and 1723. These Cato's Letter were reprinted many times, in Britain and in America, and played a large part, after the pattern of John Locke's natural law and natural rights justification of the Glorious Revolution (1688), in the formulation of the ideology of the American Revolution. Trenchard died in 1723; and Gordon, who did not die until 1750, threw his lot, a bit like Cato himself, with a particular political faction. The Whig Party of Sir Robert Walpole (considered the first Prime Minister of England), however, was rather more suitable than the faction of Pompey the Great. Today, both Cato himself and the Cato's Letters are remembered in the work of the Cato Institute, whose efforts on behalf of limited, Jeffersonian, and Constitutional government are occasionally even noticed in Washington.



Consuls of the Roman Empire

Decadence, Rome and Romania, the Emperors Who Weren't, and Other Reflections on Roman History

The Vlach Connection and Further Reflections on Roman History

Rome and Romania

The Byzantine Republic, by Anthony Kaldellis

Philosophy of History

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