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Was the assasination of Caesar justified?
#19
Quote:By that logic, Augustus could never have existed, nor any of his successors - yet the ages changed and the principate was born. How was this seen and judged at the time, which was still a 180-degree swing from the murder of Caesar?

Octavian-Augustus was politically smarter - and more ruthless - than Caesar. Like Nathan mentioned, many of the old aristocracy had been killed off in the civil wars, and the proscriptions, or had retired (from fear or frustration). The old aristocracy was replaced by upstarts from the Italy beyond Rome, like Agrippa, Maecenas, Sejanus, and others, who held no love for the Republic, and who had risen to power because of Augustus. Syme's Roman Revolution is the classic source on this, even though his work has to be read in the context of the increasing totalitarian governments of the 1930s.

Octavian did manage to pull off a huge, and largely unprecedented publicity and propaganda (cf. Zanker, Augustus und die Macht der Bilder), and not least "restored the Republic" in 28 B.C. It was rather a transparent façade, but like Ghadaffi, who, when asked to step down, replied that he did not hold a position he could step down from, Augustus did not have any official power and went out of his way to underline this. Propaganda was a hugely important tool in the arsenal of Caesar Divi Filius!

Furthermore, Octavian did not only have the Caesaricides to fight, but also Sextus Pompeius, who was far more dangerous to him, and far less of a thuggish pirate, as later writings make us believe: it was not simply a matter of winning Philippi and having the Republic buried.

So, in essence, people were either dead, tired of the wars (hence the charade of offering him the Civic Crown), or owed everything to Augustus. Those who continued to disagree were done away with. In Tacitus' words: "there was peace, but a bloody one".

Emperors who refused to respect this "settlement" were still eliminated, their memories besmirched: Nero and Domitian were popular with the people and army, but hated by the Senate. Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian and Titus were largely polite with the Senate, an. Adherence to the Republican ideas are still very much alive in Tacitus, even though he is realistic enough to accept that there was no way back. You might as well ask whether it was right for Vindex and Galba to rise up against Nero (the people of Rome, the Rhine legions, the Treveri and Lingones, the Greeks, and the supporters of the fake Neros who appeared afterwards did not think so!) or to kill Domitian (the people of Rome were apparently rather lukewarm about the murder, the armies actively threatened mutiny and wanted the culprits dead).

An excellent way to see how people felt about it is to read the extracts from Tacitus' Annals where Tiberius tries to get the Senate to show a bit more of a responsibility. Now, Tacitus presents Tiberius as false, but it is possible to see him as genuinely trying to get something like the Republic started, before realising that returning any part of the power would essentially be suicide; it would also explain why he retired to Capri and gave up on a Senate which had become unused to real power and did not trust either itself or the emperor (and failing that, the emperor's lackeys).

Naturally, one needs to be careful to believe everything the highly trained lawyer and orator Tacitus tries to make us believe. But as said, he himself is rather much of a Republican who accepts, however badly, the political need for a principate while attacking the vice of monarchy and pining for the good old days (he never actually experienced).
M. Caecilius M.f. Maxentius - Max C.

Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493

Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
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Re: Was the assasination of Caesar justified? - by M. Caecilius - 04-16-2012, 10:32 PM

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