LogFAQs > #962144152

Kimbos_Egg posted...

Seriously. Although this is the beginning of the roman empire, i'm convinced that almost all of its problems stem from this stupid bullshit. So many reigns ended by assassinations by dumbass military commanders with dreams of grandure.

That shit started before literally anyone involved in Caesar's assassination was ever born, though.

A more realistic argument is that the republic was already dead and had been for decades, and the people opposed to Caesar were trying to save something that had already been corrupted and lost 80 years before. The moment Tiberius Gracchus was clubbed to death the republic was utterly doomed, because it was the moment that murdering your political rivals gained acceptability (and with each repetition, it became more acceptable and more ruthless, and the idea of "tradition" and "mores" eroded more and more). It opened the door to a succession of strongmen who seized autocratic power and ruled through violence (and the threat of violence). Caesar was just following in their footsteps, and wound up ultimately hoist by his own petard.

Look into the history of Marius, Sulla, and the Gracchi. They basically started the slide that Caesar's death and Augustus' ascension merely completed.