Current Events > Julius Caesar was a legitimately fascinating leader

(+) Yeah! (+)

Dude was simultaneously a clear and obvious dictator/autocrat (and super corrupt) and a surprisingly compassionate and clever leader. Normally it's just one or the other.

His death was kinda interesting too. A bunch of politicians stabbed him. Cant imagine that happening in any other Democracy ever again. Where a group of politicians kill the President.

Side note: was Nero actually bad or was he made out to be by the wealthy and ruling class

The fact that plenty of contemporary and relatively recent figures have looked up to him has always confused me.

He waged a brutal and unprovoked war of aggression that killed an estimated million Gauls just for personal glory and enrichment. He took advantage of every legal loophole to swindle the state to the detriment of its stability and defense. He flagrantly abused his authority and bent the republic's institutions to their absolute breaking points. And then he waged a personal civil war to entrench power around himself to become a dictator for life and then some.

The assassins had it right when they got him, they just didn't go far enough as Mark Antony and eventually Octavian were both worse.

An effective politician and general for sure, and a great historian/propagandist as well. But not someone any supporter of democratic values and republican institutions should idolize.

His commentary is one of the most fascinating reads, since it is literally the inside of the mind of a man who lived over 2000 years ago in a world thats not entirely unrecognizable from our own. Like its just one of those things that really hammers it home that he and we have pretty much the same brain.

BlueTigerLion posted...

His death was kinda interesting too. A bunch of politicians stabbed him. Cant imagine that happening in any other Democracy ever again. Where a group of politicians kill the President.

Politicians that he literally pardoned previously

DespondentDeity posted...

His commentary is one of the most fascinating reads, since it is literally the inside of the mind of a man who lived over 2000 years ago in a world thats not entirely unrecognizable from our own. Like its just one of those things that really hammers it home that he and we have pretty much the same brain.

Marcus Aurelius by comparison seems postmodern

Watch the final season of Spartacus, the villains are Caesar and Crassus and it has interesting depictions of both.

Liu_Kano posted...

Watch the final season of Spartacus, the villains are Caesar and Crassus and it has interesting depictions of both.

Poor Crassus. He just couldn't get a head.

MaxEffingBemis posted...

Side note: was Nero actually bad or was he made out to be by the wealthy and ruling class

Red Saber is nice

I probably absorbed this through osmosis somewhere but I might have just thought of a very fitting idiom for anxiety.

I feel like Caesar at the forum

Veni vidi vici