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PugJesus piefed.social PugJesus@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-03-24
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PugJesus Moderator PugJesus@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-03-24
#2 · Quote Reply

Explanation: The importance of Julius Caesar's actions in the fall of the Roman Republic remain hotly debated, including his intentions, the political context which triggered his actions, and the value of the increasingly aristocratic and plutocratic Republic itself.

Intense partisanship can rear its head even amongst academics over whether Caesar was a tyrant or a reformer at heart.

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Lvxferre [he/him] mander.xyz lvxferre@mander.xyz
Joined: 2024-01-12
#3 · Quote Reply

[deleted]
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PugJesus Moderator PugJesus@piefed.social
Joined: 2025-03-24
#4 · (edited) Quote Reply

[deleted]

I would argue that Caesar's actions being seen as a positive has more to do with why Tiberius going for a second tribunate was seen as a positive - not because norms had been eroded (though certainly norms were eroded by Caesar's time) but because it had become apparent that the disconnect between the reality of the Republic after the Second Punic War, and the norms that served the government before it, were crushing the great mass of ordinary Romans in a way that they did not in the mid-Republic.

When the system appears designed to fuck you over, you become less attached to the norms of the system. The equilibrium that was maintained by the ~3rd century BCE Republic was obliterated by the growth of the city of Rome - both in population and wealth - and the inability and unwillingness of the aristocracy to make new accommodations without being forced.

When people are desperate, they turn to dangerous men, like Caesar. Sometimes it works out for them. More often, it doesn't. Which outcome Caesar counts as... depends on one's reading. :p

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