Caesar and Rome: An Overview

Your Learning Goals Today (What I Want You to Remember from Today)

• How Ancient Rome has influenced our society today in terms of architecture, art, government, language, sports, etc.

• The structure of the Ancient Roman government and how it worked

• How and why Caesar rose to—and fell from—power in Ancient Rome

• What happened after Caesar’s assassination and why William Shakespeare felt it was important to write a historic play about these events

Roman Influences on Our Society• Our language, English, is primarily based on Latin, which

the Romans spoke (other Latin-based languages include Spanish, French, and Italian)

• Our sports such as boxing, wrestling, Mixed Martial Arts, fencing, even race-car-driving, can be traced back to Ancient Rome’s gladiatorial and chariot-racing spectacles … we even have “American Gladiators”

• A lot of our art can be traced back to the classical sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome, where the goal was to realistically portray idealized human forms; the Romans worshipped physical perfection, as do we

• Of course, arguably their most important influence has been on our form of government …

But First, ‘Verbal Irony’

• Raise your hand if you can tell us all the answer to this question: What’s the definition of verbal irony?

• Now that we’ve reviewed that, a bit about the Roman Senate …

The Roman Senate• The Ancient Romans had a Senate, and we have a

Senate in our government, too, but politics in Rome have nothing—I repeat, nothing—to do with our politics today

• The Roman Senate was entirely made up of wealthy people called patricians—not like our Senate today

• The Roman senators got into their positions of power through money or family connections or both, not like our senators

• The Roman lower classes (who were called plebeians) had almost no say in government, almost no political power at all, not like America today …

More on the Roman Senate

• Ancient Roman politicians often waged war and conquered foreign lands, bringing them under the control of their nation, just to enrich their nation and become popular … not like our modern-day politicians

• During a time of war, the Romans often elected a dictator and suspended democracy until the war was over … not like our modern-day government

The Roman Senate and Our Own Modern-Day Government—Seriously

• Money, power, corruption, family ‘dynasties’ of rulers, bribery, greed, bloodthirsty war-mongers and throwing out democracy when it was inconvenient … their government was EXACTLY like our own modern-day government in all those respects

• (I was using verbal irony before, something you will see frequently in the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar)

Patricians Then and Now

Crassus, the banker, and member of the First Triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey

Roman Influences on Our Nation• Government—again, our Republic (which means any

government where the people elect their leaders) was modeled after the Greco-Roman government, along with the Iroquois Confederacy (a large group made up of different Native tribes), both of which influenced our Founding Fathers as they formed our own government

• Our early government did not permit women or slaves to participate in democracy, just like in the Republic of Ancient Rome, where only free (and wealthy) men could have government positions … now we no longer have (legal) slavery, and women can participate in democracy, but the majority of our elected officials are still wealthy

Roman Influences on America, Contd.

• Raise your hand if you can describe for the class the architectural style of most government buildings in Washington, DC

Roman Columns and Friezes on the U.S. Supreme Court Building

An Actual Ancient Roman Building

The Roman-Architecture-Inspired U.S. Capitol Rotunda and Capitol Dome

A Drawing of a Real Ancient Roman Building as it Most Likely Looked

Our Nation’s Capitol’s Architecture Even Includes A Roman-Style Obelisk

Ancient Roman Obelisk in Saint Peter’s Square, in Vatican City, in Rome

Rome (and Greece) Provided Us With the Model for the Literal Architecture of Our Government’s Buildings and Its

Metaphorical Architecture for Our Governmental Structure

Roman Government, U.S. Government

• In Ancient Rome, for awhile, there was a triumvirate made up of three different rulers; the idea was that no one man would grow too powerful and abuse his power and make bad decisions that would be bad for Rome

• We have our own version of this … raise your hand if you can name the three different (and in theory, equal) branches into which our own government is divided so that no one branch has too much power, providing a system of ‘checks and balances’

The Roman Triumvirate Failed

• The first triumvirate, made up of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus (a wealthy banker), fell apart … Crassus died, leaving Pompey and Caesar, but Pompey was jealous of Caesar’s power and popularity, and when Caesar’s only legitimate, acknowledged child—his daughter Julia, who had been married off to Pompey (to solidify Caesar’s and Pompey’s alliance)—died in childbirth, this left Caesar no reason to try to get along with Pompey, so they went to war … and Caesar won

Caesar’s Victory Leads to Dictatorship

• Julius Caesar defeated his former ally Pompey, and also defeated Pompey’s sons (Pompey and one of his two sons were eventually killed by Caesar and/or Caesar’s forces), and established himself as dictator-for-life of Rome (in an interesting historical parallel, the U.S. defeated its former ally, the dictator Saddam Hussein, who—like Caesar—had images of himself all over his country, and the U.S. military also killed Hussein’s sons before establishing U.S. military rule in Iraq) … some people had a problem with Caesar becoming dictator-for-life of Rome, because the way it was supposed to work was this: during times of war, the Roman Senate (senators were democratically elected by the wealthy and free Roman males; slaves, the poor, and women didn’t get to vote, just like our earliest form of ‘democracy’) would elect a temporary dictator who was to rule absolutely (every order followed unquestioningly) ONLY for the duration of the war, not for the rest of his life …

Why Would They ELECT a DICTATOR?

• It seems odd to democratically vote a dictator into power, since a democracy means that many citizens get to have a say in their government, while a dictatorship means one individual (and that individual’s closest circle of trusted fellow rulers) get to tell everyone what to do and everyone has to do what they’re told, or ELSE … why would they think it was a good idea to elect a dictator during times of war (or national crisis), suspending democracy until the war or crisis ended? Raise your hands and I’ll call on some- one to share.

Advantages and Disadvantages of This Approach

• Dictators could get things done a lot more quickly than a democratic process could achieve; during war, when swift decisions could make the difference between victory and defeat, this made sense to the Romans

• Without the possibility of dissent, those who opposed or questioned the dictator could have their rights seriously violated … with democratic rights thrown out, people could be imprisoned, enslaved, tortured, or killed just for stating their beliefs (like that the dictator is making bad decisions, and/or they need to step down from power so that their nation can restore democracy)

• Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler were both initially elected by a democratic vote, after which they became dictators who did not allow anyone else to ever run against them

Our Own Version of This Model• During World War I, people who opposed America’s getting

involved were imprisoned for exercising their First Amendment right to say so … many remained in prison until well after the war was over

• During World War II, Americans of Japanese descent were put into internment camps without their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to due process (trial, etc.) simply because they were of Japanese descent and we were at war with Japan

• During the 1950s, Senator Joseph (Joe) McCarthy claimed that Communists had infiltrated our government, and proceeded to call forth suspected Communist Americans to have Congress question them on their loyalties, ruining the lives of all who were accused (those who were Communist and those who weren’t); many people were even imprisoned for refusing to cooperate with his witch-hunts for Communists, a violation of their Constitutional rights

Our Own Version of This Model, Contd.

• During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had all kinds of people who opposed that war put into prison for exercising their First Amendment rights by speaking out against it; anti-war pamphleteers had their printing presses smashed, etc. It didn’t matter if they were pro-Confederacy (for the South’s right to have slaves and secede from the country) or if they were just opposed to war on principle because they were pacifists (who believe in peace and always oppose war) … they were imprisoned. Lincoln used the very first-ever Executive Order to do this. Other Presidents have issued Executive Orders since …

Our Own Version of This Model, Contd.

• If you are so inclined, write down these numbered Executive Orders and look them up online:

• Executive Order 10995 • Executive Orders 10998-11005 • Executive Order 12919 • Here’s what these Executive Orders give our

government the power to do in times of crisis or national emergency (our government gets to decide what constitutes a national crisis) …

Executive Orders Similar to the Roman Model of Suspending Democracy in Times of

Crisis/Emergency/War• Those Executive Orders give our federal government the power to seize

control of all food and natural resources (including energy sources) as well as take over industries that are useful in producing weapons

• These Executive Orders can be activated by any president during a state of national emergency or war: there is no distinction between two. This can go on indefinitely; as long as our nation is at war, or in a state of emergency, these extreme measures that suspend the Constitution can continue

• “Operation Blackwoods” was a plan in which our military would fake a foreign-based attack on our nation as a justification for suspending the Constitution, giving the president King-like powers, and waging war … it was planned, but never done (it was rumored Kennedy came up with a plan of this type to justify invading Cuba, and Reagan planned to do the same to justify invading Nicaragua); the government agency responsible would have been FEMA … this is exactly the type of thing that (unfortunately) lends credibility to the crackpots who believe our own federal government actively engineered 9-11, though this is not the case

Julius Caesar: Ruthless, Brilliant, Bloodthirsty

• Like FDR, JFK, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Fidel Castro, Julius Caesar was quite intelligent and went after power with single-minded purpose, aided by his intellect and ability to write and speak well

• Caesar crucified his enemies (literally) • Caesar didn’t invent gladiatorial combat, but he elevated it

to the sports-entertainment that it later became in Rome … chariot races were primarily watched for their spectacular and deadly accidents (rather like NASCAR today) and the gladiatorial fights (to the death) are reflected in our own sports of wrestling, boxing, fencing, MMA … the Ancient Romans were a bloodthirsty bunch, and Caesar gave them what they wanted

Gladiators Then and Now

Spectacular Crashes Then and Now

Caesar’s Rise

• After conquering Pompey and his sons, Caesar was declared dictator-for-life of Rome (not just until Rome was no longer at war or in crisis), and also statues and temples honoring him were springing up all over Rome, and his image put on Roman currency (we have put our past political leaders on our money, too); according to the Roman Cicero, the people honored Caesar as if he had become a god, and Caesar very much embraced that

Caesar’s Popularity

• Caesar was popular because he gave land to the poor, benefits to war veterans, tax breaks to the wealthy, and he won lots of wars and conquered lots of land which Rome then got to rule and exploit (the natural resources and the labor of the people of those lands, etc.)

Caesar’s Unpopularity• Caesar angered some members of the Roman Senate when at a

public meeting he did not (as was customary) rise to greet them, but instead remained seated on his throne, a gesture of disrespect

• Caesar’s status as a ‘god’ angered many Romans who believed in the traditional Roman pantheon of gods; it was blasphemous

• Caesar violated the basic rights of many Roman citizens (freedom of speech, etc.); for example, when tribunes removed laurel wreath coronets (crowns) from his statue because that honor was reserved for royalty and/or the gods, Caesar ordered them to be either fired or executed (depending on which historic source you believe)

• Many Romans believed that while temporary suspension of democracy in times of crisis was acceptable, a total loss of democracy and a permanent dictatorship were unacceptable, and brought to mind their ancient kings whom the Romans had overthrown to install a democracy in the first place

More Reasons Caesar Was Scandalous

• Caesar also blatantly carried on an affair (one of many) with Cleopatra of Egypt, bringing her to Rome and having her—and her young son Caesarion, who was allegedly Caesar’s—live in an apartment across from the Roman Capitol … this shocked many Romans, who believed husbands should be more discreet about the affairs they were all expected to have … Caesar was openly cheating on his last wife, Calpurnia (depending on which source you read, she was either his third or his fourth wife; historians still argue about whether or not Caesar ever legally married his first fiancé Cossutia)

• We can’t know for sure if Caesar loved any of his wives, but we do know every time he got married it helped him advance his career, and when one of his wives was involved in a public scandal he divorced her for that reason, and said so

Caesar and Cleopatra Not Keepin’ It on the DL

Caesar’s Fall

• For all these reasons, a group of conspirators, including Caesar’s best friend (and possibly, it was rumored, his illegitimate son) Brutus, whose ancestors had helped overthrow the Roman kings and install a democracy, stabbed Caesar 23 times, in public, and sent Roman society into a downward spiral of chaos and civil war …

The Aftermath of Caesar’s Assassination

• The conspirators fell to bickering with each other as Rome fell to pieces, and those who had been loyal to Caesar—including his other best friend, Mark Antony—formed a new triumvirate sworn to get revenge on those who had betrayed Caesar: the new triumvirate was made up of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius (or, Octavian) Caesar, Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew and his adopted heir to the throne

• Octavius later became known as Augustus Caesar, and he is why we have the month of August, named after him; July is named after Julius Caesar, and the Julian Calendar (which Julius Caesar created) was widely used until the twentieth century (it’s still used by some people in the world today, though now most people in the world, including us, go by the Gregorian Calendar, a reform of the Julian Calendar)

Rome Returns to Another Caesar’s Power

• After a long war waged largely through the Middle-East, the conspirators—Brutus, Cassius, and others—were defeated and killed by the forces of the new triumvirate, with the result that Octavius (later known as Augustus) Caesar became the new ruler of Rome and its first emperor

• After Julius Caesar, the name ‘Caesar’ became a generic name for every Roman emperor; they were all known as ‘the Caesars’

• The German form of Caesar is Kaiser, like Kaiser Wilhelm who ruled Germany during World War I

• The Russian form of Caesar is Czar or Tsar, and the Czars of Russia ruled Russia in much the same way Caesar had ruled Ancient Rome … iron-fisted and merciless dictatorships

Why Shakespeare Wrote The Play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

• During Shakespeare’s time in England—known as the Elizabethan Age, named after their Queen Elizabeth—a lot of people worried about the fact that Elizabeth had no known legitimate heirs (whom she claimed as her own) to inherit the throne if she were to die, though it was rumored she did have illegitimate children

• Julius Caesar had no known legitimate male heirs (whom he claimed as his own) to inherit his throne (Romans at that time would not have accepted a female leader due to their sexism, and even if they would have accepted this, Caesar’s daughter Julia had died), so when Caesar died, Rome fell into chaos and civil war as different sides fought to gain power and rule Rome

• Shakespeare feared the same fate could befall England if Elizabeth died without an heir, leaving a ‘power vacuum’ and a destructive struggle for power

Important Things to Know

• Shakespeare based his play on Roman histories, but did not accurately portray every single event as it really happened … he took some creative liberties with the facts to make a more effective drama

• However, the main points—the assassination itself, those who were involved in the conspiracy, and the chaos after Caesar’s death—are pretty much what did happen in actual history, though Shakespeare did change some minor details or make up some things (Caesar’s last words in the play are spoken in Latin, but in actual history his last words were probably in Greek)

More Important Things• BCE means Before the Common Era, and has now largely replaced

the previously-used BC, which stood for Before Christ; the years referred to remain the same, but, for example, what used to be called 1 BC is now generally referred to as 1 BCE (both refer to the year before Jesus Christ was allegedly supposed to have been born)

• Whereas once we’d refer to our own time as AD (for Anno Domini, which is Latin for Year of Our Lord) it is now more common to refer to this time period as the Common Era, or, CE

• Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE on the ides of March, or, in other words, on March 15th (‘ides’ means ‘middle’) and over fifteen and a half centuries later, William Shakespeare thought it was still important enough to write a play about it … about four centuries after Shakespeare wrote that play, we still consider it important enough today to read William Shakespeare’s play about these events that happened over twenty and a half centuries ago

Trivial But Interesting Information• John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham

Lincoln, was an actor in a family of actors, and had been in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, but never as Brutus (who strikes the fatal blow against the tyrant Caesar), but he always wanted to play that role … he killed Lincoln in a theater, in public, and then leapt on to the stage and yelled, “Sic semper tyrannus,” Latin (the language they spoke in Ancient Rome) for “Thus always to tyrants” (which is now the state motto of Virginia) and in his own diary Booth referred to Lincoln as a Caesar and to himself as Brutus

“SIC SEMPER TYRANNUS!” (“Thus always to tyrants!”)

More Trivial But Interesting Info.• Caesar’s Rome was considered to be the First Reich; Kaiser

Wilhelm’s government during WWI was considered to be the Second Reich; Adolf Hitler called his Fascist government the Third Reich, and adopted many of the symbols (and practices) of Julius Caesar, among them, the symbol of the eagle. The term ‘Fascism’ itself comes from the ancient Roman practice of having high-ranking government officials have lower-ranking officials walk in front of them with bundles of sticks tied together around an axe (these bundles were called ‘fasces’) to symbolize their power; this symbol was adopted by the founder of Fascism, Italian dictator Mussolini (Italy is where Ancient Rome used to be), the idea being that a bundle of sticks is strong and not easily broken while a single stick can easily be broken. This represents the idea of an individual citizen’s life being unimportant, and only the whole nation-state matters, so individuals’ rights are sacrificed.

Fasces

The ‘Third Reich’ Borrowed the Imagery

of the ‘First Reich’

More Interesting Trivia

• In the 1930s, a young American, Orson Welles, had his Mercury Theatre company stage a production of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar as a propaganda piece to encourage the U.S. to get involved in the fight against the Axis Powers, re-setting the play in the then-current 1930s Fascist Italy, portraying Caesar as a Mussolini- or Hitler-type of dictator, and having those loyal to Caesar wear brown shirts like Hitler’s supporters

• Welles re-staged the scene portraying the death of Cinna the Poet as a hate crime similar to what the Fascist Nazis were doing to the Jews

An Interesting Anecdote About Caesar

• When just a youth, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates … he asked them how much they were asking for him, and they told him, and he told them he was worth more, and they should ask his friends for more; he assured his kidnappers that his friends would pay more for his safe return … the pirates asked for the amount Caesar told them to demand, and they got the ransom in full

• While their captive, Caesar joked with them that he’d eventually catch up to them and crucify them all … at the time, the pirates laughed …

• After Caesar’s friends had paid the higher ransom, his pirate captors let him go, and Caesar promptly got some ships, caught up to the pirates, and crucified them all, just like he’d said he would do. He did show them some mercy, however, since they’d been such gracious hosts and treated him so well while he was with them; he slit their throats so they’d die faster on their crosses (usually it takes days to die by crucifixion, due to dehydration, exhaustion, exposure, and blood loss). Then he took the ransom money (which was now more than it would have been otherwise) and kept it for himself rather than returning it to his friends who’d paid to free him. He turned his own kidnapping into a fundraising opportunity.

Did Caesar Know About the Assassination Plot?

• Finally, some historians argue that Caesar may well have actually received and read the warnings about his imminent assassination, but allowed it to happen anyway because he wanted to go out ‘on top’ and ‘in a blaze of glory’ at the height of his power, rather than fade away slowly, growing weak in body and mind, becoming senile as he grew older, etc.

• We do still remember him today as he was at the height of his power