What if Julius Caesar was not murdered by Brutus and Co.? How would the roman empire´s history be different?
Caesar lives on...
- Thread starter Merowinger
- Start date
I heard that he was planning a campaign against the Parthians, to recover the Eagles lost by Crassus some years earler.
Some of his partisans said that there was a prophecy that "only a King can defeat the Parthians" and thus he would have to be made King in order to defeat them.
Some of his partisans said that there was a prophecy that "only a King can defeat the Parthians" and thus he would have to be made King in order to defeat them.
Depends.
It is entirely possible that there wouldn't *be* a Roman Empire as we know it. Caesar is kinda hard to read (for someone we know so much about, we know remarkably little about him), but I think he lacked the calculating political genius for accomodation and make-believe that Octavian had. He wanted to be king, and failing that he wanted tzo be dicrtator perpetuus. The problem is, dictator perpertuus is not hereditary and king was unacceptable to the Romans of his day. I doubt he'd have been able to pull of an Augustus, creating a non-hereditary heritable non-office between the framework of the old Republic. Thus, almost no matter how good he is (and he may well have been very impressive indeed on the battlefield and the senate floor), his death would set his achievemnts at nought. So he conquers the Arsacid kingdom - more disgruntled provinces for Republican governors to squeeze. More battlefields for civil wars. A bigger bed for Rome to die in.
Of course, it is possible he could have done something - maybe institutionalised a triumvirate to create something like the tetrarchy a few centuries early - but I don't think he thought along those lines. This is a guy who went all sobby before a statue of Alexander 'the Great'.
It is entirely possible that there wouldn't *be* a Roman Empire as we know it. Caesar is kinda hard to read (for someone we know so much about, we know remarkably little about him), but I think he lacked the calculating political genius for accomodation and make-believe that Octavian had. He wanted to be king, and failing that he wanted tzo be dicrtator perpetuus. The problem is, dictator perpertuus is not hereditary and king was unacceptable to the Romans of his day. I doubt he'd have been able to pull of an Augustus, creating a non-hereditary heritable non-office between the framework of the old Republic. Thus, almost no matter how good he is (and he may well have been very impressive indeed on the battlefield and the senate floor), his death would set his achievemnts at nought. So he conquers the Arsacid kingdom - more disgruntled provinces for Republican governors to squeeze. More battlefields for civil wars. A bigger bed for Rome to die in.
Of course, it is possible he could have done something - maybe institutionalised a triumvirate to create something like the tetrarchy a few centuries early - but I don't think he thought along those lines. This is a guy who went all sobby before a statue of Alexander 'the Great'.
What's the Arsacid kingdom? Is that the Parthians?
Even if Caesar wasn't as cunning a politician as Octavian, might Octavian get involved somewhere? He was Caesar's heir, so unless he dies before Caesar (or gets totally politically discredited, which would be difficult for someone of his skills), he might come into the picture somewhere.
There's also Antony. Did he have dictatorial ambitions?
Even if Caesar wasn't as cunning a politician as Octavian, might Octavian get involved somewhere? He was Caesar's heir, so unless he dies before Caesar (or gets totally politically discredited, which would be difficult for someone of his skills), he might come into the picture somewhere.
There's also Antony. Did he have dictatorial ambitions?
Yet another theme which should turn up in a compiliation album: "These you once loved- 25 AH themes which have long bored you shitless."
Still- a few points.
First of all, Caesar was past his best. He was approaching sixty. He'd been campaigning virtually non-stop for the past 15 years. He doesn't seem to have any real fundamental ideas for reforming the Roman system of government. As an old friend of his said after the assassination, "if even Caesar with all his genius could not find a way out, what chance have we?" Viewed in this light, his planned campaign in Parthia is an escape, getting back to an environment he was used to. And the campaign could have ended in disaster. I don't know if the Surenas's special corps had been retained after his execution, but I suspect Caesar might have had trouble in Parthia. It seems to me that increasingly in the Civil War, he was relying on luck, speed, un-nerving his opponents, verve. His crossing the Rubicon, the Greek Campaign "we'd have lost today had we been facing a general who knew how to win", the comic opera Alexandrian War, his last battle,Munda, where he was literally forced to fight for his life. His luck might have run out. Even if he had conquered Parthia, I can't see it being held. Imperial overstretch.
What did Caesar really want? I've always been doubtful about the king/ dictator thing. I suspect that what he wanted was the traditional role of Rome's great man, primus inter pares. Viewed in this light you can see why he spared his enemies, when you've won a chess game, you don't execute the loser, you may fancy another game. And you can understand his anger at Cato's suicide (a vastly over-rated figure who seems to have been the only person he hated).
Perhaps like Sulla, he would simply have retired. He couldn't have set up anything like the Augustan Settlement, which was only possible after another 13 years of civil war and proscription had exhausted and thinned out the old Roman ruling class. Besides, he wasn't a murderous little bastard like Octavian.
Still- a few points.
First of all, Caesar was past his best. He was approaching sixty. He'd been campaigning virtually non-stop for the past 15 years. He doesn't seem to have any real fundamental ideas for reforming the Roman system of government. As an old friend of his said after the assassination, "if even Caesar with all his genius could not find a way out, what chance have we?" Viewed in this light, his planned campaign in Parthia is an escape, getting back to an environment he was used to. And the campaign could have ended in disaster. I don't know if the Surenas's special corps had been retained after his execution, but I suspect Caesar might have had trouble in Parthia. It seems to me that increasingly in the Civil War, he was relying on luck, speed, un-nerving his opponents, verve. His crossing the Rubicon, the Greek Campaign "we'd have lost today had we been facing a general who knew how to win", the comic opera Alexandrian War, his last battle,Munda, where he was literally forced to fight for his life. His luck might have run out. Even if he had conquered Parthia, I can't see it being held. Imperial overstretch.
What did Caesar really want? I've always been doubtful about the king/ dictator thing. I suspect that what he wanted was the traditional role of Rome's great man, primus inter pares. Viewed in this light you can see why he spared his enemies, when you've won a chess game, you don't execute the loser, you may fancy another game. And you can understand his anger at Cato's suicide (a vastly over-rated figure who seems to have been the only person he hated).
Perhaps like Sulla, he would simply have retired. He couldn't have set up anything like the Augustan Settlement, which was only possible after another 13 years of civil war and proscription had exhausted and thinned out the old Roman ruling class. Besides, he wasn't a murderous little bastard like Octavian.
Matt Quinn said:
Everybody had dictatorial ambitions. It was flavour of the decade
No, seriously, in the event of Caesar's death, Anthony would grasp power, but he was a loyal Caesarian and would not have stabbed his benefactor inthe back. Octavian, OTOH... I could see him stage-manage an intrigue against a weakenedand ageing dictator perpetuus in a few years time (if Caesar lives that long). Unless someone beats him to it. The proboem is, Anthony would never drop Caesar, and he is a formidable obstacle fopr everyone trying to topple him. Octaviuan is just about 18 and nobody expects him to play any role in the foreseeable future. Without the adoption and the shock death of his 'father' at the height of his popularity, he would likely recede into the relative obscurity of second-tier politicians in time (he was no military genius, and in the Late Republic that mattered a lot)
A worst-case scenario would be a reasonably successful Parthian campaign (Caesar would not have made Crassus' mistakes, but he may well make some of his own) followed by a triumphal procession and a long twilight of the ageing, increasingly cranky and obsessivbely reminiscing dictator Caesar. he goes off on piddly little wars every year to relive his glories and runs Rome as best he can - which isn't good. And when he dies aged 84, his lieutenants are all over each other in a murderous rage that ends in someone (who knows what would happen in 20 years). And then the Repubnlic continues in its murderous free-for-alls until, one day none too distant, the whole thing comes down.
Diamond said:The whole Antony/Cleopatra thing, with a surviving Caesar, would be verrry interesting... or very ugly.
What would happen with Egypt?
Cleopatra was *far* too smart to do anything that foolish. That woman grew up in a piranha tank.
Egypt would stay a client kingdom until either the next Roman overboss decides to make it a province (you couldn't do it in Republican times, it would have made its governor far too powerful), or it succeeds in slowly distancing itself from Rome enough to pretend at independence in good weeks. If Rome ever comes down, the familiar pattern of kingship reasserts itself
"Cleopatra was *far* too smart to do anything that foolish. That woman grew up in a piranha tank."
LOL.
I don't know much about Cleo's upbringing, but if there was a lot of intrigue involved, the "piranha tank" is a VERY good of expressing.
LOL.
I don't know much about Cleo's upbringing, but if there was a lot of intrigue involved, the "piranha tank" is a VERY good of expressing.
Matt Quinn said:
Jack Lindsay wrote a very readable biography of her. Suffice it to say by the time she was 18, she had married and murdered her brother and had her sister killed. And she was not at all unusual in that regard. It ran in the family.
Leo Caesius
Banned
The reigning families of the ancient Near East seem to have been congenitally machiavellian.
Actually, I'm too pissed to talk coherently, but I seem to remember one theory is that when Alexander was asked who should succeed him, his answer was "to Craterus", meaning that Craterus should be regent, but this was misinterpreted as meaning, "to the strongest."