I'll ask you the same question. Do you have any proof at all that Caesar was a Republican and not a Monarchist?
What if Julius Caesar was not assassinated and invaded Parthia?
Sulemain
Banned
His actions when offered the crown.
His background.
The context in which he operated.
Look, I'm not saying that he wasn't an autocrat. He was. But he wasn't a monarchist.
Sulemain
Banned
Tom Holland and Adrian Goldsworthy for the most part are the ones I'm using. Plus general knowledge from here and there.
Did Caesar want the throne? He wanted ultimate power, but if he wanted to set up a dynasty he would have done what Kings historically did of kill those who opposed him in the civil war other then the foot soldiers. He wanted the Republic to continue, but he wanted absolute power within the Republic until a new generation including his natural born son and adopted son competed like he did with Pompey for who would be the first man in Rome.
What he wanted was a competitive authoritarian state with the first man in Rome fighting for and getting the power of a dictator, but he did not want a anti competitive monarchy.
The problem is what he wanted really isn't in the nature of man as most men with total power of the era will want to simply give it to their son and kill all their potental political opposition.
What he wanted was a competitive authoritarian state with the first man in Rome fighting for and getting the power of a dictator, but he did not want a anti competitive monarchy.
The problem is what he wanted really isn't in the nature of man as most men with total power of the era will want to simply give it to their son and kill all their potental political opposition.
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Sulemain
Banned
Aye.
Caesar's system was very much the Republic 2.0 then the Monarchial system that Octavian created.
Caesar went out of his way to court Cicero especially, something he would try and mostly fail to do for most of his career. For example, a letter to Cicero when Caesar's army was approaching Rome:
While of course Cicero would have merited great propaganda value if on Caesar's side, one gets a sense that over his years of repeatedly trying to win Cicero over that Caesar sought some form of validation from the great orator whom he respected. By also asking for him to come as an advisory role, it signals again he had no designs on monarchy but on reforming the republic to suit his own wishes as to how he believed it would best function. Otherwise there was little reason to seek the counsel of someone who would be steadfastly opposed to monarchy in all forms.
In any case, even when Caesar arrived at Rome, he still respected Republican traditions and institutions. The senate meeting was convened outside the city, for his was not permitted to enter the city bounds as a proconsul in command of an army. It should be noted also, his repeated attempts to foster a reconciliation with Pompey, something he had tried to do prior to crossing the Rubicon, once more after reaching Rome, and had designs on such yet again after Pharsalus.
Anyway, to my main reason for this post, here's some selective quotes from Adrian Goldsworthy's spectacular biography on Caesar:
We can also garner from some of his laws, that Caesar was looking forward to a time when he was not ruling Rome. For example:
As to Lee's earlier claim that Caesar was expecting to die soon'and so his will was meant to be his final one, rather than a stopgap until a more suitable alternative presented itself:
On his supposed monarchical ambitions:
On the crown offering:
While of course Cicero would have merited great propaganda value if on Caesar's side, one gets a sense that over his years of repeatedly trying to win Cicero over that Caesar sought some form of validation from the great orator whom he respected. By also asking for him to come as an advisory role, it signals again he had no designs on monarchy but on reforming the republic to suit his own wishes as to how he believed it would best function. Otherwise there was little reason to seek the counsel of someone who would be steadfastly opposed to monarchy in all forms.
In any case, even when Caesar arrived at Rome, he still respected Republican traditions and institutions. The senate meeting was convened outside the city, for his was not permitted to enter the city bounds as a proconsul in command of an army. It should be noted also, his repeated attempts to foster a reconciliation with Pompey, something he had tried to do prior to crossing the Rubicon, once more after reaching Rome, and had designs on such yet again after Pharsalus.
Anyway, to my main reason for this post, here's some selective quotes from Adrian Goldsworthy's spectacular biography on Caesar:
We can also garner from some of his laws, that Caesar was looking forward to a time when he was not ruling Rome. For example:
As to Lee's earlier claim that Caesar was expecting to die soon'and so his will was meant to be his final one, rather than a stopgap until a more suitable alternative presented itself:
On his supposed monarchical ambitions:
On the crown offering:
And finally, on if Caesar wanted a hereditary kingship:
fi11222
Banned
I believe that this debate misses part of the truth, as most modern debates about Caesar do, because it allows itself to be misled by the modern meaning of the words "king" and "republic".
In our time, these words have a purely political meaning while in Rome, at the time of Caesar, they were as much religious as they were political. Implicitly, they asked the question: "Can a man (especially a leader of men) become a God?" The Greek answer to this question was an emphatic "yes", while the Roman traditional, republican, answer was an equally emphatic "no".
The traditional Roman answer was related to the strong standards of piety Rome liked to consider its own. Allowing a man to claim godhood was to challenge the gods and they would not like it. By contrast, the Greeks had always made it relatively easy for men to become gods (the hero path) and this tendency had become even more pronounced after Alexander, with almost every ruler of some importance being granted divine honours.
The problem of the late Roman republic is that after the conquest of the Greek east, and the influence of the Scipio, the Romans had come to consider the Greeks as their cultural masters. Some, like the Cato family, deeply disliked the Greek way and tried to resist this trend. But it was a losing battle. The bottom line was that, by Caesar's time, the populace was more than ready to pay divine honours to a successful military leader. And this was especially true of soldiers who, through campaining in the East, had been most exposed to Greek customs.
Caesar, like Pompey before him, had campaigned in the East as well and had therefore had to interact on a regular basis with semi-divine rulers who paid him homage because he was Rome's representative, of which they were vassals. Yet, he was supposed to remain a man when he was in Rome.
We will never know what Caesar really thought because the only text we have from him (De bello Gallico) was a propaganda piece, and maybe ghostwritten, and the opinions of others about him are of course slanted. One thing is sure, though. When, after his death, Caesar was deified on the orders of Octavian, the cult was wildly popular. Caesar really did become a god and this is why we still use the words Kaiser and Tsar today.
Could Caesar have mentally resisted the temptation to think of himself as a superior being, while everything seemd to be yielding to him around the whole world? Is it realistic to think so given what we know of human nature? I think not.
It is therefore likely that Caesar was just torn between 2 irreconcilable positions. He was a god in his own eyes but he could not acknowledge it while he was in Rome. So he tried to muddle through, as his behaviour shows. It seems to me that he did not have a precise plan regarding how to legitimize his own power, and neither did he have one regarding his succession. He improvised and took whatever decision seemed judicious based on his gut feeling in whatever situation he found himself in. The campaign against Parthia was the next logical step. Maybe he thought that the Roman people would acknowledge him as a god at last, if he matched Alexander.
It is with Octavian that we find someone with a plan. As a young man, he had witnessed his uncle's trajectory and no doubt pondered on how to solve the dilemma he faced. By contrast with Caesar, Octavian had hindsight, and had had time to reflect when his turn came to face the same choices. We know what his plan was, and it succeeded. It was as much religious a religious reform, a thorough reorganization of Roman state religion, as it was a political settlement.
In our time, these words have a purely political meaning while in Rome, at the time of Caesar, they were as much religious as they were political. Implicitly, they asked the question: "Can a man (especially a leader of men) become a God?" The Greek answer to this question was an emphatic "yes", while the Roman traditional, republican, answer was an equally emphatic "no".
The traditional Roman answer was related to the strong standards of piety Rome liked to consider its own. Allowing a man to claim godhood was to challenge the gods and they would not like it. By contrast, the Greeks had always made it relatively easy for men to become gods (the hero path) and this tendency had become even more pronounced after Alexander, with almost every ruler of some importance being granted divine honours.
The problem of the late Roman republic is that after the conquest of the Greek east, and the influence of the Scipio, the Romans had come to consider the Greeks as their cultural masters. Some, like the Cato family, deeply disliked the Greek way and tried to resist this trend. But it was a losing battle. The bottom line was that, by Caesar's time, the populace was more than ready to pay divine honours to a successful military leader. And this was especially true of soldiers who, through campaining in the East, had been most exposed to Greek customs.
Caesar, like Pompey before him, had campaigned in the East as well and had therefore had to interact on a regular basis with semi-divine rulers who paid him homage because he was Rome's representative, of which they were vassals. Yet, he was supposed to remain a man when he was in Rome.
We will never know what Caesar really thought because the only text we have from him (De bello Gallico) was a propaganda piece, and maybe ghostwritten, and the opinions of others about him are of course slanted. One thing is sure, though. When, after his death, Caesar was deified on the orders of Octavian, the cult was wildly popular. Caesar really did become a god and this is why we still use the words Kaiser and Tsar today.
Could Caesar have mentally resisted the temptation to think of himself as a superior being, while everything seemd to be yielding to him around the whole world? Is it realistic to think so given what we know of human nature? I think not.
It is therefore likely that Caesar was just torn between 2 irreconcilable positions. He was a god in his own eyes but he could not acknowledge it while he was in Rome. So he tried to muddle through, as his behaviour shows. It seems to me that he did not have a precise plan regarding how to legitimize his own power, and neither did he have one regarding his succession. He improvised and took whatever decision seemed judicious based on his gut feeling in whatever situation he found himself in. The campaign against Parthia was the next logical step. Maybe he thought that the Roman people would acknowledge him as a god at last, if he matched Alexander.
It is with Octavian that we find someone with a plan. As a young man, he had witnessed his uncle's trajectory and no doubt pondered on how to solve the dilemma he faced. By contrast with Caesar, Octavian had hindsight, and had had time to reflect when his turn came to face the same choices. We know what his plan was, and it succeeded. It was as much religious a religious reform, a thorough reorganization of Roman state religion, as it was a political settlement.
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@fi11222
I have a question.Wasn't Romulus and his wife deified by the Romans?I was under the impression that under the belief of the Romans,deification was possible,but extremely rare,and that Caesar was the first man to be deified by them since Romulus.
I have a question.Wasn't Romulus and his wife deified by the Romans?I was under the impression that under the belief of the Romans,deification was possible,but extremely rare,and that Caesar was the first man to be deified by them since Romulus.
fi11222
Banned
Yes, but it was the only example. No man between Romulus and Caesar had been successfully deified.
Caesar wasn't trying to be declared divine or a king in invading Partha. If was a major thorn in Rome's side that he could see would need to be dealt with while Rome was ready and able to do it or else long very expensive wars for generations would result. Also this was the pinnacle of Roman military power.
It would shore up both Rome and Egypt's position in the East and allow him to ceade more territory to Cleopatra and her son while still adding to the Roman Empire.
Caesar could see that the East as of this time was rich, but the weaker of the two parts of the Empire, but the defeat of Partha and Dacia could have changed the equation and allowed the West and East to be more on par at the time.
Caesar was probably the last Roman leader who could have conquered both modern day Iran and Iraq and created lasting defensable boards for the East.
Then Augustus, Ceasarian and whoever else rises can prove their worth trying to conquor the whole of Germany and if they are successful some of modern day Poland as well as perhaps his adversary going for Britain or India. A Roman Republic where the cream was still allowed to rise to the top would have meant a much larger Empire.
I honestly don't think Caesar wanted Pompey killed, he wanted a precident set where the loser accepts the first man in Rome and they work together to manage Rome after having it out. We will never know if his concept could have worked.
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fi11222
Banned
Wanking Caesar is not helping understand him better. Actually, it is the modern version of deification.
It is very important to make the distinction between the latin words “deus” and “divus”.
Caesar was never called “deus” but divus. Nor were the roman emperors that succeeded to him. Antic romans made a clear distinction between a God and a human being that had reached divine status.
I agree with Sly’s previous comment. I will add a few points about Caesar.
Concerning Caesar’s relation with Cicero, Caesar had been striving for most of his political career to associate himself with Cicero.
In 60, when was elected consul for the year 59, Caesar tried to from not a triumvirate but a quadriumvirate. He wanted Cicero to be part of his association with Pompey and Crassus in order to have the strongest possible support for his political agenda. The point is that Cicero rejected the offer because Cicero could bear the least agrarian law and that he wanted to be accepted by the staunch optimates that had been harassing Pompey since his return from his eastern campaign.
Caesar’s political goal had never been to become the monarch of Rome until he was literally forced on this position by the hatred of his political enemies that left him but no other choice than being destroyed by them or defeating them by all possible means. Caesar’s political goal was clever government of the empire and especially of the provinces that had almost been bled to death by stubborn and corrupt roman aristocrats, most of whom were optimates. In this goal, Caesar tried to reach political association with the most enlighted roman statesmen as early as we see him appear on the political stage. First with Servilius Vatia Isauricus who was a moderate sullan, then with Crassus (who was the best connected with the backbenchers senators and with the core of the roman aristocracy), Pompey and Cicero.
As he placated at the beginning of the second civil war, Caesar’s program was “tranquility for Italy, peace for the provinces and security for the empire”.
Which literally was the program that generations of roman emperors enforced. Which also meant curbing down the old roman aristocracy’s excesses and manipulation of Italian and provincial clientelae and halting the excessive predation inflicted by the old roman aristocracy in order to advance their political ambitions at Rome.
Caesar was one of the rare true statesmen of the roman political stage, who set sound and quite moderate political goals but who did not hesitate to resort to extreme means in order to realize his sound and moderate political program when his political opponents made a distorted use of the traditional checks and balances of the roman “constitution” (I mean the tricks with omen, veto and filibustering) in order to block any political action they disagreed with.
Now, although he showed a part of the means and ways that Octavian Augustus later used (like taking the powers of several magistracies without holding the title), we can’t know what Caesar really and deeply wanted for a lastable political reorganization of Rome. And one decisive reason for this is that all had been distorted by Octavian Augustus who:
- is the man that deliberately and actively built a hereditary monarchy at Rome,
- made a political and dynastic alliance with a part of the old optimate aristocracy in order to gain their support (Livia Drusilla was a parent of Cato and the catonian faction was the core of the optimate aristocracy that was the most powerful force in the roman oligarchy since the slaughter of the Gracchi since the Catonian faction was just a part of the galaxy that gathered the Metelli and last Cornelii Scipiones, the Servilii Caepiones and Vatiae, the Domitii Ahenobarbi, the Claudii Marcelli, the Marcii Reges and Philippi, the Licinii Luculli and the old Lutatius Catulus dead in 63 BCE). He did it far more and far thighter than Caesar did. The core of Caesar's supporters were moderate aristocrats that had refused to side either with Marius or with Sulla in 88, that refused to condemn Marius in 88, that condemned Sulla's coup on Rome in 88, supported Marius from 100 on and then Cinna in the years 86-85 and then wanted and found an understanding with Sulla before the extremist marians took over in the last 2 years of the sullan civil war). Augustus encouraged his court poets and court writers to belittle and criticize Caesar, to magnify and even mythify Cato, to say that Caesar should have backed down in front of Pompey.
- and hid it by a propaganda distortion more or less saying “OK. My granduncle Caesar was a great man, a divine man, but he was not a good republican since he did not abide to the Senate, bears a big responsibility in triggering a mean mean mean civil war and wanted to rule in too monarchic a way with his Egyptian whore that was picked up by the pitiful Anthony. I am (please don’t laugh or I have you proscripted which my terrible granduncle should have done) the one who reinstituted the aristocratic republic and civil peace (after wrecking it on my own initiative)."
To put it an other way, Augustus made of Caesar a scapegoat. Augustus is the man who triggered the longest and bloodiest of the roman civil wars in order to promote his own tremendous ambition (although his personal fear of being later eliminated is understandable) and who caricatured the intentions and actions of his granduncle/adoptive fatherin order to shirk his own abyssal responsibility in initiating the institution of hereditary monarchy. Nobody in roman history strove more blatantly and more obstinately than Augustus to have his closest male parent become his political successor. He began with his nephew Marcellus, then with his grandsons, and when he had but granddaughters left, Julia the younger and Agrippina the elder, guess who he chose ?
Julia the younger the elder of his 2 granddaughters, was married to a man of the highest patrician aristocracy : one of the true last members of the gentes maiores, an Aemilius Paullus (who was in fact an Aemilius Lepidus but the Lepidi had revived the extincted Paullus cognomen).
Agrippina the elder was married to a young man from the relatively minor Nero branch of the patrician Claudii, who was later to be known as Germanicus but who most of all happened to be ... the grandson of Augustus' sister Octavia (through her daughter Antonia) and of Augustus' wife Livia (through her son Drusus).
It is of course the one who had the greater number of real blood ties and marriage alliances with Augustus.
Caesar was never called “deus” but divus. Nor were the roman emperors that succeeded to him. Antic romans made a clear distinction between a God and a human being that had reached divine status.
I agree with Sly’s previous comment. I will add a few points about Caesar.
Concerning Caesar’s relation with Cicero, Caesar had been striving for most of his political career to associate himself with Cicero.
In 60, when was elected consul for the year 59, Caesar tried to from not a triumvirate but a quadriumvirate. He wanted Cicero to be part of his association with Pompey and Crassus in order to have the strongest possible support for his political agenda. The point is that Cicero rejected the offer because Cicero could bear the least agrarian law and that he wanted to be accepted by the staunch optimates that had been harassing Pompey since his return from his eastern campaign.
Caesar’s political goal had never been to become the monarch of Rome until he was literally forced on this position by the hatred of his political enemies that left him but no other choice than being destroyed by them or defeating them by all possible means. Caesar’s political goal was clever government of the empire and especially of the provinces that had almost been bled to death by stubborn and corrupt roman aristocrats, most of whom were optimates. In this goal, Caesar tried to reach political association with the most enlighted roman statesmen as early as we see him appear on the political stage. First with Servilius Vatia Isauricus who was a moderate sullan, then with Crassus (who was the best connected with the backbenchers senators and with the core of the roman aristocracy), Pompey and Cicero.
As he placated at the beginning of the second civil war, Caesar’s program was “tranquility for Italy, peace for the provinces and security for the empire”.
Which literally was the program that generations of roman emperors enforced. Which also meant curbing down the old roman aristocracy’s excesses and manipulation of Italian and provincial clientelae and halting the excessive predation inflicted by the old roman aristocracy in order to advance their political ambitions at Rome.
Caesar was one of the rare true statesmen of the roman political stage, who set sound and quite moderate political goals but who did not hesitate to resort to extreme means in order to realize his sound and moderate political program when his political opponents made a distorted use of the traditional checks and balances of the roman “constitution” (I mean the tricks with omen, veto and filibustering) in order to block any political action they disagreed with.
Now, although he showed a part of the means and ways that Octavian Augustus later used (like taking the powers of several magistracies without holding the title), we can’t know what Caesar really and deeply wanted for a lastable political reorganization of Rome. And one decisive reason for this is that all had been distorted by Octavian Augustus who:
- is the man that deliberately and actively built a hereditary monarchy at Rome,
- made a political and dynastic alliance with a part of the old optimate aristocracy in order to gain their support (Livia Drusilla was a parent of Cato and the catonian faction was the core of the optimate aristocracy that was the most powerful force in the roman oligarchy since the slaughter of the Gracchi since the Catonian faction was just a part of the galaxy that gathered the Metelli and last Cornelii Scipiones, the Servilii Caepiones and Vatiae, the Domitii Ahenobarbi, the Claudii Marcelli, the Marcii Reges and Philippi, the Licinii Luculli and the old Lutatius Catulus dead in 63 BCE). He did it far more and far thighter than Caesar did. The core of Caesar's supporters were moderate aristocrats that had refused to side either with Marius or with Sulla in 88, that refused to condemn Marius in 88, that condemned Sulla's coup on Rome in 88, supported Marius from 100 on and then Cinna in the years 86-85 and then wanted and found an understanding with Sulla before the extremist marians took over in the last 2 years of the sullan civil war). Augustus encouraged his court poets and court writers to belittle and criticize Caesar, to magnify and even mythify Cato, to say that Caesar should have backed down in front of Pompey.
- and hid it by a propaganda distortion more or less saying “OK. My granduncle Caesar was a great man, a divine man, but he was not a good republican since he did not abide to the Senate, bears a big responsibility in triggering a mean mean mean civil war and wanted to rule in too monarchic a way with his Egyptian whore that was picked up by the pitiful Anthony. I am (please don’t laugh or I have you proscripted which my terrible granduncle should have done) the one who reinstituted the aristocratic republic and civil peace (after wrecking it on my own initiative)."
To put it an other way, Augustus made of Caesar a scapegoat. Augustus is the man who triggered the longest and bloodiest of the roman civil wars in order to promote his own tremendous ambition (although his personal fear of being later eliminated is understandable) and who caricatured the intentions and actions of his granduncle/adoptive fatherin order to shirk his own abyssal responsibility in initiating the institution of hereditary monarchy. Nobody in roman history strove more blatantly and more obstinately than Augustus to have his closest male parent become his political successor. He began with his nephew Marcellus, then with his grandsons, and when he had but granddaughters left, Julia the younger and Agrippina the elder, guess who he chose ?
Julia the younger the elder of his 2 granddaughters, was married to a man of the highest patrician aristocracy : one of the true last members of the gentes maiores, an Aemilius Paullus (who was in fact an Aemilius Lepidus but the Lepidi had revived the extincted Paullus cognomen).
Agrippina the elder was married to a young man from the relatively minor Nero branch of the patrician Claudii, who was later to be known as Germanicus but who most of all happened to be ... the grandson of Augustus' sister Octavia (through her daughter Antonia) and of Augustus' wife Livia (through her son Drusus).
It is of course the one who had the greater number of real blood ties and marriage alliances with Augustus.
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fi11222
Banned
Matteo, I believe that what you say is probably true (as far as we can tell) but that you focus too much on the deeds of individuals at the expense of the bigger picture.
If you look at the series of "great men" that Rome had to endure in the last century of the republic: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Anthony, Octavian, it seems obvius that although they all had different outlooks and personalities, they were all irresistibly attracted, often against their will, towards the Greek model of the god/ruler. All of them grappled with this problem and all more or less failed to find a stable solution except Octavian. But of course, it was easier for him, as he could benefit from the trial and error experience of his predecessors.
The Greek divine ruler model was funtamentally at odds with Romans conceptions of pietas and that is no doubt the reason why the civil wars were so bloody and so long. Finally, Octavian was able to find a compromise and of course, because the fundamental Greek/Roman contradiction remained unsolved, this compromise had to rely on hairsplitting semantics like divus/deus and on disingenuous rewriting of history like what you mention about lionising Cato and disparaging Caesar.
I am not sure Octavian was more ambitious than any other young patrician of his age, or than his predecessors. He simply was more conscious than all of them of the inevitable catastrophe that was going to befall him and his regime if he did not tackle the deepest levels of the politico-religious conondrum that all of his predecessors had faced. His solution was to place his trust in tried and tested monarchic principles, including strictly dynastic succession, while paying outward respect to Roman mores and religious sensitivities. In so doing, he managed to decouple to a certain extent the political reality (dynastic succession) from its religious legitimation framed in the traditional language of Roman pietas. Even so, the core of the Augustan settlement remains of a religious nature: the organized worship of Caesar's dynasty through the cult of its founder. It stops short of actually worshipping a living man, but not by much. It probably was the maximum that could be done to acknowledge reality (the overwhelming desire of Rome's subjects to be ruled by a quasi-divine ruler in the Greek mould) without breaking the paramount Roman taboo against worshiping the ruler (which is what being a "king" means in the era in consideration).
If you look at the series of "great men" that Rome had to endure in the last century of the republic: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Anthony, Octavian, it seems obvius that although they all had different outlooks and personalities, they were all irresistibly attracted, often against their will, towards the Greek model of the god/ruler. All of them grappled with this problem and all more or less failed to find a stable solution except Octavian. But of course, it was easier for him, as he could benefit from the trial and error experience of his predecessors.
The Greek divine ruler model was funtamentally at odds with Romans conceptions of pietas and that is no doubt the reason why the civil wars were so bloody and so long. Finally, Octavian was able to find a compromise and of course, because the fundamental Greek/Roman contradiction remained unsolved, this compromise had to rely on hairsplitting semantics like divus/deus and on disingenuous rewriting of history like what you mention about lionising Cato and disparaging Caesar.
I am not sure Octavian was more ambitious than any other young patrician of his age, or than his predecessors. He simply was more conscious than all of them of the inevitable catastrophe that was going to befall him and his regime if he did not tackle the deepest levels of the politico-religious conondrum that all of his predecessors had faced. His solution was to place his trust in tried and tested monarchic principles, including strictly dynastic succession, while paying outward respect to Roman mores and religious sensitivities. In so doing, he managed to decouple to a certain extent the political reality (dynastic succession) from its religious legitimation framed in the traditional language of Roman pietas. Even so, the core of the Augustan settlement remains of a religious nature: the organized worship of Caesar's dynasty through the cult of its founder. It stops short of actually worshipping a living man, but not by much. It probably was the maximum that could be done to acknowledge reality (the overwhelming desire of Rome's subjects to be ruled by a quasi-divine ruler in the Greek mould) without breaking the paramount Roman taboo against worshiping the ruler (which is what being a "king" means in the era in consideration).
What wanking are you talking about?
Caesar wanted ultimate power as I said, but he knew what made the Republic great in that he, Pompy and others were able to compete to be the first man in Rome.
If you get rid of that Rome is no different then any other kingdom of the era and Caesar knew that I believe based on his own actions visa via his enemies and his allies.
Compitition was what made Rome great on that score Caesar understood the sitution all too well. Hereditary monarchies by their nature have the shit not the cream rise to the top. The cream ends up being killed as threats to the king, his family and sycophants.
Caesar was supremely power hungry, but also understood what made Rome great and that was it wasn't a totally anti-competitive system like he got to know so well in the East. He had to fight to get in his place for years in the process in his view advancing the interests and landmass of Rome. He wanted the next generation to have to do the same.
I never said their never subvert the laws of Rome. I said only their actions were always against their enemies and not against the structure of the Roman Republic. You can say who Caesar or Sulla really go against the Roman Laws (doing something who was forbidden) before their enemies forced them to do it? I can not say that and their political and militar careers followed the standard cursus honorem while that of Marius, Pompey and Octavian clearly violated it.
The difference is that A) Gaius Julius had little choice given his enemies were hovering all around Sulla had more choices and acted like the worst tyrants in history...no clemency there. and B) Sulla acted for a very narrow elite, whilst Caesar displayed wider concerns for the public. Whilst this may be 21st century bias almost anyone would sympathise more with the goals of the populares than the optimate.
Sulla and Caesar in truth were much more alike than are usally thinked to be... And Sulla really had exactly the same kind of choices of Caesar and the same reasons for his attacks: The first time, he was the Consul and illegaly deprived of his rightful command of the war against Mithridates by a popular assembly who was little more than a puppet in the hands of Marius (who at the time was not holding any office). Really if Marius had not tried to deprive Sulla of his command, the latter would never have thought to march on Rome, never mind put into practice something like that. Rome was just out of a really bloody war against their italian allies, something very like to a civil war, and had a revenge to take against Mithridates of Parthia. Sulla's mind was all on the war against Mithridates before Marius' illegal attempted takeover, then Sulla marched on Rome for restoring the order. If you are talking about his second march on Rome well you need to remember who few months after Sulla's departure for East, Marius and his allies take again the control of Rome, this time killing or forcing to escape many of Sulla's allies and kin (pratically all the optimates' faction) and after Marius' death his ally and successor Cinna ruled Rome as de facto dictator (he was elected consul and sent another army in the East with the order to fight and destroy both Sulla and Mithridates. When Sulla came back to Rome, he needed to reconquist again the city and then decided to try to destroy once-for-all his enemies and their supporters...
As I said Sulla like Caesar had not much choice....