The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome is a book published in 2004 by the historian Michael Parenti which discusses the assassination of the historical colossus Julius Caesar in an utterly novel way by showing class conflict which was prevalent in Rome, especially in the field of politics. The Assassination of Julius Caesar, written in witty, powerful language, should be read by everyone interested in Roman history.
Parenti begins his book by giving the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar: March 15th, 44 B.C. He describes, “On the fifteenth of March, 44 B.C., in a meeting hall adjacent to Pompey’s theater, the Roman Senate awaited the arrival of the Republic’s supreme commander, Julius Caesar. This particular session did not promise to be an eventful one for most of the senators. But others among them were fully alive to what was in the offing. They stood about trying to maintain a calm and casual pose-with daggers concealed beneath their togas” (1). When Caesar entered the room, the senators approached him: their ruses for getting close to him were the signing of petitions to have the exiled relative of one of the senators returned to Rome. When they surrounded Caesar, they revealed their daggers and stabbed him to death. Parenti acknowledges that this assassination is, quite erroneously (from his perspective), seen as a move by the senators to restore the Roman republic: in truth, Parenti believes and skillfully defends the notion that the senators had murdered Caesar not to protect democracy, but to protect their wealth (most senators were quite wealthy, and were aristocrats): “The prevailing opinion among historians, ancient and modern alike, is that the senatorial assassins were intent upon restoring republican liberties by doing away with a despotic usurper. This is the justification proffered by the assassins themselves. In this book I present an alternative explanation: the Senate aristocrats killed Caesar because they perceived him to be a popular leader who threatened their privileged interests. By this view, the deed was more an act of treason than tyrannicide, one incident in a line of political murders dating back across the better part of a century of a dramatic manifestation of a long-standing struggle between opulent conservatives and popularly supported reformers” (2). Parenti states that another purpose of his book is to demonstrate the importance of things that are down-to-earth, including wealth and material goods: these things could be argued to be more influential and important than concepts like freedom. Parenti describes that the wealthy Roman aristocrats viewed those of lower classes with utter disdain: “In word and action, wealthy Romans made no secret of their fear and hatred of the common people and of anyone else who infringed upon their class prerogatives. History is full of examples of politico-economic elites who equate any challenge to their privileged social order as a challenge to all social order, an invitation to chaos and perdition” (3). Parenti tellingly wrote that the oligarchs of Rome were basically despots, and were overall greedy and unimaginably selfish human beings: “Steeped in utter opulence and luxury, they remained forever inhospitable to Rome’s democratic element. They valued the Republic only as long as it served their way of life. They dismissed as ‘demagogues’ and ‘usurpers’ the dedicated leaders who took up the popular cause” (3). Quite a few of the historians of Rome, being wealthy (and also owned many slaves), defended the actions of the elite. Parenti reiterates the purpose of the book, arguing that “Caesar’s sin … was not that he was subverting the Roman constitution-which was an unwritten one-but that he was loosening the oligarchy’s overbearing grip on it. Worse still, he used state power to effect some limited benefits for small farmers, debtors, and urban proletariat, at the expense of the wealthy few. No matter how limited these reforms proved to be, the oligarchs never forgave him. And so Caesar met the same fate as other Roman reformers before him” (4).
Parenti continues by describing that the Roman public is given too little credit: for instance, in William’s Shakespeare play (aptly titled Julius Caesar), commoners are shown as a stupid, gullible rabble whose opinions are easily manipulated: in the play, they first supported Pompey, changed their minds to Caesar, were swayed by his assassins to view his murder as justified, only to be won back by the oration of Antony immediately afterward. Regardless, some authors saw the assassination of Julius Caesar and Rome for what they truly meant: “In a prologue to Caesar and Cleopatra that is almost never performed, the god Ra tells the audience how Rome discovered that ‘the road to riches and greatness is through robbery of the poor and slaughter of the weak.’ In conformity with that dictum, the Romans ‘robbed their own poor until they became great masters of that art, and knew by what laws it could be made to appear seemly and honest.’ And after squeezing their own people dry, they stripped the poor throughout the many other lands they conquered” (7). Parenti writes once again that the Roman public deserve more credit than they got: they weren’t as stupid as they were commonly made out to be. To demonstrate this prejudiced mindset, the movie Gladiator (which I enjoyed and watched multiple times), which came out in 2000, showed the Senate as caring about the rights of the common citizen (which was untrue) and portrayed regular citizens as the equivalent of idiots. This is excellently seen in how Cicero, a senator in the movie, said that the common people don’t know what’s best for them, and that they are perfectly fine with Commodus bankrupting Rome and costing them their lives (to malnutrition) so long as they get momentary pleasures. Parenti denounces this view of the Roman people as little more than propaganda, which has, unfortunately, been supported by both the entertainment industry (ex. Hollywood) and historians (in the past and relative present). Parenti states that the period of the Late Republic (the time preceding Rome’s transition into a monarchy) was from 133 B.C. to 40 B.C. Parenti denounces the wealthy oligarchs for what they are: the enemies of democracy and popular representation. He says that the book “is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, profiteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders” (11).
Parenti starts his description of what led to Caesar’s assassination by writing that history is frequently written by those who are privileged and rich. For instance, Edward Gibbon, author of A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, came from a very rich family, had everything he wanted, and never knew what it was like to struggle to survive. As expected, he supported the aristocrats of Rome, denouncing populist measures. In Parenti’s own words, “Being immersed in what he called the ‘decent luxuries,’ and saturated with his own upper-class prepossession, Edward Gibbon was able to look kindly upon ancient Rome’s violently acquisitive aristocracy. He might have produced a much different history had he been a self-educated cobbler, sitting in a cold shed, writing into the wee hours after a long day of unrewarding toil … Gibbon himself was aware of the class realities behind the writing of history: ‘A gentleman possessed of leisure and independence, of books and talents, may be encouraged to write by the distant prospect of honor and reward: but wretched is the author, and wretched will be the work, where daily diligence is stimulated by daily hunger.’” (15). Parenti continues denouncing Gibbon in a way both telling and hilarious: “As one who hobnobbed with nobility, Gibbon abhorred the ‘wild theories of equal and boundless freedom’ of the French Revolution. He was a firm supporter of the British empire. While serving as a member of Parliament he voted against extending liberties to the American colonies. Unsurprisingly he had no difficulty conjuring a glowing pastoral image of the Roman empire … Not a word here about an empire built upon sacked towns, shattered armies, slaughtered villagers, raped women, enslaved prisoners, plundered lands, burned crops, and mercilessly overtaxed populations” (15-6). Parenti states that the rich (who were conservative to protect their wealth) were prone to viewing the past in an overly-idealized way, which is utterly false when it comes to their accuracy. For instance, accounts written by those who were being harassed by the Roman Empire revealed what they thought about it: they saw it as an overly and overtly greedy entity that knew no bounds. The Caledonian chief Calgacus writes that Roman soldiers were very brutal, as they made slaves of civilians (to make money for their aristocratic masters), sexually assaulted women, slaughtered indiscriminately (“they call it desolation and make it peace”), and robbed people of their food (they call this robbery “taxes”). Parenti writes that unfortunately, most Roman historians were wealthy and viewed the common people poorly, while the exact opposite should be true: the aristocrats and oligarchs should be seen as exploiters of their own and other peoples. These so-called “historians” were also sexists and misogynists: being traditional, they viewed women as sexual objects and as incubators for future rulers (these people are like parasites: they only want to dominate and to reproduce, though the jokes on them in the end, for they will leave no legacy in the long-run, seeing how the sun will eventually expand and swallow Earth, leaving behind no trace of us and our squabbles). Expectedly, there were very few women historians, as Roman women were indoctrinated and brainwashed into believing that they were only good as wives and mothers: “Almost half of all Roman brides were under the age of fourteen, many as young as twelve, with consummation coming at the time of marriage even if before menarche. Women of all ages almost invariably lived under the rule of some male, be it husband, guardian, or paterfamilias (head of the extended family or clan)” (21).
Another way women were robbed of their proper freedoms was that they had names which were similar to those of their male relatives: this was supposed to show their subordination. Furthermore, some women sold their bodies as prostitutes, and this was done en masse: owning a brothel was seen as a perfectly normal and respectable job. Furthermore, even wealthy Roman women were viewed with suspicion and were denounced by various misogynists on the grounds that they were supposedly unfaithful to their husbands (with inadequate evidence). Parenti scathingly writes, “Under the patriarchal system, a man was free to kill an allegedly unfaithful wife, while himself patronizing prostitutes or keeping a concubine. The codes against adultery initiated by Emperor Augustine were aimed at wives, with no prohibitions imposed upon husbands. One of the many Roman writers who see only virtue in Rome’s earliest epoch and decadence in their own times is Valerius Maximus. He approvingly cites examples of husbands of yore who divorced their wives or otherwise treated them severely for … walking abroad with head uncovered, talking to a common freedwoman, or attending public games without the husband’s knowledge” (24). Even Julius Caesar, who was friendly to the public, viewed women as sexual objects: the rich and powerful would have their daughters and female relatives married to potentially much older men as a token of friendship to the other party. The aristocrats were also racist: Cicero, for instance, denounced the Jews, Greeks, and subjugated people of Rome as terrible people with no empirical evidence. This racism could be quite expected, seeing that the rich wanted to blame those who were poor (ex. slaves and those who were subjugated by Rome) as the ones responsible for their own misfortunes and poverty (victim-blaming): “In ancient Rome, as in societies before and since, class oppression was supported by class bias. The lowly were considered low because of deficiencies within themselves. Class bias … was often buttressed by ethnic prejudice. Many of the poor, both slaves and free, were from ‘barbarian’ stock, and this further fueled the tendency to loathe them as wastrels and brigands, troublesome contaminants of respectable society. So ethnic and class bias conveniently dovetailed for those who looked at their world de haut en bas, and this included not only the likes of Cicero but many of the writers who came after him” (26). Parenti gives credence to Voltaire’s quote that “the comfort of the rich depends on the abundance of the poor” when he describes the plight of slaves, who comprised a significant portion of Roman society: “Rome’s social pyramid rested upon the backs of slaves (servi) who composed approximately one-third the population of Italy, with probably a smaller proportion within Rome proper. Their numbers were maintained by conquests, piratical kidnappings, and procreation by the slaves themselves … War captives were worked to death in the mines and quarries and on plantations (latifundia) at such a rate that their ranks were constantly on the wane” (27). Above the slaves were the proletariat: together, the two groups composed the majority of Rome. The proletariat lived in cramped apartments in the city in terrible living conditions which were prone to suffering from fires and disease: “There being no public transportation, the proletarians had to be housed within walking distance of work sites and markets. The solution was to pile them into thousands of poorly lit inner-city tenements along narrow streets. Such dwellings were sometimes seven or eight floors high, all lacking toilets, running water, and decent ventilation. The rents for these fetid, disease-ridden warrens were usually more than the plebs could afford, forcing them to double and triple up, with entire families residing in one room. Some luckless renters could afford only dank cellars or cramped garrets not high enough to stand in” (28).
Aside from the hazards brought about by disease and fires, sometimes the buildings would collapse, killing and wounding the inhabitants. Due to the widespread poverty and misery which accompanies extreme income disparities, crime was rampant in Rome: even aristocrats, who had guards, were afraid of going out at night. For the common individual, venturing outside at night was asking for trouble (if not injury or death). Above the proletariat were farmers and those in the middle class (which was a small group). However, although the majority of citizens lived hard and dangerous lives, a few thousand basked in obscene wealth that they didn't need or deserve in the first place: according to Parenti, one survey conducted revealed that the maximum number of pretty rich families was 2,000. When it came to the elite, there were the equites (equestrians/knights) and the nobilitas (the top of the social pyramid: these families would usually boast a family member in the lineage who served as consul): “Both groups were members of the officer class; both held wealth in land, slaves, trade, and finance. Both lived in seemly mansions, enjoying gourmet meals served on plates of gold and silver, lavish gardens, game preserves, aviaries, stables of the finest horses, fish ponds, private libraries, private baths, and water closets. Their estates were situated on tracts the size of veritable townships, large enough to house swollen retinues of slaves and personal servants” (31). The aristocrats (they should be named “parasites” - they contribute close to nothing but consume most of the resources. In fact, they shouldn’t be called “parasites at all” - parasites are too good for them, seeing that they’re ignorant to the destruction they cause, while aristocrats as a whole accept and justify the abominations committed to ensure they keep their ill-gained wealth) forbade intermarriage between people of different ranks to safeguard against the commoners gaining power and wealth. Ridiculously (and indeed in most of human history), the rich saw their parasitic and dastardly exploitation of the vast majority of the population as a moral good: “The rich, who lived parasitically off the labor of others, were hailed as men of quality and worth; while the impecunious, who struggled along on the paltry earnings of their own hard labor, were considered vulgar and deficient” (32). Aside from that, one of the best illustrations of Rome’s extreme income inequality and the unbridled arrogance of the rich was seen in slavery: Gibbon had the audacity to say that Roman slaves were “lucky” (supposedly because they could purchase their freedom). However, Parenti corrects that that rarely happened, as very few slaves underwent manumission (most of their time were spent on toiling labor, after all). To justify the mistreatment of slaves, aristocrats viewed them as inhuman: “A similar degrading appellation was applied to slaves in ancient Greece and in the slavocracy of the United States, persisting into the postbellum segregationist South of the twentieth century. The slave as a low-grade being or subhuman is a theme found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. In the minds of Roman slaveholders, the servi-including the foreigners who composed the larger portion of the slave population-were substandard in moral and mental capacity … Cicero assures us that Jews, Syrians, and all other Asian barbarians are ‘born to slavery’” (35). Furthermore, Roman slaves could be abused, tortured, and brutally executed (ex. crucified) by their masters, making their situation even worse. That is, torture was both legalized and encouraged when it came to slaves: in some instances, it was actually required. To deal with their terrible living conditions, many slaves escaped, though quite a few were captured and returned to their masters: if they were caught, they could be tortured, branded (with a red-hot iron - an “F” for “fugitive” on their forehead), and executed. Parenti writes that slaves sometimes had uprisings (the most famous being that of Spartacus from 74-70 B.C.), but they were almost always unsuccessful (though some slaves would succeed in escaping).
As expected, Roman slaveowners frequently molested their slaves (of both genders) and saw nothing wrong with it. This demonstrates the human propensity for cruelty and exploitation: while this was terrible, this wasn’t an isolated incident, seeing how later on, “civilized” European men would buy female black slaves in slave markets to rape in the privacy of their homes (these “civilized” men would also force these poor women to bear the resulting offspring). In many instances, infant slaves would be raped by adult men and women: “Slaves regularly catered to pedophilic tastes, selling young boys and girls for sexual purposes. Depilatories were used to remove the hair on a boy’s body, keeping him as young-looking as possible. Boys were made to ingest various potions thought to delay the onset of puberty. Even worse, slave dealers frequently resorted to castration despite successive laws forbidding it. Such instances of child barter, rape, and sexual mutilation go unmentioned by those latter-day scholars who, like the slaveholders themselves, seem to have a keener sense of slavery’s hidden benefits than of its manifest evils” (40-1). Cicero himself was surprised when one of his slaves died: he didn't want to feel sympathy or remorse because in order for any large scale injustice to continue, the mass of people and the perpetrators must be willing to either turn a blind eye to it or to strip the victims of their right to happiness and health. Parenti summarizes that slaves “were marginalized creatures often denied the most elementary social bonds. They suffered a nearly total lack of control over their labor, their persons, and in most regards their very personalities. Slaves themselves … were commodities … Cicero made this perfectly clear when he remarked that it was preferable to lighten a ship in emergency by throwing an old slave overboard rather than a good horse. And the elder Cato advises his readers to sell old or sick slaves along with old or sick draught animals ‘and everything else that is superfluous.’ So every slaveholder was locked into an intrinsically injurious construct that is the inescapable essence of slavery: The degrading exploitation of one human being so that another may pursue whatever comforts and advantages wealth might confer. Ultimately, the same can be said of all exploitative class relations perpetrated by those who accumulate wealth for themselves by reducing others to poverty” (43). Rome was supposedly founded in 753 B.C. and was named after Romulus (who murdered his brother Remus in cold blood over where to build Rome). The Roman Republic began when Tarquinius Superbus, a tyrant, was thrown out of Rome. However, Rome remained highly unequal, and the mass exploitation of the poor was still present. Rome, despite being a republic, was still an empire: they utterly destroyed Carthage and other areas, frequently massacring their inhabitants indiscriminately. Rome’s imperialism caused an influx of land (known as the ager publicus). A law was drafted that stated that the maximum amount of land held by any individual was 500 iugera (approximately 310 acres). However, the aristocrats, acting as the parasites they were, broke this law repeatedly (by utilizing violence and bribes). Pliny the historian criticized the rich in his writing in a way that is so fantastic that it should be quoted in its original words: “With a further touch of wisdom Pliny continued: When compared to all the universe, the earth is ‘but a pinprick,’ yet ‘here it is that we fill positions of power and covet wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar.’ Here we launch ‘civil wars and slaughter one another to make the land more spacious!’ And here ‘we expel the tenants next to us … how small a fraction of the earth’s surface? or when he has stretched his boundaries to the full measure of his avarice, may still retain-what portion, pray, of his estate when he is dead?’” (49).
As expected, Roman politics was highly unfair: the richest were the leading voices of most decisions and issues. While the poor had a powerful voice in the form of the tribune, they were still drastically limited in what they could do (tribunes could shut down the government to protest the policies of the aristocrats, but this rarely happened). The Roman Senate only cared about wealth, as those who comprised it were virtually all aristocrats who wanted to maintain the status quo and to oppress the commoners. By the second century B.C., there were two major parties of thought: the populares and the optimates. The optimates were the politicians who served the aristocrats while the populares involved the officials who wanted to help the commoners. Parenti states that the populares were frequently viewed as traitors and dissidents by the aristocrats, an attitude which carried on for most of history up to now: people viewed the optimates (the senators who assassinated Caesar) as the heroes of the Republic while forgetting that they cared only for their own wealth: they couldn’t care less if Romans were starving to death, seeing that starvation and deprivation of the most basic necessities existed in Rome. In Parenti’s own words, the Roman government was extremely biased in that “there was nothing to prevent the Senate from passing any decree it so desired. The nobles protected the constitution-an unwritten one based on custom and practice-to the extent that it fortified their oligarchy. It was their constitution, their law, and indeed their Republic, made to accommodate ‘sacred traditions’ including, above all, their long-standing class interests” (58). Parenti moves on to discuss Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus: they were two politicians who are famous for trying to implement land reforms: they wanted regular people to be given an opportunity to succeed and for the aristocrats to make some concessions. The aristocrats responded by hiring death squads (of armed thugs) to murder them both: Tiberius was killed with hundreds of his friends and colleagues. Later, their bodies were thrown into a river. Gaius, despite being told by his mother Cornelia (who was famous for saying that her children were her jewels/treasure) to not enter the field of politics, did so anyway: he focused on the equivalent of social security (he wants poor people to be guaranteed survival in the form of the allotment of food). However, he was viewed as too radical (by the way, calling a movement “radical” to show your displeasure is quite foolish, seeing how many movements seen now as great and wonderful were almost always viewed as being radical themselves - for instance, slavery took thousands of years to abolish on a large scale, women’s suffrage was viewed as ridiculous for most of human history, seeing how women were largely seen for the vast majority of civilization as incubators and sexual objects, and the outlawing of war crimes like genocide and massacre, which were once viewed as honorable deeds by a variety of civilizations, was only recently viewed as reprehensible, seen in civilizations that ranged from ancient Greece to Qing China) and was also murdered with hundreds of his allies by the senators who said they were “defending” Rome by doing away with someone who threatened the established order. In Parenti’s own description, “Gaius and 250 supporters, including another popularis, Fulvius Flaccus, were massacred by the optimates’ death squads in 121 B.C. These assassins then rounded up and summarily executed an additional 3,000 democrats. The victims’ relatives were forbidden to mourn publicly for the dead” (69). Despite the horrific atrocities, it was more common for Gaius, Tiberius, and other reformers to be criticized than their murderers: “Cicero is among the earliest commentators to denounce the Gracchi and voice approval of their murders. He saw them as demagogues who pandered to the worst elements. Likewise Dio writes that Gaius ‘was naturally intractable’ and easily ‘played the rogue,’ becoming a mortal threat to ‘the nobility and the senatorial party.’ … Valerius Maximus … treats Gaius’s death as ‘a good example,’ and applauds the Senate’s ‘wisdom’ in killing Tiberius Gracchus ‘who dared to promulgate an agrarian law.’ The Gracchi and their ‘criminal supporters … paid the penalty they deserved.’” (69). After the heinous murders of the Gracchi, the Senate wasted no time stealing the rest of the land from the common Roman citizen: “After the massacres of 121, violent expropriation of land by the rich and powerful owners accelerated. The land commission was dissolved outright in 118 at the instigation of the Senate, and allotments to smallholders became a thing of the past. By 111, the rents that the big landholders had paid to the state for use of public lands were abolished, thereby effecting a complete privatization of the ager publicus. The fertile public lands now belonged completely to wealthy absentee slaveholders” (70).
Twenty years after the murder of Gaius Gracchus, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia, two populares politicians, recommended for grain to be made affordable to people. The aristocrats and senators viewed them as extreme, and passed a decree which gave then unlimited power (senatus consultum ultimum) and hired a death squad to murder them both: afterward, those who had butchered them were not prosecuted at all. This was the general trend for many politicians who wanted better situations for the common Roman: they were murdered by the death squads of the aristocrats. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was a despot who became powerful due to his power over the military, as well as the fact that he catered to the aristocrats by slaughtering thousands of people who subscribed to the populares when he returned to Rome with his army (which was illegal: however, why was Julius Caesar stabbed to death for doing this while Sulla was unharmed?). Parenti elaborates, “After several years of foreign wars, Sulla reentered Rome in 82. He defeated a rebellious Samnite army and butchered all its troops including those who had surrendered. He then issued a proscription (proscriptio) against hundreds of Romans, to which hundreds more were added in the passing months. A proscription consists of a list of persons who were declared outlaws by the state authority. Their property and possessions were confiscated, and in effect a bounty was put on their heads. Their killers were rewarded and their protectors punished. As a method of political purge, proscription was brought to brutal perfection by Sulla. He slaughtered some fifty senatorial opponents suspected of not being cooperative enough, along with 1,600 knights and 2,000 commoners (some estimate as many as 10,000 victims), so determined was he to eradicate the democratic faction that opposed him” (73). Sulla made a large amount of money as dictator, and appointed 300 conservatives to the Senate to make sure he wouldn’t be prosecuted for his crimes. The senators didn't assassinate him, for they realized he didn't threaten their personal wealth (unlike Caesar): “Sulla undid Gaius Gracchus’s court reform, restoring a senatorial monopoly over the judiciary. In sum, he rolled back hardwon democratic gains and established a strikingly reactionary constitution. The Senate emerged with nearly complete control over legislation, courts, and executive magistrates, with more powers than it had enjoyed centuries past. Sulla abolished the right of the plebs to buy cheap grain, thereby imposing serious hardship on them. During his dictatorship, and into the following decades, usurers or larger landholders drove half the rural residents of Italy from the countryside … a momentous social upheaval involving immeasurable suffering, yet scarcely mentioned by public figures or historians of that day” (74). A reformer, Publius Clodius Pulcher, eventually came to want to serve the public, despite coming from a wealthy family (he asked a plebeian family to adopt him so he can run for a tribune in 58 B.C.). Upon becoming a tribune, he made it a law that aristocrats can’t hire death squads to massacre people, reintroduced the concept of guilds to help plebeians find and maintain jobs, and flirted with the idea of giving political freedom to slaves and freedmen. Expectedly, the aristocrats fiercely criticized and slandered him: they went so far as to claim that most of his supporters were criminals, which was obviously untrue. Cicero himself said that Clodius was a scoundrel (only clearly demonstrating that he himself was one: one’s words frequently reveal more about the person saying them than the person being described by them). Later, expectedly (I know the use of “expectedly” is becoming a list, but these are the facts), Clodius was callously butchered by the aristocrats, who hired a death squad (which was illegal) to murder him: “On 18 January 52, Clodius was traveling along the Appian Way with about thirty slaves. He encountered a band of 300 mercenaries, mostly gladiators, led by the optimate Titus Annius Milo, a friend of Cicero and husband to Sulla’s daughter. Wounded in the ensuing fray, Clodius was carried to a nearby inn. At Milo’s command, the gladiators pursued their prey, killed the innkeeper, then dragged Clodius out to the hallway, stabbing him repeatedly until they finished him off” (78).
When the commoners heard of the murder, they were outraged and started a riot, attacking those whom they felt sympathized with the murderers. Milo was eventually brought to trial. Expectedly, Cicero the scoundrel served as his personal lawyer and relied mostly on ad hominem attacks (with little evidence) to discredit Clodius. It was later revealed in a personal letter of Cicero that he knew Milo had murdered Clodius on his own accord: however, Cicero was defending him because he didn't want the privileges of the elite to be jeopardized. Milo was given the harshest penalty available: exile. “Four years after killing Clodius, Milo returned from exile to join forces with others in Italy in an attempt to stir a rebellion against Julius Caesar. He was swiftly captured and executed by the praetor Pedius, Caesar’s nephew” (81). It was also detailed that Cicero blatantly lied during the trial: he maintained that Milo’s retinue consisted not of gladiators but of “a boy’s choir and a collection of female servants, ‘whereas Clodius who was habitually escorted by whores, prostitutes, and homosexuals’” (81). Parenti writes that as a whole, the reformers of the Middle and Late Republic were murdered by death squads, despite the fact that they were very reasonable in their demands (when viewed from a modern perspective). Also, the aristocrats made it a policy to have thousands of civilians killed along with populares politicians, clearly demonstrating their absurd greed and wanton callousness. Parenti tellingly writes that “As with just about every ruling class in history, the Roman nobility reacted fiercely when their interests were infringed upon, especially their untrammeled ‘right’ to accumulate as much wealth as possible at the public’s expense … In a word, the nobles were less devoted to traditional procedures and laws than to the class privileges those procedures and laws were designed to protect. They never hesitated to depart from their own ‘hereditary constitution,’ resorting to extraordinary acts of bloody repression when expediency dictated. They treated egalitarian reforms and attempts to democratize the Republic’s decision-making process as subversive of republican rule. What should not go unnoted is how readily some past and present historians embrace this same position” (82-3). Parenti proceeds by discussing Cicero’s life: he didn't deserve his good reputation (many have high regards for him). That is, he came from a rich family, but was mocked by aristocrats: he wasn’t as rich as them, so they viewed him with disdain. He quickly made a career out of catering to their misdeeds, and made himself wealthy (like most of the aristocrats) by brutally exploiting the majority of the citizens: “A self-enriching slaveholder, slumlord, and senator, Cicero deplored even the palest moves toward democracy. Rulers, he insisted, should always be persons of the affluent class: ‘When you appoint a judge it is perfectly proper to be guided by considerations of property and rank.’ In 66, when Gaius Manilius, a people’s tribune, introduced a law that granted freedmen the right to vote along with their former masters, Cicero was part of the senatorial majority that immediately rejected it” (87). He also said that ballots which allowed anonymity were unjust, as they supposedly kept the aristocrats in the dark when it came to the opinions of specific individuals (his logic being that the aristocrats would have a lot of trouble telling the death squads who to kill due to not knowing the exact identities of those who held opinions they judged as unorthodox and populist).
Cicero also viewed the common Roman as utterly beneath him, writing terrible words about them. Furthermore, he himself was more than willing to get rid of basic constitutional freedoms (ex. right to a trial and a right to live without fear of immediate execution by the authorities), which is seen very well in the Catiline conspiracy. Lucius Sergius Catiline was a politician who seemed to favor the common Roman, and Cicero responded by denouncing him as a traitor who wanted to destroy Rome (though the aristocrats were the ones doing that: Catiline didn't need to do anything if the destruction of Rome was what he pursued, seeing that Rome fell centuries later due to corruption, arrogance, financial hardship, and internal conflict). Catiline, Cicero claimed, wanted to assassinate many of the senators in a conspiracy (appropriately titled “Catiline Conspiracy”). Catiline, however, didn't really seem to be like that kind of person, as he ran for the proconsulship in 64 B.C. instead of committing murder for it. Hilariously, the ruling class were reluctant to support Cicero’s election to the proconsulship, for the exact reason they showed him disdain before, even as they needed his services: Cicero’s family wasn’t wealthy enough. However, “Forced to choose between their class snobbery and their class interests, the oligarchs decided on their interests. When necessity dictates, every ruling class has recruited serviceable talent from the ranks below” (90). One of Cicero’s main strategies when it came to getting elected was to continue to use ad hominem tactics, and he denounces Catiline as coming from a family of poor people (though what’s shameful of coming from a poor family? On the contrary, that should actually make Catiline seem more impressive, as it is a remarkable achievement to run for power from a harsh background). Cicero barely won the election, and as the consul he opposed all reform, causing the Roman public to become poorer as the rich grew richer. Cicero, unsatisfied with his terrible behavior, decided that he wanted to get rid of Catiline: he accused him in the Senate of treason. Catiline, afraid for his life, left for Etruria. Cicero, seeing this, said that he was trying to organize an army against Rome, and used shameless propaganda to bolster his claims. As before, he gave no evidence, and said that the reason an army wasn’t invading Rome was due to his vigilance and love for his country. He then used his position of power to put to death multiple people without trial for supposedly being traitors. Some who were supposed to be executed escaped by bribing Seneca. Rome attacked Catiline and the Etrurians he was staying with, killing them all. “For the next twenty years, Cicero tirelessly credited himself with ‘having preserved the state’ and having ‘delivered the Senate House from massacre,’ describing his crusade against Catiline as ‘the grandest deed in the history of the human race.’ He had to admit that the only citizen the Republic ‘could not do without was myself.’” (106). He also asked the author Lucius Lucceius to over-exaggerate his role when it came to Roman society, as he wanted to be famous (as stated before, the joke’s on him: Earth is extremely small compared to space - his “fame” is completely insignificant and is dwarfed by the massive proportions of space and time). Parenti writes that Cicero’s claims of the Catiline conspiracy have multiple flaws and are completely slanderous on certain levels. To begin, if Catiline, true to Cicero’s words, really wanted to destroy Rome and slaughter everyone, what would he have to gain from it? How could he profit by doing such a thing? Furthermore, if it was true that Catiline’s comrades were criminals and those who were supposedly degenerate, how can they seriously attempt to take Rome? Furthermore, if Catiline was so vile, why didn't he organize any assassinations? Also, Cicero said that two of Catiline’s assassins almost murdered him in his own home, yet it’s to be noted that they calmly left when he refused them entry into his house. Also, since Cicero claimed that Catiline planned to burn Rome to the ground, why is it there was seemingly no influx of man-made fires in Rome? Second-to-last, why would those who “exposed” the conspiracy be so stupid as to contain their “plans” in letters delivered by foreign envoys with their addresses? How could they be so foolish and careless? Parenti writes that Cicero answered this specific question by saying that the Olympian gods had robbed the conspirators of their wits in an attempt to save Rome, “This from a man who privately debunked the auspices and other religious beliefs” (110). Finally, why were the only members of the “conspiracy” a few people? If the conspiracy really existed, why didn't more people come forward, seeing that there was a very large monetary reward? In Parenti’s own words, “For a slave, the prize was freedom and 100,000 sesterces (about ten years’ earnings for the average laborer); for a free man, double that sum and a pardon for any share he had in the conspiracy. Sallust notes that ‘not a man among all the conspirators was induced by the promise of reward to betray their plans.’ … why did not one feckless turncoat issue forth with information in order to pocket the sumptuous reward and save his own skin? Most probably the conspiracy was not betrayed because it did not exist, at least not to the phantasmal extent conjured by Cicero” (111). Parenti writes that Cicero praised himself on December 29th, the last day of his consulship, only to be booed down by the crowd “for executing Roman citizens without a fair trial and without the consent of the people. In vehement protestation, the orator shouted back that the safety of the state and city ‘is due to my efforts alone,’ a boast that only succeeded in inciting still more anger from the crowd. Cicero had hoped that his renown as Rome’s deliverer would prevail throughout the ages, and so it has among many classicists. But among the sensible commoners of Rome, his self-anointed glory endured for hardly a day” (111).
Caesar as a youth was almost killed by Sulla’s proscription, but survived due to fleeing and by giving a bribe to one of Sulla’s officials. Caesar became a powerful general and allied himself with Pompey the Great by offering him his daughter as a wife. Although they got along well initially, Pompey was later won over by the aristocrats, a political move which was only strengthened after his wife died in childbirth. After Caesar came back from his conquests in Gaul (which involved genocidal killing of civilians), he wanted to restore good relations with Pompey. Cicero, as usual, showed that he was a hypocrite: while he praised Caesar to his face, he denounced him in letters. Caesar was told by the aristocrats to leave his army upon coming back to Rome, but he knew what they were planning: if he had no army, he would be quickly seized by the aristocrats due to his future populist measures. Defying them, he entered Rome with his army, causing civil war. However, “Most of the Italian countryside hailed Caesar. So too did the Roman proletariat, in a far cry from the furiously hostile reception they had accorded the troops of the reactionary Sulla decades earlier. Within weeks Caesar took Rome while Pompey and his forces retreated to Greece where they anticipated greater support. With both consuls and most of the Senate having fled, the people’s Tribal Assembly judged that the Republic needed a legally constituted authority. It passed a law giving the praetor, Lepidus, the right to nominate a temporary dictator in place of the absent consuls. As was expected by the people, Lepidus appointed Caesar. Dio says that Caesar committed no act of terror while dictator. Instead he recalled the descendants of Sulla’s proscription, allowing them to return to Rome with all their rights restored after over thirty years of exile. He also granted Roman citizenship to the Gauls who lived south of the Alps just beyond the Po” (128-9). Caesar later defeated Pompey (who was betrayed by the Egyptians whom he counted on) and became the sole dictator of Rome. Parenti noted that “Gaius Julius Caesar was a man of outstanding qualities, a commanding figure, uncommonly intelligent, attractive, and utterly charming when he cared to be. His associate Sallust testifies that he was esteemed ‘for the many kind services he rendered and for his lavish generosity.’ An inspiring military leader, he was famously liked by his troops whom he led with a mixture of eloquent exhortation, bold example, iron discipline, and the rewards of plunder. Unlike most members of his class, he disdained luxury and excessive self-indulgence, though he was something of a dandy in his dress. Also unlike many members of his class, he usually refrained from excessive alcohol consumption” (131). Caesar, as stated before, was intelligent: he wrote accounts of his conquests in Gaul (in which he referred to himself in third-person) and was a great orator. However, despite his numerous strengths, he was also very corrupt as a politician (like the rest at the time and even today, though, to be honest): he bribed people to win elections (though he was already very popular) and extorted large amounts of money from other countries (1.5 million gold pieces from Ptolemy of Egypt). Aside from that, he was responsible for the deaths of many people. For instance, Caesar himself admits the worst war crime his soldiers performed: in the siege of Avaricum, they killed almost 40,000 people, including women and children. Vercingetorix, a Gallic leader who was very brave, once captured by Caesar, was imprisoned for six years before being publicly executed. Caesar was also guilty of owning slaves, and saw women as objects to be negotiated with. He was also a womanizer. Cicero and other aristocrats attacked Caesar by saying that he was every man’s woman and every woman’s man: that is, he was a homosexual. The Romans, though no strangers to homosexuality, still frequently viewed it with abhorrence, especially if the person in questioning was in the submissive position during anal and oral intercourse. Parenti writes that even though it was true that Caesar wanted power, it would be a mistake to think that that was his only goal: “To this day, defenders of class privilege resort to ad hominem attacks, maligning any leader who pursues policies on behalf of the common people as a self-promoting demagogue, a panderer intent upon usurping power. To be sure, no popular leader can afford to be indifferent to considerations of popular power. Mass support is needed as a countervailing leverage to challenge entrenched ruling-class interests. In other words, the pursuit of power and the pursuit of egalitarian reform are not mutually exclusive but mutually imperative. While leaders doubtless derive personal gratification from their acquired renown, it would be a mistake to think they are motivated only by the pursuit of popularity and power, especially those who align themselves with the powerless and the downtrodden. As we have seen, in the Late Republic siding with the masses as a perilous undertaking, not a promising career choice for ambitious leaders … Those like the Gracchi, Clodius, Caesar, and others who ventured forth as champions of egalitarian causes paid the supreme price for doing so, and were propelled by something more than-or in addition to-self-aggrandizement” (139-40).
Parenti then sharply criticizes the aristocrats, the optimates: they opposed all versions of democracy, and wanted only the best for themselves. Cato the Younger, frequently viewed as a man of principle, determination, and tradition, was in fact a scoundrel who didn't care about the people: while he supposedly was “against” bribery, he was more than willing to speak in defense of his relatives when they did the same act. Cato the Younger also owned slaves, and spoke in favor of the undemocratic executions of civilians in the Catiline Conspiracy and said that slaves should remain in chains, seeing that they were only “property.” When it comes to Brutus the Younger, Shakespeare’s rendition of him as an “honorable” man (seen in how he once said that he wouldn’t extort money from the peasants as he spoke to Cassius) was quite false, seeing that he “was s usurer of the worst sort and a spoliator to boot. Having lent money at 48 percent interest (instead of the usually 12 percent, which was usurious enough), the noble Brutus then demanded that the Roman military help his agents collect the debt from the hapless Cypriot town of Salamis, in 50 B.C. At Brutus’s insistence, the town council was besieged until five of the elders starved to death” (146). All in all, the previous instances show a clear double standard. In Parenti’s own words, “Leaders who take up the popular standard are faulted as the power-hungry authors of their own unhappy fates, while their assassins are depicted as the disinterested stalwarts of republican virtue. As best we can tell, the Roman people themselves did not see it that way” (147). As a man who held great power, Caesar pursued many measures which were populist: “During his last consulships, 46-44 B.C., he founded new settlements for veterans of his army and for 80,000 of Rome’s plebs, distributing some of the best lands around Capua and elsewhere to 20,000 poor families that had three or more children” (149). Caesar also gave the public entertainment and free feasts, and created infrastructure to prevent the Tiber from overflowing. He also employed the unemployed to provide them with money, and made them productive by repairing buildings and doing other public work projects. Also, “He mandated that large landholders were to have no less than one-third of their laborers as freemen instead of slaves, a rule that would diminish unemployment, brigandage, and the landowners’ inordinately high profits. He remitted a whole year of rent for low to moderate dwellings, affording much needed relief on poor tenants. And he deposited the wealth of vanquished foes in the state treasury to be distributed as gifts and benefits among the Roman citizenry, with each soldier receiving 5,000 denarii and every pleb 100 denarii” (150). Caesar also tried to make the aristocrats more honest by introducing a law: if they were to murder a person, they could lose all their property. Furthermore, he tried to get rid of much corruption by throwing out of the Senate those who severely and cruelly overtaxed foreign provinces for their own pecuniary gain. Furthermore, “He put a cap on tributes in the more heavily taxed communities, and abolished the tithe in Asia and Sicily, substituting a land tax of a fixed amount, thus eliminating the much hated self-enriching tax assessors” (150). Caesar also tried to lift Romans out of debt, and made it clear that free Roman citizens cannot be sold into slavery if they were unable to pay a debt (which was remarkably progressive at the time). Caesar even allowed for some degree of religious tolerance: he gave the Jews the right to practice Judaism in relative peace. Those who criticize Caesar often say that he torched the library of Alexandria: this, upon closer examination, is quite hard to believe. As Parenti acknowledges, “Caesar did torch the Egyptian royal fleet in the harbor, and a stock of scrolls stored on the dock may have been destroyed. But the waterfront fire was a substantial distance from the library and did not cause a general conflagration in Alexandria, which would have been the only way the solidly built stone library could have ignited” (154). Other sources describe that the library was completely fine: the Greek geography Strabo, two decades after Caesar’s Alexandrian campaign, alleged that the library was largely intact.
Caesar was largely liked by the proletariat and the Roman public. He also showed clemency: while Sulla slaughtered thousands in what was basically a massacre, Caesar pardoned many of his enemies and allowed them to live unmolested. Caesar, aside from that, held the Senate and Assembly accountable to the public by updating their proceedings on a daily basis. Furthermore, he tried to have the common people placed into positions of power, as he increased the size of the Senate from 600 to 900, allowing foreigners (ex. the Gauls) to have a say in their fate. The Roman aristocrats continuously resisted Caesar’s reforms, and even opposed public education, since they didn't want people competing with them, showing just how insecure and unqualified they were. While it was true that Caesar was made the imperator (dictator) for a decade, dressed in royal clothing, and later planned to make himself a dictator for life, it should not be forgotten that he had the people’s interests in mind: as the dictator, he could override the oligarchy of the aristocrats. Caesar also reformed the calendar: “Beginning in 45 B.C., the Julian calendar served for more than 1,600 years” (166). Furthermore, “The new calendrical system … did miscalculate the solar year by eleven minutes … in A.D. 1582 Pope Gregory XIII slightly modified the formula for leap years and set the date ahead ten full days. Aside from these few adjustments, the calendar we use today is essentially the Julian version, owing far more to the efforts of Caesar and his astronomers than to Gregory and his. But given Christianity’s dominion over the Western world, it comes down to us as the ‘Gregorian calendar,’ with no tribute rendered unto Caesar” (166).
Caesar spared Brutus at the Battle of Pharsalus: he had a love affair with his mother, and he didn't want to upset her. There were around 60 conspirators, and they were made up of aristocrats, including Brutus, who urged for the assassination of Caesar and not Antony and Lepidus (Antony was Caesar’s right-hand man and Lepidus was the leader of the cavalry) due to not wishing to ruin their public image. The desire for them to keep a positive public image is also seen in their decision to do the killing themselves: they want themselves remembered as heroes, not as murderers and greedy aristocrats: “Caesar was no common magistrate to be dispatched by lowlife assassins, who in any case might have trouble getting close enough to him undetected or might prove to be of dubious reliability when confronting such an awesome prey. More than a mere political assassination, the deed was to be paraded as a glorious tyrannicide, a lesson for generations to come. To remove the usurper and save the Republic, only Rome’s sterling leaders could qualify for such an upstanding historic mission” (171). Of course, when it comes to Caesar’s assassination, the fabled “Ides of March” cannot be forgotten, for good reason: a fortune-teller supposedly told Caesar of his impending death. Furthermore, it was said that Caesar’s wife Calpurnia supposedly had a dream of his assassination the night before his assassination. He almost stayed at home due to Calpurnia’s insistence, but let his guard down when the senators tried to make themselves seem like his allies. When he walked to the Senate house, he talked to the fortune-teller (named Spurinna) of the Ides of March, telling her that the Ides of March have already arrived. She cryptically told him that they had not passed, and that he should be careful. Caesar, not paying any heed to her words, entered the Senate. Once he situated himself in the hall, “suddenly Tillius laid hold of Caesar’s robe, yanking it down from his shoulder, the signal for the assault. The first blow came from behind, delivered by a trembling Publius Casca; it missed its mark, grazing Caesar about the shoulder. He whirled about, seizing his assailant by the arm and wounding him with the stylus he used for writing. Caesar then bolted forward only to be slashed in the face by Cassius. Desperately flaying at his attackers and issuing furious cries like a trapped beast, he took another blade into his side, then swift thrusts into his thigh, his back, and his groin, until he staggered and collapsed, some say, at the base of Pompey’s statue. Even then the assailants continued savaging him with their daggers, some of them accidentally cutting each other in the mêlée. Suddenly all was quiet. Caesar lay motionless, bleeding to death from twenty-three stab wounds” (175-6). After doing the deed, the killers claimed that they had committed murder out of love for Rome and proclaimed themselves as heroes. Lepidus, enraged, gave a stirring speech that turned the public against the assassins. Antony also spoke against the assassins, and Caesar’s soldiers, angered at the death of their leader and desiring the land and money promised to them, combined their forces to oppose the assassins. That is, Antony spoke at Caesar’s funeral that he had: “received many honors from a grateful people. He had mercifully pardoned opponents and even assigned them honors, pursuing a policy of reconciliation rather than retribution … It was Caesar who enacted special laws against murder. Yet this hero and father of Rome, whom none of the enemy abroad had been able to kill, now lay dead, ambushed within his own city, struck down in the very seat of the Senate in an act of vilest perfidy. Caesar was Rome’s benefactor, Antony went on. Even in his death he remembered the people. In his will he allotted 75 denarii to every Roman adult male, and bequeathed them public use of his gardens beyond the Tiber. Antony then picked up Caesar’s robe and displayed its bloodstained rents, pointing out each dagger gash and the number of wounds. Overcome with anguish and fury, the assembled throng placed Caesar’s body on a pyre and set fire to it” (182).
The populace, embittered, attacked the houses of the assassins. The murderers, worried, left Rome to amass armies elsewhere. As for Caesar’s body, it is rumored to be under the Temple of Julius Caesar, which still stands today: the temple was supposedly built on the place where his funeral pyre took place: “To this day, every year on 15 March, numerous bouquets of flowers are left at the temple entrance by persons unknown” (185). Parenti fantastically summarizes in just a few sentences why the senators stabbed Caesar to death: they did so “well before he assumed dictatorial power, even before he first ran for consul in 60 B.C. They sought to thwart him during his proconsulship by attempting to confer on him a province from which he would have gleaned no advantage whatever. They resisted his efforts to forge a way to high office because they detested everything he stood for. Caesar was not just another popularis who rallied the commonality-which would have been bad enough-but a brilliant charismatic one like Gaius Gracchus, who pursued a broad program of redistributive reform. Worse still, like Marius, he had an army at his back … he had devilishly keen political instincts and a deep grasp of social policy. Furthermore, he was personally incorruptible. True, like other public figures he indulged shamelessly in the corrupt practice of buying influence and votes, but he himself could not be bought off or otherwise lured into an alliance with the optimates, as could reformers manqué such as Pompey” (189). Overall, the Roman aristocrats were a terrible section of society that ruthlessly oppressed the lower classes and called for any reform, large or small, treason. Furthermore, their willingness to slander and to use death squads and brutal, uncalled-for assassinations show their true motives. Even worse, they defended their heinous actions as honorable deeds, adding salt to the wound. Parenti once again writes of the hypocrisy of Cicero, Cato, and Brutus: while they verbally claim to wish for a fantastic government headed by wise individuals, they themselves were basically robbers, apologists of mass murders, prolific liars, and greedy tyrants: they “swindled public lands from small farmers (in violation of the law), plundered the provinces like pirates, taxed colonized peoples into penury, imposed backbreaking rents on rural and urban tenants, lacerated debtors with usurious interest rates, expanded the use of slave labor at the expense of free labor, manipulated auspices to stymie popular decisions, resisted even the most modest reforms, bought elections, undermined courts and officeholders with endless bribery, and repeatedly suspended the constitution in order to engage in criminal acts of mass murder against democratic commoners and their leaders. Such were the steadfast republicans upon whom most classical historians gaze so admiringly” (193-4). The whole notion of “republican liberty” refers to the freedom to act for only the elite minority: the vast majority of the Roman population were not to enjoy this.
After Caesar’s assassination, Gaius Octavius (later to be known as “Augustus”) formed the Second Triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus to deal with the assassins. Brutus and Cassius killed themselves after losing a key battle, and all of Caesar’s assassins were soon hunted down and murdered. The Second Triumvirate saw that Caesar’s policy of clemency didn't deter his murderers from butchering him at all, causing them to decide to rule by terror: “Hence the Triumvirate opted for proscriptions, hunting down and killing Caesar’s assassins and their associates. Antony had already made a point of having Cicero tracked in 43. The story goes that, while trying to escape, Cicero leaned his head out of his litter to see who was approaching and was summarily decapitated by his pursuers. So was silenced the golden voice of Rome’s privileged coterie” (198). Later on, Lepidus was demoted, and Antony was defeated at Actium by Octavius. He later committed suicide with Cleopatra, and Octavius named himself the Roman emperor. The Senate didn't have him murdered because he made it clear he would allow them to keep their wealth, and was named “Augustus” by the Senate itself (so much for trying to “defend” liberty, as Augustus was basically a dictator, though he took care to not say he was one). Indeed, for the rest of Rome’s history, the aristocrats and senators didn't assassinate the emperors of Rome, despite the fact that they did hold unlimited power. When Augustus was the emperor, he turned back many of Caesar’s reforms, and was subsequently praised by the Senate. Parenti continues writing that the Roman public doesn’t deserve to be seen as nothing but a fickle mob. This negative attitude towards them is seen fastically in the satirist Juvenal’s quote of “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses): basically, the citizens of Rome (and those of many other countries) should, hypothetically, be complacent if their freedom were stripped, so long as they were provided with entertainment and basic necessities. Parenti states once more that “gentleman historians” (rich people who catered to the views of the rich) have dominated the historical scene, and that they have no right to speak for the vast majority of Romans who suffered from disease, poverty, overwork, and other issues. Also, when it came to the games in the Colosseum, it was true that they served as a distraction for the average citizen, but the relief provided was only temporary. Furthermore, aristocrats were the main participants and spectators of games within the Colosseum: they had the best seats, participated in the games themselves at times, and organized the events. Furthermore, the Roman public still had a conscience, though it sometimes took extreme atrocities (ex. especially grievous animal cruelty) to call from their hearts the better angels of their nature: “The ceremonies to dedicate Pompey’s theater included a battle between a score of elephants and men armed with javelins … The slaughter of the elephants proved more than the crowd could countenance. One giant creature, brought to its knees by the missiles, crawled about, ripping shields from its attackers and tossing them into the air. Another, pierced deeply through the eye with a javelin, fell dead with a horrifying crash. The elephants shrieked bitterly as their tormentors closed in … When they had lost all hope of escape, they turned to the spectators as if to beg for their assistance with heartbreaking gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing. Their pitiful shrieks moved the arena crowd to tears and brought them to their feet cursing Pompey” (212).
When it came to who composed the Roman “mob,” their numbers included those who worked difficult and demanding jobs that just happened to not pay as much as some lucrative professions (these lucrative professions, ironically, involved next to no effort: if you were a usurer in Rome, you could make a large amount of money with little talent): “While Cicero characterized the activist elements among the plebs as ‘exiles, slaves, madmen,’ runaways, criminals, and ‘assassins from the jail,’ in fact, they were masons, carpenters, shopkeepers, scribes, glaziers, butchers, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, bakers, dyers, rope makers, weavers, fullers, tanners, metalworkers, scrap dealers, teamsters, dockers, porters, and various day jobbers-the toiling proletariat of Rome” (215). Most of the Roman plebeians were as poor as slaves: the only difference was that they still had some degree of “freedom.” The Roman proletariat frequently sympathized with slaves: once, when a slave murdered a Roman prefect, Roman tradition ordered for an atrocity. That is, tradition stated that if a slave was to kill their master, all the slaves belonging to that family should be executed to make an example. However, in this scenario there were around 400 slaves in the household, which called for nothing short of a massacre. When the Senate debated, they agreed to put them all to death to show their resolve. This caused a massive public outcry: the presiding emperor Nero was forced to have his soldiers make sure no rebellions would occur. The historian Tacitus “refers to the protestors as ‘the mob’ but he makes no critical reference to the lynch-mob mentality that prevailed within the Senate House among those who sanctioned this mass murder. The deep sense of moral outrage expressed by the protestors signaled a sympathetic bond between impoverished slaves and impoverished plebs” (216). Also, the plebeians honored those who hand their best interests in mind: the aristocrats threatened punishment for people to honor the Gracchi brothers. Despite their threats, the statues commemorating the Gracchi were frequently visited, and many items were left there. It should also be recognized that “the people never offered memorial tributes to Cicero, Cato, Sulla, Catulus, Milo, Brutus, Cassius, or any other prominent senatorial conservative” (218). Parenti proceeds by detailing that we know little of the plebeians and their activism and struggle for better conditions, showing how biased the study of history really is. He ends his book with the following statements: “In the highly skewed accounts of what is called history, Cicero, Brutus, Cato, and other oligarchs come down to us as the defenders of republican liberty; while Caesar-who tried to move against their power and privilege and do something for the poor-comes down to us as a tyrant and usurper. And the people of Rome themselves … come down to us hardly at all, or most usually as a disreputable mob. They who struggled against all odds with all the fear and courage of ordinary humans, whose names we shall never know, whose blood and tears we shall never see, whose cries of pain and hope we shall never hear, to them we are linked by a past that is never dead nor really past. And so, when the best pages of history are finally written, it will be not by princes, presidents, prime ministers, or pundits, nor even by professors, but by the people themselves. For all their faults and shortcomings, the people are all we have. Indeed, we are they” (222).
Personal thoughts:
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti is a stunning, concise, and powerful book. It makes ample use of historical anecdotes, logic, and an innovative perspective to show the reader a surprising (but much-needed) conclusion of Roman society. Indeed, Parenti’s writing is phenomenal: not only does he provide facts, but it is easy to tell that he’s passionate about the topic, as seen in his diction. Furthermore, I like that he didn't use any euphemisms: he called actions for what they truly were. When I first read The Assassination of Julius Caesar (given to me for Christmas by my Latin teacher: I greatly appreciated the present), I thought of Cicero and Cato as honorable people and I viewed Caesar very negatively (I heard of his genocidal killings of the Gauls). After reading the book, my previous opinions have greatly changed, as I know now that Cicero and the other oligarchs deserve no respect due to the immorality of their actions. When it comes to Caesar, I greatly admire him, though my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that he was responsible for many horrendous deeds (however, many other leaders in history also were, including Sulla): although he engaged in dishonest practices (like all the other politicians of his day), he still championed the rights of the Roman people and practiced clemency towards his enemies. Even if those gestures were only to amass popularity, they’re still remarkable nonetheless. Reading this book has greatly improved my understanding of Roman history: I highly recommend The Assassination of Julius Caesar to anyone interested in income inequality, class conflict, politics, Rome, historical figures, and the study of history as a discipline itself.
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