Remember the Ides of March

Ides of March – the midpoint of the third month, made famous by the killing of the dictator, Julius Caesar. Many in the past have glorified Caesar as a great military campaigner, and glamorised him as a charismatic leader who knew just how to get people on side.

However, the more historians have uncovered about his brutality, not just in slaughtering those who sought to resist Roman conquest, but in destroying fellow Romans who tried to prevent him from amassing absolute power, the more he is seen as the ruthless manipulator he truly was. 

By the time Caesar emerged as a politician in 69 BC, Rome had put an end to the kingly rule for over four centuries. Instead, power was shared with the people through elected public officials. No one person could have the power to dictate to others, except in times of emergency when that was necessary to have one decision-maker to take control, but even then, the arrangement was strictly time-limited and the person entrusted with that power was still ultimately accountable to the senate. 

But Caesar wanted to have the power of a king, to be able to impose his will on everyone else with no check or balance. To achieve that, he knew he had to dismantle the Roman system of power sharing and public accountability. Others such as Cato the Younger, Cassius, and Brutus knew that too, and they came to realise that Caesar must be stopped from taking ever more power to control the country.

Alas, Caesar had been able to sway more and more senators to back him, stir up mobs to ensure public expression of support favour him, and command battle-hardened troops to defeat those who opposed him. When the desperate act of assassination came on 15 March, 44 BC, it was too late. The Roman republic was disintegrating. The power to rule had been so twisted that kingly control by any name had established itself. It did not take long for Caesar’s adopted son, Octavius, to rid himself of his one-time allies, Lepidus and Mark Antony, and reign supreme as Augustus Caesar. Following him, the absolute power to rule would always be vested in (or seized by) one man who would be addressed reverentially by all other Romans as Caesar.

Anyone wondering why having one person with absolute power is so bad may reflect for a moment on the names of Caesars such as Nero, Caligula, Commodus, and their notorious cruelty, incompetence, wastefulness, and depravity. In a republic, a poor leader has to step down if they lack electoral support. Under a Caesar, you protest in vain and still risk being executed.

Many US Republicans, contrary to the name of their party, are yearning for their own Caesar – someone who will wield power without ‘liberal’ constraints, control the judicial system with his own acolytes, hunt down his political enemies, invoke election results only when they are in his favour.  They may yet get their wish.

Except the Caesar they end up with may well be in the mould of a Nero or Caligula.