Ah the roman republic, perhaps the ancient world's most brilliant form of government. It's had a rough go in its later years But with the right people in charge I bet that it could continue on for centuries to come. Like this guy right here, Julius Caesar, who I'm sure will do everything in his power to preserve the Republic! *Music* We saw in the last couple videos that as Roman politics got increasingly factional and Roman territory got increasingly massive, things started getting Increasingly Civil War-y, as in they'd barely be able to go a decade between 135 and 30 BC without collapsing into some variety of a civil war. It's honestly a minor miracle that Rome didn't permanently tear itself in half before we even got to Caesar. So as we push forward through history and get to talking about our old buddy Julius I want to consider the question of whether the Roman Republic-- not Rome as a whole, but specifically the Republican system of government, was doomed to fail or whether it had any chance of survival. Because our answer to that question really matters when we look at people like Caesar and Augustus and ask ourselves what they did and whether or not they went too far. But since I'm impatient I'm going to give you my answer right now. To me, the Republic had almost no chance of surviving on its own. Zero. You saw what happened in the first century. You know what kind of mess Rome was in. I love the Roman Republic! It's one of my favorite systems of government ever, but that poor thing was so screwed! So with our sickly-looking Republic on its last legs, let's meet the guy who took it out back and killed it dead: Julius Caesar. Now let's do some history. To establish what kind of guy Caesar really is, I'll spin you a yarn about some Cilician pirates. When Caesar was in his early 20s, he managed to get himself captured by a band of pirates who wanted to ransom him off for twenty talents of silver. There's no agreed-upon conversion between talents and US dollars, but for our purposes let's just say that one talent is about 1 million dollars. So, when Caesar heard this sum he straight-up laughed at them and demanded that they asked for a much more respectable 50 talents instead. The pirates, charmed by Caesar's overwhelming diva-ness and razor sharp cheekbones, I might add, were all too happy to keep him around for the sheer entertainment factor! He played games with them, told stories, and even wrote poems and speeches for them. Sometimes they'd joke about his speeches being bad and Caesar would respond by saying that when he got free he'd come back and crucify every last one of them, which the pirates apparently thought was hilarious. Eventually the pirates did get their fifty talents, so they let Caesar go. And then about five seconds later, Caesar came back with a bunch of ships and arrested all of them, casually taking his fifty talents back. He brought the pirates to the provincial governor, but since he didn't really seem to care all that much, Caesar took matters into his own hands and took the high road by keeping his promise... and, ah, crucified all of them. Fun! Moral of the story is: Caesar cares a lot about his image, he's amazingly charismatic, he's not afraid to take matters into his own hands if he needs to and he does not screw around. On to more historically significant matters our boy Gaius Julius Caesar was a well-to-do nobleman from a prestigious family that traced its ancestry back to the epic hero Aeneas and his mother Venus. However Caesar had a chip on his shoulder because his dad was never Consul. You see, in Roman culture the concept of nobilitas was rooted in the idea that you can inherit excellence, but you have to confirm it by doing excellent things in the present. So unlike in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution and the early modern period, you couldn't just coast by on familial prestige, you actually had to, you know, do something for it in ancient Rome. Caesar's dad not being consul was a big deal, so his primary goal in life was to confirm his nobilitas by just being Consul. To do it he struck a deal with two other prominent Romans: Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and Pompey, Rome's most accomplished general, and they created an informal alliance. In other words, they made the first Triumvirate. They were all good friends. Pompey married Caesars daughter, Crassus bribed Caesar's way to the Consulship in 59 BC, Caesar passed all the laws that Pompey and Crassus wanted, it was a good time! In the process of ramming through debt forgiveness and land redistribution legislation, Caesar maybe-definitely broke several procedural norms, and did things that were straight-up illegal. But since he was consul, he had Imperium, the gold Mario star of Roman politics, which meant that he couldn't be prosecuted for his actions while he was in office. Regularly overriding the veto of your co-Consul on the principle of because I said so and filling the city with legionaries to dissuade your political opponents may be definite no-no's in the eyes of the Roman elite, but no one could really do anything about it. If you want the full details of Caesar's Consulship, this video here shows you all of the shady- but-also-kind-of-despicably-brilliant stuff that went down. Anyway for Caesar's year in power, he was safe, but once that Consulship and his Imperium expired, Caesar had a big target on his back, so he needed to find a way to keep his Imperium until he was allowed to run for Consul again, 10 years later. Conveniently, generals also have Imperium, so Caesar's next move was to secure himself a governorship of a province and the command of a few legions so he could go around campaigning with all the Imperium in the world until he could stand for Consul again. Some Senators, fearing that Caesar would do literally exactly that, tried to swap his guarantee for governor of a province for, essentially, governor of the Italian woods. But Pompey and Crassus, again, had enough power to overturn that. Coins and stabby things tend to get you a lot in life. But here we see just how fragile the Republic really was at this point; anyone with enough connections and resources could effectively cripple the normal flow of government and steer it in favorable directions for their own benefit. But anyway, Caesar got himself four legions and a cushy governorship in southern Gaul, along with a metric buttload of military Imperium to keep him safe, and set about campaigning in Gaul for the next 10 years. Alright, cross-promotion time. So Historia Civilis, the guy who made the video about Caesar's Consulship, has over a dozen other fantastic videos dedicated to Caesar and his Gallic campaigns. So if you want to know way more about that particular chunk of history, links in the description. It's astounding how much we know in detail about these campaigns and it's because Caesar himself wrote extensive commentaries on them. This was critical, as he could justify his continued campaign in Gaul, year after year, by showing how cool he was and how great of a job he was doing, while also building up support among the Roman people by also showing how cool he was and how great of a job he was doing. Plus we got a history out of it, so win-win-win! Alright, so in enough detail that I can still sleep at night, but also in short enough form that this video won't be an hour long, Caesar's campaign went roughly as follows: in 58 BC Caesar attacks the Helvetii tribe on the pretense that they were attacking an ally of Rome. Because remember, Rome would never be so crass as to attack unprovoked. At the end of each year's campaigning, season Caesar left his armies in Gaul and spent the winters in northern Italy. The next year Cesar went north, won a battle and got ambushed one time. In 56 Caesar claimed that the Veneti tribe had, quote 'revolted from Rome,' even though they were in goddamn Finisterre, so, uh, he conquered it. Safe to say at this point that Caesar functionally considered all of Gaul as already his. I mean Rome's. The next year Caesar went really hard on the 'Gaul is Roman' thing. He considered Britain and Germany as threats to Gaul, and therefore as threats to Rome. So in the same year, he bridged the Rhine and attacked some Germans and he sailed across the English Channel. The invasion of Britain was honestly a total bust, so the next year he went back with a huge fleet, because the man can't leave well enough alone, and pushed as far north as the Thames. After his floundering, humiliating scramble on the British beaches the year before, Caesar had to prove that Rome was no pushover- to his enemies, to himself and to his Romans back home. Oh, also he lost an entire Legion to an ambush in the dead of winter, so, uh oops! In 53 he went back to Germany and afterwards left half of his bridge still standing in a sort of 'don't you make me come back there' power play. The following year was probably the biggest year of the campaign because King Vercingetorix had unified the remaining Gaulic tribes against Rome. After some battling back and forth, Vercingetorix camped out on the fortified hill city of Alesia. Now, Caesar needed to surround and wall off the city to starve it out, but there was also the distinct likelihood that he, himself got attacked while investing the city. So Caesar needed to fortify both directions! His army built a ten-mile long wall on the inside and a 14 mile long wall on the outside! That's 24 miles of wall that Caesar threw down because he was goddamn determined to take this city! But ohhh snap, next thing you know a ton of angry Gauls come down to attack Caesar. So Caesar rolls a natural 20 on his deception check, sends out a cavalry detachment to attack them, but the Gauls think it's the first of an entire Roman reinforcement force so they panic and book it right the hell out of there, allowing Caesar to take the city and just like that all of Gaul basically belongs to Caesar. BOOM! That's how you do a campaign. The next two years are spent cleaning up the last pockets of resistance, because remember, Caesar still had a few years before he's allowed to buy his way to the Consulship again. To complicate things, Crassus died while on a campaign in Parthia, and Pompey, feeling his oats, got the Senate to rescind Caesars governorship of Gaul. So even the triumvirate, which was supposed to be immune to the vices of factionalism, fell victim to the vices of factionalism. It's, ah, It's not a good sign. So Caesar Got Pompey's note, and astutely realizing that going back to Rome on his own was nearly a death sentence, Caesar feeling HIS oats, said screw it, or more accurately said Alea iacta est, and brought the 13th Legion over the Rubicon River and into Italy. Pompey and most of the Senate proceeded to nope right the hell out of town and go to Greece. Caesar, rousing the support of the people, was proclaimed temporary diktator, Latin for 'speaker,' with the goal of restoring peace. Even though he was technically the one who started the civil war, but shhh, details. And he proceeded to absolutely demolish Pompey's army in Greece at the Battle of Pharsalus against all odds. Again, Historia Civilis. And then he chased poor old Pompey to the end of the earth, which in this case was Egypt. Pompey sought refuge with the boy King Ptolemy who owed him a favor, and was likely very displeased to find himself beheaded instead. Terrible way to start a vacation. Anyway, Caesar was absolutely horrified to see Pompey's head, because first of all, he was a fellow Roman citizen, but also, Caesar was planning on PARDONING him afterwards, not killing him. See, this is a lesson in how healthy communication saves lives. But yeah, Caesar was super big on clemency, that was pretty much his thing. Except for, you know, the Pirates he crucified, but anyway. In addition to pardoning some people, tribes, and even whole towns during the Gallic campaign, Caesar pardoned pretty much Pompey's entire army and all of his supporters who fled to Greece with him. For me personally, that's one of the most important aspects of Caesars character. And he was certainly a controversial character, but it's important that we weigh the good with the bad. He broke a TON of laws and sold his soul just to become Consul, but he made moderate reforms that benefited the people. He killed a LOT of Gauls and Romans in the civil wars following his Consulship, but he granted clemency wherever he could. And he basically fashioned himself a king after he was appointed dictator for life, but he was beloved by his people and he used his power to stabilize Rome. All in all, he did do a lot of serious and lasting for Rome's people, but that good was done through politically devious means for suspiciously power-hungry motivations. He's a controversial character for really good reason, and I'm doing my best to give you both sides of this right now so you can get a feel for some of the questions people like Brutus asked themselves when they were making plans to assassinate him. But I'm getting behead of myself. Uhh... sorry. AHEAD of myself. Oof. Awkward... While Caesar was in Egypt deciding what to do with poor old Pompey's head, he was making moves both with and on the Queen, Cleopatra, supporting her in her civil war against her brother. The arrangement proved beneficial for both of them, as Cleopatra could count on Caesar's Rome supporting, rather than annexing Egypt, and Caesar could count on Cleopatra's Egypt as a continuous source of food, which helped supply Caesar's generous public food programs. And for bonus points, by all accounts Cleopatra was just, plain interesting to talk to, so... win-win! Following Caesars return to Rome, his position as dictator was extended to ten years. During his time as dictator, Caesar managed to instate even more reforms that promoted public welfare, government efficiency and general stability. For one, he limited the political and military power of provincial governors, mostly to stop other people from doing to him what he did to Pompey and the Senate. He also reformed the monstrosity that was the old Roman calendar so well that we still use a version of it today. He also conducted a census, carried out several building projects, unified the Roman provinces more closely with Italy and was just all around a really solid leader. Did he pull a lot of super-mega illegal stunts to get himself to this point? Ah-heh. Absolutely! But, did he make substantially beneficial reforms that the people loved? Absolutely. Okay, this is the part that makes me sad and angry. In March of 44 BC Caesar was named dictator for life and this made a lot of Senators really antsy, because at this point he was basically King and Rome still very specifically didn't like Kings. On the Ides of March Brutus, Cassius and about 60 other senators surrounded and killed Caesar in the theater of Pompey. Ironic. Caesar's last moments are rather disputed, but my take on it is that when he saw Brutus, his friend, whom he had pardoned after Pharsalus, was a part of the conspiracy, he accepted his fate and fell to the ground, covering his face with his toga. I don't think Caesar, even, was eloquent enough to have fancy last words when there were twenty three knives simultaneously stabbing him. No one is. The assassins may have fancied themselves liberators and restorers of the Republic, but they didn't count on the fact that the Romans really LIKED Caesar, because, oh, gee, I don't know, he was a generous and effective leader? Well, I may disapprove of Caesar's actions in his early career I abhor his assassins. He granted them clemency and they killed him! Dante puts Brutus and Cassius in the lowermost pit of hell for betraying their protector... and I'm with Dante on this one. Anyway that's Caesar. Stabbed twenty-three times and left bleeding out on the floor of the Curia. Brutus and Cassius were able to read the mood in the room well enough to tell they weren't wanted, so they and a bunch of Senators hightailed it to Greece to build up an army. As we'll see in the next video, it doesn't end too well for the assassins, but I'm already into overtime, so let's wrap this up. In my mind, Caesar killed the Republic long before he was even dictator. He proved how breakable the system was. Let's count it: he bribed his way into office, illegally rammed legislation through the Senate, intimidated his political enemies with threats of force, escaped any and all consequences for his actions on a technicality, commandeered Roman resources for his own prestige and enrichment, marched an entire Legion into Rome and declared war on a fellow Roman for his own political gain! The entirety of Caesar's main political career was either distinctly un-Republican in character or explicitly illegal! And remember that only after all of that did the Senate name Caesar as dictator for the FIRST time. By the time Caesar was named dictator for life and functionally had become a king, he had long since proved that the Republic was fundamentally broken. For most of the Republic's history its success came from fantastic Roman teamwork. But here, its downfall came primarily from the selfishness of powerful Romans. People realized how incredibly fragile and game-able the institutions of the Republic were when you stretched them across the entire Mediterranean, so basically one of two things could have happened to Rome. Either civil wars continued on and eventually ripped Rome to bits, or something in Rome's government changed to make it less susceptible to all those civil wars in the first place. Basically, it was monarchy or bust at this point, because nothing else could stop the chaos. While Augustus becoming Emperor down the line was far from a guarantee, Rome's transition from a Republic to a monarchy was inevitable if it was to survive. It's a little paradoxical, but in a way Caesar saved Rome by destroying the then-unstable and unworkable Republic. He abused the HELL out of its institutions, but in doing so he showed how effective a strong and stable central government could be. And this was the basis of Rome's accomplishments for the centuries to follow. Today Caesar kills the Republic. Next time Augustus starts an empire. *Music*