2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Trumpism, here to stay?
Still, no. And it’s not just rhetoric of the victors. We have the records from people on both sides of the conflict.
The idea that Caesar “capitalized on public discontent to topple the republic” is what’s woefully incorrect here. Not even remotely the sequence of events that played out. Even by the accounts of pro-senate writers like Cicero, that’s not what happened.
You can definitely find examples of that in history, and this situation with Trump is looking like history repeating itself with regards to those, but Caesar’s struggle with the Roman Senate isn’t a parallel situation.
Comment by LeoSolaris at 27/01/2025 at 14:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The Roman civil war that ended the Republic can be fairly described as a bitter rivalry between two former allies, namely Pompey and Julius.
Julius very much capitalized on his fame built on the success of the war with the Gauls to maintain his legions after the war. Julius's ally Scribonius, the plebian tribune, proposed that both Pompey and Julius disband their armies. The Senate agreed with this plan 370 to 22. Pompey rejected the proposal and his ally Claudius Marcellus used rumors of an invasion by Julius to charge Pompey with defending the city of Rome.
No, I am not making a 1-to-1 comparison between Trump and Caesar. The politics of the time were wildly different. For instance Pompey was Julius's son-in-law. However, the Plebian Assembly supporting Julia's political maneuvering was a critical part of the chain of events.