I can`t even remember a girlfriend`s name. PARENTI: The first one was a young one - oh, you`re going to - you`re going to put me on the spot to remember their names now. And there he was, at the height of his power. And eventually, Caesar took his army to Greece and beat Pompey and won the civil war and came back. And there - and the - the oligarchic, the elite, aristocratic party, realizing they couldn`t hold Rome against him, went to Greece, where they felt they had stronger support. They saw him as somebody who was more or less on their side. And today in our language, we still have that expression, crossing the Rubicon, which means a momentous decision, an irrevocable decision.Īnd as he came down the peninsula, the Italian cities opened their gates to him, and the towns welcomed him. You`ve committed - I mean, it`s civil war. And if you come back with an army onto - into Italian territory without permission of the government, you`ve committed an act of treason. When you cross it, you`re in Italian territory. The Rubicon was a small river in northern Italy. He came back and - and this is when he made that momentus decision to cross the Rubicon. PARENTI: Gaul is what is now France - France and little parts of Germany he also invaded and took over. So he did not - coming back, I should explain, from Gaul. And they encouraged Pompey to raise an army, and they - and they demanded that Caesar disband his army and come back unarmed. They wanted the whole thing, and they would not compromise with Caesar in any way. They were really looking to go back to a pre - constitution that was 200 years before. The more conservative aristocratic group - "conservative" might not be the word - reactionary. Won`t have to worry about either of them, and we will stay in the saddle. They - they did not - they really pushed for a one-sided - the ultra - the ultra-oligarchic group did - the senate actually agreed to that plan. He called for an alliance, a mutual disarming of him, of his group and the aristocrats, who now had Pompey with them, and let the - as he said, Let the people at the senate and the people of Rome, through their assemblies, rule Rome, and we`ll have no armies. He knew he would be finished if he did that. Well, when he came back from Gaul, the aristocratic party wanted him to surrender his army and to appear and present himself. PARENTI: Oh, the word "emperor" hadn`t had the same meaning - commander. The Assassination of Julius Caesar offers a whole new perspective on an era we thought we knew well. In these pages we find reflections on the democratic struggle waged by Roman commoners, religious augury as an instrument of social control, the patriarchal oppression of women, and the political use of homophobic attacks. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the distinguished author Michael Parenti subjects these assertions of “gentlemen historians” to a bracing critique, and presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth.Īs he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. They have generally regarded Roman commoners as a parasitic mob interested only in bread and circuses, as Cicero’s “starving, contemptible rabble.” And they have cast Caesar, who took up the popular cause of the poor, as little better than an adventurer and a demagogue, presenting his murder as a personal feud or a constitutional struggle, devoid of social content. Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility.
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