Salvete:
I just finished reading an interesting book just recently published,
The Assassination of Julius Caesar by Michael Parenti. In his book, Parenti
surveys the social conditions of the common roman, your average Aulus, which
constituted the vast majority of the Romans and in that background surveys a
list of reformers and he places Julius Caesar as the last in that list of
reformers who were assassinated and slandered.
I came out of this book liking Caesar a lot more than I did before,
specially that I had just read a book on Alexander who was incredibly
vindictive and brutal. In fact, that seems to have been the norm in the
ancient world and Caesar seems to be an exception in that regard as he
showed magnanimity in victory and did not persecute his ennemies and tried
to make friends of them instead. And if you are an admirer of Cicero,
you're in for a shock
It is a small book that could be read in one sitting. Here is an
excerpt from the blurb in the back cover:
"Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the late Republic
of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. They regard Roman commoners
as a parasitic mob, a rabble only interested in bread and circuses. They
cast Caesar, who took up the popular cause, as a despot and demagogue, and
treat his murder as the outcome of a personal feud or constitutional
struggle, devoid of social content. 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
compelling story of popular resistance against power and wealth...."
Here is an excerpt from the book itself:
"The "mobs" of eighteenth- and nineteenth - century England and France
are described by the upper class critics of those times as composed of
beggars, convicts, and other lowlife detritus. But records reveal that
rebel crowds consisted of farm laborers, masons, and various other kinds of
craftsmen, along with shopkeepers, wine merchants, cooks, porters, domestic
servants, miners, and urban laborers, almost all of fixed abode, some
temporarily unemployed, only a handful of whom were vagrants or had criminal
records." And these, the Roman mob, are really what Parenti writes about,
the people and those who championed their cause, Caesar being the most
prominent.
And here is something which I did not know nor expect:
"Today in modern Rome, amidst the ruins of the forum there stands the
temple of Julius Caesar, reputedly built upon the very site where his
earthly remains had been burned. Indeed, it seems centrally situated in the
forum, just where Caesar's body would most likely have been placed. The
temple is a modest one story structure composed of the dark narrow bricks
that were the common building material of the Republic public edifices.
(Rome did not become a city of marbles until Augustus). It is said that the
ashes of Caesar pyre still rest somewhere beneath the structure. To this
day, every year on 15 March, numerous bouquets of flowers are left at the
temple entrance by persons unknown."
I know that here in this forum there are many people who are
diametrically opposed to Parenti's conclusions, and it would be interesting
to hear their arguments. I am no expert and I am still learning.
Valete
G. Galerius Peregrinator.
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