In 49
BCE, at the tail end of the glorious, democratic, six-hundred-year-old Roman
Republic, Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon River in northeast Italy
and thus crossed the point of no return, for he knew his action defied both tradition
and law and that he and his army would soon be entering Rome, taking it by force.
He knew he was leading a revolution.
“The die is cast,” he famously said as he crossed the river, understanding full
well what he was doing and what it meant, that he was challenging by main force
the entrenched, senate-run government that was buckling under the weight of widespread
popular unrest.
The very
same Romans who were challenging Senate rule, welcomed Caesar as their savior, but
overcoming six centuries of entrenched government also created chaos as opposing
parties vied with each other for power—which made the government even more unstable.
The
people looked to Caesar to calm the waters, to restore order, to bring peace back
to the city and the republic. They wanted
him to be king, a title Rome had proudly done without for some six
centuries. It was a matter of pride that they had no king, so Caesar wisely
refused the offer, but then not-so-wisely accepted the same position rephrased as
Rome’s "Dictator for Life."
Clearly this was a semantic evasion, which
led the most conservative Senators, calling themselves the Liberators, to plot
and successfully assassinate Caesar on the Ides of March, 44. So the
democratic Roman Republic, which had long been run by a conservative ruling
class, was threatened by a leftist revolution supporting a dictator who was
then assassinated by Senate conspirators. The political landscape of
conservative Senators and military revolutionaries shifted so quickly that it
was all but impossible to determine which party was actually conserving the
glories of the Roman Republic. They
probably both thought that’s what they were doing.
Gradually,
after Augustus, Caesar’s adopted son and heir, took the reins of government,
the Roman Empire was born and lasted another five hundred years, a long saga of
Roman emperors, ranging from the very good like Augustus and Marcus Aurelius to
the very bad like Caligula and Nero, a long era of Dictators for Life.
What
does this long history of Roman power and grandeur tell us? That the
justly celebrated and democratic Roman Republic ran out of steam after about
700 years and was replaced by an autocratic government led by a succession of famous
and infamous Roman emperors, all of whom led an undemocratic system that eventually self-destructed
too. But altogether, the Republic and
the Empire lasted an astounding twelve hundred years. Rome prospered
under both forms--then crashed and burned under both forms.
Conclusion: Democratic republics aren’t any more
successful in the grand scheme of things than the rule of tyrants. Damn it.
