One of Caesar’s friends, Asinius Pollio, was present when he deliberated crossing the Rubicon and recorded his thoughts and actions during the civil war so might have been a most helpful source in identifying possible enemies of Caesar and their motives during the final few years of his life but Pollio’s writings are unfortunately lost. Much of Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar and Life of Brutus and Appian’s Civil Wars (of which the second book considers Caesar and Pompey) are said to be derived from Pollio’s work however. In all of Plutarch’s lives he writes in a biographic fashion which is important because it focuses on the individual and their achievements, glorifying them but not attempting to understand history and create any real line of argument. As a result he does not consider in detail the motives to kill Caesar although Plutarch does make reference to one of Brutus’ friends, Empylus, who wrote a short but detailed account of Caesar’s assassination titled ‘Brutus’.We unfortunately possess no copy of it but the fact that this story glorifying the murderers was not deemed worthy of preservation gives some insight into the overall popularity or rather lack of popularity for the assassination of Caesar. Appian’s account of Caesar’s assassination creates an ominous sense of hubris and makes comparisons in Caesar’s fall to that of Alexander the Great, dramatising his death but again paying little attention to the motives of the assassins. Finally, Suetonius’ Life of the Deified Julius in The Twelve Caesars depicts Caesar acting as Rex but gives little thought to any other possible motives for his eventual assassination. The difficulty with many of our primary sources, particularly the Romans or Greek writers influenced greatly by Rome such as Plutarch who held Roman citizenship, is that the histories are written by the aristocracy and reflect this, often simplifying complex matters into a depiction of heroic men fighting evil to preserve the res publica.
Firstly let’s consider the traditional belief that has been affirmed over millennia. It has been argued that of all Caesar’s unlawful and power driven actions, the one that separates him from any previous ‘warlords’ of the Republic was to act as Rex. Following its legendary origins of the usurpation of King Tarquin Superbus by Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman Republic’s structure of political office, the cursus honorum, had been designed specifically to prevent any individual rising to such prominence that they might ever again act as a king. Marcus Junius Brutus, who claimed to be descended from the original liberator Lucius Junius Brutus as well as multiple honourable men including a consul, jurist and a father who had been killed for siding with Marius in the previous civil war, felt it his duty to rid the Republic of another tyrannical monarch. Though Caesar’s decisions to march on Rome and engage in civil war with Pompey were crimes against the state, his most heinous crime was the manner in which he abused the role of dictator and acted like a King, and it was this climax which ultimately lead to his assassination. After all, Lucius Cornelius Sulla had followed a similar path some decades earlier; the key difference is that when Dictator, Sulla had made reforms that appeared to be in the interest of the Republic, even his proscriptions, before then stepping down, whilst Caesar’s short reign saw him invoke the right of clemency on some of Pompey’s followers including Cicero and Brutus (an act reserved for Kings), give his name to time itself (Julian Calendar/July) and ultimately dismiss two tribunes of the people for removing a crown that had been placed upon his statue. This argument is not without merit, and no doubt some of the dozens of senators involved in Caesar’s assassination might have believed it to be true, but ultimately this does not adequately provide a motive for the scores of young Roman nobility who would benefit greatly from the dictator for life’s death.
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