Julius Caesar was one of the very best military commanders of all time. His military skills were unmatched. Besides his military skills, Caesar was a charismatic figure beloved by his men. Just his presence would give his soldiers confidence. Other military leaders which deserve mentioning include Scipio Africanus, Pompey, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Byzantine general Belasarius, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery, Erwin Rommel and many others. However, what follows will be about Julius Caesar.
In Roman times, successful military leaders often gained significant personal and political power. Many of these individuals leveraged their achievements on the battlefield to secure control within the political sphere. Julius Caesar exemplified this pattern, using the influence he had amassed through his military success to further his own political ambitions.
Caesar's pursuit of power was marked by a deliberate effort to consolidate authority. His growing dominance eventually provoked fear among his contemporaries, leading to his assassination in 43bc. The conspirators who took part in his murder were motivated by a desire to halt the expansion of his power, which they viewed as a threat to the established order.
Up to Caesar's ascent, Rome operated as a Republic governed by elected officials and a senate. Caesar’s drive for absolute power represented a fundamental shift away from this system. Instead of serving within the framework of the Republic, Caesar sought to concentrate power in his own hands, challenging the traditional structure of Roman governance.
The Roman Republic had been a stable and successful system of governance for many centuries. Throughout its history, the republic was characterized by elected officials and a senate, which together maintained the balance of power and ensured the smooth functioning of the state. However, following the death of Julius Caesar, a significant transformation occurred within Roman politics. The traditional republican structure gave way to a new system; one dominated by emperors. Emperors were absolute rulers with total power at their whim. The first individual to assume the title of emperor was Gaius Octavius, known as Augustus, Caesar’s adopted son, also known as Octavian; he ruled from 27bc to 14ad. Augustus established the imperial system that would continue for more than a millennium; until the Eastern Empire's (the Byzantines) fall of Constantinople in 1453, crushed by the Moslem Turks.
Although Caesar has been lauded for his military skill, he brought about a form of government that was antithetical for freedom and rule by the people. One man had all the power with no one to check it. Emperors and tyrants are one and the same. Today we have modern examples: Sadam Hussain, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jung Un and the Chinese tyrants that rule China with an iron hand. Tyrants can order the murder of anyone they want. The Russian tyrant, Putin, arranges for his opponents death; some fall out of apartments, some die from an arranged explosion of an aircraft, as happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, was killed in a plane crash in Russia in August 2023, or Alexei Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption crusader and political opposition figure. He died in February 2024 at the age of 47 while imprisoned in a Siberian penal colony. Many more examples can be shown by other tyrants.
History has shown that the form of government led by emperors and tyrants is not only oppressive but a failure of good government. Adolf Hitler caused the death of millions and millions of people during World War 2. He ordered a military attack on Europe and the Soviet Union and his military followed. Along the way he murdered all the Jews he could find. In Kiev, Ukraine, he butchered about 35,000 Jews. The Byzantine emperors, for example, could order the murder of anyone the perceived to be a threat to their power or simply order that they be blinded, which happened regularly. The sixth century Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered the slaughter of over 30,000 people he surrounded and locked in a stadium until all were butchered. After he did this heinous act, he ordered the building of the grandest Christian church, the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, which today is a Museum/Mosque.
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