In a move to alleviate this poverty, Caesar, while Dictator, founded new settlements for his veterans and 80,000 of Rome's poor. He also required landowners and businessmen to hire freemen as one-third of their total labor force on their latifundia (Roman plantations, see Parenti, op. Cit., chapter 8).
Caesar demonstrated a remarkable clemency for a man of his era, at least when fighting his fellow Romans. Many of Caesar's assassins were granted amnesty when, after Pharsalus and other battles between the legions of the oligarchs and Caesar, they were captured. Only when Caesar returned to Spain a second time, putting down a rebellion by Pompey's two grown sons, did he follow the traditional course of the ancient world by giving no quarter.
One of the most blatant examples of the Caesar Factor involved his contemporary opponents. They have been portrayed as freedom-loving republicans, stopping a tyrant from destroying the Roman constitution and enslaving the Republic's citizens. The reality is they-like so many of today's oligarchs-were individuals who did not hesitate to violate the constitution, laws, and traditions of the Roman Republic when it benefited them.
These "paragons" of Republican virtue, were not above bribing the electorate to win an election for their fellow optimates. Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger for example, would publicly condemn the practice of-and happily prosecute any popularis who was caught-buying even a single vote, while defending his fellow optimates' electoral bribery as being for the good of Rome.
Marcus Tullius Cicero spoke for the rights of Roman citizens, but as Consul he trumped up improbable charges of rebellion, attempted murder and treason against Lucius Sergius Catiline. Catiline was a recent convert to the popularis cause, and Cicero's opponent in the previous year's election for Roman Consul. Cicero also ordered the execution of five men (one of them a praetor, the second highest office in Rome) without trial for allegedly conspiring with Catiline, an act that was contrary to Roman law and tradition.
The "noble" Marcus Junius Brutus (to use Shakespeare's description) was one of the two or three richest men in Rome. He loaned money at an extortionate rate (as much as 48 per cent annually) to provincial cities so they could pay tribute to Rome's publicani (tax collectors). Brutus did not hesitate to illegally make use of Rome's legions to lay siege to a city or town in order to collect what they owed him (Parenti, op. Cit., chapter 7).
The optimates used "death squads" to murder their political opponents since the time of the Gracchi. They exploited the Roman proletariat, the provinces, and treasury. They undertook these crimes not out of love for Rome, but to advance their political career, increase their political clout, or add to their personal wealth. Brutus and his fellow assassins murdered Caesar not because he was a tyrant, but because he denied the optimates their traditional "rights" of murder, theft, and extortion.
Caesar's assassination by Rome's plutocrats spelled the end of the Roman Republic. His heir Augustus established the principate, a form of hereditary monarchy that marginalized the traditional political rights of both the Senate and the people of Rome. This provided a temporary degree of stability, but its reliance on the military, and the spark of madness that infected the Julio-Claudian dynasty, limited the length of that stability.
Caesar was-if we are to believe Suetonius and Plutarch-popular with the vast majority of Rome's lower and middle class citizens. No, he was more than popular: he was beloved.
It wasn't a blind infatuation: "the mob," "the rabble," (to use two of the kinder descriptions that the oligarchs have used to describe the mass of farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, laborers, tradesmen, and other members of the poor, working and middle class over the centuries) held Caesar to account even after he became Dictator of Rome.
The best-known instance was when Marcus Antonius (Shakespeare's Mark Anthony) thrice offered Caesar a kingly diadem during the Lupercalia (one of Rome's major religious festivals), an offstage event that Shakespeare made famous. The elimination of usurious interest rates-or more precisely, the renewed enforcement of existing law-together with the partial forgiveness of debts by Caesar, were a direct result of pressure by Rome's poor, working and middle classes on the Dictator (Parenti, op. Cit. Chapter 11).
No, the lower and middle classes of Rome loved Gaius Julius Caesar, and he loved them in return. Caesar understood that it was the people of Rome as a whole, not just the Roman Senate and the upper classes, who were truly sovereign. When Caesar was murdered, the masses of the Roman people threw everything they could find on his funeral pyre, even breaking into houses to find fuel for that fire. This affection continues today, twenty-and-one-half centuries after his death: bouquets of flowers are left at the Temple of Julius Caesar in Rome's ruined Forum every year on March 15th, the anniversary of his death (Parenti, op Cit., chapter 7).
As Shakespeare wrote, "The evil which men do lives on after them; the good oft lies interred with the bones." (Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 2.)
What has this to do with any of the problems we are currently facing in the United States? One of the underlying faults for the difficulties we face today is a modern version of the Caesar Factor. These are lies and myths perpetrated by conservative politicians, commentators and historians in order to give Americans false hope for their future prospects. These lies and myths include that it is possible for anyone to become President of the United States, fabulously rich, or achieve fame, regardless of their background, if they are willing to work hard and sacrifice.
This, like all myths, incorporate a small portion of the truth into a given tale. In the case of the American success story, the myth-makers can always point to someone who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps," and achieved some extraordinary degree of success. The reality is that such people are the exception, and not the rule.
Another myth perpetrated by our modern optimates, is that all government programs are inherently more inefficient and costly, than if they were done by the private sector.
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