The Death of Caesar, by Jean-Léon Gérôme. Our culture of exploitation and military conquest for the benefit of the wealthy few is as old as ancient Rome. (Image: Jean-Léon Gérôme)
When presidential candidates run on a campaign of “change,” historians typically roll their eyes. After all, Western political systems haven’t changed in 2,000 years — so it’s highly doubtful that an egalitarian society will emerge any time soon. In Ancient Rome, senators of the elite schemed, bribed and above all else, plotted military operations to expand the Empire, which is an abbreviated way of saying that they conquered foreign lands to enrich their own wealth and power.
Sound familiar?
In S.P.Q.R.: A History of Ancient Rome, a fascinating read, Mary Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge University and award-winning author of several books on antiquity, draws important parallels in her new book between Ancient Rome 63 BCE, leading up to Caesar’s assassination, and US politics, specifically after 9/11. “After 2,000 years,” concludes Beard, “Rome continues to underpin Western culture and politics, what we write and how we see the world, and our place in it.”
When I read the next line in Beard’s book, I thought about the number of democratically elected leaders in the last 30 years that the US government covertly or overtly, (how should I put this delicately) — disposed of — in one way or another.
“The assassination of Julius Caesar,” Beard explains, “on what Romans called the Ides of March 44 BCE has provided the template, and the sometimes awkward justification, for the killing of tyrants ever since.” Today, the president need only call said leader a “tyrant,” or in G.W. Bush’s words, “an evil dictator” and voila! send in the troops. Vietnam, Latin America and presently the Middle East are all examples of Mary Beard’s assessment on Julius Caesar’s assassination, wrapped in the same rhetoric that Roman statesmen used for removing a leader: He’s an evil doer!
There’s only one…