Introduce Caesar
Caesar
Open Category: Characters
Caesar’s full name is Gaius Iulius Gaius Julius Caesar (102.07.12-44 BC) was a politician and military strategist active in ancient Roman politics).
The Julius family was originally an ancient noble family born and raised in Rome; however, the family fortunes declined over time. When Caesar was born, only those who claimed the surname Julius were left in the Caesar family.
In 75 BC, Caesar followed the example of the Roman aristocrats at that time and went to Rhodes Island to study rhetoric and debate.
The First Triumvirate
Soon after, Caesar began to enter the world of politics. However, at this time, Rome was still in an era of peace, and politics was in the hands of the Senate composed of the older generation, which was not a place where the young and moneyless Caesar could play. In 60 BC, Caesar was invited by Marcus Licinius Crassus (114-53 BC) and Pompey (106-48 BC) to form a political alliance, which was later called the "First Three" The system of "head political alliance system". But Crassus and Pompey had already formed a secret alliance before, and it was only then that Caesar was invited to join. In 56 BC, they met again and agreed that Crassus would be in Syria, Pompey in Spain, and Caesar in Gaul to develop their respective powers.
According to the agreed plan, Caesar spent nearly eight years starting from 58 BC on an expedition to Gaul (the area today in northern Italy, France, Belgium and other places). Caesar first defeated the Gauls living in what is now Switzerland, and then formed an alliance with them to fight against the more powerful Gauls further north. In 52 BC, a rebellion broke out among the Sartes in Gaul. Caesar spent two years suppressing it, and Gaul was completely included in the territory of Rome. "Gaul Wars" published in 51 BC is a record of the process of Caesar's conquest of Gaul. Volumes 1 to 7 were written by Caesar while the army was at war, and only the eighth volume was written by his subordinates.
After the death of Crassus, only Pompey and Caesar remained in the Triumvirate. Thanks to the spoils captured in the Gallic wars and the taxes levied, Caesar was able to repay past loans and become a rich man, while also winning the love of the Roman people. As an ally, Pompey was jealous of Caesar's achievements and attempted to unite with the Senate to banish Caesar from Rome. In January 49 AD, Caesar learned of the incident at Ravenna, east of Bologna in northern Italy and on the Adriatic Sea, and immediately led the troops at hand to the banks of the Rubicon River. The Rubicon was the border river between Gaul, where Caesar had military command, and mainland Italy. It would have been against Roman law for Caesar to lead his army across the river. However, Caesar's mind was made up, and shouting "The die is cast" (The die is cast), he led his army across the Rubicon River and invaded Rome. Pompey hurriedly crossed the Adriatic Sea and fled to the Balkans, where Greece was located. After Caesar pacified Rome, before the decisive battle with Pompey, in order to avoid future troubles, he first sent troops to Spain, which was within Pompey's sphere of influence.
Caesar and Cleopatra
At that time, Egypt was dominated by the 13-year-old King Ptolemy 13 and his 20-year-old sister Cleopatra 7 (Cleopatra Ⅶ, 69-30 BC) The two kings ruled together, and the sister and brother fought with each other due to disharmony. Cleopatra VII, who was both talented and beautiful, asked Caesar for help. Caesar was fascinated by his charm and helped her fight against the hostile citizens of Alexandria. However, Caesar only led a few soldiers at that time, and his troops were weak, so he was imprisoned in the palace. Soon after, reinforcements from Asia Minor (Turkey) arrived, and Caesar and Cleopatra VII finally defeated King Ptolemy's army; King Ptolemy fell into the sea and drowned while escaping. Around March 47 BC, Caesar defeated Pharnaces, the son of King Mithridates, at Zela in Asia Minor and sent Veni, vidi, vici)” was sent back to Rome. In April 46 BC, Caesar defeated the remnants of the Pompeian faction at the Battle of Thapsus in Tunisia; in March 45 BC, he completely destroyed the remnants of the Pompeian faction at Munda in Spain. power.
Caesar's Death
In 44 BC, Caesar became a lifelong dictator, but was assassinated in the same year, ending his 56-year life. Before assassinating Caesar, the group planning the assassination tried hard to persuade Caesar's friend Brutus (Marcus Junius Brutus (85-42 BC)) to join the assassination, because Brutus was an upright man and could win the respect and trust of the Roman citizens. Brewster was Pompey's deployment and was captured by Caesar during the war, but Caesar not only pardoned him mercifully, but also promoted him. Brewster was unwilling to betray Caesar out of gratitude. The group of assassins who planned the assassination wrote a letter with the content "Brewster, are you still sleeping?" ’ letter to Brewster. This letter changed Brewster's mind. Brewster agreed to join the assassination, and the number of the assassination team exceeded 60.
Caesar planned to attack Persia, which defeated Crassus in 53 BC. The Senate invited Caesar to the Senate on March 15, 44 BC, three days before his departure. One of them stopped Caesar when he came to the Senate. Pretending to beg for pardon for his brother who had committed a crime and was exiled overseas; after Caesar's flat rejection, the man grabbed Caesar's clothes. This was the secret code agreed upon by the assassination team in advance, and then about 40 people rushed out. Man, attacking Caesar with a dagger. Caesar fought back with only a piece of notebook in his hand. After discovering Brewster, whom he admired, among the attacking crowd, he said painfully: "Are you a part of this too?" Brewster! ” Then he covered himself with clothes and stopped resisting. After being stabbed 23 times, Caesar fell to the ground and died soon after. It is said that beside Caesar at that time stood a statue of Pompey, his former ally.
Political construction
Publish certain tax rules and prohibit extortion by tax collectors; send bankrupt and unemployed people to colonize sparsely populated areas; let urban residents in Gaul, Spain and other places enjoy Roman citizenship; appointing Gauls and other Italians to the Senate to promote the Romanization of various places; building various projects to increase people's employment opportunities; abolishing the original old calendar and switching to the solar calendar from Egypt (the famous " The Julian Calendar, which was implemented on January 1, 45 B.C., was revised by Pope Gregory Loved by some people, the authoritarian style also arouses disgust from some people.
The political system of ancient Rome
The "dictatorship" system was originally a way to deal with emergencies under the democratic political system of ancient Rome. temporary measures. Although the "dictator" holds great power during his term in office, he is selected by the "Presbyterian Council" according to legal procedures rather than self-appointed. His power comes from the legal authorization of the "Presbyterian Council". Therefore, the dictatorship of ancient Rome was not a negation of democratic politics, but a contingency of democratic politics under extraordinary circumstances. Moreover, the dictator's dictatorial rule has a certain timeliness. During the nearly hundred years when the dictatorship prevailed, there were 88 dictators in Rome, none of whom served for more than six months. During the reigns of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Caesar, the nature of ancient Roman dictatorship began to change, and its terms were gradually extended from six months to one, three, ten, and even life-long terms. However, political commentators at the time generally believed that Roman politics during the reigns of Sulla and Caesar was "tyranny" and "prostitution", and was no longer "dictatorship" in the original sense.
Life of Julius Caesar
An outstanding military strategist, politician and writer in ancient Rome, and a dictator at the end of the Roman Republic. He was born into the famous Julius family in Rome, and his father was a former administrator. He studied rhetoric and speech in his youth and received a good education. In the early days of his political career, he was the leader of the democrats and opposed the aristocracy. He has successively served as financial officer, censor, chief priest and chief judge. In 60 BC, he formed a three-headed alliance with Pompey and Crassus, and they jointly ruled the Roman Empire. They were known as the "First Three" in history. In 58 BC, he obtained the position of governor of Gaul and conquered all of Gaul within a few years. Not only did he have a lot of wealth, but more importantly, he trained a powerful army that was loyal to him. In 49 BC, Caesar defeated Pompey and seized power (Crasus had died in a foreign battle). In the following years, he gained unlimited dictatorial power, combining the powers of a consul and a dictator into one, becoming a veritable military dictator. The Communist Party and the country exist in name only, and the power of the Senate is gradually reduced. Some measures implemented by Caesar, such as allocating provincial land to 80,000 veterans, alleviating the debts of debtors, punishing corruption and extortion of officials, etc., touched the interests of the senators and aroused the dissatisfaction of the senators and nobles. On March 15, 44 BC, he was stabbed to death by the opposition led by Brutus and Cassius in the Senate Chamber. Caesar left two works of historical value, namely "Gaul Wars" and "Notes on the Civil War".
Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 102 BC, which was an era of serious political crisis in the Roman Republic. At this time, Rome's economic foundation had undergone tremendous changes. It had become the country with the most developed slavery system in the Western classical era. The original small agriculture had been completely replaced by large estates using slave labor on a large scale. Direct military plunder and The squeezing of conquered areas in the form of tribute and other methods caused a large amount of wealth from all over the Mediterranean coast to flow into Italy, accelerating the social differentiation of Rome.
The great changes in the economy will naturally affect the political life of Rome. The conquered land is expanding day by day, the standing army composed of mercenaries is constantly expanding, the slave population is increasing sharply, and the slave population is composed of unemployed small farmers and The homeless class composed of freed slaves also flocked to the capital in large numbers, which required a greatly strengthened state machinery to cope with it. However, the Roman state system at this time was basically still the city-state system of the small commune on the Tiber River. Its civilian government, which is re-elected every year, its citizens' assembly, which has become bloated and ineffective, and its Senate, which is monopolized by a few wealthy nobles who have been in power for generations, are simply unable to adapt to this situation.
Since the 1930s BC, people have been proposing various democratic reform plans from different perspectives. However, because they offended the interests of the wealthy aristocrats, they were suppressed by a small group of so-called aristocrats entrenched in the Senate. The opposition of the peace faction failed. Since then, people advocating democratic reform have continued to struggle, and the democratic movement has gradually developed from legitimate demands for reform to taking the form of conspiracy, riots and even civil war. In 82 BC, Sulla, the protector of the wealthy nobles, suppressed the opposition with a bloody massacre, and the democratic movement fell silent for a while. But the massacre could not eliminate the root cause of the demand for reform. Soon after Sulla's death, the democratic movement made a comeback. At this time, the incompetence of the Roman aristocracy and government, the turmoil of the social order, and the tyranny of the military had greatly weakened the country's power. By the 1970s of the first century BC, the situation finally developed to an extremely dire situation. level of concern. The attacks by the powerful neighbors in the east and the separatism of the western provinces were yet to come. The most serious ones were the rampant pirates in the Mediterranean and the slave uprising led by Spartacus. The rampant pirates not only made life difficult for the people along the coast, but even Rome was in danger of running out of food because of the inability to transport food from overseas. The slave uprising caused Italy to suffer the heaviest military disaster since the Hannibal War, and fundamentally shook the slaves of Rome. system, which struck down the slave economy. Slave revolts forced slave owners to make certain changes in the way they exploited slaves and managed their fields, and also forced slave owners to change the methods they used to control their slaves. More importantly, they were forced to change the political system and political system that could no longer guarantee the economic development of slavery. As the revolutionary teacher Engels pointed out: "... when the national power within a certain country is in an oppositional position to its economic development - until now, almost all political power is like this at a certain stage of development - —The struggle always ends in the overthrow of political power." It was under such circumstances that Caesar entered the political arena.
Caesar was born into an ancient but fallen aristocratic family in Rome. Because he was related to the older generation of democratic leaders Marius and Chennai, he was harassed and harassed by the aristocrats in his youth. The exclusion of the political faction forced him to stand on the side of the democrats from the beginning, and gradually became the leader of the opposition. At the same time, he was promoted step by step from financial officer, public works officer to judicial officer. But at this time, he had no other political capital except for his huge appeal among the homeless people on the streets. For this reason, he tried to establish a relationship with Cnaeus Pompey, who had great power in the army at the time, and representatives of wealthy people. They formed the "Three Alliance" with Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome of the so-called knightly class. Of course, these three people represent three different interest groups, and they only got together because they were also squeezed out by the aristocratic factions and factions that controlled the Senate. With the unanimous support of these two men, Caesar was elected consul in 59 BC, but due to the constraints of the Senate, he did not achieve much.
At this time, after more than half a century of political turmoil, the leaders of any faction in the Roman ruling group realized from practical experience that in order to control political power, there must first be an armed force. Only by using force can we make a difference in politics. Therefore, after Caesar's term as consul expired, he tried his best to win over the province of Gaul to serve as provincial governor. The purpose was to take advantage of the opportunity in Gaul to train an army of his own as a political backing; at the same time, in Gaul, By expanding territory and plundering slaves, Lu could also gain a reputation among the Roman slave-owning class and take the opportunity to accumulate a large amount of wealth as capital for future political activities.
Caesar went to Gaul in 58 BC and returned to Italy in early 49 BC. During his nine years in Gaul, according to Plutarch, he slaughtered a million people and captured another million. He and his generals became wealthy, allowing him to spread bribes throughout Rome, even to the favored slaves of important people. He also held various performances among civilians, distributed large sums of money, and built a large number of projects in many towns in Italy, which not only curried favor with the contractors, but also with the civilians who obtained job opportunities. As a result, his reputation among Italian citizens gradually surpassed that of the other two members of the "Three Alliance". In particular, he used Gaul as a training ground to train a military force that was the most capable of fighting in the Republic of China at that time. An army, and it is an army that only knows Caesar and does not know a country.
Caesar’s success stimulated Crassus. In 63 BC, he rushed to the east to launch a war against Parthia, hoping to achieve the same success as Caesar there. Unexpectedly, his entire army was annihilated and he died there. there. This left the original "Triple Alliance" that was at odds with each other, leaving only two heroes, Caesar and Pompey, standing side by side. They were increasingly suspicious of each other, and with the instigation and co-optation of some people in the Senate, Pompey finally broke up with Caesar and officially stood Go to the side of the Senate and become the leader of the aristocratic political faction against Caesar. In 49 BC, Caesar led his army into Italy with lightning speed. Pompey was caught off guard and fled from Rome in a hurry with all the government personnel and the Senate, crossed the sea and entered Greece, only to see Italy fall into Caesar's hands. The following winter, Caesar also rushed to Greece and defeated Pompey's main force at the battle of Pharsales. Pompey fled to Egypt and was killed on the spot by the Egyptians. Caesar reunified the country after purging Pompey's remnants from other places.
The process by which Caesar purged the remnants of Pompey's party, province by province, was also the process of sweeping away the residual influence of the Roman aristocratic party and system and establishing a new ruling machine.
Therefore, the Roman state reunified by Caesar is no longer the old Roman Republic that was weak and procrastinating in times of trouble. It is already a brand new centralized military dictatorship. It has been able to command the whole country in a unified way just like the body uses its arms and the arms use its fingers. This will definitely be beneficial to the economic development and cultural exchanges in various regions along the Mediterranean coast.
It was less than four years before Caesar unified the Roman country until his death, but in such a short period of time. During this period, he was still able to complete a lot of commendable work, the most noteworthy of which are two aspects: First, he destroyed the old aristocratic organization and system, concentrated military and political power, and basically completed In order to make the transition to a monarchical dictatorship, we have done a lot of work to unify the overlapping and fragmented old systems that have encountered problems at any time in the past few hundred years of development, and have been tinkered and patched together at any time. He combined the important positions of consul, censor, tribune, and high priest into one body. He reduced the Senate to an advisory body, and he treated the citizens' assembly as a dispensable decoration, all for him. Later heirs paved the way for turning Rome into an empire clothed in imperial and military garb. Secondly, he attempted to gradually abolish the various privileges left over from the old Rome as a city-state hegemony, raise the status of Italian towns to be equal to Rome, raise the status of each province to be equal to Italy, and gradually grant citizenship to Rome. The various provinces - of course only given to the slave-owning class - further expanded and consolidated the foundation of the ruling group of this great empire. But the work is only partially done. In the past, when he was in Gaul, he had given citizenship to the mountain Gauls, and later he also allowed some of their leaders to enter the Senate. This aroused the dissatisfaction of those old citizens who regarded citizenship as a taboo and did not want others to share it. They ridiculed him. :
“Caesar led the Gauls away during the triumphal ceremony,
but led them into the Senate;
The Gauls took off their long robes trousers,
but instead put on the broad-brimmed robes (of the senators). ”
In 44 BC, he formulated a self-government law applicable to various Italian towns and gave them the following laws. The same status as Rome; he restored the customs duties that Italy had always been exempted from; he also planned to abolish the method of contracting by merchants to collect provincial taxes, and instead had the state directly send people to collect them, abolishing one of the most hated taxes by the provincial people. No wonder there were a lot of rumors at that time that he wanted to move the capital to Alexandria and transform Rome into an Eastern-style monarchy, mainly because he lowered the status of the city of Rome in the country.
Caesar was assassinated by the remnants of the aristocratic political faction in 44 BC, ending his busy life. His heir, his sister's grandson Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, that Augustus, completely completed the task of transforming the slave Roman Republic into an empire based on the foundation laid by Caesar.
There have been many people who have commented on Caesar, and most of them have praised him as an unparalleled hero, a great statesman, a genius commander, a writer, a speaker, etc., as if he was an empty figure. The man who built this great empire. In fact, Caesar's lifelong struggle was nothing more than a struggle between one ruling group in the slave-owning class and another ruling group over whether to change the way of governance. Although it improved the situation of this slave-owning country for a period of time, the slaves The slave-owning economy further developed, but it was still only the slave-owning class that benefited, and it did not affect the fate of the vast slave class at that time at all. Secondly, the success of his life should be mainly attributed to the fact that he happened to be in a country like the Roman Republic. In such a historical era, a sudden turn of events and good luck allowed him to unconsciously complete what history asked him to complete. career, here, his personal qualities such as perseverance, wit, boldness, tact, etc., only played a very limited role in it, so it is inappropriate to over-praise Caesar. Just as the revolutionary mentor Engels said: "It happened that Napoleon, a Corsican, became the military dictator that the French Republic, which was exhausted by the war, needed. This was an accidental phenomenon. However, if it had not been If there is a person like Napoleon, then his role will be played by another person. This can be proved by the following fact, that is, whenever such a person is needed, he will appear: such as Caesar and Augur. Stuart, Cromwell, etc."
On the contrary, some people tried their best to criticize Caesar, saying that he suppressed the democratic movement, abolished the guild organizations, and restored Italian tariffs. Reducing the rations distributed to the poor, etc., is said to be a betrayal of the common people. These accusations were often the result of an overly modern interpretation of the so-called "civilians", "democratic movement" and other terms used in Rome at that time. It is a relatively complicated task to analyze the so-called common people who lived in Rome and the late Roman Empire, their composition, their political role and economic status, etc., and it is not the task that should be done here, but At least it can be said with certainty that they are by no means the industrial proletariat of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sismondi's famous saying quoted by Marx in the preface to the second edition of "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" - "The Roman proletariat lived on society, and modern society lives on the proletariat" - -This is the most pertinent conclusion about them.
In the first or two centuries BC, they had never produced a political representative of their own, nor had they ever put forward a set of political programs of their own. They had always been tools in the hands of various political activists. Just as we cannot regard them as the modern proletariat, we must not regard Caesar as a figure like Louis Napoleon or even Thiers. Here Caesar was doing exactly what other activists of the time were doing, and the most that could be blamed on him was that he initially used them and then left them. And leaving them, or even harming them, is... At that time, I didn’t ask what would happen to the pro-democracy activist once he came to power. Especially for Caesar, as long as we look at the work he was dedicated to briefly listed above, we can know that this is the inevitable result of his work. The homeless class in the capital has long become a heavy burden on the country. In order to reduce the search for provinces and reduce the privileges of the city of Rome, we have to take some measures that are unfavorable to these homeless people, such as the free rations distributed to citizens. The quota was suddenly reduced from 120,000 to 150,000. This was an example of severely restricting a privilege that had always been considered a citizen's right and turning it into a real social relief. Moreover, after the establishment of strong personal rule, the citizens' assembly has lost its role as a rubber stamp, and the political status of the homeless class has come to an end. It is logical that there is no need to spend all the treasury to please them. Development is also the inevitable result of the transition from a peaceful country to an empire. Although there are many things that can be discussed about what Caesar did in his life, it is not in this aspect.