Redpill me on Caesar /his

>>3359070
If you do actually want information and not memes, don't use a retarded term like redpill.

File: 1463509592553.png (1MB, 609x1074px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 609x1074px

Caesar wasn't inherently evil. Had a lot of genuinely good traits, and evidently cared about the people he ruled and the men who he commanded.

His ego was gargantuan in scope though, and he is decisively amoral, willing to enslave hundreds of thousands and kill just as many to achieve personal glory.

tl;dr Caesar was a complex figure and neither wholly evil nor wholly good. I tend to idolize the man, simply in how much he achieved.

>>3359070
Did amazing things for Rome by pillaging the shit out of Gaul and killing about 25% of their population either directly or indirectly.

>>3359070

The answer to that question depends entirely on who you ask. Most middle-lower class Romans loved him for his land reform and welfare projects. The upper class hated him because they were worried he was going to try to have himself installed as dictator (they were right). He also killed and enslaved an enormous number of women and children in Gaul, but that was a generally accepted part of warfare at the time, so you can take that however you want. There were Romans who criticized Caesar for his actions in Gaul, but they were mostly people who already hated him, so you can read that however you want, principled opposition, or just preparing an excuse to have him arrested. He did invent the calendar that we still use today, so that's something.

>>3359091
If Caesar lived many more years, do we know by any chance what plans he had for the future ? conquer more lands, more local politics etc ?

Considering how we know more about him than most other historical figures 2000 years ago, he was definitely something that's for certain.

>>3359106

The most common concensus was a campaign against Parthia I believe. Crassus's defeat was unavenged at that point, and victory over the Parthians plus recovery of Crassus's Legionary Eagles would be a significant propaganda victory.

>>3359106

>conquer more lands

Caesar was actually getting ready for another big campaign right before he was killed. This is part of the reason why the conspirators were so desperate to get him at that moment. They were scared that'd he leave the city and then he'd be impossible to kill. It was a "if we don't don't kill him now, we might never get another opportunity" sort of thing.

>more local politics etc

It's kind of safe to assume that the sort of stuff he wanted to do was the sort of stuff that Octavian actually did after seizing power and changing his name to Augustus. Caesar did pick him as his successor, after all.

Many Marxist historians laud him as a class warrior against the Optimates, interestingly.

>>3359070
>>3359070
>carrhae was a 10 second shadowy montage

dropped

File: missyou.jpg (58KB, 650x366px) Image search: [Google]

58KB, 650x366px

OP here, i know i mighty sound foolish but i see that a lot of rules of Rome have been assassinated or died pretty brutaly i have 3 questions : 1. Were romans back than not that religious as we think ? Seems that with so many assassinations or emperors dying brutal deaths people would be afraid of divine punishment maybe ? 2. Were the praetorian guards or the personal bodyguards of emperors that easily bribed/corupted or they just didn't care that much about their ruler getting sacked. 3 How would normal citizens view this type of behavior from their higher counterparts ?

>>3359142

If you look at it from a purely Roman perspective and exclude everybody outside the city itself, that does kind of make sense. He was supported by the lower classes of Rome and opposed by the upper classes of Rome. Free market liberals also tended to identify more strongly with Cato (hence the Cato Institute and the founders of America have an obsession with Cato) so it makes sense that their opposite would identify with Caesar more.

>>3359070
>redpi-
kill yourself

File: 60432.jpg (22KB, 314x475px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 314x475px

>>3359070

Go to your library and check this book out.

>>3359165

>Were romans back than not that religious as we think

If you went back in time and asked a typical Roman "what is the secret of Rome's success" the answer you'd almost certainly get is that Rome is favored by the God's because nobody else worships them as hard. When interacting with other cultures, Romans always took it upon themselves to remind everybody else that they were most pious. And when they wanted to slander another culture, the go-to insult was that that culture was impious or faithless. This was especially directed towards Hannibal and the Carthaginians, but it could be just easily applied to anybody else who Romans were currently having a problem with. Roman historians also tended to write about the outcomes of battles as if the Gods were taking an active interest in every skirmish. Win a battle? You must have made the Gods happy somehow, good job. Lose a battle? You pissed off one of the Gods and you must somehow regain their favor. After the Battle of Cannae, it somehow became a meme that the Goddess Juneau was supporting Hannibal and so Rome had to woo were back somehow, which they attempted to do with an extremely costly ritual that involves burning an absurdly large amount of food as a sacrifice to the Goddess to win her back.

>>3359235
So basically it was ok to murder or steal as long as you made a sacrifice to the gods ?

>>3359070
Pretty complex figure. There's reasonable arguments on both sides but that's part of why he's so fascinating.

>>3359070
>was he truly evil or another person in history who seized power by any means

He was. He killed an entire 60K people in northern Gaul for literally no reason. They weren't at war with him, they weren't attacking him. They were in fact just fleeing in his general area and actually offered to leave and ally with him and he used negotiations to move his army closer to them and then kill them all just in case they might maybe prove to bite him in the ass in the future.

Because he was a cunt.

>>3359262
>There's reasonable arguments on both sides
No not really. He was an unapologetic evil psychopath as were most warlords back then but that doesn't exactly take away from the title of unapologetic evil psychopath.

>>3359275
He needed to cover his rear for his invasion of Britain.

>>3359119
That's because he wrote about himself.

File: cato_the_younger_by_suburbanbeatnik-d3gmgh2.jpg (169KB, 900x1292px) Image search: [Google]

169KB, 900x1292px

>>3359070

Caesar is an enemy of the Republic that must be destroyed.

>>3359295
Oh, you mean the invasion of Britain that he undertook for literally no other credible reason other than his own prestige?

The one where he made note of how utterly impoverished the Brits were and still insisted on invading them a second time because the plebs back home would eat up how he went to this mythic land?

That invasion of Britain?

>>3359142
Who gives a fuck about what quacks call him?

File: pyramidkek.png (560KB, 539x850px) Image search: [Google]

560KB, 539x850px

>>3359070
>Can you guys redpill me on Caesar though...was he truly evil or another person in history who seized power by any means ?

Caesar is a god - the bearer of divinely granted authority - you are a nobody. Kill the Emperor you will spend eternity in solitary confinement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QageVk0vAQ

>>3359137
>It's kind of safe to assume that the sort of stuff he wanted to do was the sort of stuff that Octavian actually did after seizing power and changing his name to Augustus. Caesar did pick him as his successor, after all.
Caesar's transformation of the Roman state would likely be much radical than Octavian's though. Octavian's regime was compromise with the Senate because he learned that pushing as far as his daddy did would get him shanked.

>>3359070
>this was cancelled for got

>>3359091
>all he achieved
got stabbed in the senate and should've seen it coming,octavius was smart enough to not directly seize power like a doofus

>>3359995
*Uncle

>>3359091
By any modern standard he was fucking evil.

>>3359256
Yes, murder and conquest is and was ok as long as you have an excuse the plebs can accept

>>3361510
Which historical figures by modern standards were not evil?

>>3361510
Yeah, but war and conquest of other warlike peoples was par for the course in 50 BCE

>>3359070

Nicomedes IV of Bithynia fucked him up the arse

>>3359070
>Redpill
Take the third pill anon.

>>3359070
Caesar's modern equivalent is the general who actually succeeded in overthrowing his government in a Coups d'etat. What separates Caesar from this power-hungry general of recent memory is that Caesar had a decent enough reason, and some could argue he had good interests, like land reforms that were really needed by this point. He is a controversial figure as he absconded a republic for totality, something that would eventually drag the empire down as ineffectual leaders would ascend to the throne during some of the worst crises.

IMO, I think Caesar was in the right in taking power from the Senate. In a perfect world, the Senate wouldn't have tried to kill him, maybe giving Caesar a long enough life to return power to the Senate, creating a special tribune-esque rank that smacks away any Senators that try to buy farming land en masse in Italy. But that's just my own thoughts.

>>3361510
By today's moral standards all ancient historical figures are varying shades of amoral or evil

>>3359275
Some of them did launch a cavalry attack and he could not know for sure their intention as it looked likey they were stalling for time

>>3364542
>something that would eventually drag the empire down as ineffectual leaders would ascend to the throne during some of the worst crises
Right, like when emperor Varrus deposed emperor Fabius during the second punic crisis and then got rekt by Hannibal.
Oh wait, Varrus was an elected republican consul who deposed an unpopolar (yet effective) dictator.

The issue with roman emperors was their utter lack of legitimacy beyond military power. They were vulnerable to any piddly general with the favour of his army and that caused shitloads of civil wars. The competence of individuals is neither here nor there, for you can always have shitworth rulers regardless of government.

>>3365822
Fair enough, that'll teach me to browse /his/ when I'm tired. Now to live with this fucking hurricane outside rn.

>>3359323
Not that anon but yes. Caesar certainly was a bad person by modern standards but it's important to remember that he didn't kill people just for the lulz but for strategic, pragmatic reasons.

>>3359165
>1. Were romans back than not that religious as we think ?
Romans in general were less religious than we think. They mostly didn't have a personal relationship with their deities, and preferred to bargain with them rather than beg on their knees. The word superstition literally comes from the Roman term for when you worship the gods too much:
>From its use in the Classical Latin of Livy and Ovid (1st century BC), the term is used in the pejorative sense it still holds today, of an excessive fear of the gods or unreasonable religious belief, as opposed to religio, the proper, reasonable awe of the gods. Cicero derived the term from superstitiosi, lit. those who are "left over", i.e. "survivors", "descendants", connecting it with excessive anxiety of parents in hoping that their children would survive them to perform their necessary funerary rites.[7] While Cicero distinguishes between religio and superstitio, Lucretius uses only the term religio[8] (only with pejorative meaning). Throughout all of his work, he only distinguished between ratio and religio.

>>3359995
Octavian also was much less powerful to begin with than Caesar, he had to slowly work his way up and couldn't outright change the state.

>>3359070
>Just rewatched Rome ( HBO series )


No you haven't, you just sat in front of a device flashing light and colors at you.

>>3359127
>Caesar conquers Parthia
>Silk trade increases
>Romans buy too much silk
>Soon, all of them are in debts
>The originally roman silver coins cause silver inflation in china
>Local farmers exchange crops for silver
>Then exchange silver for gold required to pay taxes
>They need more silver now to be exchanged now, because silver coins loose value
>So more crops must be given away
>Famine in China
>Rome will go bankrupt
>China will go bankrupt
>Civilization ends