Was Caesar wrong to march on Rome?

For my whole life, I've always had a deep admiration for figures such as Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Sulla, etc. for being able to march with their armies and forcibly take power for the greater good of the nation.

However, I'm finding this difficult to logically explain why they were in the right. If they had failed to seize power in the capital, wouldn't they just go down as failed terrorists and enemies of the State? Furthermore, if they had a moral right to violate the law and seize power, wouldn't this mean that anyone willing to attack the government with the 'greater good' in mind is also right?

Kinda a newfag in philosophical thought though, so apologies

pic unrelated

You like mussolinis march on rome too?

>greater good

It takes balls to challenge the status quo, and it takes strength of character to get people to go along with that challenge. These are things which can be admired separate from the end results of those challenges.

Not bait. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar achieved far more and united the people, rather than the faggots in the Senate who just bickered among themselves.

>Was Caesar wrong to march on Rome?
Define wrong. Caesar could certainly claim to have grievances with the senate, but legally speaking he had no right to do what he did.

The Senate was killing people like Caesar left and right. Caesar had the people on his side. Not everyone who siezes power is good, but Caesar did good things for the people.

The Senate and pretty much everything was super corrupt at the time.

>The Senate was killing people like Caesar left and right.
Like who? If anything the opposite.
The senate was held by the balls by Pompey after Crassus died, and the picentine asshole was trying to shut down Caesar politically.
Pompey was the same exact type of politician as Caesar, if nowhere near as good. That civil war was a power spat between faction leaders more than something ideological. The populares vs optimates ideological conflict ended with the first triumvirate.

>Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar achieved far more and united the people, rather than the faggots in the Senate who just bickered among themselves.

Of course you can only say that with all the wisdom of hind legs...

>It takes balls to challenge the status quo

Great arrogance could easily be substituted there.

>and it takes strength of character to get people to go along with that

Manipulative rhetoric and a masses of people who are complete idiots could also be substituted in there.

Caesar would have been tried for abuse of his Imperium due to the falling out between him and Pompey.

Cato and Cicero would have done everything they could to force him into exile. And guess what? It would have been Cataline all over again, except with an incredibly astute general with a ton of popular support.

Basically they forced him into a no-win scenario because the Senate were retards who were afraid of successful men. If they had just said he wouldn't have been tried, and Cicero and Pompey supported him then he would have just been recalled to Rome with zero fuss.

>If they had just said he wouldn't have been tried, and Cicero and Pompey supported him then he would have just been recalled to Rome with zero fuss.
Zero fuss in the sense that Pkmpey wouuld have been forced to keel over and yield his influence and preheminence over to Caesar. That was not going to happen ever without a fight.
Also Cicero was kind of irrelevant at that point, he was basically politically dead in the first triumvirate years.

Even if this did happen, Caesar would rise to power anyways unless he lost the favor of the plebeians, which I doubt he would.

It was mainly Cato who wouldn't let up. Cicero desired peace during the standoff between Caesar in Gaul and Pompey/Senate. He tried to negotiate but Cato wasn't having any of it.

Brutus literally killed Caesar because he thought he was acting out the ideals of Cicero.

That's Pompey's problem, not Caesar's.

>the ideals of Cicero
Of Cato, you mean. You know, his mentor and uncle?

All the big populists since the brothers grachii. They despised the Tribune position, and the power populist tributes wielded.

It's true that populist tribunes had a tendency to drop off like flies, but Caesar most certainly didn't fit the mold. You could hardly group him with the likes of Saturninus, Clodius or even Drusus afterall. Completely different political profiles.
Caesar was the Pompey/Marius/Sulla/Lucullus kind of politician, the army backed kind, and those certainly weren't being killed off, if anything the opposite.

Didn't Caesar "accidently" march on Rome?

As in, he didn't have a long term plan to do the march. Rather, when the Senate and Pompey called for his arrest, Caesar had two choices : surrender, or YOLO and take on the entire Roman state to save his own ass.

So from that perspective, Caesar acted extremely selfishly.

Selfish to not want to get fucked and killed by the senate?

Now, now, user. Just because no one on the playground every wanted to play the games you wanted to play is no reason to grow up and tip so many fedoras.

Wrong, Cicero. In his letters to Atticus he describes the day and how Brutus was confused that Cicero was stupefied by what they had done. Cato would not in any way have implicitly approved of Caesar's assassination plot. Number one. He had already killed himself by then. Number two. Cato approved of Cicero moving to execute the prisoners during the Cataline rebellion, but disapproved of the way it was handled.

>If they had failed to seize power in the capital, wouldn't they just go down as failed terrorists and enemies of the State?
If people like Caesar and Napoleon could fail to seize power, they would not be Caesar and Napoleon.

>Furthermore, if they had a moral right to violate the law and seize power, wouldn't this mean that anyone willing to attack the government with the 'greater good' in mind is also right?
It's only morally right to try to overthrow the government if you can actually overthrow the government. A government so weak that it can be overthrown by one great man is a government that must be overthrown, and it is right for that great man to overthrow it. It is not right to try to overthrow a government that is strong and will survive your rebellion.