Childhood is idolizing Caesar

It needed a reform, but that reform didn't have to be dictatorship.

The republic was already falling apart at that point with serious institutional problems, not to mention Rome was becoming a shithole to live, if not Caesar then some other wannabe Sulla would've taken power, no way the entrenched patrician traditionalists on the Senate would take their heads off their asses and realize Rome needs those reforms

>le slaughter elephants for the lulz and have the people of Rome turn against him because elephants screaming in terror is heart-wrenching man

>"...does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds! When he was casting so many troops of wretched human beings to wild beasts born under a different sky, when he was proclaiming war between creatures so ill matched, when he was shedding so much blood before the eyes of the Roman people, who itself was soon to be forced to shed more. He then believed that he was beyond the power of Nature. But later this same man, betrayed by Alexandrine treachery, offered himself to the dagger of the vilest slave, and then at last discovered what an empty boast his surname was."

Seneca the Younger, De Brevitate Vitae (XIII)

Caesar realized the Republic was fucked because of the rich fuckers who held the power. Pompey was just one of them

True intellectuals understand that Lepidus was the tragic hero of the story

#CelticLivesMatter

WAS

A

CONSUL

Pompeius was a tool who let himself be used by the Optimates out of a desperate desire to be accepted by them.

He is actually a fairly pathetic figure by that point in his life.

Provincial, please.

Cato, through his idiot intransigence, made the civil war that destroyed the Republic unavoidable.

Cato went to great trouble and endured greater hardship to bring about the one thing he most wanted to avoid.

He was always pathetic. The only reason they called him "the great" was for putting down slave revolts. Easy to slaughter undisciplined hordes of poorly armed slaves, but when he had to face an actually competent commander like Julius Caesar, Caesar curbstomped him even despite being totally outmanned and outmaneuvered.

That's the harshest irony about Cato. He's like the Anakin Skywalker of ancient Rome, the harder he fought to prevent his vision of future governmental tyranny from coming about, the more inevitable he made it

But arguably the Optimates had proven pretty decisively that they would block any and all efforts at reform within the system, and that only somebody willing and able to circumvent the system had any chance of making needed changes.

Whether Caesar the Dictator was trying to do that is unclear to me, he may have just been after power. But his assassination made that a moot question.

In any case, the rise of Augustus provided a guy with the power and the intent to make some changes.

We don't really have any idea what Caesar realized. But projecting political opinions onto him is a pastime that has a long history.

AND

His use of "The Great" goes back before the Spartacan revolt.

Sulla used it about him, with a sense of irony so heavily dripping from every utterance that only somebody as needy as Pompeius could mistake it for genuine.

>Caesar realized the Republic was fucked because of the rich fuckers who held the power.
Like him? Caesar was a fucking hypocrite, the problems that were facing rome (Slave labour out competing free labour and the growing collosal estates) were only worsened by Caesar's illegal warfare.

There ain't no good guys.

There ain't no bad guys.

There's only you and me, and we just disagree...

Do you even know what you're talking about or are you just being contrarian?

Who else loves Marcus Crassus? The richest man in Rome.

I loved his portrayal in Spartacus show.

The way he died was awful

I’m a Marcus Antonius man myself

Someone drop the truth on the Praetorian Guard

That show sucked, that costuming and casting is atrocious, and Marcus Crassus was some rich puke with no talent who happened to be born astronomically wealthy and died a horrible but fitting death for playing soldier and engaging in the most cynical and self-promoting type of foreign military adventurism

Childhood is idolizing Justinian
Adulthood is realizing he is a meme emperor and screwed the Empire with his dumb foreign and fiscal policies

>Marcus Crassus was some rich puke with no talent who happened to be born astronomically wealthy
Sorry but this part is completely wrong. Crassus was born an aristocrat but he built up an astronomical fortune through his own savviness. He increased his fortune from 300 talents at first to 7,100 talents, which according to Plutarch would be 229 tonnes of gold.

He further increased his wealth through this horrible tactic: He hired a huge team of capable fire fighters who could rush quickly to a scene upon hearing of it. Fires were common in Rome due to pop. density and primarily wooden buildings. However, before the firefighters would do anything, the building's owners would have to sell the property to Crassus at a "trifling price". He'd then build up the houses with slave-labour. According to Plutarch, he bought "'the largest part of Rome in this way".

I wonder if some of those fires might not have been freak-accidents...

You're right that he was a slimy bastard but he certainly had talent; this talent did not translate into military prowess, as you rightly pointed out.

Childhood is idolizing Caesar.
Adolescence is idolizing Pompey thinking he was any better.
Adulthood is idolizing Caesar, despite his flaws.

Republic had it coming. They were so out of touch they thought the public would celebrate them killing Caesar but instead got a huge backlash when they came out of the temporary senate house to let the people know.

He was an effective robber baron, I'll give you that. I guess I was defining talent by "the amount of long term good that the person was able to accomplish for his society", and by that metric Crassus was pure cancer

Justinian was one of the most important reformers of his day. The reason why he's not considered one of the greatest leaders of all time was because he had his ultimate legacy ripped from his hands by the Justinian Plague, which disproportionately hammered and devastated the east and left him with a fraction of his tax-base and manpower reserves right as he was on the verge of total victory. He could very well have been the inspiration for the Martians from "War of the Worlds": an ancient power with advanced technology comes to Earth with the intent on turning it into a colony and totally buttfucks the population but right as the world is left a smoldering ruin a virus comes along and stops the Martians from achieving final victory.

Caesar allowed the true MVP to come into power

Athony Everett's Augustus has a real good detailed accounts about Sexius Pompey.

>ruin the treasury built up by Anastasius
>do not trust belisarius
>manage to piss off both circus factions at once
>tried to escape constantinople if not for his wife
>underestimate the cost of african and gothic invasions
>overestiamte the peoples support, esspecially in Italy
>spend cash on excessive building projects
>persecute pagans at the expense of stabiltiy

Fuck Justinian, the codex is the only worthwhile thing he did. Plauge is not an excuse

>>ruin the treasury built up by Anastasius
losing a third of your tax base while trying to fund a major war will do that to you
>>do not trust belisarius
Belisarius was history's most legendary cuck who needed an eunuch to come bail him out. His wife would be brazenly walking around town with her lovers (including her son-in-law) and Belisarius was too busy botching the Italian campaign to notice.
>>manage to piss off both circus factions at once
Nika riots are where Justinian showed his stones, standing his ground even in the face of overwhelming odds, and all it took was a little encouragement from his adoring loyal wife, a qt femdom who stood by him through thick and thin who was able to get him to come to his senses when he contemplated withdrawing from Constantinople. Those factions had always been a tinderbox waiting to spark a blaze.
>>underestimate the cost of african and gothic invasions
banking on future returns, no doubt
>>overestiamte the peoples support, esspecially in Italy
This is certainly true. The Gothic War was probably the most destructive conflict in Italian history, and the Italians were doing just fine on their own without the yoke of Roman bureaucracy around their necks.
>>spend cash on excessive building projects
Building projects which would pay dividends to the city for generations.
>>persecute pagans at the expense of stabiltiy
It was the various competing sects of Christianity who were causing stability issues. Pagans in those days were small pockets of hold-outs, persecuting them was placating the Christian majority, and Theodora went out of her way to make sure that Christian sects were meeting each other with dialog instead of violence. Later leaders went full retard with the religious repression and set the stage for Islam's takeover of MENA