was forgiving his enemies a tactic by Cæsar?
I've heard that being forgiven makes you indebpted to your enemy in the Roman world view
so Cæsar appeared kind and forgiving after the war, but he was actually dominating them?
Was it justified?
Hudson Roberts
Adrian Williams
This is not true. The problem was that the senate had no "next day" plan. I would think if I was going to kill the autocratic executive branch leader I would try and install a dictator with "Republican virtues" (oligarhic values aligned with the senate) ASAP but they didn't. They had no plan and they expected everyone to just be happy and have the whole power vaccume somehow fix itself
Charles Morris
>Brutus and Cassius
>Burn in hell
Literally in the lowest circle of hell, chewed in the mouth of Satan himself, along with Judas Iscariot,
Ayden Davis
Caesar’s clemency works on multiple different angles.
One, it is at least partially genuine. Caesar consistently committed to using clemency even against Gallic barbarians. It was just in his nature to be merciful.
Two, sparing your enemies makes you look good. In a war that was essentially for Roman public opinion, sparing your enemies and being merciful and fostering brotherhood among Romans fought against Pompey’s propaganda that he was an outlaw. This also worked against Pompey because he was extremely violent and would execute anyone who fell into his hands.
3. It’s also an insult to those he spares. Domitius for example hated Caesar. When he was spared, it made him feel like he wasn’t important enough to be killed, and that he was indebted to Caesar. He was deprived of a martyrs death and embarrassed.
Caesar was a political genius and everything he did had multiple angles working for him.
Aaron Taylor
on the other hand Augustus' policy of exterminating your enemies quickly during the start of your reign, then using propaganda to distance your later reign from the earlier atrocities worked just as well, if not significantly better.
Owen Clark
True. Augustus could see the positives in both Caesar’s machinations and Sulla’s and merged the two. But of course, he was working from Caesar’s example, something the man himself could not. I feel like Augustus and Caesar were equal politic masterminds.
Jackson Anderson
It worked well for Augustus, but not so much for his extended family, who all found themselves purged by one emperor or another, until the final member of his line was purged and another line was installed as Emperor.
That's what happens when you normalize blood politics.
Lucas Baker
well if we want to be technical, Tiberius wasn't related to him through blood at all
also his first and second heir died on him
And course Claudius being killed was not because he was a bad ruler or the people hated him but rather because Agrippina was a complete cunt
Leo Cruz
Was it justified? Yes.
Should it have happened? No.
Gavin Rivera
>well if we want to be technical, Tiberius wasn't related to him through blood at all
He was the last man standing, Augustus's really distant third choice whom he really didn't want to tap but didn't have much of a choice, it was either Tiberius or someone outside the Julio-Claudian line. And Tiberius purged all of Caligula's family (he was young but old enough to remember what a horrible cunt uncle Tiberius was) and then raised him in his rape palace filled with child slaves, and then we wonder why Caligula grew up to become a little enfant terrible
Claudius was also a last man standing, avoiding execution because literally nobody took him seriously enough to purge him.
And Nero was the most useless fucking one of them all, forcing stodgy old administrators to listen to him play a set on his harp while they were there to discuss provincial tax policy, literally forcing people at sword point to attend his concerts, which were apparently so dull that people feigned horrible sickness to get out of it. He got more ruthless as his reign went on, and by the time he offed himself, people were fucking over the now extinct Julio-Claudians and their bloody purging ways.