Although operating in a very different political context, the Swiss-republican dramatist Johann Jakob Bodmer, author of Julius Caesar: Ein Trauerspiel (Bodmer 1763), and the radical author of the Social Contract, Rousseau, were similar to British and American writers in considering Caesar as a villain displaying lust for power over men and women in public as well as in private (Paulin 2003). In general, however, Continental writers were less severe on Caesar than the English-speaking world. In part this has to do with the particular place Caesar held in the ‘‘national’’ historiographies of both Germany and France, as heroic conqueror of ancient Gaul and importer of civilization there, and as the first Roman Emperor in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In addition, Caesar played a comparatively marginal role in absolutist propaganda during this period. This meant that he was less exposed to the wrath of absolutism’s fiercest opponents than Alexander and Augustus, who
Were upheld by one side and attacked by the other as the prime examples of princely virtue or vice. Instead, writers criticizing the existing monarchical regimes from a non-corporatist point of view and setting their hopes on ‘‘enlightened’’ monarchy used the figure of Caesar to promote a model of change that (apart from his death) might appeal to rulers willing to forge an alliance with enlightened reformers.
It was only in the nineteenth century that French historians discovered the figure of Vercingetorix as an early proponent of ‘‘Gallic’’ independence; eighteenth-century French writers, in contrast, integrated Caesar’s conquest of Gaul into a narrative of French cultural superiority, as it had supposedly brought Roman culture to peoples that may have been exceptionally ferocious fighters but had, until Caesar’s arrival, lived in ignorance and barbarism (as the Germans on the far side of the Rhine still did) (Grell 1995: 1129-32).
To be sure, Caesar’s usurpation of power remained a problem, and the legitimacy of his assassination was discussed in both drama and historiography - a highly delicate question in the context of the various assassination attempts on French kings from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Van Kley 1984). Fenelon defended Brutus and Cassius as freedom-loving virtuous citizens, whereas Voltaire was fascinated by the combination of greed and clemency - ‘‘tyran et pere de patrie’ - which in his view characterized Caesar (Flamarion 2003: 65). Always critical of regicide, Voltaire had a more ambivalent view of tyrannicide, which he discussed in three dramas, most importantly his La mort de Cesar. In this first French adaptation of Shakespeare’s Caesar, Voltaire carefully weighed the assassins' love of liberty and the efficiency of Caesar’s dictatorial system of government (Couvreur 2003). After all, for French philosophes attacking the injustices and inefficiencies of eighteenth-century absolutism, Caesar was not only a usurper but also an early example of ‘‘enlightened despotism,'' an energetic ruler who had the power, the insight and the will to carry through far-reaching reforms, such as introducing the new, Julian calendar, against the corporatist interests of the conservative elite. It was no coincidence that Voltaire wrote his Caesar drama in England, and in close succession to his Lettres philosophi-ques (1733, English 1734), in which he introduced English political thought from Bacon to Locke and Newton to the French, as well as attacking the French government and Catholic (state) Church for religious intolerance. Voltaire consequently thought of his sometime friend Frederick II ‘‘the Great’’ of Prussia (1740-86) as a ‘‘great man’’ in Caesar’s comprehensive mold while Charles XII of Sweden (1697-1718) fell off in comparison as a mere soldierly ‘‘hero’’; it was a distinction Labruyere had already exemplified through the comparison of Caesar and Alexander (Voltaire 1978b: 1396; Peyrefitte 1992: 149).
This highlights the fact that enlightened writers, taking their inspiration from Plato's concept of the philosopher king described in the Republic and taken up again by Hobbes, had raised the standards for true royal greatness (Beales 2005b: 28-9): legal reforms and even philosophical reflection were now a necessary complement to military success and cultural patronage, which improved Caesar's standing in comparison to Alexander or Augustus as well as Frederick the Great’s vis-a-vis Louis XIV. In his Observations on the Romans, the republican-spirited Mably denounced Alexander as a power-hungry conqueror who ‘‘left nothing behind him but ruins,’’ while admitting that Caesar at least displayed ‘‘heroic courage and elevation of the soul,’’ and in their influential Roman History, Crevier and Rollin gave Caesar the accolade of a ‘‘model sovereign’’ - had he only been put onto the throne by birth or by election (Mably 1751: vol. 1, 152-3, 165-71; Crevier & Rollin 1755: 427-9; Wright 1997). For Voltaire, it was clear that the most enlightened periods of human history, among which he counts Caesar’s reign, depended on the mutual advancement of enlightened ruler and civilized people (Voltaire 1978a), and the most famous philosophe stated: ‘‘The best thing that can happen to mankind is to have a philosopher-prince.’’ Here, Caesar as a man of power who reflected upon his own deeds in his Commentaries is an example as well as Marcus Aurelius and the Prussian roi-philosophe. This gave ‘‘despotism,’’ a term which for long had only had negative associations in political theory, a novel positive meaning. It may not be so surprising that a monarch, such as the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (1765/80-90), advocated the concentration of all power in a despot for a limited time to modernize the state and abolish ancient laws, but even in the greatest work of the Enlightenment, Diderot’s Encyclopedie, despotism now received a more balanced discussion; Montesquieu and his followers, however, continued to see Caesar as an illegitimate usurper responsible for the abolition of all liberty (Beales 2005b: 48; Diderot 1765: 154-8 ‘‘Republique romain,’’ 333-8 ‘‘Romain empire’’).
World History
