For serious historians, and to a lesser extent for biographers, there is also the bigger question: did Caesar kill the Republic, or was it, in any case, terminally ill? The particular events that led immediately to civil war and to the demise of the Republic were, in themselves, no more inevitable than any other events in history; but were they just a concatenation of unfortunate circumstances, or was that demise explicable: an event with intelligible long-term causes, an event, as Montesquieu thought, waiting to happen at some time? These questions may not have much bearing on Caesar’s responsibility for his actions, but they do affect our assessment of his impact on history. The brilliant account by Theodor Mommsen in his youthful History of Rome (1854-6), which can be said to mark the beginning of modern historiography on
Caesar in Europe (except in France: Nicolet, chapter 27, p. 416), contained an authoritative answer. Mommsen held that the Republic could not bear the strains of her growing empire, so that - as Caesar saw - some kind of constitutional monarchy was necessary. Mommsen has influenced the views of many subsequent historians, even the sober and scholarly Gelzer, but not all have been convinced, and those that have, like Christian Meier, do not necessarily agree that Caesar had a plan to solve the problem.1
The same question, that of the viability of the Republic, affects our political assessment of Caesar’s assassins. If the Republic was still vital, then their bungling after the murder can be blamed for its demise; but if it was already doomed, then their act was simply futile. Mommsen showed his contempt for their adherence to the dying Republic by omitting the murder and ending his treatment of Caesar with his program and his vision for Rome as a cosmopolitan state, with citizenship extended to the whole world: a free state ruled by a constitutional monarch. Critics, then and later, have noted the folly of regarding success as necessarily fated or deserved (Badian 1982) and have pointed out that Cato and Brutus have, through the centuries, been inspiring figures (Christ 1994: 153). These, again, are questions for historians.
Whatever one thinks about the political wisdom of the assassination, however, the moral questions about the act remain. And this question has been the leading inspiration of the dramatic tradition about Julius Caesar. Brutus may have genuinely championed republican liberty, but he also murdered his friend and benefactor (perhaps even, for some playwrights, his father). Caesar may have usurped power and become tyrannical, but he showed clemency and generosity undeserving of such cruelty (see Griffin, chapter 25). Dramatists, like Lucan and Seneca before them, explore other moral questions about Caesar too: was he driven to civil war simply by ruthless ambition? Was his regret at the murder of Pompey by the Egyptians just a pretence (Leigh, chapter 17; Griffin, chapter 25)?
World History
