Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome [Hardcover]

The Assassination of Julius Caesar points out how numerous popularis fell victim to the optimates death squads, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Drusus, Clodius and Rufus all sealed their fates by taking up the populist cause. Along with Caesar each of them lobbied and passed such policies as land reform, debt forgiveness, expansion of the franchise, giving the craft guilds more power, and greater food allotments.

Parenti makes for especially fascinating reading when he documents the reign of Sulla; the fascist autocrat whose policies weren't rolled back until Caesar's First Triumvirate was able to abolish some his more regressive laws. Also Dr. Parenti's sections on Cicero, the Machiavellian statesman who served autocratic interests, are sensational. He exposes Cicero's fomenting of the witch-hunt like Cataline Conspiracy. Egalitarian reforms and attempts to democratize decision making were treated as outright subversion by the optimates. Cicero upheld these values by constantly propagandizing against Cataline and his tepid reforms. We discover that Cicero was an odious creature who sold-out to power at every opportunity by often being quite an effective mouthpiece for the priveleged of ancient Rome.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar shows how Caesar was not a revolutionary but rather a reformer who worked to break the stranglehold of the senatorial autocrats. While not being perfect, Caesar dedicated himself to the popular cause and was well liked by the masses. Unlike Cicero, Sulla, Brutus, Cassius and Cato of whom none have flowers left at their graves like Caesar's tomb does to the present day. Parenti documents how Caesar was committed to rolling back the worst class abuses perpetrated by the wealthy and was fondly remembered for it.

One prevarication Parenti studiously attacks is Caesar's supposed burning of the Serapeum library in Alexandria. It was the Christ worshippers in the fourth century who carried out the deed, Caesar and his forces burned not a single page.

The assassination itself is portrayed in vivid detail, including a surprising and accurate quote from Major General Fuller's biography that sums up the entire affair: "the plotters were well aware that under Caesar their opportunities for financial gain and political power would vanish." Perhaps not vanish but greatly diminish would have been totally accurate.

A consistent theme runs throughout the book and that is Parenti's analysis and evidence of the bias many latter day gentlemen historians have against the "mob" or "rabble" and Caesar. He notes that these historians pay little attention to how the optimates swindled land from small farmers, plundered the provinces like pirates, over taxed colonized people, rent gouged, and lifted not a finger towards debt relief. It should be remembered that the common people had scant opportunity to leave a written record of their views and struggles. In fact these people derisively referred to as the "criminal mob" and "rabble" by Cicero and some other present day historians were in actuality masons, carpenters, shopkeepers, scribes, butchers and other working class people.

The reader can't help but draw the obvious parallel to the Kennedy assassination. Another example of a group of reactionary plutocrats rubbing out a potential threat to their wealth and way of life. As stated, Parenti makes reference to the fact that Caesar was a reformer and not a revolutionary. Of course that did not matter to the autocratic optimates of ancient Rome nor to a certain segment of the ruling class in the 1960s.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar is a major scholarly work and will surely be read and discussed for generations. It is history and historical analysis of the highest order and should not be missed by anyone with an inkling of historical curiosity.

What impressed me about the book is the amount of praise that Parenti finds from the people toward Caesar and the amount of negative information that the author digs up about Cicero, Cato, Brutus and the other usual heroes of the saga. It's interesting because historians traditionally give Caesar's assassins credit for trying to save the Republic while Caesar is usually cast as the power hungry despot. Parenti reverses these roles. He asserts that Caesar's concern over average citizens put him at odds with the landed class and they killed him because he was bad for business.

The hard part about the book is that Parenti seems to find no fault in the kinds of leaders that stir up the masses. Sure some of those leaders have good intentions, but just as many of them are using the needs of people to build a power base. It's the nature of politics and politicians. Parenti seems to take any social reformer as unselfish hero. This error is common among a certain world view and in extreme cases it's been used to explain the merits of butchers like Castro or Stalin.

Parenti also uses phrases like class prerogatives and social justice, as if there were a form of justice unrelated to human beings. Those terms seem out of date in 2004 when it's been shown all over the world that statist economies cannot keep up with the free market. Countries that use more central planning have higher inflation and unemployment rates and the cost of living is always higher there. "Class prerogatives" and "social justice" may have been handy terms when the question of economies was up in the air. But in today's world they come off as jealousies rather than plans to make people's lives better.

Parenti did convince me that Caesar probably had more positives than the average historian is willing to give him. Maybe his willingness to redistribute wealth had more to do with his death than popularly recognized. Still, I don't think Parenti makes a good case that Caesar the dictator was a better scenario than a free republic. I'd rather live in a free country where some people have more than I have, especially when I have more than the average person in the world. It's true for Americans today and for ancient Romans.

The fact that I disagree with the conclusions doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the case that Parenti makes. This is a well researched book and it made me think analytically about things that I hadn't considered before. It also gave me an interest to read more about the classical world.

As a case in point, Parenti notes that the "Republican"
heroes of the Ides of March claimed to detest Caesar's
monarchical rule and Caesar's complete disregard for
constitutional forms. Yet such a careful avoidance of
one-man rule and such a close preservation of the
constitution was nowhere evident when the Senate appointed
Pompey sole consul in 52 BC. As seems to hold for all
peoples in all times, the Romans were fiercely loyal to the
law when it served their interest, and bent it or tossed it
out all together when it did not.

I could not disagree with any of Parenti's major theses,
though I am no Marxist (and I think that Parenti is likely
to consider himself a Marxian historian, not merely a "progressive",
though I am not sure.) I fall short of considering
Caesar's rule as "a dictatorship of the proletarii." It
most assuredly was not (and I do not think Parenti truly
believes that it was.) I see Caesar (and I think that
Parenti could agree with this) as being more akin to FDR:
an enlightened oligarch who knew what it would take to
stabilize his unsteady world. By bettering the lot of the
masses -- even when it noticibly impinged upon the
oligarchs' traditional advantages -- he made it possible
for the oligarchy to persist. Caesar was no popular
revolutionary, though a reformer (nor was FDR a
revolutionary, though many today call him such.)

Parenti does not use original sources, preferring to rely
on standard works in English translation, and standard
authors such as Syme, Scullard, and Grant, as well as
Gibbon and Mommsen, but he clearly has read a wide range
and great depth from these resources.

This was an extremely readable, well researched, and
though-provoking book. I do not buy into every single part
of Parenti's theses, but I find it overall convincing and
persuasive.