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On March 15, 44 BC, Caesar, who had been stabbed with 23 knives, fell to his death under the statue of his political enemy Pompey. He was tricked into going to a meeting of the Senate and was murdered by more than 60 members of parliament at the scene. Among the killers was his trusted adopted son, Brutus.
Why was Caesar killed? What kind of hatred drives these parliamentarians to dare to assassinate powerful dictators? There are not a few outstanding generals and reformers in Roman history, and many of them have died, so why has the death of Caesar alone attracted so much attention? To understand these questions, it is necessary to have a general understanding of the problems faced by the late Roman Republic.
After the end of the monarchical era, the Roman Republic successively introduced a series of institutional designs aimed at preventing the chaos of the nobility, such as the 12 bronze law table, the separation of the three powers, the right to citizenship and so on. Objectively speaking, these measures maintained the stability of the city of Rome for a long time and protected the basic rights and interests of civilians to a certain extent. But by the end of the second century B.C., with the expansion of territory, the changing demographic composition, and the diversification of political power, the old republican system inevitably fell into difficulty, as follows:
More than 300 years after Tuckervin was expelled, the Senate became the most powerful state organ of the Republic. Whether it is the election of senior officials, the mobilization of foreign wars, or the review of consuls' bills, the Senate has the final say.
Behind the 300 senators was the entangled and powerful alliance of noble families in the city of Rome. They constituted the most wealthy and powerful ruling group in the Republic. Overwhelming rights and vested interests made it difficult for them to enact legislation in favor of the common people, which was the source of disagreement between the Senate and the reformers of the past.
Rome was a very enterprising country, and its foreign conquest never stopped. From 406 BC to 146 BC, Rome launched six large-scale wars, and there were countless small fights. Its territory spanned three continents in Asia, Africa and Europe, and the Mediterranean Sea became the inner lake of Rome, which was also a magnificent country in that year.
However, as the territory and population increased, the ruling strategy of the republic did not change. In Italy, for example, the people of the conquered areas were regarded only as "allies" and not as "citizens", who had to pay taxes to Rome and send troops for Rome, but were not eligible for election and could not be given land.
In terms of the military service system, Rome has always implemented a citizen soldier system of "self-funded combat", and the common people who do not have enough money are not even qualified to go to the battlefield. This is bound to affect the replenishment of soldiers, so that the effect of conquest is greatly reduced.
Fourth, the distribution is still unfair, especially the veterans who have returned from victory, they have laid down such a large territory, but not much land has been distributed to them.
With the increasing level of land annexation and the large-scale use of slaves, individual small producers simply could not compete with the large-scale richmen. Squeezed by oligarchs, the commoners went bankrupt and were forced to sell their land, which led to a further increase in land concentration and the gap between the rich and the poor.
In the last years of the Republic, the number of proletarians in the city of Rome was as high as 320,000, accounting for about 1/3 of the total number of citizens at that time. The increasing concentration of wealth created a huge "social underclass", which did not count the larger slave class and the Italian "allies".
From 196 to 73 BC, there were five large-scale slave revolts in Rome, an average of more than 20 years. This fully shows that the system of exploitation previously implemented based on conquest is almost impossible to play.
Together, the above points to a contradiction: the "republican system" established more than 300 years ago can no longer match the vast Rome of that time. The centralization of interests formed in the old system has been divided from the bottom of society and has formed a sharp opposition. Without further reform, Rome risked collapsing in a massive internal struggle.
The direction and purpose of the reform is obvious: that is, to break the pattern of aristocratic all-you-can-eat interests and enhance the social status and political rights of the people at the bottom. At the same time, they must be allowed to share the land and get benefits in the expansion of Rome's territory. In addition, the system of military service also needs to be adjusted in order to expand the number of troops.
If these measures are successfully implemented, the rigid Roman society will be reactivated and the mobility of the bottom will be increased. But if you cut flesh from the nobles and let the poor sticks equalize with them, can they not feel bad in their hearts? Will it be willing? Can I not hate you? Thus, in the more than half a century of change, the enmity that broke out over power and profit and the distribution of land continued to occur between the Senate and the reformers.
Intense contradictions escalate violence, while warlords and armies rise above and beyond in conflict. In the end, the reform of the "republican reform" initiated by the commoners of the Senate turned into an imperial transformation by the military leaders to end the senate system. In the process, Caesar was not the only victim, his death represented the climax of the struggle.
The first to do it were the Brothers Ofgracus, who in 133 BC were elected consul generals of tiberius. Gracchus, began the reforms. He issued a series of land reform plans similar to the "Wang Mang Reform System": including measures such as limiting the amount of land occupied per capita, confiscating and redistributing land annexed by large landowners, prohibiting land sales, and expanding the scope of military service.
As soon as the plan was introduced, it caused an uproar, and the people at the bottom naturally welcomed it, but the aristocrats and masters who had a lot of money and a wide range of money did not do it. The Senate resisted particularly fiercely, not only obstructing the progress of land reform, but even trying to eradicate the "scourge" of reform. At Tiberius' citizens' assembly for re-election, an armed mob attacked the scene, killing him and more than 300 supporters and throwing his bodies into the Tiber River.
Ten years later, Tiberius' younger brother Gaius. Gracchus also became a consul. While continuing his brother's land policy, he also had a long eye and gave the knightly class great privileges in taxation and justice. As a result, Guyio gained unprecedented support and was easily re-elected.
However, when he tried to grant Roman citizenship to his allies, he caused widespread discontent among all strata of the country. The Romans felt that their allies were barbarians and unworthy of being "citizens", and the policy of the conservator degraded their status and chilled their hearts. So Guyo's second chance to be re-elected was ruined.
Then, the Senate, which had been holding back for two years and did not dare to say a word, jumped out again. At the meeting to discuss the survival of the Carthaginian colony, the Senate and the Guyists had a fierce dispute, and the more they quarreled, the greater the enmity, which led to a large-scale fight. During the battle, the consul Lucius, with the authorization of the Senate, led his soldiers to conquer the hills occupied by the Gaius in the name of "defending the country", killing more than 3,000 Roman citizens. Gaius himself committed suicide because he was humiliated. The first conflict between the Senate and the Reformers ended in the defeat of the Gragus brothers.
At the end of the 2nd century BC, the republic fell into a low ebb, the invasion of Rome by Germanic tribes such as Sinbury and Teutonic intensified, and the Numibian War in North Africa did not know that the Year of the Monkey could be fought. Not only that, the Numibian king Djouda did not know whether he was guilty of the second or confident, but dared to go to the Roman Senate during the war, and shook out a large number of corruption incidents that occurred on the battlefield on the spot, and afterwards he retreated completely, tearing the faces of the nobles.
It was not until 107 BC, after Malleus came to power, that Rome's predicament was reversed. The archon, who was born from a bitter child, acted in a much stronger style than the Gracchu brothers. With the money of the Senate, he recruited a large number of landless poor people and allies into the army, and through the reform of the army and the establishment, the poor rods were collectively tempered and professionalized. At the same time, promise the soldiers that if they win the battle, they will have land. This is tantamount to the direct abolition of the "self-funded" citizen army system, the state pays for the maintenance of the standing army, and forcibly opens up citizenship during the war.
The soldiers trained in this way act in unison, obey the command, fear military discipline, and fight bravely. In addition, because the army was directly managed by the commander-in-chief, the veterans were often very loyal to it. The constant privatization of the army became a weapon for future generations of military leaders to shake the oligarchy and promoted the demise of the republic.
With this iron army, Malleus reached the pinnacle of his life by combining King Djouda and the invading Germans in 105 BC. However, after being elected consul six times, Malleus's reputation plummeted due to his lack of firmness and betrayal of his teammates. In the "Allied Wars" that broke out in 91 BC, Malleus's performance was also lackluster, but his old subordinate Sula, with brilliant achievements, was highly regarded.
Three years later, after the war ended with forced liberalization of citizenship, the power struggle between Sulla and Malleus caused continued political upheaval in Rome.
For a comeback, Malleus allied himself with the newly appointed protector, Lufus. In 88 BC, the two tried to take away Sulla's military power, and after hearing the news, Sulla fled back to Asia Minor, and then immediately returned to attack Rome, which was also the first time that the Roman army attacked its own country. The unprepared city of Rome was soon captured, Rufus was captured and killed, and Malleus fled.
In the past few years, Sulla, who thinks she has done everything, once again goes to Greece to fight with the kingdom of Pontus. As a result, as soon as he left on his front foot, Malleus, who had been doing hanako for a year, appeared, and joined forces with the expelled consul Qinna to retake the city of Rome. After the senate was emptied, the two men slashed and killed the aristocratic political enemies in the city. But the following year, Malleus fell ill and died, and Qinna became the boss of Rome.
Although he could not return home, Sulla, who was leading his troops, was not idle, and in the same year (86 BC) of Malleus's death, Sulla had already defeated the Pontus army in two major wars and swallowed up the Army sent by Qinna to destroy his own army. In addition, the move to allow soldiers to extort money from the Asian states also won the hearts of Sulla. In 84 BC, Qinna died, and Sulla led a counterattack of 40,000 troops in Italy the following year. After two years of bloody fighting, he finally took control of Rome in 81 BC, making himself a dictator for life.
Sulla returned as a defender of the Senate and carried out a brutal purge of the Mallorians. But he also doubled the number of the Senate, diluting the rights of the nobles, and these "new senators" were drawn from the "new Romans" who had just been granted citizenship. In addition, Sulla confiscated many of the lands of political opponents during the Civil War, most of which were given to his veterans in the form of colonies.
Although the Sumers were inseparable, both of them invariably weakened the foundations of oligarchy in the course of their struggle, making it no longer free from the protection of the warlords. While citizenship was expanded and land reform deepened, the social base of Rome was also changing in favor of individual dictatorship. In 78 BC, Sulla died.
The next phase of the struggle began with the restoration of the senate in 78 BC and ended with the re-outbreak of civil war in 49 BC. During this period, frequent military conflicts gave several generals unprecedented power, and they would become the gravediggers of the republic.
The first great warlord was Pompey, who served under Sulla's tent when he was young, recruiting troops and forming legions for him, belonging to the concubines of the old leaders. In 77 BC, after suppressing the anti-Sulla revolt in Italy, Pompey threatened the Senate and gained the command of the Party of Malleus. As a result, the division did not go well, and it took four years of fighting in Spain to barely end the war.
In 74 BC, the Spartacus Rebellion broke out, and hundreds of thousands of slaves were armed and swept through the country, defeating the hastily arriving Roman army several times. Two years later, the legal officer Crassus came out of the mountains, took over the baton, and defeated the main force of the rebel army. In return, Pompey, along with Crassus, became consul in 70 BC.
Three years later, in order to consolidate his position, Pompey went out again. In 6 years, the pirates of the Mediterranean, the invading Pontus and Armenia, and the Iberia, Albania and Syria, which no one provoked, were all pacified by Sula, and the territory of the republic was greatly expanded. However, it was this faceless expedition that caused Pompey to fall into the pit.
Pompey's military achievements caused great panic in the city of Rome, and people were very worried that he would become a "second Sura", kill Rome, and engage in military dictatorship. But Pompey really didn't mean that, and he didn't want to make enemies of the Senate. As a gesture of goodwill, he returned and disbanded the army. However, this move fell into the hearts of the Senate, and the parliamentarians were immediately in good spirits, not only refusing to recognize Pompey's achievements in the East, but also allocating land to his veterans. Crassus was even more miserable, and his plan to reorganize Asia's tax revenues was undermined.
Disbanding the army was a slap in the face of Pompey, especially in an era when warlords were overwhelmingly dominant. If there had been no such mistake, not only would the Senate not be able to move him, but the history that followed would have nothing to do with Caesar. But the regret medicine was not enough, and in order to regain the defeat, he had to cooperate with Crassus again and allyed with the rising star Caesar, hoping to restore his authority with his strength.
After the alliance of the Big Three, Roman politics basically had no senate. During his tenure as consul, Caesar was given military command in Gaul; Pompey and Crassus, re-elected consuls in 55 BC, took command of Spain and Syria for themselves, and extended Caesar's command in Gaul. In fact, this is the warlords dividing up the territory. Which to fight and how to divide it is all up to their brothers to decide, and the Senate can only "pass."
But the scales of power were broken, mainly because Caesar's credit was too great. In a series of invasions from 58 to 52 BC, he incorporated all the areas west of the Rhine into Rome and raised a loyal and powerful army.
Spurred on by Caesar, Crassus was anxious to gain military prestige comparable to that of his allies. In 53 BC, Crassus crossed the Syrian border and brazenly invaded Parthia, only to be killed in a disastrous defeat in Kalai. In less than a decade, there are only two of the Big Three left.
Facing the mighty Caesar alone made Pompey in the city of Rome feel like a needle in a haystack. He finally knew what was in the hearts of the elders when he returned from the Crusade. In addition, the delicate situation created by Crassus's death also gave rise to the idea that the Senate would also fish in the water and make a comeback, and they sent a friend application to Pompey.
In order to eliminate the common enemy, Pompey gladly accepted the olive branch thrown by the Senate. After the alliance between the two sides, the ruined Senate "added wings to the tiger" and kept stabbing Caesar in the back: one would thoroughly investigate his "corruption", the other would seize his military power, and every effort would hinder his election as consul, and the intention of expelling him from the political arena was very obvious. After seeing the position, Caesar drove his army to Italy in 49 BC, and the two sides began to fight.
Although Pompey was supported by many elders, Caesar proved with his strength that he was the most powerful general in Rome. The war lasted less than two years, and in August 48 BC, Pompey was defeated and killed in Egypt more than a month later.
Caesar, who defeated Pompey, was very benevolent, many enemies were forgiven but not killed, and the Senate was nominally preserved, which gave many of the remaining nobles the hope of "rebuilding the republic". But Caesar's reforms in 46 BC completely cooled their hearts.
First, the number of members of the Senate was increased by 100, and most of them were "new Romans" in Gaul and Macedonia, so that, with the addition of Sulla's 300 places, the number of "new senators" had surpassed that of the noble elders, and this historic institution was completely hollowed out.
2. Open citizenship to allies in Northern Italy and Sicily.
Caesar appointed himself as dictator for life.
Caesar divided the territories conquered by Rome into 18 provinces, each of which was equal to the city of Rome and was successively granted citizenship, with the governors of the provinces directly appointed by Caesar. This was tantamount to the integration of Rome from a loose alliance of city-states (an alliance of roman cities and allies) into a single state.
Fifth, establish colonies for retired veterans, thoroughly solve the problem of land distribution for soldiers, and institutionalize the national standing army.
These measures were not the whole of Caesar's reforms, but they were enough to destroy the foundations of oligarchy and rebuild a social structure that matched the totalitarian empire. In the midst of drastic changes, the glory of the elders and aristocrats was also completely swept into the history textbooks. From then on, there was no force that could prevent the dictatorship from growing bigger. The so-called "republic" has been reduced to a dispensable plaque.
Caesar's reforms made the nobles despair and unwilling, and they dreamed that if they got rid of the "tyrants", they could "revive" the republic. But their assassination was only the last flame that sprang out of the embers of the elder regime. Although Caesar was killed, the overall situation he forged could not be shaken, nor could it change the fate of Rome to run wildly towards the totalitarian system. Within three years, all the nobles involved in the conspiracy had been murdered; seventeen years later, Octavian, Caesar's heir, became the founder of the Roman Empire and the politics of the Führer.
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