Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 10 - Conclusion

  • Robert Morstein-Marx, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book:
    Julius Caesar and the Roman People
    Published online:
    05 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021, pp 580-615

  • Summary

    Caesar was no aspiring autocrat seeking to realize the imperial future but a republican political leader whose success was based on a combination of patrician pedigree with a popular persona built on an extraordinary record of military achievement. He was no anti-senatorial, populist revolutionary but followed in the tracks of Roman heroes of the past such as the Scipios. His astonishing success hardened his enemies' determination to stop him, even at the price of forcing a civil war. His assassination on the eve of his departure for a great war of vengeance against Parthia precluded whatever plans for consolidation he may have had, but also propelled the violence of civil war into the next phase of what would become a decisively destructive cycle. If Gruen was correct to emphasize that civil war destroyed the Republic, not its preexisting institutional weaknesses, then human choices, especially those that brought about the Civil War, provide the most satisfactory explanation for the collapse of the Republic.