The Founding fathers having had a study of history and who modeled our government in part of the Roman Republic would understand how that Republic ended.
This is like Gracchi brothers stuff going on.
That republic ended mainly due to a combination of corruption of the senate and power mad Emperors.
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The Republic Ended before there were Emperors.
Julius Caesar marked the end of the Republic. But the really interesting stuff happened in the generation before him.
A good book to check about this period is this.
The “Republic” existed as long as there was a Senate with Plenary power.
The Republic ended with Julius Caesar. You know… the Emperor? The dude who proclaimed himself a God? That guy… and when he was disposed of did they return to the system that they had before? Nope… they seemed to like the stability that having an Emperor brought. Because the decades leading up to Julius Caesar was one of constant internal conflict.
I don’t know why this is under dispute.
Next you’re going to tell me that all the Roman Emperors and in fact emperors all over Europe for the next nineteen hundred years would call themselves “caesars” as a synonym for emperor.
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That Augustus was a supremely talented and competent leader is the only reason why the image of the republic persisted.
Octavian was a â– â– â– â– â– â– â– boss. The prima porta is my favorite statue ever. It is gorgeous in the Vatican. Absolutely gorgeous.
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It is staggering to think of how long Roman History actually is and what they accomplished in that period.
It is really easy for people to conflate different periods of the history because on one hand it is so long and on the other changes seemed to happen suddenly.
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The Republic was pretty short lived though.
In the grand scheme of things it was.
It failed under pressures of them being expansionist, a rapidly increasing wealth gap from that expansion and importing cheap labor.
History does tend to rhyme.
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My favorite part of that is, according to the Romans, they literally never fought an offensive war. Strictly D.
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It truly is overwhelming and dwarfs American history beyond all recognition.
It took the gens Octavia family clan centuries to rise to a level sufficient to produce Augustus. A slow, steady climb via countless ancestors and key events.
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Well the Cimbri would freak anyone out.
You catch senator Bennett’s speech on the senate floor the night of the riots? He had lots to say about this.
What blows me away about the scale of time is stuff like the Sphinx fell into a ruin and was restored during the Egyptian period. Just staggering in scale.
I caught a bit of it… He probably read the same Mike Duncan Book I did.
Well I just bookmarked it to order tomorrow so thanks and hat tip.
It’s good. If you listen to Dan Carlin’s history podcast he goes over this period also. It is basically focused on the generation before Julius Cesear.
I read Mary Beard’s book, but I found it lacking on the later period stuff. I have to get back into Rome but I have been doing a deep dive into early 1800’s American History lately.
Really love reading Alan Taylor’s stuff on this. Currently reading his book on the settlement of Maine. It is super crazy and one of the purest forms of class warfare I can find in the early days of the American Republic.
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There we go, the fun police solved the problem.
Nah dude. It’s all good.
Let’s not have organic conversations or nothing.
You do you.
