I watched Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator. (Yeah, I’m a nerd!) It was made in 2023 by (the very objective) BBC Studios Specialist Factual Productions for the (equally objective) BBC and PBS. It’s the story of a power-grab that saw Julius Caesar consolidate the vast Roman Empire into his own hands, of how he overthrew nearly five centuries of Roman democracy in just 16 years.
The documentary begins with a hint of what’s to come — “political power”: “Historians and experts who understand the nature of political power will chart his [Caesar’s] rise.”
Rome is portrayed as a tinderbox ready to explode because the wealth gulf between the rich and the ordinary people had grown (sound familiar?). Rome was therefore set for a new type of politics, one where populism clashed with establishment, where threatening political enemies with violence became the norm (sound familiar?). As Caesar consolidated his grip over the Republic, his ambitions turned to dictatorship. A handful of senators plotted to end his rule in the only way they could: by taking his life.
Why should we care? Because it is a transparent attempt to link the actions of one of history’s worst tyrants to what the historians interviewed view as the actions of a current tyrant: Donald Trump. With the making of the “landmark” documentary, its producer, Emma Frank, appeared desperate to turn Julius Caesar’s actions into a warning for current times: if we don’t heed the lessons of Caesar’s wanton iconoclasm and populism, then any current or future Caesar is a “threat to democracy.”
The documentary was made in England, but it has found its way to this side of the pond. From a TLS article: “After many months struggling for an ancient parallel for Donald Trump, the American press seems to have latched onto Julius Caesar.”
The documentary, though historically accurate, neither presents new information nor provides a fresh perspective. Instead, it fashions Caesar’s actions into a parable for modern times. Caesar took advantage of Rome’s (unwritten) constitution and changed the entire fabric of the empire. As Donald Trump’s populism increases, Caesar’s story should, according to Democrats, remind us how fragile our own democracy is. If Rome, they insist, could be overthrown by the ambitions of one man, it could again happen. Our modern democracy could collapse if the U.S. elects a bellicose demagogue.
Caesar is compared to Donald Trump. Labour lord Baroness Chakrabarti says, “I think the Caesar story really is a wake-up call. If we take democracy for granted, a new Caesar will come.” Caesar’s story, says Tory M.P. turned podcast host Rory Stewart, “reminds us of our own times.” According to Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, professor of Roman Studies at the University of Cambridge, when the Roman Senate was burned in 52 B.C. by an angry horde, it was like the January 6 riots in the U.S. It was an episode “as terrifying as the spectacle of the Capitol being invaded by an angry mob under Trump.”
Stewart says the “echoes with Trump are obvious.” Both men “basically whip up a mob” to achieve their aims. “The fundamental lesson of Caesar’s rise and fall is to be very, very suspicious of populism. It is: ‘I’m standing for the people against the elite. The people who are trying to defend the old way of doing things are out of touch. Things need to change, and I’m going to break it all. The roots of dictatorship are very seductive.”
According to historian Tom Holland, part of the attraction of populist politicians is the “adrenaline rush of seeing traditional orders trampled down and humiliated. People want someone who they feel speaks for them.”
Caesar’s story is of ambition, recklessness, hubris, gore, rapacious violence, wit, and cunning. That stands on its own, without the need for constant Trump analogies. Attempts to equate the Roman Republic with the modern day make for lazy history. Remonstrations by the January 6 Committee notwithstanding, political power has been transferred peacefully. Respect for law and order has basically persisted; no symbolic Rubicon has been crossed. To suggest that a modern Caesar is biding his time in the wings, ready to strike at any moment, is a Democrat scare tactic. To argue that he might actually succeed, in spite of all the checks and balances in place, is ridiculous.
The documentary occasionally leans too heavily into its parallels between Caesar and modern-day populism. The portrayal of Caesar as a populist and the comparisons made between him and Donald Trump seem heavy-handed. Caesar endures, said Holland, “in the imagination either as an exemplar to be emulated or as a warning from history.”
Rory Stewart described Caesar as a “disgrace in every single way. He’s immoral, irreligious, and a political tyrant.” I can’t imagine Trump disagreeing with this description of himself. However, it does a disservice to the process of learning from specific and/or cherry-picked historical events to suggest that they can be understood only through a modern lens, that the story of a faltering and vulnerable republic is interesting only if it can be remembered in light of January 6.
There are parallels, but they should, as Stewart suggests, cease there. However, Politico couldn’t stop making parallels with this hit piece.
Julius Caesar, the Donald Trump of his day, promised to return Rome to an imagined ancient glory — but instead constructed himself a throne, bulldozing democratic norms, ignoring checks on his power and eroding political debate. Rome chose to follow Caesar, putting the famed Republic on a path to destruction. Like Trump, Julius Caesar was already a celebrity when he took the highest office in Rome — and despised by much of the ruling class. Questions were constantly raised about his fitness for office; more than simply unconventional, he operated within an entirely new set of rules, overturning procedure and bending the law whenever it was expedient. He was regularly derided for his personal foibles.
Time magazine got in on the act:
Roman emperors could not have suppressed charismatic challengers without the (sometimes) hidden threat of force. The legal battle over the 2024 U.S. presidential election may threaten our democratic tradition, but so long as the army remains in its barracks, the country is unlikely to adopt a monarchy. A die may be cast, but it is not destined to land on the same side as Caesar’s.
Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. in order to end his tyranny. Perhaps that’s what the Democrats and the MSM are hoping will happen to Trump as they spew their calls for his death.
The final days of the Roman republic bear little resemblance to today’s world, with NATO, a European Union, a United Nations, an internet, and new values and anxieties. Therefore, parallels between Caesar and Trump are, at best, self-serving.
Image via Raw Pixel.
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