Customer Reviews

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The Assassination of Julius Caesar blows away the so called truth proffered to us by the gentlemen historians who peddle a genre biased towards an upper-class ideological perspective. Parenti is an eloquent Caesarian historian who displays an astonishing amount of research finely organized and presented in this Pulitzer Prize nominated work; which will no doubt have the Ciceronians scrambling to put together a rebuttal.

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 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.

This book is excellent. I started reading about Julius Caesar 50
years ago. I have been constantly amazed at the praise that major historians have given to Cicero (who lies to everyone but Atticus), Brutus (whose exhorbitant interest rates were talked about by even HIS peers), for Cato (whose hyprocrisy allowed him
to denounce Caesar at all points while manipulating Roman laws
to defeat Caesar at every turn) and others in the oligarchy as
"noble" protectors of the constitution.

These "protectors" of the Roman constitution allowed Pompey to
become consul before he was legally of age, appointted him sole
consul (a unique position) at one point, allowed him to govern
Spain and maintain an army without going to Spain, and gave him
control of the Roman state BEFORE Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Mr. Parenti was able to take these inherent contradictions of the wealthy Senators AND many hisotrians and recognize their
class blindness. Almost by instinct many historians seemingly
identified themselves with the oligarchy ("the best") and condemned Caesar for excessive arrogance and ambition in a Rome
where all of the Senatorial class were equally ambitious and
desirous of getting & keeping private wealth.

His book is readable and well reasoned. Thanks to Mr. Parenti!

Michael Parenti's book, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, might be read most profitably in conjunction with Goldsworthy's new biography, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Parenti's work focuses on a specific issue--Caesar as "populist," murdered by wary elitists. Goldsworthy's book is much more detailed, provides much more context. Parenti's book can be viewed within the larger context.

Parent's thesis, outlined on page 3, is straightforward: "Caesar's sin, I shall argue, was not that he was subverting the Roman constitution--which was an unwritten one--but that he was loosening the oligarchy's overbearing grip on it. Worse still, he used state power to effect some limited benefits for small farmers, debtors, and urban proletariat, at the expense of the wealthy few."

Some other reviewers are appalled at this thesis and the manner in which Parenti writes. This is typical of Parenti's work more generally. He has a position and normally writes in such a way as to address that view in no uncertain terms. Some will appreciate this; others won't. But the question should not be whether or not one likes his passionate writing. The question should be: Does he make his case? This is why reading this book in concert with Goldsworthy's makes sense. In the latter volume, much the same theme is advanced, although presented in a much more nuanced, and, in fact, more convincing manner.

This book is most useful in laying out a perspective that is straightforward and not subtle. Sometimes, the lack of subtlety undermines the logic of the analysis. Still, the volume provides a thesis that places Caesar in a political context.

Critics who fail to see through the very blindnesses Parenti challenges throughout this book are just proving his point. It is not, as "L.C" Robinson asserts above, that Parenti thinks everybody is wrong. Parenti's interest is not in some puerile (and typically American) debate over who is right and who is wrong, but rather a very fair and disinterested discussion about the consequences of crippling class stratification in ancient Rome and, as it turns out, throughout much of the history that followed.

People like Mr. Robinson speak from precisely the privileged perspective Parenti works so tirelessly to challenge here. It is unfathomable to people such as himself that there are those for whom education is a pipe dream, an unattainable aspiration prohibited by the financial situations into which they were born. From the days of Sallust, Seutonius and Polybius on down to Edward Gibbon, education was a privilege reserved for the wealthy. Literacy rates in ancient Rome were horrific; the vast majority of the population could neither read nor write. This insurmountable disadvantage persisted over thousands of years and continues even today, when there are only two ways by which an American kid gets a good education: rich parents, or a willingness to plunge oneself into tens of thousands of dollars into debt (I myself owe $57,000 in student loans, which will not be paid off for 30 years). In less developed nations, literacy rates remain as bad as they were in Caligula's day. Still, though, America's own literacy rate ranks just 48th in the world (see Morris Berman's "Twilight of American Culture"). Of course, some of us are lucky enough to land a scholarship or grant, but that is too often like winning the lottery.

People like Seutonius and Edward Gibbon were able to write history because they could afford to; they grew up in the upper classes where education was not only affordable but often taken for granted. Parenti's thesis is absolutely correct: history is written by the winners, the privileged and the fortunate. Thus, the condemnation of the ancient Roman populace as an unwashed and filthy rabble persists not because it is fact, but because it is the only history that circumstances have allowed. It is one of history's most glaring ironies that the privileged classes of ancient Rome considered themselves morally superior to plebs and slaves, when it was THEY who orchestrated spectacles such as this one, described so poignantly by Parenti:

"The ceremonies to dedicate Pompey's theater included a battle between a score of elephants and men armed with javelins . . . the slaughter of the elephants proved more than the crowd could countenance. One giant creature, brought to its knees by missiles, crawled about, ripping shields from its attackers and throwing them into the air. Another, pierced deeply through the eyes with a javelin, fell dead with a horrifying crash. The elephants shrieked bitterly as their tormentors closed in. Some of them refused to fight, treading about frantically with trunks raised toward Heaven, as if lamenting to the gods. In desperation, the beleaguered beasts tried to break through the iron palisade that corralled them. When they had lost all hope of escape, they turned to the spectators as if to beg for their assistance with heartbreaking gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing . . . the audience was overcome by a feeling that these great mammals had something in common with humankind."

It was the plebs whose eyes could not bear what they saw; the senators and kings who forced it upon them, calculating these events specifically to distract the underprivileged from the practical woes that Caesar and the Gracchi (among others) attempted to ease with proposals for reform that culminated in so many assassinations at the hands of Roman society's chief beneficiaries. In the face of so many biased and classist historical texts, Parenti's book is as necessary an historical account of an extraordinary epoch as we have. While casting Caesar in a more humane and progressive light than historians have allowed, Parenti never wavers in his sincerity, calling attention to Caesar's notorious brutality and the corruption that festered around him as much as he lauds the man's more civil pursuits. Parenti never claims that Caesar hoped for an egalitarian society; he only suggests that Caesar's proposals for reforms in land distribution, tax codes and interest rates provoked the bitter disdain of the rich and powerful.

Compared to the quality of life available to plebs and slaves, these proposals were modest, even meager, compared to the real needs of ancient Rome's common people. Still, they might have lent some degree of comfort to the lives of those who had to use the urine of passersby to wash their clothes (As parenti explains, uric acid is still used today in common cleaning agents such as Borax) and crammed into unstable and claustrophobic apartment complexes, living with five other families in one room. That even these most modest of attempts at pacifying the underprivileged met with such scorn from Cicero, Marcus Brutus, Cassius and others makes an even more powerful testament of Parenti's book, which never turns a blind eye to Caesar's entire character merely to prove a point. This is the kind of sincerity and humanity one would expect from historians but so infrequently experiences.

[...]

The ancient Romans have always been a saddening history for me,
a time of slavery and cruelty, schemes and murderous conquest,
fat aristocrats, insane emperors and unruly mobs.
Michael Parenti has my thanks for detaching the conflicts of
the Late Republic from their usual biases, dispelling
the ideological illusions that are treated as fact, and
constructing a useful perspective that increases historical
comprehension of that era, allows reflection on other stories
from history, and even the turmoil of our own times.
Well-researched, but not merely a collection of facts or
a simplistic timeline, this is history with a purpose, written
with confident style, incisive humor and surprising intelligence.

Michael Parenti's treatment of Ancient Rome's Late Republic is a richly layered, deeply researched, well written work that deserves our attention for years to come. He takes a complex and troubled era and makes it accessible and fascinating for both the lay reader and the classicist expert.

A word about some of the ad hominem attacks proffered by other reviewers. One Timothy Doran calls Parenti "a bleeding heart Marxist." This kind of cheap labeling tells us more about Doran than about the book at hand. In fact, there is nothing in Parenti's book that savors of doctrinaire ideology. He sticks close to the original and primary sources, and demonstrates how they have been repeatedly mishandled by generations of elite scholars. If there is any ideology in the book it is the ideology of conservative classicists-whom Parenti exposes.

Another reviewer Jamie Rawson makes the incomprehensible assertion (in an otherwise favorable review) that Parenti does not use original sources, preferring to rely on standard modern-day secondary works. This is simply not true. He delves deeply into primary sources: Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, et al, along with all the ancient historians such as Plutarch, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, etc. Parenti uses them all and seems to have read them all. Of course, he also cites standard secondary works including modern day ones, but mostly to criticize their tendency to repeat each other's ideological biases against the Roman reformers and for the Roman aristocrats.
Parenti's treatment of Julius Caesar and ancient Rome is a wonderful book and a great read.

Parenti's discussion of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar is radically enlightening. His presentation, like a fork of lightning, illumines the history of Rome. It's real and revelatory. I understand the history as I never before did. I can relate it to my life experiences and give it heft and dimensions because Parenti writes of and documents very well the crucial forces that were at work. He makes clear what the "gentlemen historians" with their upper class biases have so muddled.
The words flow clear, the concepts easily grasped. He has a sweet way with words.
He adds a very useful appendix that enables one on their own to penetrate into the scholarly resources available.
An excellent book.

History is long dead, so who really cares what happened in ancient Rome? Surely there is some reason that it remains a staple of our educational curriculum. Perhaps it is because the more one learns about Rome, the more one understands about our own society and government. The lens of history permits us to take a less biased view of events. We gain an understanding of patterns and processes that, we suddenly realize, are applicable to our own situation in the present. This value of history, of course, depends on the impartiality of the history itself. Otherwise, history can be a powerful tool in warping our perceptions--both of the past and the present.

Michael Parenti addresses these issues with a fine mix of political science and history in "The Assassination of Julius Ceasar". The subtitle is perhaps more descriptive of the book itself--"A People's History of Ancient Rome". Parenti does a brilliant job providing the background to the assassination itself. He paints Rome as a world much different than that normally portrayed in history textbooks. He takes us beyond a mere alternative interpretation of the events, however, into a historiological diatribe against the aristocratic historians who have, until now, portrayed Rome in a very warm light.

From the primary sources--Cicero, Cato and Virgil--to the more recent giants of history such as Gibbon, Robinson and Tillemont, the accepted history of Rome has been passed down to us through an unbroken chain of wealthy aristocrats. Parenti points out their clear bias in interpreting issues of enlightened aristocracy, land reform and the plight of the commoner. He provides compelling evidence that this accepted, "gentleman's" history is strongly biased. He illustrates that this bias goes well beyond a few unkind words about "the ignorant masses" to outright reversal of the facts. Ultimately returning to the title, he demonstrates this egregious misrepresentation of history in the interpretations of the assassination of Julius Ceasar himself.

Ask most any student of history about ancient Rome and you will hear about the strong democratic institution of the Senate, and about how Julius Ceasar made himself the first emperor of Rome by destroying the power of this institution, leading to the downfall of the Republic and the rise of Empire. Brutus and his fellow patriots killed Ceasar in an act of tyranicide, a last-ditch attempt to rescue the republic for the people of Rome. Or so the story goes...

Never mind, for the moment, that Ceasar wasn't the first emperor (it was either Sulla or Octavian, depending on how you define Emperor). Never mind that the senate was never a democratic institution (but the tribal assembly of Rome was). Those commonly held beliefs are surely just simplifications to help us understand the big picture. At least we can remain confident in what we were taught about Ceasar himself?

As Parenti points out, Gaius Julius Ceasar was actually the last in a long line of populares, men who fought to prevent the exploitation of the populace by the aristocratic oligarchs in the senate. Like Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus before him, Ceasar attempted to pass a series of lex agraria, or land reform laws. There were actually very few private property owners in the Republic, with most land being leased to citizens to use as farm land. The oligarchs in the senate used their influence to ensure that nearly all leases to the small farmers were terminated, and the land was instead leased to themselves, virtually for free. Ceasar, and the other populares, attempted to break this stranglehold on arable land by passing land-reform laws that would return this public land to the general public. On 15 March, 44 B.C.E., the senators did what they had historically done when their priviledge and wealth was threatened: they assassinated those pushing for reform. Marcus Brutus, one of the ringleaders, was an aristocrat and wealthy landowner. He was acting in the interest of himself and of his class...not in the interest of what most would consider patriotism.

Parenti skillfully combines an alternative history and a lesson in historiography all while providing excellent food-for-thought for our current political situation. He writes in a lively style that is accessible and enjoyable to read. For those with a modest background and interest in either ancient Rome or modern politics, Parenti's "People's History of Ancient Rome" is highly recommended.

This is a fascinating book, beautifully written, compellingly informative, with engrossing details and surprising accounts. It is an analysis not only of Rome's Late Republic but of the conservative and manipulative prejudices and tacky scholarship of many writers on the subject.

One reviewer here attacks Parenti for claiming to be the first to show that the conspirators killed Caesar because he was moving against their privileges. That is a false statement, as Parenti makes no such claim. Parenti explicitly notes that other scholars before him, including Arthur Kahn and most notably G.E.M. de Ste. Crois, have offered this thesis. He quotes Kahn who says however that they are just "a handful."

Also contrary to that reviewer, Parenti never said that scholars "confuse the Augustan regime with what Caesar intended to found or perpetuate." All Parenti does is note how unconcerned the senators were when their "beloved" Republic was undermined by Augustus. They readily went along with the emperor because he secured their material interests. That was their concern--their wealth and property. That's why they supported Augustus and hated Caesar--Caesar refused to leave their immense wealth and class privileges untouched. He dared to demand that they share a bit of it.

That issue, like so much else in this book is all too relevant for the conditions of today. Parenti is a remarkably versatile and powerful writer. No one so capably combines such thoughtful, engaging analysis and perspective with such interesting storytelling.

Although I do not consider this to be Parenti's best work, it certainly exposes Rome in a way not usually (read EVER) presented. We live in a society that wants quick ideological answers. Perhaps instead we should look toward reason and truth. This book contains both. There are parts of this history left uncovered. So be it. What is presented here is not a definitive history, but rather a concise arguement about motivations of the players. Brilliant. Bravo Parenti.