The ethics of Caesar's assassins

The Roman Republic was broken in many ways by the time that Gaius Julius Caesar came along, but it was based on a constitution, checks and balances of power, and the votes of the people of Rome. If someone took on the role of dictator--a sort of super magistrate with special legal powers--it was only an appointment for six months, one which most men resigned from early.

So it's not terribly difficult to imagine a group of senators being driven to murder when Caesar came along and had himself declared dictator in perpetuity.

Setting aside all that the Roman Empire did after the Ides of March and everything else that the assassins couldn't have foreseen, how ethical was what they did? At that point, was assassinating Caesar justifiable or not? If not, can any political situation ever justify assassination?

I don't think this one can be justified. Caesar was a popular ruler and he was killed by an elite class who did not want someone to continue with power in this way. They thought he would overthrown the Senate and rule as a tyrant, whether that view was justified or not.

They may have considered their actions to be in the best interests of Rome, but it was almost certainly in their interests as well.

Political assassination can be justified, see Von Staffenberg (loses thread due to Godwin's Law)

While in the end it proved futile, I believe it was completely justified. If some tin-plated general or crazy President declared martial law and eliminated the democratic process I would hope some brave souls could not only kill or arrest him but then actually succeed it putting things back to where they should be.

Of course with Rome it was not quite overnight. There was a steady shift of power from the Senate to the Consuls and then the acceleration of power away from the Senate under the First Triumvirate. The Senate should have acted quicker to halt their erosion of power to keep the Republic alive.


And yes, I think there is a lesson to be learn here though I have simplified things of course.

Part of the problem I have with assassination, of any kind, is that it seems to me to be the opening strains of a civil war.

Wars suck, and civil wars suck even worse than most. A civil war that seeks to solely change which person is at the top, or even which family, or group of families, is exercising power seems to me to the worst kind of violence. Gangsterism cloaked in national politics and starving masses beneath their ambitions.

There are times and places where I'd consider civil wars to be necessary, or at least an arguable necessity. But, unless the good one is trying to do has the potential to at least match the suffering that such a conflict will generate, I tend to view many civil wars as little more than power grabs.

To get back to Caesar's assassination, I believe that the three primary movers behind the assassination, only one of them had the goal of trying to restore the Republic. (Though I may be wrong about that - My view of Brutus tends to be heavily influenced by Shakespeare.) With the other two planning to simply supplant Caesar as dictator after a suitable period of mourning. Which leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Whatever the motives of the three primary conspirators - the disparity between their private ambitions and their public motives leaves me with the impression that only a blind idiot (or idealist - take your bow, Brutus) could imagine that they'd be able to supplant Caesar's rule with a stable government.

Of course, in spite of the OP's requests, it's hard for me to forget that one of the effects of the assassination of Caesar was to end up finally destroying the Republic, and ushering in the Empire - where dictator for life was the norm.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

While in the end it proved futile, I believe it was completely justified. If some tin-plated general or crazy President declared martial law and eliminated the democratic process I would hope some brave souls could not only kill or arrest him but then actually succeed it putting things back to where they should be.

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Which is one reason I'm so favorable towards Harry Truman. IMNSHO MacArthur was this close to establishing himself as some kind of tinpot emperor over the Far East.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

While in the end it proved futile, I believe it was completely justified. If some tin-plated general or crazy President declared martial law and eliminated the democratic process I would hope some brave souls could not only kill or arrest him but then actually succeed it putting things back to where they should be.

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How is it justified? Are you saying that because he removed democratic process, it should be legal to kill him? Several of the titles were given to him in his absence and the reaction of the general populace should be more than enough to say how popular he was.

To protect the Republic from a Despot it was. I'm not saying his assassins were all acting with honor but Julius Caesar was not going to retire to be Governor after his time Consul and was a Dictator and declared himself so for more than Rome allowed. He was the end of the Republic. The attempt to stop this, even by assassination is just.

I don't know that I'm comfortable with the fact that you think ethics and government go together, but what the hell. If it were a modern general who crossed the Rubicon river equivalent to start a civil war we would probably execute the general and most of the soldiers who followed him or her. Afterward we'd seize the wealth of their supporters and families. The brutality of it all would probably horrify the modern world. Thankfully we shit can generals just for even hinting at insubordination (McArthur being Americas first great lesson in this). We all learned important lessons from Rome. (I think McArthur understood this in some fashion, and to be fair his farewell speech is beautiful.)

Whose to say what is right or wrong, without the assassination of Caesar they might not have seen the rise of Octavius who would go on to start several hundred years of relative peace for Rome. A veritable golden age by any standard.

So I guess I will side with the people who believe government and ethics are a useless pairing, all I want is stability and peace. Sometimes the ends justify the means.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

To protect the Republic from a Despot it was. I'm not saying his assassins were all acting with honor but Julius Caesar was not going to retire to be Governor after his time Consul and was a Dictator and declared himself so for more than Rome allowed. He was the end of the Republic. The attempt to stop this, even by assassination is just.

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You mean replace Caesar with a small group of elite aristocrats wielding all the power. Somehow democracy doesn't come in to it and its still not a justification for these assassins.

Governments are always supposed to act ethically, except when they aren't. Usually when it comes to "Matters of National Security". :roll:

I meant and mean that the Senate should have stopped him by any means including assassination and put the Republic back on course.

The Republic wasn't remotely a democracy. This was just a matter of which aristocrat controlled the Republic, not about trying to stop a free nation from sliding into tyranny.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

I meant and mean that the Senate should have stopped him by any means including assassination and put the Republic back on course.

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But the Republic was already well off course before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Those who opposed him were the aristocrats, not the common people who were largely happy having "the People of Rome" be embodied by a single man.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

I meant and mean that the Senate should have stopped him by any means including assassination and put the Republic back on course.

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Why? In what way was the Republic better than Caesar ruling as acclaimed leader of Rome.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

To protect the Republic from a Despot it was. I'm not saying his assassins were all acting with honor but Julius Caesar was not going to retire to be Governor after his time Consul and was a Dictator and declared himself so for more than Rome allowed. He was the end of the Republic. The attempt to stop this, even by assassination is just.

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Except that the Republic had been dead in all but name for years before G. Julius Caesar came to power. It was just one over-powered general :hist: after another. And the assassins weren't so much interested in restoring the republic as they were making a power-grab for themselves.

So, no. I don't think they acted ethically. All Roman politicians were conniving, avaricious, megalomaniac loons.

I find it interesting that you consider the details of the assassination more important than the details leading to Gaius Julius taking power.

1) The policies of Gaius Julius were an extension of the Marian reforms and other policies put in place by Gaius Marius. Marius wanted a better Rome, where all freemen could be citizens. This was attempted prior to the Social War and the Tribune proposing it was assassinated.

2) The Senate/Senatorial class wanted a continuation of the status quo. Gaius Julius threatened to upend the existing social structure by giving increased power to the lower tier nobles as well as the citizens.

3) The Senate was rightfully terrified of another Sulla. More importantly, Marcus Junius Brutus was terrified of another Sulla and was turned away from Gaius Julius by the reactionaries in the Senate. This did not mean he was opposed to the desired result, only the methodology as explained to him by a band of thieves.

If more men in the Senatorial class had the convictions of Marius Junius Brutus, Rome would have never been in the dire straights it was. As it was, the Brutus family name alone gave the conspirators the extra edge they needed in their power grab. He did what he felt was right not because it was convenient, but because it was right.

I am not arguing Caesar's assassins. I am arguing over the last thing Zuul wrote.

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If not, can any political situation ever justify assassination?

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I agree most of Caesar's assassins were not noble in intent. I agree it did no good to reverse the course.

ETA: This should have posted nearly 2 hours ago. My connection failed instead.


ETA #2: Welcome hobbler and nice addition. I take it you are more up on this subject than I and I appreciate your insights.

Thanks!

The whole situation was complicated and not as simple as "Oh! The Senate and Democracy!" To me, your line of thought falls more in with the mistake Brutus made. How could Gaius Julius make it hereditary, when he was childless? I believe he would have enacted his reforms, stuck around long enough to see they stuck long enough to be irreversible, then retired to obscurity and wealth. Even if he hadn't done that, they would have eventually been able to destroy him politically.

None of the conspirators (or Antony) counted on Octavian's drive. Octavian lucked out because he was able to do major house clearing during the civil wars spurred by the assassination so didn't have any major opposition once he finished off Antony.

Looking at it that way, it was the assassination and assassins that brought down the Republic, not the single man.

All fair but then I was arguing more that assassination was the right thing to do in some cases. History already proved it was wrong in this case though.

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Originally posted by hobbler

More importantly, Marcus Junius Brutus was terrified of another Sulla and was turned away from Gaius Julius by the reactionaries in the Senate. This did not mean he was opposed to the desired result, only the methodology as explained to him by a band of thieves.

If more men in the Senatorial class had the convictions of Marius Junius Brutus, Rome would have never been in the dire straights it was. As it was, the Brutus family name alone gave the conspirators the extra edge they needed in their power grab. He did what he felt was right not because it was convenient, but because it was right.

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"Brutus is an honorable man," as the play says. Your view here seems to be that, based off of his own convictions and what he'd been lead to believe through manipulations, Brutus was taking the correct course of action as he saw it, even if it was ultimately wrong? (And yet, oddly enough, led to a lot of very good consequences.)

Assassination of a public figure is never a good idea. All it does is create a martyr for the cause. Public discrediting (political assassination) is much more effective at getting rid of an enemy. Discredit the face of the cause, discredit the cause.

What are some times you feel assassination would have been a good course of action?

Zuul:

Based off of his own convictions, he was doing the right thing to benefit Rome and putting his personal feelings aside for the good of the Republic. Killing the man at the top, who would have been a major supporter of his own political aspirations, is political suicide.

Well clearly examples like Hitler and Stalin come to mind easily.

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Originally posted by What Exit?

Well clearly examples like Hitler and Stalin come to mind easily.

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I actually fear what would have happened had either of those men been assassinated. I know there's some debate on Stalin's death, but it looked enough like natural causes that it certainly didn't martyr him.

Neither one was in a vacuum. There were plenty of others waiting in the wings, ready to take over and continue the cause. In Hitler's case at least, they may have not only had the benefit of a martyr but been better strategic minds as well.

Both are debatable. Hitler had Goebbels and Goering, Stalin had Beria. One of the first major actions after Stalin died was Beria's execution. Assassinating Hitler prior to the complete military crippling of Germany and obvious defeat would have led to a Stalin style purge of the country by those two.

No Stalin, no Eastern front or rapid industrialization plans in the 1930s that kept Germany from steamrolling over Russia. Germany steamrolls over Russia, more troops available for the Western fronts, Allies don't win a complete victory and the Nazis stay in power within Germany.

As my priest likes to say, "I never met a motive that wasn't mixed." Caesar's assassins had a number of reasons for killing him, not all of which were laudable. But it was clear that Caesar intended to retain supreme power for life, and that was anathema to the ideals of the Republic, tattered and oft-disregarded as they were by that point in the city's history. Caesar's popularity among the rabble, er, esteemed citizenry is almost beside the point if you think that he was a threat to the Republic, as many if not all of his assassins apparently believed he was.

Incidentally, the book Seven Days in May (later made into a pretty good movie) is a just-barely-plausible but very interesting look at what might happen if a smart, popular, MacArthuresque general decided that the incumbent U.S. President was an incompetent weenie who had to be removed for the good of the country. A bit dated now, given its Cold War backdrop, but still worth a read.

The problem is MacArthur didn't really have the respect of senior leadership in the military and would have never been able to muster enough support even under ideal conditions.

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Originally posted by hobbler

The problem is MacArthur didn't really have the respect of senior leadership in the military and would have never been able to muster enough support even under ideal conditions.

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That is a good point. MacArthur had a definite popular following, but had done a magnificent job of alienating the professional Eisenhower-type officer class.

Caesar's popularity needs to be kept within proper perspective. Caesar was popular because he threw lavish parties for the Plebes. He was also politically popular because he was enfranchising Gauls and other foreign vassals in the Senate. From a Modern Globalist's perspective this can be a good thing, but when he was making Emperor a hereditary title, I can see why some might oppose that.

Of course the greatness of the Republic is vastly over-stated. The Patricians were assholes. An Aristocratic ruling class that makes all the decisions is hardly a "Republic" in the way we conceive of it, and we like to project our modern notions of a Republic on Rome.

Was Caesar's assassination justified? Yeah, I think so.

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Originally posted by hatesfreedom

I don't know that I'm comfortable with the fact that you think ethics and government go together, but what the hell. If it were a modern general who crossed the Rubicon river equivalent to start a civil war we would probably execute the general and most of the soldiers who followed him or her. Afterward we'd seize the wealth of their supporters and families. The brutality of it all would probably horrify the modern world. Thankfully we shit can generals just for even hinting at insubordination (McArthur being Americas first great lesson in this). We all learned important lessons from Rome. (I think McArthur understood this in some fashion, and to be fair his farewell speech is beautiful.)

Whose to say what is right or wrong, without the assassination of Caesar they might not have seen the rise of Octavius who would go on to start several hundred years of relative peace for Rome. A veritable golden age by any standard.

So I guess I will side with the people who believe government and ethics are a useless pairing, all I want is stability and peace. Sometimes the ends justify the means.

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Several hundred years of relative peace? Umm, what? Are you unaware of biblical history like at all? Shortly after Augustus came Nero, who was a despot that declared himself a God. The Jews revolted against Rome because Nero wanted to put statues of himself in the temple. Jesus tossing out the money lenders was a matter of a numismatic monopoly where it was illegal to print any coin that did not have the icon of the Emperor on it, and as such they monopolized the kosher coin at the Temple, making it hard for people to worship at the temple if they could not obtain the proper coin that had no graven image of a ruler on it.

If Caesar brought peace it's because they expanded the Empire so far and wide that the real violence occurred remotely from the borders of Rome proper.

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Originally posted by Tinker

hey i wanna act like the entire roman empire was BIBLICAL HISTORY

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It's referred to as Pax Romana these days, you can look it up.

Moderator note: OK, I moved the fight posts out of this thread, starting with the one where Tinker inexplicably accused hatesfreedom of hating Christianity, and threw in a few insults to boot. Tinker, if you want to debate that's great, but if you have an argument, make it, don't throw out unfounded accusations. Everyone else, if you have a problem with a poster, it would be great if you could bring it to a mod's attention before joining in the insults and namecalling.

Oh...and feel free to fight more in the Thunderdome, but please keep it out of this debate.

Did Octavius actually setup a system that lead to a period of peace? How does one define peace? Do the excesses of Caligula and Nero not count as a disruption of peace? Do the conquests of Trajan not count as imperial expansion? How exactly is peace defined?

If so are people arguing that the Empire was ethically superior to the Republic?

Octavius and everything he did doesn't matter for the purposes of this question. It's about the conspirators. Why they killed Gaius Julius and whether it was justified using only the knowledge they had at the time of the assassination.

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Originally posted by Zuul

Octavius and everything he did doesn't matter for the purposes of this question. It's about the conspirators. Why they killed Gaius Julius and whether it was justified using only the knowledge they had at the time of the assassination.

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Fair enough.

Then I think based on the knowledge they had at the time, and based upon their own conception of propriety, they acted correctly.

How do you reconcile the notion of 'info at the time', with the idea of Caesar's 'potential' reforms? If they thought those reforms were a horrible idea and all.