>>97895028>Caesar was the only person in Rome who actually cared about Republican ideals and representing the average manYeah, which is why he continually extended his powers and his term of office to unconstitutional levels, suspended elections (and therefore disenfranchising the common man), destabilized the Republic with vindictive military campaigns when he felt his power was threatened, and took the unprecedented step of declaring himself a living god. Very much 'for the common man'. He was so hoped up on power he reorganized the fucking calendar to satisfy his own vanity.
But no, he was 'for the common man'.
What a fucking joke that the propaganda of his supporters is still swallowed without critical thought 2000 years later taking only the substance of his words and not the substance of his actions.
He made all men free by making all men slaves of the state, and he made himself the living embodiment of that state.
Those land reforms had nothing to do with suffrage and everything to do with disenfranchising Crassus' opponents, generating wealth that he freely pillaged from state coffers, while securing a voting block of his own now landed soldiers that he did away with eventually anyway when he cancelled all free elections and turned all government positions into posting by his personal appointment. The man destroyed the Republic 'for the common man' and ushered in an era of increasingly incompetent dictators that saw the spirit of Rome rot away entirely until it was left as nothing but a Greek husk on the fringes of Europe.
What a propagandist he was to be held up as a pillar of liberty after smothering it in its own bed.
Its better to live in an imperfect republic than in Ceasar's Rome.
