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The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome is a 2003 history book by American professor Michael Parenti. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book's central argument is that Julius Caesar was assassinated because wealthy and conservative elites wanted to block Caesar's reforms.

Contents 1 Analysis 2 Summary 2.1 Chapter One "Gentlemen's History: Empire, Class, and Patriarchy" 2.2 Chapter Two "Slaves, Proletarians, and Masters" 2.3 Chapter Three "A Republic for the Few" 2.4 Chapter Four "'Demagogue' and Death Squads" 2.5 Chapter Five "Cicero's Witch-hunt" 2.6 Chapter Six "The Face of Caesar" 2.7 Chapter Seven "You All Did Love Him Once" 2.8 Chapter Eight "The Popularis" 2.9 Chapter Ten "The Liberties of Power" 2.10 Chapter Eleven "Bread and Circuses" 3 Footnotes 4 External links

In most ancient and modern histories, Caesar is characterized as a dictator and demagogue. If so, then Caesar's assassination can be portrayed as a defence of the Republic. Also, plebs or "the Roman commoners" are viewed "as a parasitic mob, a rabble interested only in bread and circuses."

In contrast, Parenti argues that Caesar's assassination was "one incident in a line of political murders ... [of] popularly supported reformers."^[1]. Parenti also argues that, despite their traditional depiction as a lazy, criminal mob, the plebs largely consisted of hard-working laborers with practical political and economic concerns.

Parenti notes that history is biased towards powerful interests because only the wealthy (or those funded by the wealthy) had the free time to engage in research and writing. Parenti itemizes various ancient writers with a conservative orientation. Also, since most ancient writings have been lost, few opposing views survive into modern times. The writings that have survived favor the elite.

In more recent times, Edward Gibbon is presented as a typical "eighteenth-century English gentleman ... in the upper strata of ... society." In contrast, the satirist Juvenal "offers a glimpse of the empire as it really was, a system of rapacious expropriation."(p.18) Various other historians are criticized including Theodor Mommsen. Parenti claims that current scholars perpetuate the bias that favors an aristocratic interpretation of history.

"Rome's social pyramid" has slaves (servi) at the bottom with "a step above ... propertyless proletariat[s]" (proletarii).(p.27) Slumlords operated crowded tenement apartments that were prone to fire, epidemic disease (such as typhoid and typhus), structural collapse, and high crime rates.(p.29) However, "looming over the toiling multitudes were a few thousand multimillionaires"(p.30) with an "officer class of equites or equestrians" and "at the very apex ... the nobilitas, an aristocratic oligarchy."(p.31) Parenti corrects various misconceptions such as the frequency of slaves being freed (manumission); manumission was often expensive and only achieved at old age (when the slave wasn't productive anymore) and didn't include the slave's wife and children.

Next, the formation and nature of the Roman Republic is described. Early in Roman history, "a succession of Etruscan kings reigned ... [with] exploitative rule"(p.45) and was overthrown after which the Roman people had an aversion to monarchy. Instead, Rome had a Senate elected by the upper class with executive power held by a pair of consuls. The consuls had one-year terms and were subject the veto of the other. Poor Romans could elect tribunes which were government bodies consulted by the Senate; tribunes had the power to veto legislation but not to propose legislation. Tribunes were elected by open ballot and, thus, this limited measure of democracy was corrupted by vote buying.

So the Roman Republic was an environment of corruption and partial democracy. Then, Parenti presents the reader with a simplified overview of the political scene:

In the second century B.C., the senatorial nobles began to divide into two groups, the larger being the self-designated as the optimates ("best men"), who were devoted to upholding the prerogatives of the well-born. ... The smaller faction within the nobility, styled the populares or "demagogues" by their opponents, were reformers who sided with the common people on various issues. Julius Caesar is considered the leading popularis and the last in a line extending from 133 BC to 44 BC(p.54-55).

A long list of populares is given, almost all of whom he alleges were killed by death squads in the pay of the optimates. The list includes:

• Tiberius Gracchus
• Gaius Gracchus
• the second Marcus Fulvius Flaccus
• Marcus Livius Drusus
• Publius Sulpicius Rufus
• Cornelius Cinna
• Gaius Marius
• Lucius Appuleius Saturninus
• Cnaeus Sicinius
• Quintus Sertorius
• Gaius Servilius Glaucia
• Sergius Catiline
• Publius Clodius Pulcher
• Julius Caesar

In fact only the Gracchi were killed by anything remotely like a "death squad": Cinna for example was slain by his own troops, Sertorius was betrayed by his own troops, Catiline was executed for an attempted coup, Drusus was slain by opponents of the optimates and not by them and Caesar was assassinated by a group of distinguished Senators.

Parenti argues against unfavorable comments made against these populares while also acknowledging their various flaws. The actions of these populares are set in contrast to the reactionary 82 BC dictatorship of Sulla during which he alleges the various reforms were rolled back.

Of concern is Parenti's willingness to attribute "populare" status to Tribune Marcus Livius Drusus because it helped his thesis that only Populares - and not Optimates (Roman conservatives) - cared about social reform, however Drusus is considered to have been an Optimate (see, for example: Ward, Heichelheim and Yeo, A History of the Roman People, 3rd ed., page 164). It is unclear whether Parenti deliberately or mistakenly attributed populare status to Drusus.

Parenti argues strongly against the favorable view of Cicero held by most historians. While admitting Cicero's chief fame as an orator, Parenti presents Cicero as a hypocrite, a sycophant, and a devious flatterer as well as noting abuse of power. Often, in his public speeches, Cicero would accept the goals of the populares or praise an opponent while, in private letters, he bitterly complained. In particular, Cicero's prosecution of Catiline for a supposed conspiracy is presented as a witch-hunt and Parenti notes nine suspicious flaws in Cicero's accusations.(p.107-111) It is of note that none of Parenti's arguments on this point have been accepted in mainstream classical scholarship. Most seriously, he alleges Cicero's self-aggrandizing prosecution led to several executions as well as a military campaign against a legion of impoverished Roman veterans. (p.93)

This chapter summarizes the life and career of Julius Caesar.

Here, the "outstanding qualities" of Julius Caesar are described as well his historic flaws. For instance,

Unlike most members of his class, he disdained luxury and excessive self-indulgence, though he was something of a dandy in his dress. (p.131)

Caesar was a lucid writer, strong orator, and of wide intellectual and artistic interests. He was extremely popular with his troops.

However, on the negative side, Caesar obtained funds through theft and extortion which he then spent freely "to buy elections, gather political influence, and raise armies"(p.132).

Further, like "he was slaveholder like all other leading Romans. And he used slaves and women for his personal pleasure ... [and] as negotiable marital objects."(p.134). Most seriously, during his military campaigns, he led his troops in various atrocities including:

the siege of Avaricu

Parenti is critical of most of the ancient sources, except for Caesar's writings and those of his supporters. He also ignores measures and reforms proposed by optimate leaders that would confuse the black and white/good and evil picture of the struggle between populare and optimate that he attempts to paint. Parenti also claims Sulla encouraged the growth of large estates in the Roman countryside (p. 79), despite the fact that Sulla passed special measures to ensure that the 120, 000 estates he bestowed to his soldiers could not be sold to great landowners, a move scholars suggest was actually inspired by the earlier Gracchan and Drusan reforms (see for example Mommsen's History of Rome, New York: 1959 pg. 302).

Parenti does list Caesar's measures to relieve poverty; some measures are outright grants to the poor but most are programs to put the plebs to productive work. Also, several measures are taken to curb corruption practices of the wealthy as well as to levy some luxury taxes. Then Parenti turns to debt relief and contrasts "two theories about why people fall deeply in debt."(p.151)

The first says that persons burdened with high rents, extortionate taxes, and low income are often unable to earn enough or keep enough of what they earn. So they are forced to borrow on their future labor, hoping that things will take a favorable turn. But the interested parties who underpay, overchange, and overtax them today are just as relentless tomorrow. So debtors must borrow more, with an ever larger portion of their eanings going to interest payments ... eventually assumes ruinous proportions, forcing debtors to sell their small holdings and sometimes even themselvs or their children into servitude. Such has been the plight of destitude populations through history even to this day. The creditor class is more that just a dependent variable in all this. Its monopolization of capital and labor markets, its squeeze on prices and wages, its gouging of rents are the very things that create penury and debt.(p.151-152)

In the second theory, debtors are lazy and free spenders. However, Parenti states this model doesn't apply to the poor but, rather, to the spoiled children of the upper class:

who live in a grand style, cultivate the magical art of borrowing forever while paying back never, as did Caesar himself during his early career. Such seemingly limitless credit is more apt to be extended to persons of venerable heritage, since their career prospects are considered good. ... They treat fiscal temperance as tantamount to miserliness, and parade their profligacy as a generosity of spirit.(p.152)

In any case, Caesar's debt relief was aimed at "the laboring masses, not the dissolute few."(p.153)

Also, Parenti notes that:

Caesar was the first Roman ruler to grant the city's substantial Jewish population the right to practice Judaism ... That he has consorted with such a marginalized element as the Jewish proletariat must have been taken by the optimates as confirmations of their worst presentiments about his loathsome leveling tendencies.(p.153-154)

Then, Parenti firmly argues against the accusation that Caesar was responsible for the burning of the Library of Alexandria. (See Library of Alexandria for a detailed treatment of this issue.) Instead, Parenti states the library:

was in fact brought to ruination by a throng of Christ worshipers, lead by the bishop Theophilus in A.D. 391. This was a time when the ascendant Christian church was shutting down the ancient academies and destroying libraries and books throughout the empire as part of its totalistic war against pagan culture.(p.155)

In an unusual measure, Caesar also proposed a cap on total wealth when:

In 49 B.C., he attempted to enforce a law that limited private holdings at 15,000 drachmas in silver or gold, thereby leaving no one in possession of immeasurably large fortunes.(p.164)

1. ^ Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003), (ISBN 1-56584-797-0) (The New Press)

• Book website
• A talk by Parenti on this book (a 14MB MP3 audio file hosted at Indymedia). In the first half of the talk Parenti vividly presents the most controversial claims from his book especially against the 95% of status quo historians who are "Ciceronian" camp as opposed to the 5% of historians who are "Caesarians". In the second half of the talk, Parenti gives a reading from his book about the day of the Caesar's assassination which is one of the least controversial parts of the book.