page_title: History of Rome (Mommsen)
section_title: Caesar
hierarchical_section_title: History of Rome (Mommsen) / Commentary I / Caesar
caption_attribution_description: English: Scanned from a book dated 1900. Original caption: "MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. Photogravure from the marble bust in the Prado Gallery at Madrid. This is the most pleasing of all extant likenesses of the great Roman orator. It represents Cicero when he was about sixty years of age and at the zenith of his career." Presumably the bust is now in Madrid's Museum of Archeology, where most or all of the Museo del Prado's collection of works from Classical Antiquity were moved.
context_page_description: The History of Rome is a multi-volume history of ancient Rome written by Theodor Mommsen. Originally published by Reimer & Hirzel, Leipzig, as three volumes during 1854–1856, the work dealt with the Roman Republic. A subsequent book was issued which concerned the provinces of the Roman Empire. Recently published was a further book on the Empire, reconstructed from lecture notes. The initial three volumes won widespread acclaim upon publication; indeed, "The Roman History made Mommsen famous in a day." Still read and qualifiedly cited, it is the prolific Mommsen's most well-known work. The work was specifically cited when Mommsen was awarded the Nobel Prize.
context_section_description: The figure of Julius Caesar (100–44) remains controversial among historians and students of ancient Rome. Mommsen saw in him a leader with a special gift for organizing and transforming the city-state, which had come to rule the Mediterranean world. Caesar was opposed by an oligarchy of aristocratic families, the optimates, who dominated the Senate and nearly monopolized state offices, who profited by the city's corruption and exploited the foreign conquests. They blocked the change necessitated by the times, stifling or coopting, at times by violence, any who advanced progressive programs. Although the state was dangerously unsteady, and the city often rent by armed mobs, the optimates rested on their heritage of the Roman tradition.
  Caesar sprang from the heart of this old nobility, yet he was born into a family which had already allied itself with the populares, i.e., those who favored constitutional change. Hence Caesar's career was associated with the struggle for a new order and, failing opportunity along peaceful avenues, he emerged as a military leader whose triumph at arms worked to advance political change. Yet both parties in this long struggle had checkered histories of violence and corruption. Mommsen, too, recognized and reported "Caesar the rake, Caesar the conspirator, and Caesar the groundbreaker for later centuries of absolutism."
  Some moderns follow the optimate view that it was a nefarious role that Caesar played in the fall of the Republic, whose ruling array of institutions had not yet outlived their usefulness. To the contrary, the Republic's fall ushered in the oppressive Empire whose 'divine' rulers held absolute power. Julius Caesar as villain was an opinion shared, of course, by his knife-wielding assassins, most of whom were also nobility. Shared also without shame by that epitome of classical Roman politics and letters, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43). For some observers, following Caesar's assassination Cicero saved his rather erratic career in politics by his high-profile stand in favor of the Republic. Also strong among Caesar's opponents was Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (95–46), who had long led the opimates, supporters of the republican aristocracy, against the populares and in particular against Julius Caesar. During the Imperial era the stoic Cato became the symbol of lost republican virtue.
  Nonetheless, even deadly foes could see the bright genius of Caesar; indeed, many conspitators were his beneficiaries. "Brutus, Cassius and the others who, like Cicero, attached themselves to the conspiracy acted less out of enmity to Caesar than out of a desire to destroy his dominatio." Too, the conspiracy failed to restore the Republic. An aristocrat's libertas meant very little to the population: the people, the armies, or even the equestrians; his assassins "failed to grasp the real pulse of the respublica."
  Moderns may be able to see both sides of the issue, however, as an historian might. Indeed, there exists a great difference in context between, say, an American, and a German historian of the 1850s, where during 1848 citizens had made a rather spontaneous, incoherent effort to move German politics toward a free and unified country: it was crushed by the nobility.
  The philosopher Robin Collingwood (1889–1943) developed a nuanced view of history in which each person explores the past in order to create his or her own true understanding of that person's unique cultural inheritance. Although objectivity remains crucial to the process, each will naturally draw out their own inner truth from the universe of human truth. This fits the stark limitations on each individual's ability to know all sides of history. To a mitigated extent these constraints work also on the historian. Collingwood writes:
  "This does not reduce history to something arbitrary or capricious. It remains genuine knowledge. How can this be, if my thoughts about Julius Caesar differ from Mommsen's? Must not one of us be wrong? No, because the object differs. My historical [object] is about my own past, not about Mommsen's past. 
caption: M. Tullius Cicero at about age 60.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2019:01:17 08:22:59", "Image ExifOffset": "168", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "306", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4097", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "314", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "453"}