In class we discussed whether or not Caesar was a
bad ruler, and came to the conclusion that he was not a bad ruler, just a bad
Roman ruler. But speaking as a citizen
of any state, a ruler that does not fit the specifications of the office that
they hold is a bad ruler. So in general Caesar may have been perfectly fit to
rule, minus his obvious love of power, just not Rome. It would be similar to
trying to force the United States into a sense of monarchy; those dedicated to
the old system would reject it. John Locke wrote on the role of government, and
his theory is that the government exists at the consent of the people with the
purpose to protect the rights of the people that it represents. This is what
truly caused the problem in Rome; the people were split in what they wanted.
Rome was caught up in between the old republic and the new dictatorship of
sorts.
I commented on Tori's
ReplyDeleteI agree. The quality of a ruler has to be judged based upon how well he serves the particular group of people he is ruling. Caesar may have been a great ruler in terms of the "new" Romans, but in terms of what Rome had historically been, he didn't fit.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion we had in class about this was very interesting to me. We talked about what kind of people were in the crowd. One point that was made was that as a republic, Rome was ruled by the consent of the governed, but at what point do the governed become unfit to have that say? Even so, the question is then raised of whether or not that is rightfully anyone's call to make. This actually made me think of Machiavelli and the cycles that republics go through. Maybe this really was an example of a time when the people needed a dictator to come and begin the next part of the cycle.
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