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Repeating Optimate slander 🤢
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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What's the "correct" answer here? An essay about the many factors that made it all-but-inevitable that someone would usurp power away from the senate?
Yeah, if you're asking "who" is responsible and looking for a single person, then Caesar is as good an answer as any. But if you want a real answer then an essay is what you need.
If you're looking for a single person, I'd point more towards Augustus (or, controversially, Cato)
Caesar pulled a lot of shit, but he was also a fairly cautious political operator by the standards of the Late Republic. The desperation of the conservative faction to prevent lawful reform - especially the intransigent hypocrites led by Cato - started the civil war.
"The Senate" would be a correct answer, for one, continually undermining the democratic aspects of the Republic for their own oligarchic power. "Augustus" I would also regard as more correct than "Julius Caesar".
The technical answer is Octavian/Augustus the first Emperor of the Roman Empire
Why not "the optimates?" The answer doesn't necessarily need to be one person.
The patricii would be a good quick answer.
That said, Caesar killed it like a lion kills a very sick gazelle. Without the lion the gazelle probably still dies, but may recover.