Ancient Rome from the People's Perspective.

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Product Description

The story of popular resistance to wealth and power in ancient Rome.

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. They regard Roman commoners as a parasitic mob, a rabble interested only in bread and circuses. They cast Caesar, who took up the popular cause, as a despot and demagogue, and treat his murder as the outcome of a personal feud or constitutional struggle, devoid of social content. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, the distinguished author Michael Parenti subjects these assertions of "gentlemen historians" to a bracing critique, and presents us with a compelling story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. Parenti shows that Caesar was only the last in a line of reformers, dating back across the better part of a century, who were murdered by opulent conservatives. Caesar's assassination set in motion a protracted civil war, the demise of a five-hundred-year republic, and the emergence of an absolutist rule that would prevail over Western Europe for centuries to come.

Parenti reconstructs the social and political context of Caesar's murder, offering fascinating details about Roman society. In these pages we encounter money-driven elections, the struggle for economic democracy, the use of religious augury as an instrument of social control, the sexual abuse of slaves, and the political use of homophobic attacks. Here is a story of empire and corruption, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, slumlords and urban rioters, death squads and political witch-hunts.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar offers a compelling new perspective on an ancient era, one that contains many intriguing parallels to our own times.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #752186 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Why did a group of Roman senators gather near Pompey's theater on March 15, 44 B.C., to kill Julius Caesar? Was it their fear of Caesar's tyrannical power? Or were these aristocratic senators worried that Caesar's land reforms and leanings toward democracy would upset their own control over the Roman Republic? Parenti (History as Mystery, etc.) narrates a provocative history of the late republic in Rome (100-33 B.C.) to demonstrate that Caesar's death was the culmination of growing class conflict, economic disparity and political corruption. He reconstructs the history of these crucial years from the perspective of the Roman people, the masses of slaves, plebs and poor farmers who possessed no political power. Roughly 99% of the state's wealth was controlled by 1% of the population, according to Parenti. By the 60s B.C., the poor populace had begun to find spokesmen among such leaders as the tribunes Tiberius Gracchus and his younger brother, Gaius. Although the Gracchi attempted to introduce various reforms, they were eventually murdered, and the reform movements withered. Julius Caesar, says Parenti, took up where they left off, introducing laws to improve the condition of the poor, redistributing land and reducing unemployment. As Parenti points out, such efforts threatened the landed aristocracy's power in the Senate and resulted in Caesar's assassination. Parenti's method of telling history from the "bottom up" will be controversial, but he recreates the struggles of the late republic with such scintillating storytelling and deeply examined historical insight that his book provides an important alternative to the usual views of Caesar and the Roman Empire.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Always provocative and eloquent. -- Howard Zinn

About the Author
Michael Parenti is the author of over 250 articles and seventeen books, including History as Mystery; The Terrorism Trap; Democracy for the Few; and Against Empire . His writings have been translated into numerous languages. He lectures widely throughout North America and abroad.

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Customer Reviews

Pulitzer Prize Nominated Masterpiece
The Assassination of Julius Caesar blows away the so called truth proffered to us by the gentlemen historians who peddle a genre biased towards an upper-class ideological perspective. Parenti is an eloquent Caesarian historian who displays an astonishing amount of research finely organized and presented in this Pulitzer Prize nominated work; which will no doubt have the Ciceronians scrambling to put together a rebuttal.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar points out how numerous popularis fell victim to the optimates death squads, Tiberius Gracchus, Gaius Gracchus, Drusus, Clodius and Rufus all sealed their fates by taking up the populist cause. Along with Caesar each of them lobbied and passed such policies as land reform, debt forgiveness, expansion of the franchise, giving the craft guilds more power, and greater food allotments.

Parenti makes for especially fascinating reading when he documents the reign of Sulla; the fascist autocrat whose policies weren't rolled back until Caesar's First Triumvirate was able to abolish some his more regressive laws. Also Dr. Parenti's sections on Cicero, the Machiavellian statesman who served autocratic interests, are sensational. He exposes Cicero's fomenting of the witch-hunt like Cataline Conspiracy. Egalitarian reforms and attempts to democratize decision making were treated as outright subversion by the optimates. Cicero upheld these values by constantly propagandizing against Cataline and his tepid reforms. We discover that Cicero was an odious creature who sold-out to power at every opportunity by often being quite an effective mouthpiece for the priveleged of ancient Rome.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar shows how Caesar was not a revolutionary but rather a reformer who worked to break the stranglehold of the senatorial autocrats. While not being perfect, Caesar dedicated himself to the popular cause and was well liked by the masses. Unlike Cicero, Sulla, Brutus, Cassius and Cato of whom none have flowers left at their graves like Caesar's tomb does to the present day. Parenti documents how Caesar was committed to rolling back the worst class abuses perpetrated by the wealthy and was fondly remembered for it.

One prevarication Parenti studiously attacks is Caesar's supposed burning of the Serapeum library in Alexandria. It was the Christ worshippers in the fourth century who carried out the deed, Caesar and his forces burned not a single page.

The assassination itself is portrayed in vivid detail, including a surprising and accurate quote from Major General Fuller's biography that sums up the entire affair: "the plotters were well aware that under Caesar their opportunities for financial gain and political power would vanish." Perhaps not vanish but greatly diminish would have been totally accurate.

A consistent theme runs throughout the book and that is Parenti's analysis and evidence of the bias many latter day gentlemen historians have against the "mob" or "rabble" and Caesar. He notes that these historians pay little attention to how the optimates swindled land from small farmers, plundered the provinces like pirates, over taxed colonized people, rent gouged, and lifted not a finger towards debt relief. It should be remembered that the common people had scant opportunity to leave a written record of their views and struggles. In fact these people derisively referred to as the "criminal mob" and "rabble" by Cicero and some other present day historians were in actuality masons, carpenters, shopkeepers, scribes, butchers and other working class people.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar is a major scholarly work and will surely be read and discussed for generations. It is history and historical analysis of the highest order and should not be missed by anyone with an inkling of historical curiosity.

New Insights on Caesar & the Historians
This book is excellent. I started reading about Julius Caesar 50
years ago. I have been constantly amazed at the praise that major historians have given to Cicero (who lies to everyone but Atticus), Brutus (whose exhorbitant interest rates were talked about by even HIS peers), for Cato (whose hyprocrisy allowed him
to denounce Caesar at all points while manipulating Roman laws
to defeat Caesar at every turn) and others in the oligarchy as
"noble" protectors of the constitution.

These "protectors" of the Roman constitution allowed Pompey to
become consul before he was legally of age, appointted him sole
consul (a unique position) at one point, allowed him to govern
Spain and maintain an army without going to Spain, and gave him
control of the Roman state BEFORE Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Mr. Parenti was able to take these inherent contradictions of the wealthy Senators AND many hisotrians and recognize their
class blindness. Almost by instinct many historians seemingly
identified themselves with the oligarchy ("the best") and condemned Caesar for excessive arrogance and ambition in a Rome
where all of the Senatorial class were equally ambitious and
desirous of getting & keeping private wealth.

His book is readable and well reasoned. Thanks to Mr. Parenti!

Caesar as populist
Michael Parenti's book, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, might be read most profitably in conjunction with Goldsworthy's new biography, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Parenti's work focuses on a specific issue--Caesar as "populist," murdered by wary elitists. Goldsworthy's book is much more detailed, provides much more context. Parenti's book can be viewed within the larger context.

Parent's thesis, outlined on page 3, is straightforward: "Caesar's sin, I shall argue, was not that he was subverting the Roman constitution--which was an unwritten one--but that he was loosening the oligarchy's overbearing grip on it. Worse still, he used state power to effect some limited benefits for small farmers, debtors, and urban proletariat, at the expense of the wealthy few."

Some other reviewers are appalled at this thesis and the manner in which Parenti writes. This is typical of Parenti's work more generally. He has a position and normally writes in such a way as to address that view in no uncertain terms. Some will appreciate this; others won't. But the question should not be whether or not one likes his passionate writing. The question should be: Does he make his case? This is why reading this book in concert with Goldsworthy's makes sense. In the latter volume, much the same theme is advanced, although presented in a much more nuanced, and, in fact, more convincing manner.

This book is most useful in laying out a perspective that is straightforward and not subtle. Sometimes, the lack of subtlety undermines the logic of the analysis. Still, the volume provides a thesis that places Caesar in a political context.