The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti

Author:Michael Parenti [Parenti, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History - Ancient, Rome - History
ISBN: 9781595585561
Amazon: B005MYIOVG
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2004-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

So too is Marcus Brutus hailed as acting only from upright motives. Brutus could not hide his distaste for Caesar’s reforms, showing little sympathy for destitute petitioners and much concern for the brimming purses of the rich, especially his own. He was a leading conspirator in the assassination of a great popular leader, who had pardoned him and treated him well.

Shakespeare dubs Brutus “the noblest Roman of them all,” and has him saying “I can raise no money by vile means / By heaven I had rather coin my heart / And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring / From the hands of peasants their vile trash.”44 The reality is something else. Brutus was a usurer of the worst sort and a spoliator to boot. Having lent money at 48 percent interest (instead of the usual 12 percent, which was usurious enough), the noble Brutus then demanded that the Roman military help his agents collect the debt from the hapless Cypriot town of Salamis, in 50 B.C. At Brutus’s insistence, the town council was besieged until five of the elders starved to death. Even Cicero was horrified by the terms of a loan that brought ruination to the Cypriot community. He was also put off by Brutus’s arrogant and uncivil tone when dealing with the matter.45

Brutus once wrote to the people of Pergamum that if they gave money to Dolabella willingly, they must confess that they had wronged Brutus. But if they gave unwillingly, they can prove it by giving willingly to Brutus. On another occasion he wrote threateningly to the Samians because their contributions were “nonexistent.”46 Still, most classical historians have not an unkind word for Brutus, preferring to treat this money-grubbing assassin as a principled and unblemished defender of the Republic.

So there remains a double standard. Leaders who take up the popular standard are faulted as the power-hungry authors of their own unhappy fates, while their assassins are depicted as the disinterested stalwarts of republican virtue. As best we can tell, the Roman people themselves did not see it that way.

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