07-23-2008, 09:01 AM
Quote:I wonder if Cato and the other Senators would have been less concerned about the "war crimes" of Caesar if Caesar had taken the side of the Patricians more often then that of the People?I think it has nothing to do with the Patricians. They were irrelevant since the Lex Hortensia of 287. I think you mean the optimates, the politicians who sought legitimacy through the Senate, as opposed to those who sought legitimacy through the People's Assembly, the populares (more...). Caesar indeed preferred the latter tactic, but when it suited him, he used the first one. Compare Pompey: he started with the optimate tactic (he was an adherent of Sulla), was for a while a popularis (restoring tribunician powers), and returned to the optimate tactic (in his conflict with Caesar).
I think no one blamed Caesar for playing the popular card. Any politician did that, even people who preferred the optimate strategy (e.g., Cato and Cicero). It was a tool, and -since the consulship of Crassus and Pompey- it was perfectly legitimate.
What mattered, I think, is that Caesar was so outrageously popular that, from the very start of his career, he appeared to be destabilizing the system. An inner tension between two ways to establish legitimacy was fine -it had been OK since Scipio Aemilianus- but there had to be a balance. Caesar threatened this.
