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  • Explanation: Julius Caesar is sometimes regarded as the man who destroyed the Roman Republic. This is a... contentious position for numerous reasons, not least of which being the extreme dysfunction caused by the conservative faction (Optimates) of the Republic.

  • Rome was dysfunctional and would have fallen either way. That being said, Caesar was the person who destroyed it. Even if he didn't, someone else would've done it, eventually.

    I think both are true.

    • But the Republic survived Caesar by several years - a period in which the Second Triumvirate exercised powers not dissimilar to the extraordinary commands common after Sulla's dictatorship. If we're allowing for "Yes it survived him, but he set the stage", then the argument can just as easily be pushed back to prior figures.

      • The way I see it, the difference between Sulla and Caesar is that one restored the republic in the end, and the other didn't (or didn't have the time to). I don't mean to say that Sulla was in any way better than Caesar - In fact, he was far, far worse - but the Republic did survive him, and many of his reforms were repelled after his death. After Caesar's death, the Republic existed in name only because, as you said, the Second Triumvirate immediately followed, which was as much democratic as Sulla's dictatorship. Basically, after Sulla there was still a Republic to return to, while Caesar paved the path for nothing but dictatorship.
        I think it's poignant that what we call the "second" Triumvirate was an official commission, while the first one was an informal agreement among powerful individuals - the fact that Caesar and his merry companions had to do it in secret is meaningful proof that the Republic was still "somewhat" functional, while it had already been irremediably ruined by the time the second Triumvirate was born.

        This entire conversation is, of course, a huge oversimplification of far, far more complex historical events that I would certainly not be able to summarize in a shitty Lemmy post: looking for a single person responsible for the collapse of an entire political system is an exercise in futility; as futile as pointing to THE cause for the fall of the Roman empire.
        That being said, it's impossible NOT to include Caesar (and Sulla, and many others) among those responsible, and Caesar would certainly be one of the prime suspects, since he was the one on the crime scene when the Republic was found dead.

        EDIT: I didn't mean "Shitty Lemmy post" but "Shitty Lemmy comment', ie. I was talking about my own comment. I love your memes, I would never insult you :)

    • Ditto.

      It's like when there's a fragile porcelain vase, in the middle of a room with heavy traffic. Someone is going to eventually break it; it might be the dog, or one of the kids, but it's going down any way.

      So. Caesar was the one dropping that vase.

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