By Predictive History in The story of CIVILIZATION — 12 Nov 2024

Civilization #15: The Myth-Making Genius of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is considered the greatest historical figure of all time; he's also one of the most controversial. Today, we're going to look at three questions about his life and provide an argument about it.

The first question we're going to look at is: What did he want? What were his motivations for what he did? Did he want to become a king of Rome, or was he trying to save the Roman Republic? This is a historical debate that's been around for about 2,000 years, and no one has resolved it.

The second question I want to look at is: Why was he so successful at what he did? He was a man who took on the Roman Empire and won. How was he able to accomplish so much in only 55 years?

And the last question is: Why did they kill him? He was killed by his friends, by his allies, by people he grew up with, by people he fought wars with, by people he pardoned and showed mercy and generosity to. So why did they kill him?

My central argument to you today is that Julius Caesar was so successful because he was a mythmaker.

What is a Mythmaker?

A mythmaker is an individual who changes the course of human history because they see themselves as a Man of Destiny who must change the world for the better. They do so by constructing a new reality that begins to absorb the old reality and alters it. They do so through their words—their speeches, their writings—and through their actions. They see themselves as the main character, the protagonist in a novel that they are writing.

This is a hard concept to understand, but let's use some examples.

The first example is Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, but he was first and foremost a mythmaker. A joke about Steve Jobs was that he had a secret weapon: a reality distortion projector. Basically, Steve Jobs lied to people, but he lied to people in such an appealing manner, in such a beautiful way, that it changed reality. Steve Jobs imposed his reality onto others, and today, that's why we use Apple computers. We are participating in the myth that Steve Jobs created for us: that if you use Apple computers, you are using the most advanced technology and participating in a pleasing lifestyle. It's about technology, but it's also about lifestyle and attitude.

Another example is movies. Movies are reality-creation machines. When you see a really good movie, it will stick in your mind and change the way you perceive reality. Someone like Julius Caesar was trying to create a new narrative that would redefine reality.

The last example I want to use—and I'm really sorry for using this example—is Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants to "Make America Great Again," and so through his speeches and actions, he is trying to construct or conceive a new understanding of America that absorbs the imagination of everyone around him.

That's what a mythmaker is, and that's why ultimately Julius Caesar was so successful. But the problem with being a mythmaker is that by creating new myths, you are disrupting old myths that people rely on for their understanding of the world. You're creating something called cognitive dissonance, and people don't like cognitive dissonance. It makes them uncomfortable.

They killed Julius Caesar because his new myth of Rome was surpassing the old myth of Rome, and that made the Old Guard uncomfortable. That's why they had to kill him. That's my argument to you today.

The Historical Context: The Fall of the Roman Republic

Now that I've made the general argument, let me provide some historical background so we understand the context that Julius Caesar was operating in.

The Aftermath of the Hannibalic War

Let's go back to 216 BCE. This was the Hannibalic invasion of Rome. Remember, at the Battle of Cannae, Rome lost about 20% of its adult male population. At this point, Rome should have surrendered or negotiated peace terms, but Rome instead chose to fight on. It fought on because it had a mythology about itself that was based on three principles:

Piety
Liberty
Republica

Because of these three principles, every Roman felt he or she had to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save Rome. The rich made sacrifices by paying for the war and freeing their slaves so the slaves could become citizens and fight for Rome. The poor also made a lot of sacrifices because they had to fight in the army. Also, the Romans decided to defeat Hannibal using a scorched-earth policy, which basically makes the land unfarmable so an army has no access to food. They burned all the land so they couldn't grow food, and Hannibal's army could not feed itself.

Everyone made the ultimate sacrifice. The rich and the poor fought alike. The rich paid for the war; the poor lost their land. This was all possible because of the nature of Rome at that time. Remember, Rome was a poor, very small place where everyone knew each other, and it was threatened with its existence. Hannibal proved to be an existential threat to Rome, and that's why everyone became united and made the ultimate sacrifice. For Romans, this was their finest hour—the moment they celebrated, when their very existence was threatened, but they came together and ultimately defeated Hannibal.

The problem was this: after Rome won the war, the question was, who got the rewards? Everyone made the sacrifice, but because the rich controlled the government—remember, Rome is a republic, not a democracy—it was decided the rich would get most of the rewards of the war. In fact, the poor got very little.

An example here is the idea of common land. What do you do with the new territory that you conquer in Spain and from the Carthaginian Empire? Normally, common land would be given to everyone, especially the poor who lost their land. But Rome made the decision that the rich would be compensated for lending money to the Republic during the war, meaning the rich got the lion's share of the new land. Not only that, but the remaining common land, the rich just pretended it was theirs. They illegally occupied common land they didn't pay for.

The Contradiction of an Imperial Republic

Rome was great when it was poor and small and threatened by its neighbors like the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, and the Greeks. But by 146 BCE, Rome had vanquished all its major enemies and was an empire. By 146, Rome had become a contradiction: it was an imperial republic. It was an empire, but its form of government was a republic.

Suddenly, those three values—piety, liberty, and republica—that made Rome strong were now problems. Let's look at republica. Republica means "public virtue" in Latin. It's the idea that the best and brightest in Rome are in competition with each other to promote the Roman national welfare, to bring glory to Rome. If you were the best and the brightest, your responsibility to your family, to the gods, and to the nation was to win new territory for Rome.

The first thing you had to do was win political office. When Rome was poor, it was basically a meritocracy. You had to prove you were the best speaker or had the best resume. But now that you have money, you could just bribe people. Bribery became a fact of politics in Rome.

Once you won political office, you could then become a general to go off to provinces to fight wars and win new territory. But because you got into so much debt to win the political office, when you went to the province, you did two things. First, you exploited the local people because you needed to get back the money you spent. Second, you started wars for no reason. You antagonized the locals in order to start wars. If you start wars, you win a lot of money. You can enslave the people and make money that way, but you will also receive something called a Triumph.

A Triumph is a military parade that establishes you as a hero of Rome. Not only do you benefit politically, but your entire family benefits. Your sons, your grandsons, your great-grandsons will all be remembered and celebrated because of your Triumph, and they are much more likely to win political office. The Triumph was a very, very big thing.

The problem is, while the best and brightest were in competition with each other, the poor were suffering. The first problem was land. During the Hannibalic Wars, the poor lost a lot of land and were never compensated. Then, as Rome continued to fight these wars, the poor were being drafted into the army and sent to faraway places like Spain and Syria. They were stuck there for years. That meant their land couldn't be cultivated, and they got into debt. The rich would come in and buy off the land at very cheap prices, becoming major landowners. This was a problem because the poor didn't have any land to grow food, so they were forced into the cities. The rich didn't want to grow food to feed the people; they wanted to grow cash crops for export. Suddenly, for the first time in its history, Rome couldn't feed itself. It had to rely on imports from its provinces.

You also had issues like debt. The poor couldn't pay off their debts and became overwhelmed by interest. This created lots of problems for Rome: violence, corruption, and inequality.

The Rise of the Optimates and Populares

This started a cycle that Peter Turchin calls elite overproduction. In times of peace, as your population grows, you're going to have too many elites who are now in competition with each other. It's usually between the upper nobility and the lower nobility. The upper nobility are people who are established, the wealthiest citizens in all of Rome. They're very happy with the system as it is. The lower nobility are people who are born into wealth, but they want more—prestige, honor, the Triumph. They're struggling against the upper nobility for political power, and usually, you do that by aligning yourself with the people. And the people, now numbering in the millions, are pissed off because they have no land, they're too much in debt, and they have no jobs.

These two factions in Rome would be called:

The upper nobility were called the Optimates, which just means "best people." Their responsibility was to uphold the tradition of Rome: piety, liberty, and republica.
The lower nobility who wanted to change were called the Populares, and that's where we get the term "populist" from.

In 146 BCE, after Rome had become an empire and defeated all its enemies, these two factions started to emerge and clash with each other.

The Relationship Between Optimates and Populares

There were about 20 noble families in Rome. The Optimates and Populares all came from these 20 noble families; they were like cousins of each other. The Optimates were maybe like the fathers and the grandfathers, and the Populares were like the sons. The fathers didn't want any change, but the sons wanted political power. They all grew up with each other; they all knew each other.

The Gracchi Brothers and the Failure of Reform

Historians normally believe the first clash happened with the Gracchi brothers. These were, again, lower nobility who had a very sensible idea: land reform. The idea was very simple. You have rich people who have too much land and are not using it properly. They're using the land as private parks for themselves or growing cash crops, which does not feed Rome. Most of this land, which was common land the rich were occupying illegally, was not being used productively.

So they proposed a simple land reform law. The government of Rome would buy out the rich from the land they were illegally occupying. The rich wouldn't be kicked off the land; they'd be compensated for it. This makes perfect sense. Once Rome bought this land, it would then redistribute it to the poor. The poor would have a social safety net, be able to feed themselves, and grow grain and other crops for sustenance. This would enable the feeding of the Roman population in general.

This sounds very simple to us, but the rich didn't like this idea because they didn't like change in general. They liked the idea of piety, liberty, and republica, which meant things must stay the way they are. What's really important is the rich cannot be challenged by the poor, because if that were the case, then the social system would be overhauled. The rich were so pissed off that they assassinated both Gracchi brothers. Most historians believe this is the beginning of the fall of the Roman Republic because it tells us that the system is incapable of change. The system as it was set up, which focused on piety, liberty, and republica, was a contradiction, and this contradiction could not be internally resolved.

The second major conflict that happened was something called the Social War. The people who fought the wars were the Italian allies of Rome, people who lived in the neighboring provinces. After Rome kept winning these wars, it refused to grant citizenship to them. So these neighbors rebelled, and there was a civil war. Rome lost this war and was forced to grant citizenship to these neighbors. But the question then was, what is the nature of citizenship? How much rights do you get? How much power do you get? Because Rome is a republic, not all voters are equal. If you're a rich voter, you have more power than if you are a poor voter. The question then was, what sort of voting rights will these new citizens of Rome have? This became a huge issue over the next few decades.

Then you had slave revolts, what they called the Servile Wars. You had piracy going on. The Roman Republic was constantly in turmoil and conflict. The war between the Optimates and the Populares became so intense that they ultimately fought a civil war. A civil war means two armies killing each other.

The civil war was between Sulla and Marius. It became so intense that both Sulla and Marius did the unthinkable: they marched their armies into Rome and killed their enemies. This had never been done in Roman history before. As a general, you're not supposed to take your soldiers and march against your own government, against your own city, and kill your own people. But that's what they both did.

Sulla won the civil war, and he understood, like all Romans, that this couldn't go on. There had to be a solution. Sulla's solution was, "Well, you know, if the problem is a conflict between the Populares and Optimates, let's just kill all the Populares, and then the problem will be solved. Then you'll have stability in Rome." This is what we refer to as proscription.

Proscription means there's a public list of about 1,000-2,000 individuals, and these individuals are basically sanctioned to be killed. If you go kill them, you'll be rewarded by the state, and you'll be given the property of those you killed. This was a new invention by Sulla in order to resolve the conflict between the Optimates and the Populares.

One of those individuals who was designated to be proscribed was named Julius Caesar, and he was about 19 years old. Julius Caesar came from a very prestigious Roman family called the Julii, and he was the nephew of Marius. That's why he was proscribed. The good thing is, if you're rich, you can bribe your way out of these things. Julius Caesar's family was extremely wealthy, and he was able to bribe Sulla into letting him go.

Sulla believed that by killing off the Populares and making the Optimates the supreme power in the land, this conflict would go away. But after Sulla died, this didn't happen. In fact, the conflict became even worse. Julius Caesar grew up in this conflict. He grew up in a time of the imperial republic, a contradiction, and he saw himself as a man of destiny to save the Republic by implementing the reforms necessary to restore stability in Rome. He basically wanted to make Rome great again.

The Life of Julius Caesar: A Myth in the Making

From an early age, Julius Caesar saw himself as special. Not only that, but from an early age, he cared a lot about his public image. He cared about how people perceived and remembered him.

The Pirate Story: An Early Example of Mythmaking

Here's a story to highlight the mythmaking genius of Julius Caesar. When he was 25, he was sent off to Anatolia to work as an official. The problem with sailing at this time was there was a lot of piracy because of the corruption, inequality, and poverty in the empire. So, at 25, Julius Caesar was captured and kidnapped by pirates. Not a big deal, because he was of the nobility. The pirates asked for a ransom, his family paid the ransom, and Julius Caesar was free to go.

A very simple story. But what Julius Caesar did was he embellished the story. He made certain adjustments that made it memorable so that people would discuss it everywhere.

The first embellishment he made was this: the pirates asked for a 20-silver-talent ransom, which is a lot of money. Julius Caesar said, "When I heard this, I felt insulted. How dare you ask for 20 silver talents? I'm worth at least 50. So hey guys, don't ask for 20, ask for 50. My family can afford it."

The second embellishment he made was that he became friends with the pirates. They drank together—he was a very charismatic individual—and he told them while they were drinking, "Hey guys, after I go home, I'm going to come back and capture all of you and crucify every one of you." The pirates were like, "That's really funny, man."

The third embellishment is that after he was released, he set up a navy, went and found every one of these pirates, and crucified every one of them. We actually don't know if he did this. But the thing that Julius Caesar understood is it doesn't matter if the facts are true or not. What matters is how appealing the details are. This story you will remember forever, and you will tell others about it. Through this, he was creating a myth of himself.

Caesar's Political Rise and the First Triumvirate

As a young man, the greatest honor in Rome was to achieve the Triumph, and you did that by starting wars. Through bribery and charisma, Caesar was elected a praetor, and then as a praetor, he went off to Spain. He fought wars against the tribes of Spain and won a Triumph. What he wanted to do was use the Triumph as a springboard for his political career to win the consulship.

The Optimates hated Julius Caesar. Because of his mythmaking genius, he was telling all these stories, and it was pissing off the Optimates. They saw Julius Caesar as just a braggart. He was arrogant, he bragged all the time, he was appeasing the people—he was exactly what a Roman should not be. He was impious, he didn't care about liberty, he didn't care about the public good. All he cared about was his own personal glory. He also had a reputation for being a libertine, meaning he slept with men and women everywhere.

The Roman Optimates—people who included Cato, Scipio, and Cicero—hated Julius Caesar with a passion. They thought Caesar represented all that was wrong with Rome. Here was a young man who had talent and charisma, a genius of some sort, but he was using it not for the glory of Rome but for his own personal political advancement. Caesar represented to them the corruption of the Roman Republic. They developed what you can call "Caesar Derangement Syndrome." They decided they would do whatever they could to destroy this guy.

So, Caesar won a Triumph and wanted to get the consulship. The problem is, you can only be a general to get the Triumph, but you have to give up your generalship in order to stand for election for the consulship. The Optimates gave him a choice: you can either have the Triumph or you can have the consulship. They thought this guy was so arrogant he would never give up the Triumph. Caesar surprised everyone by giving up the Triumph. He said, "I don't want this crap. I want to stand for election."

That's the other thing that's really surprising about Caesar: he was unpredictable. Or you can also argue he understood the mentality and motivations of his opponents, but his opponents never understood him. They always underestimated him.

Caesar became consul, and as consul, he wanted to promote stability in Rome. He promoted land reform, and the Optimates tried to obstruct him wherever they could. After the consulship, Caesar wanted to go take over Gaul, a northern province in Rome, and there he wanted to win glory for himself. The Optimates understood this, so beforehand, they decided the next consul would be sent to Italy, which is basically Rome. If you're in Rome, you can't fight wars. If you can't fight wars, you can't win glory, you can't have a Triumph. The idea was, "We'll let Caesar be consul, but we'll have him in Italy building roads and cutting trees. We're not going to let him go fight wars in Gaul, that's for sure."

Caesar knew about this and did something unexpected. He formed an alliance with two other individuals that the Senate hated. The first was Pompey, who was considered the greatest general of Rome. He was called Pompey the Great. He was also pissed off at the Senate because Pompey won all these wars for Rome, and he had to settle his veterans—give land to his veterans—but the Senate refused. Then there was Crassus, the richest man in Rome. He was pissed off at the Senate as well because it was blocking a lot of his political career.

They formed a secret alliance called the First Triumvirate. They did a lot of deals. Caesar, as consul, would help settle the veterans of Pompey. They would promote some tax reform that Crassus wanted. In return, Pompey and Crassus would give him Gaul as the province that he would take over once he left his consulship.

The Conquest of Gaul: Forging a Legend

When Caesar became the proconsul of Gaul from 58 to 51 BCE, he became a legend in Rome. This is where his mythmaking genius really shone. He went and committed genocide in Gaul. In the words of Caesar, "I went to Gaul, I killed a million Gauls in war, I enslaved a million Gauls, and then I let a million Gauls live." He basically committed genocide against the Gauls, and it was all for his personal glory. He started all these wars in Gaul in order to accomplish three things:

Money: He got into a lot of debt because he had to bribe a lot of people to secure his consulship, and he had to pay them off. He made a lot of money. The money he had left over, he sent back to Rome to organize feasts and festivals for the Roman people. The term we use today is bread and circuses. That's what Caesar was doing to ingratiate himself with the Roman people.
Create the World's Greatest Army: Rome was mainly at peace at this time, and if they were fighting wars, they were fighting against lesser opponents. The Gauls were tough warriors, and his Roman soldiers were getting the best training in the world through eight years of constant fighting. Through this process, he created the most loyal and disciplined army in the world, and they were all loyal to him personally because he was the one rewarding them and bringing them victory.
Create the Myth of Caesar: The most important thing was he created the myth of Caesar as the great conqueror. Romans love generosity; Romans love conquerors. While Caesar was in Gaul fighting these wars, he would write down dispatches or reports. Then he would send a soldier back to Rome, and in the Forum of Rome, the main public place, the soldier would stand up and read the composition of Caesar from that week. The things he was doing captured the imagination of all Romans. For example, he attacked Germania. Romans thought the Germans were so barbaric it was impossible to attack them. The second thing Caesar did to capture the imagination of Romans was he invaded Britain. In the imagination of Romans, Britain was this mystical, imaginary place. No one knew what it was. Caesar launched two major expeditions against Britain that didn't really do anything, but that was the point. The point was Caesar ventured into the unknown. It was basically the equivalent back then of the moon landing. It was just unheard of. "Why would you go to Britain? Aren't there like dragons in Britain? Aren't there sea monsters in Britain?" And Caesar went there twice.

At this point, the Romans worshipped Caesar. He was bribing them with bread and circuses, he was winning all these military exploits in Gaul, and he was constructing a new reality of Caesar as the great conqueror.

The Second Civil War: Caesar vs. Pompey

While Caesar was doing this, the Optimates back in Rome—Cato, Scipio, and Cicero—now saw what a threat Caesar was. They realized this guy was not beatable. If he ran for elections, he was going to win all the elections. His allies were going to win the elections. So they decided to strip him of his military command and put him on trial for all the things he did illegally. And Caesar was not a nice person; he had done a lot of illegal, immoral things to accomplish power. The Senate had a major case against him.

Crossing the Rubicon

At this point, Caesar recognized that these guys meant war. So what Caesar did was he basically declared war on Rome. He crossed the Rubicon. The Senate was appalled by this, and they appointed Pompey, who was considered the greatest general in Rome at this point, to counter Caesar. This started the Second Civil War. The first civil war was between Sulla and Marius; now it was Caesar versus Pompey.

At this point, Rome was an empire. Caesar controlled Gaul, which was poor. The Optimates and Pompey controlled Spain, Greece, Anatolia, Syria, and Northern Africa. This was a problem for Caesar because Rome got its food from the provinces. In other words, all Pompey had to do was wait. This is what we call a containment strategy. Eventually, because Romans would be starving from this blockade, they would rise against Caesar. Game over. That's all the Optimates had to do: just wait it out. Over time, Caesar would lose the loyalty of his troops and of the Roman people, and then he would be weak. At that point, they were going to attack him.

The odds were against Caesar. It was basically one man versus an entire empire.

Caesar's Advantages: A Superior Army and a Divided Enemy

But Caesar had two major advantages. The first advantage was he had the world's greatest military, who had fought for eight years in Gaul. They were extremely disciplined and devoted to him.

The second major advantage was the division within the Optimate opposition. Even though the Optimates—Cato, Cicero, and Scipio—hated Caesar, they didn't trust Pompey either. As this war continued, more and more power would accrue to Pompey. So even though Pompey wanted to drag this war out, the Optimates didn't. They were afraid that by getting rid of Caesar as a dictator, they would make Pompey the dictator. What they wanted to do was maintain the status quo. They didn't want a new king to arise. They didn't want a situation where Caesar lost but Pompey won. So the Optimates were pushing Pompey to end the war as quickly as possible. This division would be costly; in fact, it would basically cost Pompey his life.

Given these two advantages, Caesar decided he must take the offensive. First, he took his army to Spain and crushed all opposition there. When he crushed the opposition, he did something that was not very Roman: he offered clemency to the enemy. He basically told his enemies, "We're all Romans. We're all fighting for the greater good of Rome. So I've won this war. Will you promise not to fight against me? If you promise you won't fight against me anymore, I'll let you go." When he did that, some chose to just go home, but there were also many who chose to go and fight for Pompey in Greece.

From Pharsalus to Munda: A String of Victories

Then he marched to Greece. At this point, Pompey didn't have to do anything and didn't want to do anything because he knew that Caesar had a superior army. These were two of the greatest generals Rome had ever produced. Caesar and Pompey understood each other; they understood warfare. Pompey just wanted to use the containment strategy and starve Caesar out. Caesar wanted to fight a battle right away.

What tipped the balance was the Optimates, who forced Pompey to fight a battle. In August 48 BCE, at a place called Pharsalus, the two armies met. Pompey chose to use the anvil and hammer strategy, where your infantry locks the enemy army into place, and then from behind, the cavalry comes in and wipes out the enemy infantry. This was the strategy that Philip and Alexander the Great used against the Greeks and Persia. The problem is, Julius Caesar's army was so disciplined and so experienced that they withstood the cavalry charge and wiped out the army at Pharsalus.

"I Came, I Saw, I Conquered"

Then Caesar took his army to Egypt and conquered it, to Syria and conquered it, and to Anatolia and conquered it. The Senate asked for a report from Caesar: "How's the war going? What's happening?" And Caesar said the most famous line that he ever said—again, he's a mythmaking genius. He basically said, "Veni, vidi, vici." Beautiful Latin, the most powerful Latin phrase ever spoken in human history. It means, "I came, I saw, I conquered." This captured the imagination of the Roman people.

After Caesar calmed the Roman East, he went to Africa to fight Cato and Scipio at the Battle of Thapsus. Again, Caesar wanted to show clemency, how generous and merciful he was. But at this point, his soldiers, who were getting very old, just wanted this war to end and go home. At this battle, they defied the direct orders of Caesar not to engage. They took it upon themselves to attack the enemy. After winning the battle, Caesar ordered them to show mercy. His veterans massacred their enemies to ensure they couldn't fight back again.

The last battle was in Spain at the Battle of Munda. Here, the enemy was on a hill, and you're not supposed to fight uphill. You're at a major disadvantage. Caesar's soldiers were now so experienced and disciplined that they could just march up the hill and destroy the enemy. That's how powerful Caesar's army was at this point. They basically wiped out every army they fought against. They reconquered the Roman Empire.

Caesar's Reforms and Assassination

Caesar went back to Rome in 44 BCE, the year he would be assassinated by his friends.

Reforming the Republic

He launched legislative reform to reform the Roman Republic.

He launched land reform.
He launched debt relief.
He created something called the Julian calendar, which is what we still use today. Before Julius Caesar, the Romans used a lunar calendar. Julius Caesar, working with astronomers, designed the Julian calendar.
He offered clemency to all his enemies. Basically, if you were willing to work for the good of Rome, he would invite you back into the Senate.
He offered citizenship to his soldiers and to Italians.

What Caesar was doing was basically trying to resolve a lot of the contradictions that led to instability, civil war, and revolution in Rome. And he was successful. He was considered a genius. He was loved by the people. He had busts of himself everywhere. He minted coins with his face on them. He was basically creating what we call a cult of personality.

He wanted to continue to expand the Roman Empire. His plan was to go fight a place called Parthia, which was the old Persian Empire, and then he wanted to go conquer Germania. He basically wanted to conquer the entire world. That was his ambition: to make Rome great again. And he almost succeeded, except ultimately he was killed by his friends. He was assassinated in 44 BCE.

Answering the Three Questions

Let's look at those three questions again. What motivated Caesar? Why did he succeed? Why did they kill him?

What Motivated Caesar?

I think what motivated him is exactly what motivated someone like Sulla and Marius and other great generals of Rome: they wanted to make Rome great again. They were nostalgic for the Rome of the Hannibalic Wars, when everyone came together and made the sacrifice necessary to protect and save Rome. He wanted to return to that era. I think that's what motivated him. He didn't want to become king. And if he became king, he didn't want to stay as king. Remember, Sulla won the war and could have made himself king, but he didn't. He implemented a lot of reforms and then he retired, because that was the Roman way. That's what the ancestors did, and he wanted to be loyal to the gods, to the ancestors, and to Rome. So Caesar didn't want to become king; he just wanted to save Rome.

Why Was He So Successful? The General, the Politician, the Administrator

How was he able to succeed? This is a more difficult question. Again, the argument is he was a mythmaker. What does that mean?

There are different individuals in society that are able to accomplish great things in different aspects of society.

The General: He is bold, disciplined, and fair. That's why soldiers follow him. He's also concerned about organization and logistics: how do you move an army from place to place? How do you feed your army? That's what a great general does. That's what Hannibal did.
The Politician: He's basically like an avatar of the people. He's able to capture and represent the emotions, the dreams, and the longings of the people. He's very charismatic and manipulative. He's able to tell stories that capture the emotional imagination of the people.
The Administrator or Legislator: This person is very concerned about details, law, and legal aspects—regulation. This person is almost a systems design thinker, very big-picture, very macro, trying to figure out how the different pieces fit together.

If you think about it, these three individuals—the general, the politician, and the administrator—have very different personalities. They're in contradiction with each other. For example, Pompey was a great general, but he was a terrible politician. Hannibal was a great general, but he was not a very good legislator.

The thing that made Julius Caesar distinctive is he was all three together. What enabled him to be all three together was his imagination. That was Julius's secret power: his imagination. He was able to imagine himself as different people at once, and therefore he was different people at once. He had multiple personalities. That's why he was so unpredictable. That's why he was able to understand the motivations of his opponents, and that's why he was able to accomplish so much.

Why Did They Kill Him? The Discomfort of a New Myth

The problem with being a mythmaker is you ultimately have to change reality. And by changing reality, you make people who are accustomed to reality uncomfortable. That's why he was killed. He was killed not by his enemies, but by his friends.

There were four major conspirators against Julius Caesar. They were Decimus Brutus, who was basically Caesar's lieutenant in war. You had Trebonius, another major lieutenant. But you also had Cassius, who was actually fighting for Pompey, but Caesar thought he was such a great general that Caesar pardoned him. And you also had Marcus Brutus, who Caesar actually saw as a son. These are the people who were closest to Caesar, and they ultimately killed him because even though Caesar was making Rome better, he was changing Rome, which caused them to feel uncomfortable and anxious about the future.

An analogy is this: let's just say that one day the Chinese government says, "We're going to outlaw white rice because white rice has been proven to be scientifically bad for you. It's not nutritious. Instead, we're going to make every Chinese person eat steak, potatoes, and broccoli so that Chinese people can be strong and healthy." How would Chinese people feel about this? They'd be pissed.

It's unfortunate that Caesar did nothing wrong, and everything that Caesar did was for the good of Rome. But change—reform—causes cognitive dissonance. It makes people anxious and uncomfortable. It disrupts your identity. And that's why there was a conspiracy that ultimately killed Caesar.

How Did Caesar Challenge Roman Identity?

He challenged people's sense of time with the Julian calendar. Before, you had the lunar calendar; now you have the Julian calendar.

Second, he was doing all this stuff by himself. He was winning these military victories by himself. He was introducing much-needed reform legislation by himself. He was a great man. But if you're Roman, what you have been taught are these three ideas: piety, liberty, and republica, which is to say no one is above Rome. Everyone is equal in the eyes of Rome. The general who won against Hannibal or Carthage or the Greeks—it wasn't because he was a great man; it was because he was fighting for Rome.

The fact that Julius Caesar was this genius, that he was so brilliant and able to accomplish so much, made them jealous. But at the same time, it made them see him as a threat to the very stability of Rome. People like Julius Caesar aren't supposed to exist. Rome does not need kings; in fact, Rome is anti-monarchy. They were very much afraid that Julius Caesar saw himself as a god and would make himself king.

And in fact, Julius Caesar had hubris. Obviously, if you believe that you by yourself can change Rome, you have hubris. He was not showing enough deference to the Senate. He was creating a cult of personality. He was being very arrogant. It seemed very much like he wanted to become king. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that. That's why it made them uncomfortable. The real issue is the idea of cognitive dissonance, where the very existence of Caesar challenged their perception of what Rome was and what Rome meant.