Catch Hold Of The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A People's History Of Ancient Rome Narrated By Michael Parenti Provided As Volume

was ok. it's definitely a "peoples" history in the same sense that zinn's book is, that it to say instead of an outright aristocratic perspective it presents a middleoftheroad Great Society liberal's take on things, but ratchets up the fake populism and haughtiness to an unbearable degree.
yes, caesar proposed mild reforms and this is why he was killed, but how about going after the entire roman system the constant internal and external pillage, the utter reliance of the entire economy on lessthanchattel slavery etc.
instead of just sniping at the edges of optimate privilege and praising the virtues of The Common Citizen “Domestic peace and union were the natural consequences of the moderate and comprehensive policy embraced by the Romans.
The obedience of the Roman world was uniform, voluntary, and The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom.
“

This description is missing few pieces, most notably Rome being built on sacked cities, slaughtered villages, shattered armies, enslaved prisoners, raped women, plundered lands, burned crops, and population that has been overly taxed.


The above part is the part that is widely ignored by many scholars, A lot of times the people who write about this kind of history tend to embellish it, to take sides with those who were in power.
If a person is well off, they will not talk about the lower class or even praise their will to live and fight for righteousness.
No, they will mention lower class and talk about their despicable living conditions and their unwillingness to accept what they have.
In fact, men like Cicero acknowledged the poor and said it was their fault for being the scum of the society.


The people in the lower class lived in horrible conditions, sometimesto a small room, Most sold stuff in the market or used their skills of begging, juggling, and servicing men in any way that will keep the family afloat.
On top of this they were heavily taxed, while the rich were getting richer by refusing to pay taxes on their lands.


For this reason, man like Tiberius Grachus emerged to help the lower class as well as ease the corruption spreading across Rome or Rome controlled cities.
He fought day and night and was still assassinated for his threat to the wealthy class,

Tiberiuss brother, Gaius, also wanted to create some kind of a reform in the republic, even after his mother begged him to not do it considering his word might could get him killed.
As you can imagine he was also assassinated along with hisfollowers and additional,Democrats inB, C, slaughtered like sheep by those that found his influence a bit too grand, He was big on not getting everyone to be equal, but to have the lower class have more political influence.
Do you know who hated any type of revolt or push towards a reform for the lower class Thats right, Cicero.
Cicero was upper class and was featured a lot in the book, Most of his speeches are either about telling people that charismatic leaders fighting for the poor are a plague of the society or calling for elimination of such people.


Next, the book goes into the uprising of Caesar, From his early years to the years where he was looked upon as man possessing godlike powers, entire chapters are dedicated to him.
He introduced the laws to “better the conditions of the poor”, From redistributing land wealthy people hated this idea to organizing entertainment events to remitting the rent for poor citizens for an entire year.
On top of this he was a charismatic leader as well as fantastic political figure with a knack for helping others and finding way to do so that would benefit most.
Unfortunately, he was ambushed by those who have gained importance during his reign, Most of his assassins got better political positions because of him yet they stab him in the back, believing the republic would be better off due to his death.


After he was killed, the assassins were not even arrested and were free to boast their accomplishments, The republic was never the same but this was probably due to higher class not knowing when they got a good thing going for them.
In fact, as author repeatedly mentions, many account of history in general are written by those who take sides based on their own social standings.
Nobody likes to take a stand with lower class, while many will argue that men like Caesar would have brought Rome to its knees, therefore arguing for justification of his assassination.


Overall a fantastic read that goes into many things that are widely ignored by most historians, I just wish this book was longer, even though sometimes it got a bit hard for me to understand, This book is one of the best, most eyeopening books I've read in a long time, It illuminates for me one of the mysteries that has long puzzled me the assassination of Julius Caesar, His death never really made sense to me in the context of the civil fighting that went on before and after him.
Most people will say Caesar was killed because he was acting like a king, too big for his britches, made the wrong enemies, trusted his rivals too much, blah, blah, blah.


This book encouraged the reader to follow the money, and it described a Rome where the rich Romans were exploiting the crap out the populace stealing their land, charging rents and interest rates that would make a loan shark blush, screwing over their veterans.
. . basically the same shenanigans that American bankers and our elite are up to today,

Caesar tried to slow down this theft, just a little bit, and was assassinated, just one in a long line of popular Roman reformers before him.
I don't know if we would call him a Democrat by today's standards, but his political faction, the populares, were met with violence and death by the plutocrats in the optimates party.


The book is an astounding rebuke not only of the rich kleptocrats who fought against Caesar, and the Gracchus brothers, and all of the other reformers who came before and were killed, but of the generations of historians that have come after and have basically taken the side of Cicero, Brutus, Cato, and Crassus against the people of Rome.
Parenti exposes the subtle and extremely unsubtle bias towards these rich schemers in the writings of historians down the ages.
For good measure, he exposes Cicero as a cowardly overreactor, and the "Cataline Conspiracy" as the nothingburger it seems to have been.


History echoes and rhymes, and being able to put Caesar's struggle and death in the context of the class struggle brings extraordinary explanatory power to bear.
This is a well written, and important, book, A refreshing change from the dominant tendency to take aristocratic framing of the period at face value the austere virtue of the patricians, defense of republican liberty against demagogues and tyrants, etc.
. In truth, the Senatorial classes under the Republic were like a cross between Eric Endicott and a Latin American landed oligarchy, and resorted to similarly lawless brutality whenever their extractive interersts were threatened.
Virtually every leading figure of the populares, from the Gracchi to Marius to Caesar, met the fate of Allende and Jara at the hands of the Senatorial death squads.
The Assassination of Julius Caesar piqued my interest when I listened to Parentis talk on the subject on youtube, here: sitelink youtube. com/watchvIOL , and the book was definitely an interesting read, Its an attempt to construct a Peoples History of classical Rome, setting Caesar in a tradition of reformist populares rather than the typical Ciceronian reading of him as a powerhungry dictator.
It is in fact a direct attack on those Parenti describes as gentleman historians a tradition of history written by the ruling class which he identifies as going right back to the Roman era itself.
In fact, the book could have been given the alternative title of The Character Assassination of Marcus Tullius Cicero Parenti is relentless in critique of Cicero and its a blast to read, although Ive always loved reading academics and historians savaging each other in books and papers so your mileage may vary here I suppose.
His meticulous deconstruction of the Catiline Conspiracy is especially good, with all of Ciceros speechifying and rhetoric convincingly shown to be nothing more than selfserving dishonesty.
The motives that various historians would have had for opposing Caesar are skilfully described and its hard to argue with any of this as its presented.
Towards the end of the book Parenti fleshes this out with examples of how contemporary lower classes were described by historians of theth andth century, displaying a continuum of contempt for the 'parasitic mob' running from Roman commentators through to the gentleman historians of even theth century.
He also attacks the opposition to 'presentism' judging historical periods by anachronistic modern standards as being selective in what it chooses to take as the viewpoint of the period it defends, and to be largely uncritical in examining the primary sources that do exist almost all from members or partisans of the ruling class, and naturally carrying their viewpoint and biases.
Instead he aims for a contextual historical approach, reconstructing the interests and lives and politics of the Roman lower classes as best as can be done with the limited information available.
One example he points out is that we still have almost no idea of how the collegia the workers' guilds were organised, and must generally rely on aristocratic slanders of them as gangs of criminals to get any idea at all of how they operated.


Parenti vividly describes the social and economic conditions in Rome, with the chapter on the lives of slaves and foreigners and women and the urban poor being particularly good.
He creates a better context for all the events of Roman history than any history book Ive read before I knew of them, but found it hard to relate to them or even see relevance.
The greatest strength of this book is in showing the relevance these events have today, and how close the politicking and social struggles are to ones in our own time.
The rhetoric used by Roman writers about the political situation, and about any agitation by the proles or reformism from tribunes and consuls, is startlingly close to the rhetoric still in use today.
Parenti focuses heavily on material causes and pressures and his analysis is all the stronger for it,

The book is not flawless, though, Parenti cites things well throughout and the book has an appendix critiquing the obfuscatory, pedantic and elitist use of sources common in other classical history, where abbreviated latinate titles are often used, but occasionally some of his source usage is questionable.
Hes not a classicist by education and has relied on secondhand translations of source texts, which is permissible, but sometimes he presents things in a way which is either dishonest or surprisingly naïve.
In the introduction he cites both the Pontic King Mithridates and the Caledonian chief Calgacus to back up how bad Roman imperialism was, and presents these as words written or said by each man respectively.
In truth these come from Roman writings, and in the case of Calgacus he may not even have existed, being an invention of Tacitus for all we know if he did exist then he certainly didnt say anything about making a desert and calling it peace, for that was just Tacitus putting words in his mouth to make a political point about contemporary Rome.
Parenti doesnt exactly hide this the quotations are footnoted and the reader is free to see that the citations are from Roman writings but he presents them otherwise in the text and doesnt engage with the implications that result from the fact that criticisms of Roman imperialism sometimes came from Romans.
This

particular example stood out, but there was also an instance of Parenti uncritically reporting something Caesar had said in the senate, with the source being a writer who lived more than a century after Caesars death.
It's quite probable that there are more instances of this than the ones I spotted, These thankfully didnt affect the wider points the book was making, and for the most part the source usage was a lot better, but it shook my confidence in the book a fair bit, especially since one of them came in the introduction of the damn book.


That aside, it's well worth reading or at least listening to the lecture I linked at the start, which is adapted from parts of the book.
I found it to be a refreshing and convincing alternative take on Roman history, and quite honestly ancient history could use more books like this.
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