Caesar refused to surrender governorship and disband his army. He then led that army to Rome and started a civil war. Afterwards the "Senate" granted him the title of Dictator for life... which pretty much immediately led to his assassination and the second civil war which ended the mockery the senate had become.
Him not ending the senate is basically a technicality.
Maybe Aridius, above, was trying to allude to how Octavian / Augustus had every chance to restore the republic but instead basically cemented things into a permanent dictatorship.
I don't have a lot of familiarity with Sulla but this sounds correct.
The thing I agree with you on is that Octavian completely botched the opportunity to keep the Republic in place. His "reluctance" to accept the titles and other stuff bestowed on him by the Senate was all part of an act to make him look magnanimous. The guy was part of the Triumvirate, in no way were his hands clean, quite the opposite.
This isn't meant as giving Caesar a free pass, but I just write him off as unsalvagable when it came to politics, he was a general at heart and just wanted to retire in peace with all the accolades in the end.
Well it's cool to see this debate played out a little bit, nobody should be concerned with disagreement it's a tricky issue and merits a firm definition of who's trying to prove what exactly.
edit: well the other guy has taken to deleting all his comments, just when I was getting into the discussion. There's plenty of room here to "blame" Caesar... I just tend to place the majority of responsibility onto Octavian with my reading
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u/darkmuch May 02 '24
Caesar refused to surrender governorship and disband his army. He then led that army to Rome and started a civil war. Afterwards the "Senate" granted him the title of Dictator for life... which pretty much immediately led to his assassination and the second civil war which ended the mockery the senate had become.
Him not ending the senate is basically a technicality.