The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome - Analysis

Analysis

Michael Parenti claims that in most ancient and modern histories, Julius Caesar is characterized as a dictator and demagogue. If so, then Caesar's assassination can be portrayed as a defence of the Republic. Also, that plebs or "the Roman commoners" are viewed "as a parasitic mob, a rabble interested only in bread and circuses."

In contrast, Parenti argues that Caesar's assassination was "one incident in a line of political murders ... popularly supported reformers." Parenti also argues that, despite their traditional depiction as a lazy, criminal mob, the plebs largely consisted of hard-working laborers with practical political and economic concerns.

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