Subject: History
I begin by saying I am not advocating anything in this post. Absolutely, I say I am not. I was, however, struck by a documentary I watched a few days ago in relation to our current situation.

The subject was the assassination of Julius Caesar.

We have all seen what one crazed gunman can do: think Lincoln, or Franz Ferdinand, the Duke of Austria. And there have been lots of others: the deranged job seeker, Leon Czolgosz, who killed President McKinley, or even James Earl Ray (King) or Lee Harvey Oswald (Kennedy.) No, those were solo efforts (conspiracy theories aside) by a single individual, aggrieved for whatever their own personal and petty outrages were.

Julius Caesar, on the other hand, was killed by a group of high status Senators who decided he had acquired too much power and was abusing in ways that threatened the Republic. (A similar situation came with Caligula some 80 years later, again not the victim of a single disturbed individual but a plot of his own guards whose sole duty was his protection.) In Caligula’s case I think we have a bit more convincing detail.

And given what we are witnessing today, I couldn’t help but wonder just how out-of-control Caesar (and Caligula) must have been to engender such a conspiracy, a murderous mutiny if you will, of those closest to the leader to have plotted, planned the details, and conspired and executed the scheme to kill him and end the tyranny. What kind of astonishing abuse must there have been to convince an entire group of the Senators to commit high treason and murder (or in Caligula’s case, his own protective guard).

It’s really something to think about, the kinds of political machinations that have resounded through history, and while I don’t think we’re in any kind of parallel situation at the moment, maybe it’s beginning to rhyme just a little?

(I emphasize again this is not an advocacy of any kind, I hope it’s a detached historical exercise to try to get into the mindset of those long ago Romans who were so appalled by what was going on politically that they took to group violence to achieve their ends.)