It’s hard to believe, but we’re almost at the first quarter mark for the humanities crash course. Up this week: Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars. I doubled down on the Republic’s fall by watching a classic movie set in this time.

Readings

The Twelve Caesars is a collection of gossipy biographies of Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors of Rome:

  1. Julius Caesar: declared dictator for life, ending the Republic. He expanded Rome’s territory and centralized power. Alarmed at his concentration of power, a group of senators assassinated him.
  2. Augustus: first emperor; stabilized and reformed the empire and initiated the Pax Romana.
  3. Tiberius: capable but reluctant and paranoid.
  4. Caligula: mad, capricious, cruel – the caricature of everything that can go wrong when one individual gains unlimited power.
  5. Claudius: competent but weak and manipulable.
  6. Nero: another monster, tyrannous and decadent. Had artistic pretensions and behaved brutally toward people who didn’t appreciate his “art.” Suetonius blames him for the Great Fire that destroyed much of the city.
  7. Galba: elderly and austere; severe and unpopular.
  8. Otho: ruled briefly during the Year of the Four Emperors. Decadent and ineffectual; killed himself rather than continue fostering strife.
  9. Vitellius: ruled during the same year; also a short and brutal reign. Gluttonous, indulgent, weak-willed.
  10. Vespasian: restored order after the civil war. Practical, frugal, and funny.
  11. Titus: popular and generous, completed the Colosseum. Ruled well but died young.
  12. Domitian: another tyrant. Cruel and megalomaniac.

Most of these weren’t good men. As Suetonius makes clear, their depravities were outrageous even for the standards of the time. But their excesses didn’t make them happy: eight were assassinated and two died by suicide.

Reading these harrowing biographies raises an obvious question: why would a republic opt to concentrate all authority on one individual given the possibilities for abuse and the inevitable corruption that comes with absolute power?

One senses elites understood the risks and expected to pull back. But authoritarianism is a one-way street:

[Augustus] twice thought of restoring the republic; first immediately after the overthrow of Antony, remembering that his rival had often made the charge that it was his fault that it was not restored; and again in the weariness of a lingering illness, when he went so far as to summon the magistrates and the senate to his house, and submit an account of the general condition of the empire. Reflecting, however, that as he himself would not be free from danger if he should retire, so too it would be hazardous to trust the State to the control of more than one, he continued to keep it in his hands; and it is not easy to say whether his intentions or their results were the better. His good intentions he not only expressed from time to time, but put them on record as well in an edict in the following words: “May it be my privilege to establish the State in a firm and secure position, and reap from that act the fruit that I desire; but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government, and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for the State will remain unshaken.” And he realized his hope by making every effort to prevent any dissatisfaction with the new regime.

Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble. He made it safe too for the future, so far as human foresight could provide for this.

I.e., like other tyrants, the Caesars promised to “make the trains run on time” – and people paid for the privilege with their freedom, dignity, values, and in many cases, their lives.

Audiovisual

Music: Mozart’s Symphonies 39-41. These are extremely familiar works (especially no. 40,) but I still revisited all three.

Art: Botticelli and Caravaggio. Again, I was familiar with both painters. Still, I spent some time revisiting their works and lives. Caravaggio was a maladjusted ruffian; had he lived in the 1970s, he probably would’ve been a punk rocker.

A painting of a young man leaning over a dark, reflective surface, gazing intently at his own reflection. He is dressed in a white shirt with voluminous sleeves and a patterned vest, with one knee bent and both hands touching the water. The scene is dimly lit with dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, characteristic of the Baroque style. The young man’s mirrored image is clearly visible in the water below him. The artwork conveys a mood of introspection and fascination with one’s own image. Caravaggio’s painting of Narcissus, via [Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Narcissus-Caravaggio_(1594-96)_edited.jpg)

Caravaggio’s painting of Narcissus, via Wikimedia

Cinema: given this week’s reading, I took in a classic film that had long been in my to-watch list: Stanley Kubrick’s SPARTACUS, a fictionalized account of a major slave revolt during the last years of the Roman Republic.

This isn’t Kubrick’s best. I found Alex North’s score and Kirk Douglas’s performance overbearing. That said, the film is worth watching for its cinematography and the other actors’ performances – especially Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, and Peter Ustinov, who won an Oscar for his role.

Reflections

As with THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, I approached SPARTACUS not as a historical source but as a way to add texture to the readings. Still, it proved surprisingly relevant. The film offers an answer to the question of why a republic would hand itself over to tyranny: because the previous governance structure had become ineffectual.

The Roman Republic had grown too big, rich, complacent, and dysfunctional on the back of gross inequities. The senators – even the “good” ones – had become opportunistic, depraved, and unresponsive to real problems at the core of the system. Against this background, the slave Spartacus unleashed a rampaging rebellion – an agent of chaos that was both symptom and cause.

Both the authors of the screenplay and the source novel were communists, and the movie portrays the slaves sympathetically as they upend the social order. (The movie’s most famous scene is an iconic show of solidarity; an obvious response to McCarthyism.) But Spartacus doesn’t offer a path to stability either. All he wants for his people is a way out of a desperate and unjust situation.

Which is to say, neither the elites nor “the people” offer a coherent way forward. Meanwhile, the country descends into chaos. Into this vacuum steps a dictator offering order and security. The price? Absolute, unopposed rule. And as always, unchecked power leads to tyranny.

Notes on Note-taking

I started a note in Obsidian for The Twelve Caesars and used ChatGPT to refine my understanding of the text. For example, I asked for brief summaries of these lives and comparisons between them. The answers helped me recover the big picture after reading twelve biographies back-to-back.

Looking for answers to this week’s key question, I asked the LLM, “Why did the Republic end? Why would they hand over unlimited power to these tyrants?” Among other helpful observations, it offered the following, which I share without further comment:

Why They Handed Over Unlimited Power

Because the cost of not doing so seemed worse. When the Republic failed to deliver peace, justice, or prosperity, people turned to strongmen who could promise them those things—at the price of their freedom. The pattern is sadly familiar in other times and places as well.

Up Next

Gioia recommends selections from Rumi and the Koran. I’ve read bits of the former but none of the latter, so this will be mostly new to me. Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!