Julius Caesar
Roman general and dictator, breaker of the Roman Republic (100–44 BCE)
Also known as: Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), Roman general and dictator whose civil-war victories ended the Republic, is Quigley's pivot-figure between the Roman Age of Conflict and the Augustan Universal Empire. He recurs across Weapons Systems and Political Stability, The Evolution of Civilizations, and Tragedy and Hope.
From Republic to Principate
Quigley places Caesar at the threshold of Roman state consolidation. The Roman "position by the end of the second century B.C. long before Caesar ventured into Gaul or Lucullus and Pompey invaded Asia (all in the last century B.C.)" was already that of a hegemonic Mediterranean power (WS 284); Caesar's wars completed the conquest. The civil-war sequence culminating in his dictatorship led directly to "the so-called 'principate' of Augustus Caesar (27 B.C.–A.D. 14)" (WS 372). His calendar reform — "a modified version of an Anatolian calendar" that the Romans "had mismanaged" was corrected when "Caesar adopted the Egyptian solar calendar" (EoC 217) — is one of the technical hinges between Hellenistic and Imperial Roman administration.
Caesar as political archetype
The name itself becomes, in Quigley's account, a structural category. Russian imperial practice imported "the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy… the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits" (T&H 95). Soviet centralized government "has a tradition going back through czarism to Byzantinism and to caesarism" (T&H 417). Caesarism is Quigley's shorthand for the political form that emerges when a Republic's institutions have been hollowed out by violence and clientage, and which can be reconstituted as a Stage-5 Universal Empire only by a successor with the political skills of an Augustus. Cecil Rhodes's biographer, Quigley notes, described him as having dreamed "of being both [his Society's] Caesar and its Loyola" — the same archetype reaching forward into the modern imperial imagination (AAE 30).
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 95 Quigley
The name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits. Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 417 Quigley
Has a tradition going back through czarism to Byzantinism and to caesarism.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 284 Quigley
By the end of the second century B.C. long before Caesar ventured into Gaul or Lucullus and Pompey invaded Asia.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 372 Quigley
Naked military force under the so-called 'principate' of Augustus Caesar (27 B.C.–A.D. 14).
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 217 Quigley
Was continued until the time of Julius Caesar (45 B.C.). The Romans used a modified version of an Anatolian calendar which they had obtained from the Etruscans, but they mismanaged it so completely that by the time of Caesar the civic year was about three months ahead of the solar year. Caesar adopted the Egyptian solar calendar.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 30 Quigley
While he lived he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola. It was this far-reaching, world-wide aspiration of the man.