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- [01:14]
Morteza Hajizadeh
I was groomed to become one of his wives.
- [01:18]
New Books Network Announcer
This week on Disorder, the podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein survivor tells me her story and what justice looks like for her.
- [01:27]
Morteza Hajizadeh
I want to see action, and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk. You need to start walking the walk now.
- [01:34]
New Books Network Announcer
It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.
- [01:45]
Professor David Potter
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:50]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Morteza Hajizadeh. Today I'm honored to be speaking with Professor David Potter about his most recent book, which has been published with Oxford University Press. It's a very fascinating. It's a fascinating topic. The book is called Life of Julius Caesar, Master of Rome. Despite the fact that it's about Julius Caesar, I think there is a lot relevant to what's happening today in the world as well, which we'll try to touch upon some of these aspects of the book as well. Dr. David Potter is Professor of Greek and Roman History in the Department of Classic Study at University of Michigan. His previous books include the Origin of Empire, Rome from the Republic of Hydrohedrian to Constantine, the Emperor the Victor's Crown, the History of Ancient Sport From Homer to Byzantine and Theodora, actress, Empress, saint. And this is his latest book, Life of Julius Caesar, published by Oxford University Press. David, welcome to New Books Network.
- [02:57]
Professor David Potter
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Before we start talking about the book, you're very well published author, very well known in your area of expertise, but can you just very briefly introduce yourself to our listeners to tell us about your field of expertise, what attracted you to that field, and then, more importantly, why did you decide to write this book? And what is different about this book compared to other books available on the life of Julius Caesar?
- [03:25]
Professor David Potter
I've always been fascinated by the ancient world, but also as a historian, on how we can get the past into dialogue with the present. And in my other books, Constantine or the Theodora, I mean, looking at people whose lives, whose careers can speak to us today, and this is certainly something I feel is very, very true of Caesar. I have been teaching Caesar in Latin and in English for a great number of years now, going back to a point where I felt that we study the Roman Republic so much through the eyes of Cicero that we cut out what Caesar actually thought. Books on Caesar will very often tell us what Cicero thought Caesar was doing, but they will very rarely tell us what Caesar thought Caesar was doing. But it turns out, of course, that we have the books that he wrote on the Gallic War, the books that he wrote on the Civil War, and we can get a very good sense from his writings about who he was, what he stood for, how he saw the world around him. And it is somewhat problematic, I think, in the past, that on a first read of the Gallic wars, you could say, okay, this is just propaganda, and it certainly is. Caesar wants to tell people how wonderful it is to be conquering Gaul. But when we start reading between the lines a bit, we can begin to see Caesar the general, Caesar the manager. It's not accidental. I think that every time the army moves, the first thing Caesar says is, we collected the grain. As he's moving into a new area, constantly taking in intelligence, a willingness to change plans, to listen to people. It's a study in management. And what I wanted to show in this book is who Julius Caesar really was. And he's a somewhat scary but fascinating person to meet.
- [05:37]
Morteza Hajizadeh
This was a great introduction, and I think I really like the point when you said that you do like to start a dialogue between past and the present. And I think you've done it really well in this book. Wish more historians could do it as well. Let us start with with the opening of the book, you open the book by situating Caesar's origin in his family myth. That's something we don't really hear or read much about, but I'm keen to know that understanding of his ancestry, whether it's real or whether it's a myth that has been invented or fabricated. What does it tell us about the political identity during Roman times, or how the Romans constructed political identity?
- [06:23]
Professor David Potter
The story about the origin of Caesar's family is a fascinating one, and it really underscores an issue with the family, which was that it came rather late onto the political scene of Rome. The earliest person we know of was an ancestor who was revered in family tradition because he killed an elephant in North Africa fighting against the Carthaginians. But that's already put us in the middle of the third century, and many successful political families in Rome had been there for centuries longer. I mean, your political standing could very often depend on how old, how well established the family was, how well established the connections were. I mean, there's a moment where Cicero is joking about the man he thinks is particularly stupid, but he says he was born to be consul because of who he is, who his family is. Well, what Caesar's family had to do as they were moving up in the political world was create a story explaining where they came from that would put them on a par with their rivals. Even into Caesar's own lifetime, very few members of the family had ever reached highest political office. But do you really need to reach the highest political office if you're descended from the founder of Rome, from Aeneas? And it's the case that at the time that Julius Caesar's family was first emerging as a political family at Rome, that the story of Aeneas was still in a great deal of flux, so that you could fit yourself into it very well. So it's a sign of really creative ambition on the part of Caesar's ancestors. And of course, for Caesar himself, being able to come along and talk about the goddess Venus as his ancestor can obscure the fact that only one of his direct ancestors had actually been consul. He'd had a couple of uncles who were consuls. But this is really a new family at the top of Roman politics. And the way you can be new is claim that you're really, really old.
- [08:45]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And it does bear resemblance, I guess, to some politicians, even today's, who want to establish that kind of genealogy, authenticity, whatever it is, especially with the rise of nationalism. But anyway, I'm sidetracked. I'm going to a different Direction here. Another part of the book I was really interested in, I think you've done it really well, was. And that aspect of Julius is I myself didn't know much about was the impact of all the political turmoil and violence that was happening around him when he was growing up, when the young Caesar was growing up. So we had the aftermath of the Gracken reforms. There was civil war. It was the violent breakdown of the republic. And again, social was like Marius versus Sola. Can you tell us a little about what happened? How did it impact, first of all, the elite families at that time, and how did it impact his. How did it shape, let's say, the political landscape of young Caesar's mind?
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Professor David Potter
I think it's fair to say that Caesar's early years showed him a lot of places where he didn't want to go. But it also made it very clear that if he was going to be safe, he would have to learn to play the political game. By the time he's 10 years old, the social war has broken out between Rome and its allies throughout Italy. The war takes its name from the Latin word socius, which means ally. So it's a war against your allies. It's not trying to suggest that this is a good social activity. But at the time the war broke out, Caesar had uncles, one of whom was the consul in the year the war began, and then other was consul in the next year. So that the family is very closely tied in to this war. And then Gaius Marius, who's married to his aunt, a leading figure in Roman military society, takes a formidable position in the war, largely bringing it to an end. At the same time this is happening, a war has broken out in the Roman province of Asia, which we would now see as being western Turkey. And a fight will break out who's going to get this command? And you can sort of sense just how disordered Roman political society is at this time. If you're going to fight a war about who's going to take command of a Roman army in another war, which is what happens when the command is taken away from the consul of 88, Sulla, and given to Marius. Sulla then leads his army on Rome, drives Marius out, appoints himself general for the campaign in the east, and off he goes. So what Caesar has seen as a very young person is the dysfunction of the Roman political system. And he's also seen the extraordinary viciousness with which people act. His uncle, who had survived the social war, was killed by the supporters of Marius, as was another person, another uncle. He felt very strongly about. Whereas Caesar's own father seems to have sided with Marius. So we can see a bloody split within his own family. So as he goes forward, how can you prevent this from happening again? How can you protect yourself and those you love from the violence of Roman politics? In later tradition we're also told that Sulla really despised Caesar and wanted to kill him. We can tell that this was made up much later as Caesar wanted his friends to present him as somebody who had always been an enemy of Sulla from the very beginning. That the political position that he was taking at the end of his life as anti Sulla had always been there. But in point of fact we can see that other members of his family seem to have protected him from Sulla. And his first few jobs were actually serving under Sulla's lieutenants in western Turkey. Which would rather suggest that Sulla wasn't interested in seeing him killed.
- [13:18]
Morteza Hajizadeh
I can't even imagine. Right, because it's, it's, it's very complicated. And by, by that I mean it's very turbulent that era and the way it influenced his family as well. We talked about his kind of genealogy, let's say and then the influence of political landscape on young Caesar. But I'm also keen to know more about his education. He had some great, let's say educators. I'm not sure about the pronunciation by the way, I think I might have butchered. So you forgive me, I'll let you correct me. Antonius Nefo was. Is one of one of his teachers. He taught him. He taught him Bali. He had. He provided a bilingual education for him in Greek and Latin literature. So he got his linguistic philosophy from him. Then he has his cousin who was a very accomplished orator. Strawberry. And it was important, I guess all that literary self presentation, that linguistic and oratory background and philosophical background was important. Political. Was an important political power. Can you tell us about the intellectual training? His intellectual training and how it influenced him as a state man, his political career as a state man.
- [14:37]
Professor David Potter
This is a very interesting issue with Caesar. We're told that his mother Aurelia took a great deal of care to make sure he got a very good education. And one of the fascinating things that we can see about the young Caesar is who is missing in all of this. He learns a great deal from Antonius Knifo. He clearly has a great deal of admiration for his uncle Strabo who was one of the people killed by Marius supporters. He quotes Strabo in one of his own speeches. The humor that Strabo advertised, which we know about from Cicero, makes its way very clearly into Caesar's own work. Sort of understated comments like when he's describing one of his enemies in the civil war who undermines himself when he shows he's clearly lying to his supporters. And Caesar simply said when his face did not match his words, then the whole thing falls apart. Or he has a German chieftain suddenly say, I'm not such an ignorant barbarian that. Well, actually you are, but thank you for introducing that. But the person who never shows up in these stories is Caesar's father. And you know, there clearly it looks like when we look backwards, there was a real problem there that Caesar's father seemed to want to sort of say, okay, you know, you go off and do this, I'm the important one. Fortunately, there's a really there to look after him. There's gnifo. And Caesar admired Ganifo's literary theory so much that in the middle of the Gallic War he wrote a book about Ganifo's rhetorical theory. And I think that it tells us something really important about Caesar that he did that, which is that he could openly appreciate a person who was not a wealthy aristocrat and that this is one of the qualities that would make him a general that men would follow. And I think that also with this difficult relationship with his father, we can sense that he does actually seek to have honest relationships with people he can trust.
- [17:00]
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Morteza Hajizadeh
and was was the one one thing that you discussed in the book was estrable also and how he taught him this, you know a mix of wit, irony and precision. All those oratory skills. Was it important for a for a Roman politician to have that oratory skills?
- [17:52]
Professor David Potter
It was absolutely critical to be a good orator. Of course the Roman politician we know best in this sense is Cicero who made his career as a successful Lawyer. Before he moved into politics, Julius Caesar would do the same thing. He would prosecute a couple of really corrupt officials. And Roman trials at this point were held out in the middle of the forum so everybody could come and watch, and so people can say, who is that smart, bright young man? And look at him scoring these points off of these nasty crooks here. And so Caesar sets himself out as somebody, as a lawyer who is also interested in defending people who are victims of the system. And so throughout his political career, he is going to be depending on his ability to be persuasive. And this is especially important on the way up.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
And I think it's a perfect segue to my next question. We always hear of Julius Caesar as the Caesar we know really nothing about, and we assume that he suddenly became the Caesar. But in a way, in the book, you sort of lay out like he had a long apprenticeship. You know, by apprenticeship, I don't mean a traditional apprenticeship, but you know what I mean. He gradually, you know, rose, rose up. He had different political careers. He was a prosecutor, a priest, as you mentioned, he prosecuted some corrupt governors. He sponsored also lavish public games there. Then he was elected as the Pontifex Maximus, if I'm not mistaken, which is the highest. Well, I'll let you explain what it is. Tell us about his gradual rise. How did he become. What did he do before becoming the Caesar we now?
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Professor David Potter
Well, the early career of any aspiring Roman politician was designed to give that person a chance to develop the skills that would be needed if he managed to hold high office. He needed to gain experience as an officer. He needed to be an effective orator, as we've seen, and he needed to know how to manage money. In all of these things, of course, military experience comes first. And so Caesar spent several years serving under Sulla's former generals and showing his courage on the battlefield. He won a major award for saving the life of a Roman citizen in battle. So whenever you would see him, literally because he was allowed to wear his award, you would say, oh, well, here is the young Caesar who's shown himself to be a brave soldier, but he's also showing himself to be a wonderful orator. There are other things, however, which also sort of get left out of the story of Caesar. We're told in passing that he held his most junior Roman elective office, that of a military tribune, at the time of the war with Spartacus. This is never mentioned, the war with Spartacus, in any tradition about Caesar. But this is where his later colleague Crassus was in command. And it looks like Caesar would have served under Crassus against Spartacus, but he also would have seen what a bloody, horrible disaster the war with Spartacus was. And so he wouldn't want to remind people that he'd been part of that. Far better to be able to talk about events a few years later, for instance, when he was a financial assistant in the province of Spain. I mean, the things that get left out of Caesar's early story, again, are as significant in some ways as the things that get put into it. But certainly by the year 65, when he becomes Aedile, we can see that he's a person of very great wealth. He's a person who can manage complex political systems, and he knows how to be remembered as somebody who is devoting himself to the pleasures of the people of Rome. So he says he's going to put on the biggest gladiatorial display anybody's ever seen. And he has the gladiators, and he's later to become the major gladiatorial contractor in Italy and hiring out gladiators, the people who want to put on games around the peninsula, which, of course, also gives him a lot of influence around Italy. But he's also aware that there are some people who don't trust him. And they look at Caesar and say, okay, we can't let him put on all these gladiators, and they prevent him from doing so. But Caesar knows that he's still going to get credit from everybody for wanting to do it, and they're going to get the blame for not letting him do it. And one of the. What we can see here is that Caesar is already using one of the tactics that he will use very often in the future, which is to give his opponents two choices, neither of which is going to be good. Okay, I put on the gladiatorial games and everybody loves me. I. I don't put them on, and everybody hates you.
- [23:09]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Another episode of his life that was a turning point in. In his life was Cataline Crisis. What was that Cataline conspiracy? To be honest, I didn't know about it myself before reading your book, and I'm not a historian, so I'm trying to excuse myself, but apparently it was a very important episode in his. In his political life. What was Cataline Crisis, and what was his stance, Julius Caesar's stand stance, on. On that? And what does it show us about his political philosophy, especially about his view on the legality of Republican. Republican legality?
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Professor David Potter
The Catalina conspiracy was held up later by the Historian Sallust, who wrote a book about it, as the moment in which you could see that Roman political society had basically ceased to function, but also as a moment where the two great rivals politically in the next decade, Julius Caesar and Cato, Marcus Porcius Cato, who he hated, sort of emerged as representing two radically different ideas in Roman politics. Now, Catiline himself was an appalling human being. He'd gotten his start as a general under. As an officer under Sulla, and he seemed to have specialized in brutally murdering Sulla's enemies. He then tried to move up into elective office, and because he'd been on Sulla's side, there were people who would support him no matter how loathsome he was. But he finally gets himself elected praetor, which is the office just before your consul, and he becomes governor of Africa. But he's so corrupt when he's governor of Africa that he's tried for murder and corruption. He gets off because of collusion with a prosecutor. Essentially, it's a completely. Every time where Catiline goes, the aura of corruption follows behind him. But he still thinks he should be consul. And so he runs for the consulship of 63, and he's beaten by Cicero and another Antonius. And so he wants to be try again in 63, and he's beaten again. And he blames Cicero for preventing him from being consul as he deserves. So he enters into a conspiracy to bring down the government of the Roman Republic. It turns out there are still a lot of very unhappy veterans in Etruria. And so he has a friend of his go and start a revolt in Etruria while he plans to assassinate Cicero in Rome. Now it turns out that Cicero is warned in advance so that the assassination attempt isn't carried out. And then Catiline goes off to join the army in Etruria, but he leaves a bunch of his not very bright associates in Rome. The story goes that they're still plotting to burn the city, and then they're conspiring with Gallic ambassadors to start a revolt in Gaul against Rome. And the Gallic ambassadors turn over the letters that they had been given, making it clear that these people were completely traitors, and so they're arrested. But here's the sort of rub. When Catiline had gone off to join Manilius, the army in Etruria, the Senate had passed something called the ultimate decree, which gave the consuls the power to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the Republic. And in the past, this had allowed them to execute Roman citizens without a trial. And this was something that ran completely counter to the fundamental traditions of Roman citizenship. You should not be able to do this. But several times in the past, consuls had declared an emergency and essentially violated the Roman constitution to kill political enemies. So when the senators who had been siding with Catiline are brought up into the Senate, a debate breaks out, and Cicero recommends they be executed. And Caesar gets up and says, this is absolutely ridiculous. It's in violation of the constitution of the Roman state. We must not go there. Let them be imprisoned for the foreseeable future, but we cannot kill them. And by the way, death isn't such a bad option if you're thinking that way, because there's no such thing as Hades. And so all of a sudden, you have the Pontifex Maximus saying that a fundamental aspect of religious belief isn't true. He's a radical thinker that way. There is no Hades. On the other hand, he's saying, we have got to protect Roman citizens, no matter how unpleasant or dreadful we think they are, from the abuse of power. Now it turns out that Cato then gets up and gives a speech, and he turns the audience away from Caesar's position, and the people are executed. But by the time you leave the Senate House that day in December, Caesar has established himself as a radically intellectually and a radical politically who has put the interests of the Roman people ahead of the interests of the powerful.
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Morteza Hajizadeh
Another important part of his political career was the formal pact that he had, the alliance with Pompey and Crassus, something that is known as the first Triumvirate. You consider this alliance with Pompei and Crassus as not really a formal pact, but as a pragmatic alignment. What do you mean by this being a pragmatic alignment? And what does it tell us about its political style?
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Professor David Potter
Well, what it shows us, the whole sort of negotiation in 59, is how Caesar could work with other people. And Pompey and Crassus basically didn't like each other at all. They had been consuls together, but didn't speak to each other most of their term as consuls. They'd both served under Sulla, But, I mean, nothing really brought these two people together. And up until the point at which Caesar became consul, they were both trying to get things out of the Senate that were important to themselves. They couldn't seem to align themselves with each other without Caesar showing them how to do it. And we have a fascinating letter written by Cicero in December of 60, just before Caesar takes up office, making it clear that this alliance hasn't really stabilized itself yet. But what has happened is that Pompey, having defeated Rome's enemies in the east, has made a whole series of arrangements, including promising good retirement benefits for his soldiers and security in office for kings in the East. The Senate was refusing to authorize the retirement benefits for his soldiers or the arrangements he'd made with the kings in the east, which were important to Pompey because this was a source of a lot of money to him. They had to live a certain lifestyle, and he'd lend them the money for it at very high rates of interest. And Crassus, in the meantime, was dealing with a situation that arose out of the fact that there was really no formal bureaucracy at Rome, that all government was managed by corporations. You needed to build a harbor, you hire a corporation to do it. You need to build a road, you hire the people to build the road. You need to collect taxes. You hire the people to collect taxes. And what they do is they provide you an estimate of how much money they think they can collect, and then they give you that, and they keep everything they collect on top of that. However, in this case in western Turkey, they had vastly overbid because they hadn't realized the level of economic damage that the wars had done to these places. And so they're going broke, and they asked Crassus to get the Senate to give them a break on the money they'd promised the Roman state. So in this case, the Senate is preventing any deal being made with the tax collectors of Asia or any deal being made with Pompey. And Caesar comes in and says to the two of them, look, we can deal with this. And what I'm going to do is give the Senate a chance to pass bills which will then be voted on by the Roman people and get us through this. If the Senate does not, however, pass these bills, I will go straight to the people and move this legislation myself, as consul, as I have the right to do. And he does. And by the beginning of February, it looks like he has gotten the legislation giving the money back to the tax collectors of Asia, and he's gotten the money for Pompey, Pompey's veterans, and stabilized the friends of Pompey in the East. And now he says to them, and of course, you can do me a favor, too, can't you? It so happens that I would like to have a province of my own for five years, and would you not support legislation doing that? And so Pompey and Crassus Say, of course, you gave us what we wanted, we'll give you what you want. I think nobody at that point could imagine the soldier that Caesar would prove to be. He'd been successful in Spain when he'd been governor of Spain, but nobody could imagine what would happen if he got a five year command, except for Caesar. But with their support, he is given this command and then the governor of a third province, he was originally given command in northern Italy and the western Balkans. The governor of southern France dies and that province is added to Caesar as well, which makes the Gallic wars a possibility. But this only happens because Caesar is able to get people who are not talking to each other to talk to each other. And then because Caesar recognizes that he has a great deal of clout with the Roman people generally when he comes to them and say, I need you to pass these bills because we have to fix a dysfunctional government. People are used to him saying this and they'll go along with it. So at the end of the year, we do have, you know, Pompey and Crassus getting what they want. They are sort of working together. They sort of work together for the next few years. They don't communicate particularly well. And Caesar at one point has to call them each in and say, look, the system, this is falling apart here. We need you to agree to work together again. You can both be consuls in 55, and I will help you do that. And, you know, you might as well just pass another law giving me a further command in Gaul for another five years, which they agree to do. The law that gives Caesar the last five years in Gaul is passed by Pompey and Crassus. So it's again, Caesar's ability to make sure that they feel that they're getting something that then brings them or makes them support actions for Caesar which are in fact making Caesar the most powerful man in Rome. But neither of them were willing to admit it, and they don't really see it that way because they still regard themselves as Caesar's mentors.
- [35:04]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Well, there was a couple of things here that I'll pick up towards the end of the interview. It's more about his maybe moving away from that republican ideas. But anyhow, there's another important part of the book and also obviously part of Caesar's life, which is the Gallic words. So during those campaigns, Caesar started building sort of a parallel state, parallel state apparatus. There was a centralized decision making. You had his intelligence networks, let's say, what do you think? And he also kind of Politically justified, that conquest. But I'm keen to know, according to you, what do you see as the most important, significant, maybe the most important political or administrative innovations that he developed during these campaigns?
- [35:54]
Professor David Potter
Well, it's through the pages of the Gallic wars that we can watch Caesar grow as a general, get a real sense of who he was as we see him manage his army. We can see him changing plans and lights of new intelligence. We can see his extraordinary command of detail. We hear him encouraging his men and crucially, building a new political society in Gaul. Now, one of the curiosities of the Gallic war is again, the propagandistic side is that Caesar is always killing hundreds of thousands of people. Because the report you write back to the Roman people at the end of the year, oh, yeah, we killed lots and lots and lots of Gauls. And that's. That's the way it should be. When you're in Gaul, you see something completely different. Caesar recognizes that mass murder is not a way to get people to deal with you. You are trying to build. Excuse me just a second. Caesar is trying to build a political, economic organization in Gaul that will support his army. He can't do that if he's a mass murderer. And what we see is at the end of every campaign, he calls meetings to be build a stronger political union in different parts of Gaul. What we can also see is that groups of Gauls who he claimed to have wiped off the planet seem to be showing up with large armies a couple of years later. Which again shows us that, as it were, the death toll of the Gallic war is nothing like what Caesar was claiming it to be for his Roman audience. And it couldn't be, if what you're trying to do is integrate people into your own system. And also to make sure that there's a working economy in Gaul. You need people farming, you need people mining. And so what we can see throughout this period is Caesar's doctrine of conquest is that the conquered, as it were, will have a place, a definable place where within the new system of government. And we find members of the Gallic aristocracy becoming important members of Caesar's Caesar's staff. Their troops are important troops within Caesar's army. Towards the end of his time in Gaul, Caesar is raising new legions entirely of Gauls. He has really built Gaul into this massive corporation that we might as well think of as Caesar incorporated. The largest and most powerful military entity in the Mediterranean world. Richer than the Roman state, more efficient, managed by people who really understand their jobs, who worked with Caesar for years, with an army that is bigger than the rest of the army of the Roman republic.
- [39:01]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And in your later chapters in the book, you portray Caesar during the civil wars and how he departed from that traditional heroic narratives. I'm keen to know your thoughts about what aspects of his leadership during those years, or maybe even his missteps, do you find most revealing about him. And generally, I think generally Cicero is portrayed as this defender of democracy and Caesar as someone who's moving towards a more authoritarian person. And I'm keen to know how do you see this dynamic there as well?
- [39:42]
Professor David Potter
Yes, well, there are a number of things that start happening in the years of the civil war. The first year and a half would seem to be sort of going by plan. And according to Caesar, he invades Italy successfully, he defeats Pompey's army, he defeats Pompey. But then we get a sense of Caesar sort of losing a bit of his touch. Part of this is when he goes to Egypt and he suddenly begins a highly publicized affair with Cleopatra. The affair with Cleopatra was really not a good move on his part. Then we begin to see that he's having health problems. He appears to be having a series of mini strokes, and he isn't always on top of his game as he had been in the past. And some of the narratives that we get of the later campaigns of the civil war look like they're trying to say that you may think that Caesar wasn't really up to his old game, but really he was. And you know, it's that sort of. They protest a bit too much about how well this is all going. What we can also see is that Caesar himself seems to have realized that what he could do in Gaul was not the same as what he could do in Rome. And trying to, you know, he was not going to be sulla. He was the anti sulla. I mean, there are a lot of ways he was anti sulla. And Ursula was a nasty drunk, Caesar didn't drink, Caesar could be very charming, et cetera. But when it comes to reorganizing Roman political society, Caesar's system is still very, very top down. And if you want to get ahead, you gotta do what I say. And in many ways, the qualities we can see making Caesar such a good general when they're translated to this domestic sphere, don't work that well. And Caesar himself realizes this, that his version of government will depend on him telling people what to do. He actually asked Cicero at one point to write a book advising him on the best form of government. That he could manage with one person at the top. And Cicero tries to write this and say, I can't write this, this is stupid. And he sends it to Caesar. And Caesar says, okay, look, I understand. But what we're also seeing there is that Caesar himself is saying, I know this isn't working quite right. That I know that the kind of peace and order that I was expecting to see, that people would understand that what I was doing was the right thing to do. I've given land to my veterans. I have enhanced the food supply of the people of Rome. I've moved people out into new places where they can have better lives. This is my commitment to the less fortunate in Roman society. But the more fortunate in Roman society are not taking this very well. Do I have to do just be Caesar's lieutenant, or can I be an independent person in my own right? And as people keep feeling that the second choice isn't really there, resentments are growing. Caesar can sense those resentments growing, but he doesn't have a clear way forward to do something different. He can't imagine a system of government involving him that he is not directly running.
- [43:27]
Morteza Hajizadeh
One final question. It's, and I'm going to go back to the beginning of the interview, when you mentioned establishing a dialogue between past and present. There's a lot of interest in
- [43:43]
Professor David Potter
the
- [43:44]
Morteza Hajizadeh
life of political leaders, whether it's in Greece or Rome, especially Julius Caesar. And you know, nowadays the world is grappling with the rise of right wing politics, populism, authoritarianism, sidelining of democracy. So given all these tensions and political turmoil about democracy, power in our current times, what do you think the life of Julius Caesar in your narrative, in your book, why do you think his life matters today and what does it tell us about. And I know it's a terribly broad question, but I'm just keen to know your thoughts on that. What does he tell us about the importance of power, democracy, political failure in the modern world?
- [44:29]
Professor David Potter
I think this is a very important question because what we see in the career of Caesar is the combination of populism and dictatorship. The career of Caesar was the result of the failure of the democratic institutions of the Roman state, which had left the majority of people wishing for a government that would pay some attention to their needs, such as better housing, adequate food supply, more money in their pockets. The failure of the Roman Senate to look after the interests of the average Roman made people look for a person who could. As we've seen in our conversation, Caesar is consistently presenting himself as the person who could make life better for others who could protect them from autocratic behavior or the illegal behavior of the Roman Senate. And he followed through on his promises. But I think it's also important to see that Caesar wouldn't have been there, able to do that if it hadn't been for systemic failures. If people had more faith in their institutions, they wouldn't need somebody like Caesar to come along and say, I can solve all your problems for you. And so the reason that Caesar was successful in a sense was he was moving. In a world where corporations like our tax collectors from Asia and other places are managing the world in their own interests, they can't really perceive that as they are weakening the institutions of the state, they are opening the door for something that is going to be completely different. But you know what we often see a person like Crassus is very short sighted. If I can just get what I want for the, for my supporters, that's all I need. If I want to engage in some other exercise, I can get the government, get the state to do what I want. But is this question being asked, is this the best thing for the state or the best thing for you? And as the Roman state had begun to serve the self interest of the wealthy more and more often, it opened the way for Julius Caesar. Without Caesar, the Roman Republic had already descended into routine chaos. Without the prior failures of government, I don't think there would have been a Caesar. But after Caesar, the way forward for Rome was really a populist dictatorship, which is initially what the Roman imperial system was. You voted power to the emperor Augustus as you had voted power previously to Julius Caesar. And what Augustus was able to do was understand some of the mistakes Caesar had made and correct for them. And he didn't need to be the one person in charge all the time. He could share power with others. But the Caesarean dictatorship was very much a product of a failed system and Caesar's ability to build an alternative to the political system he'd grown up in.
- [47:49]
Morteza Hajizadeh
And it all sounds very familiar, I guess with again, with current political climate, I guess everywhere in the world, not necessarily in America or Australia, where I live.
- [47:58]
Professor David Potter
I think I suppose the one comfort we can take is if you want to be Caesar, you got to be really, really smart and really good at detail.
- [48:06]
Morteza Hajizadeh
I know that this book just came out a few months ago and it takes a long time to write a book. So I'm just keen to know if there's any other project you're currently working on, a new book project you have in mind, anything that might be published sometime soon?
- [48:19]
Professor David Potter
Well, I actually have a book called Atlas of Rome's Wars From Augustus to Achilla the Hunter that will just be coming out in a few months and it's being done with basic books and it's wonderfully illustrated. And I hope it's a book that people will be able to enjoy, as I very much hope people will find the story of Julius Caesar intriguing and relevant to themselves.
- [48:47]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Now, I'm more interested to talk about this book with you on New Books Network as well. So I really hope to be able to do that in a few months. I'll keep my eyes open. I'll check the website to see when the book comes out. Dr. David Potter, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us about your wonderful book. The book we just discussed was Master of Rome, A Life of Julius Caesar, published by Oxford University Press. Thank you so much for your time.
- [49:14]
Professor David Potter
Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk to you,
- [49:23]
Morteza Hajizadeh
Sam.