OK, at the end of the last episode, I mentioned Julius Caesar, because I was planning on brining him on to the stage in this episode, but as I was researching all the stuff that leads up to Julius Caesar, I realized that I was going to have WAY too much to cover. I really am trying to keep each episode around 20 minutes, but still cover the topic well, so in order to cover Caesar well, I think I’m going to spend this episode not on Caesar, but on the events that lead up to Caesar.
Also, the stuff leading up to Caesar is really interesting in itself, and it’s relevant to us today, for a couple of reasons. The big tension in the Roman Republic, after the successes of the Punic wars and the conquering of Greece, came from the struggle between the patricians and the plebeians, and also from the falling apart of the fabric of Roman society. The Romans began to ignore their own long-held traditions, and also their own laws, and one of the things that we are going to see happen to Rome is that people are more and more willing to use force, rather than relying on the rule of law, and following the traditions. We will see a lot of ‘might makes right,’ which is a major rejection of some core Roman values.