Cornell history professor sheds new light on the death of Julius Caesar
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- Опубліковано 12 тра 2024
- Barry Strauss, Cornell's Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies and chair of the Department of History, talks about "The Death of Caesar: New Light on History's Most Famous Assassination" in this July 22, 2015 lecture sponsored by the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions. Strauss is the author of a highly praised new book on the subject.
This guy is siding with the rich elites he said Caesar denied the people the right to elect officials he appointed when he should well know the plebs had to vote for who their wealthy benefactors decreed. Caesar did take a lot of power but undeniably he made reforms that benefited the poor of Rome and was beloved by them.
Eita saudade
Thats the WAY I seeit
I aint goinn nowowhere . I KNOW sounds like a personal prob to me also lol
I THINK Julius was betrayed by a rapacious MILITARY officer
Most of his enemies turned into friends
Caesar had to be a charismatic and extremely bold man to do the things he did. It took a lot of guts to attend that last Senate meeting. Thanks to Barry Strauss I learned a few details here I didn't know. Also: For students of the era, A great audiobook ("The Assassination Of Julius Caesar, A Peoples History") about Caesar by Michael Parenti gives us much detail on Caesars "good works" he was trying to push through. Works that were intended to help, feed, employ, and basically elevate the plebs. The Oligarch Senators felt he was pandering to the Pleb Mob.
That is an EXCELLENT book....EXCELLENT....you might even say it's a wonderful rebuttal to cicero
Caesar politically went after Cicero in a big way. No one else at the time really had the power to do so except possibly Marcus Antonius on a different level. @@manuelkong10
@@manuelkong10 Fuck Cicero on EVERYTHING HE WAS SUCH AN INCONSISTENT OPPORTUNISTIC COWARDDDD
@@manuelkong10Cicero is upheld for his philosophy but sadly he was really just another among many oligarchs tearing at Rome’s wealth like dogs. Sad to see what the conspirators did to Caesar.
What’s really amazing about the memory of Julius Caesar’s death is that: 1)shakesphere did get some key facts right and at least got some of the motives correct despite being very limited in his sources, 2)in comparison a show like Hamilton which benefits from more open scholarships compared to old England got more stuff wrong.
grreat point
Hamilton got most stuff wrong cause that was the idea for artistic purposes I guess. Hamilton himself is played by Lin Manuel Miranda. Hamilton was not Hispanic of course.
This guy should have studied Latin before saying anything about Julius Caesar. The map should include Caesar's conquest of Britannia. Watch Michael Parenti's lecture The Assassination of Julius Caesar for an accurate look at Rome and Caesar available on UA-cam.
Caesar did not conquer Britannia. He commanded a significant military foray into the island and then withdrew. It was Claudius who conquered Britain.
54:38 The model - wax image - of Julius Caesar's body was not on a crane, it was nailed to a cruciform tropaeum---in other words, a *cross!* Mark Anthony was able to rotate the tropaeum showing all 23 stab wounds.
You didn't mention Cicero's head and hands being nailed to the podium in the Senate house .
When Roman blood no longer mattered , Rome no longer mattered.
Great talk, thanks for sharing it!
Great lecture. What I would like to understand more clearly is what is new about his interpretation or sources. None of this surprised me, however elegant the delivery.
callyharley I learned he was stabbed to death, I thought he died in single combat fighting Hannibal in Australia.
I am shocked, I thought he was still alive!
His spirit is very much with us today.
Ceasar died? I didn't even know he was sick
@@r2zdena
Doesn't look like I should expect a Christmas card from him.
Excellent lecture. I enjoyed watching it.
What a personable professor. Really enjoyed the lecture, thanks for posting
Nice presentation and I am happy to have audited it. Thanks for posting, Cornell!
Enjoyed the lecture, thanks for posting. I learned a few details that I was previously unaware of. I assume that the "new light" was that Caesar was killed because the senators and aristocrats felt threatened by the terms of his dictatorship -- the prospect of the republic being turned into an autocracy -- rather than merely out of jealousy. But I thought that this was already widely known; I had read about it when I first became interested in ancient Rome back in the early 1980s.
One can not shed new light on the Life and Death of Julius Ceasar. The very idea, 2,000 years after the fact, is utterly absurd.
@@isaiahxp9185 Why is it utterly absurd?
@@bouji_ 2,000 years.
@@isaiahxp9185 What was absurd about it though? lol
@@bouji_ lol.
The biggest risk for the conspirators appears to have been Caesar's personal popularity. Had they stabbed Caesar on the street, outraged onlookers would likely have turned on them.
The funeral is evidence of your idea
Caesar was a dictator. In public he would have been carried on a litter and been surrounded by his lictors so no one would have been able to come up to him
He was a populist it seems like... had to kill him in the senate... closed session.
Of course the word got around. But he didn't get it.
4th reason for dismissing his body guards?
He was tired, ill and losing it and making bad decisions.
He was murdered because he threatened the senator's power
06:00 So previously we didn't know about the Grachi, Catilina was unknown?
This does not bode well ...
Sulla only held the office of dictator for a short time, before he left. Caesar was beloved by the plebs and his legions. Caesar didn’t read the senate and was unaware of how deep the hatred for him by the Senators really was. He began to believe in his own superiority and that was his eventual downfall.
I didn't notice any new light
me thinks Strauss is a bit full of himself.
Nothing he said is new. He didn't add anything to what Mommsen, an actual historian, said 200 years ago, and what has been repeated since. No new evidence was pointed to, no new theories. Literally just "a playwright most of you haven't read got it wrong 500 years ago"
Caesar had all the trappings of kingship save for the title itself? And why would he want the title which was despised in Rome? And wouldn't it have been a well known fact that client kings answered to Caesar or the Republic anyway? Accepting the title of king in the Rome of Caesar's time would seem to have been an outright act of stupidity. I suspect that Caesar's refusal of the title was no ruse or anything of the sort.
Yes there is literally 0 proof he would have made himself king except the Senators yapping
I don’t think anthony would take it upon himself try to put a crown on caesar and declare him king in front of a roman crowd
Excellent lecture.
Michael parenti 's the assassination of Julius Caesar is a much better talk on the subject.
He showed a couple of photos of the part of the Theater of Pompeii where Caesar was killed and also showed the exact spot where the murder occurred, but he failed to identify it when the slide came up. He kept flipping back and forth between slides instead. It took place at the site at the base of the pine tree that he showed.
great lecture
You forgot the fact that he was also killed by the Pillar Man Wammu
SHIIIIIIIIZAAAAAAAAAAA
Just went to this spot in Rome in June. Theatre Argentina archeological area is open for visitors now instead of just cats.
This is a good talk. This is a historical goldmine.
I thought this was fantastic, great speaker not dull or monotonous or anything like, this professor knows his stuff, fresh, and a point of view that's very interesting, well done and thank you for the opportunity to be able to learn on this level.
just ordered Struass' book Spartacus he is a very good writer
38:20 - "...the earliest senators of Rome who killed Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, when he became a tyrant."
Huh?
Yeah, I caught that too. It seems his expertise does not extend to the early Kingdom era.
Approximately the end of the 5th paragraph.
True, Livy notes hundreds of years later that it may have been the very senators that searched for him after his disappearance that were responsible for his disappearance. Livy's suspicions are raised because Romulus was known for being unpopular with the senate. Did any of this happen? Who knows. This story before the Gallic sack of Rome (essentially Roman prehistory) and is about a man who was raised by a wolf.
Having that said, I agree that there is at least enough to the senatorial regicide to take the claim seriously.
I don't get it. That's a widely accepted telling of Romulus' death. Why the huh?
Alaric 421 Romulus wasn't killed by senators.. that's why he wrote huh...!
No-one knows what happened to Romulus, only that he disappeared .
His spin on everything favors the optimates and ignores the populari view.
Excellent
Excelente información!!!! sobre la muerte del más grande de los romanos, saludos desde Chile, adquirire su libro
Everything we know points to Caesar being very popular with the common people. It was the Roman aristocrats, what 'Mencius Moldbug' today calls 'The Cathedral' that wanted Caesar dead and gone.
Wow Dr. Strauss how many achievments can you get, you are starting to sound likes Caesar! Do you think his life more of a result of skill or luck? I've read a few books and there were many times where the stars aligned such as in Gaul or Germania. It's quite poetic how if it was luck the one time where he had the most to lose he ignored all the signs in the moments before his death.
Julius Caesar is known for ignoring signs, omens, and profecies.
+Isabella H , to be fair, I think most of the times in which he ignored omens was when Bibulus tried to road block him during their consulship in 59. There is the whole event where he was troubled by a dream in which he had sex with his mother, and that he was going to stay home on the Ides of March on Calpurnia's urging, so I wouldn't say he did too much ignoring of omens when they weren't done for political reasons (a la, Bibilus.)
Skuldhilda when Bibulus tried to block Caesar, Caesar was already Pontifex Maximus, he over ruled him and had a bucket of shit poured over him.
Dirk No-wit-ski Luck my fuckin arse, in Gaul he depended on a huge intelligence network and even when marching further and further into Gaul he never did so without being thoroughly briefed and then taking calculated risks.
What about sic semper tyrannus ?
This lecture informs us more on why History still struggles to become a science than it does on its actual topic.
It's been all rewritten and its about the current (long term) psychotic leaders maintain power... they are eternal scoundrels, killers and liars always pathetically painting themselves as heroes and real heroes (as I assume this video does without watching it) and ever demeaning real heroes more and more with each generation. It is the way of what I call the Yorksalem bloodlines, spread far and wide, identified by RH-blood, blue blood, and a vastly different genetically psychotic mental structure
Michael Parenti's Lecture is much more better. Very superficial research about Divus Julius and Roman Theopolitics.
"Much more better"?
This speaker is a trained historian and classicist. Michael Parenti is neither of these things. This lecture presents historical research that is grounded in the sources and actual pieces of evidence.
@@airtours1990 ::
You're underestimating Parenti. He has a PhD in Political Science from Yale.
W / or w /o degrees, research can be carried out by almost anyone w / the strong desire for History.
W / or w / o degrees, they all rely on historical references.
This professor, from Cornell, is regurgitating information you can find from many other historians who don't go beyond the accepted history of The Ides of March & what really lead to Julius Caesar's assassination. He doesn't mention any of Julius Caesar's reforms ::
--- rent control
--- alleviating the tax burden of the
masses
--- interrupting the financial privileges
of the Senator's
--- changes to the system that would be
considered Progressive, now
Historicans, for the most part, BS people. Parenti does not BS. That's why he's "Parenti".
Michael Parenti mentions in his book ::
_The Assassination of Julius Caesar_
the Gaius (sp) Brothers who were also assassinated because of their Progressive Reforms.
If you haven't read Parenti's book, imho, you should give it a shot for this professor needs to go back & do more in-depth research because Parenti makes him look & sound historically programmed.
What's with the bust of Augustus used?
Cite your sources ?
From what I know about the interests of wealthy elites, authoritarianism is usually not one of their concerns. In fact, they prefer it. They support whatever or whoever helps their _financial_ interests. Who cares if the President suspends democracy so long as he cuts taxes, right? So the murder of Julius Caesar because he was getting too authoritarian has never convinced me. Michael Hudson's contention that he was killed because he was going to forgive all the public's debts - Brutus and the others being some of the largest moneylenders of Rome - makes far more sense.
why the battle of Zela (Zile) was mentioned as the one of the civil war???
I highly agree with those who criticize this lecture and stress its poor quality in comparison with the profound insight of Parenti's talks on the same subject. It seems that Barry Strauss still is in the era of the «histoire événementielle». How is it possible?
I have heard that one of the reasons that triggered Caesar's assassination was an incident when Cleopatra presented baby Cesarean to Caesar in public (in Rome), and he carried the baby, giving him some sort of legitimacy... Although I'm not sure if this event really occurred. Could somebody clarify this??? Thanks.
I have never heard or read about such event in any sources and it seems quite unrealistic. Holding a baby in his arms by his father for Romans was equal with legitimization of the child. A Roman was not allowed to marry a foreign woman. For a man of such position that would mean a political suicide. Too many formal objections.
+zincbooster Foreign kings (or queens) were not permitted to cross the pomerium, into Rome proper, so that seems highly unlikely.
j
Caesar might well have acknowledged his son by Cleopatra. She would have wanted him to. Likely, she considered herself to be his plural wife, regardless of what Roman law had to say on the subject (polygamy was legal in Egypt). The act would have been political suicide had he still been an elected official, but he had already been declared "dictator for life", which meant that he would never have to face the voters again. And it is common enough for highly successful people to believe that ordinary rules don't apply to them. Caesar was neither the first nor the last prominent person to be a victim of his own hubris.
+John Ries The "voters" proved how much they value the title of "dictator for life".
Picture is Augustus
Highly informative!
check out Prof Freedman, Yale Lectures, European History, Middle Ages, much better delivery, up close & personnel.
Glad we are finally getting to the bottom of this tragic homicide.
I admire your sense of humor lol
I like more from
Will Durant---Julies Ceaser
It's good to learn about civil Wars after all that apears where America is headed.
There was a Roman named Nicholas?
Nicholas, Nickolas, Nikolas, Nikolaus or Nicolas is a male given name, derived from the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), which is a compound of (νίκη = nikē) 'victory' and (λαός = laos) 'people'. Wins people over.
This guy says: Shakespeare was not an Historian...Do you know how many Historian have gotten History completely wrong? Do you know how many Historians have intentionally lied about History for one reason or another.? Being a Historian doesn't mean you actually know what you are talking about.
starts at 4:15
Hero.
Ohhh, Brutus! That coin... Too soon! Too soon...
Some chutzpah there!
Still the coin was very cute.
And the Eid Mar inscription is very easily read by English speakers.
I wouldn't say Pompeii the great was Caesar's arch enemy. I'd say that was cato...
Brutus,the little bastard he was,stabbed Caesar in the groin as a coup de grace...
I have a follow up video. Utube user sheds light on how History professor trolled away 1 plus hrs of my life with old news rebranded as new. In laymans terms HE LIED.
the freeze frame for this video - witch drew me to it in the first place - cuz the only part of the title I could see was "Cornell history professor sheds new light on the death of"
i saw the freeze frame pic nd i swear its Octavian/Augustus lol then i noticed it said Caesar when i clicked on it - anyway thanks for the comments guys wont even bother watching then based on what few of you are saying specially callyharley
Nicolas was worried about Augustus, had to sugar -coat GJC.
Similar to Caesar, Augustus believed in the liberty to speak. When Augustus caught his own grandson reading Cicero's writings (likely to included negativities about Caesar), August told him to learn well. Caesar never has been and never will be afraid of words.
60 senators were involved and the conspiracy still didn't leak.
Looks like a great many people wanted Caesar gone.
Extraordinary to learn that there were more Caesarians than Pompeians among The Liberators.
“”Liberators””💀💀
I am sorry, but is he really a professor?
I wonder his pupils...
Cleopatra wasn’t living in Rome double check your information
I take issue with his stance @ 38:55 Caesar wanted to walk the streets like a normal person and face any detractors head on, as Sulla had done before him after Sulla had seized Rome in the Social War, subsequently retiring in Rome. "Near the end of 81 BC, Sulla, true to his traditionalist sentiments, resigned his dictatorship, disbanded his legions and re-established normal consular government. He stood for office (with Metellus Pius) and won election as consul for the following year, 80 BC. He dismissed his lictors and walked unguarded in the Forum, offering to give account of his actions to any citizen. In a manner that the historian Suetonius thought arrogant, Julius Caesar would later mock Sulla for resigning the Dictatorship." Wikipedia
My dream cornwell
"I AM THE SENAAAAAAAAATE" SORRY, COULD NOT RESIST
He must have known Julius caesar personally.
Everyone who uses a sword will be killed by a sword.
This presentation is full of inaccuracies, misinterpretations and lacks any understanding of political context. Besides that the speaker mentions that Shakespeake is no historian and then uses Shakespeare again and again as an historical reference. Try Freedman or Parenti. This is just ad hominem blahblah.
Thanks for making those points. Most people here ( in these comments ) seem to think this "historian" knows this history, but he sounds programmed.
Good speech, a bit biased however. Many inaccuracies.
Phil K
"How do we know?"
The countless sources that contradict what this guy is saying?
"Opinions only"
Thank god you're not a historian.
Phil K
Why are you capitalizing words?
Phil K
I already answered you, you weirdo.
Why are you being so hostile?
This guy is specifically referring to a single historical account that is considered not very credible. He also sounds a bit biased based on what I assume are his political views. Now stop replying to me with your awful grammar.
Phil K
Yeah forgive me for criticizing the misinformation in the lecture, I should just shut up and accept whatever people say.
You are an idiot, and I'm muting you.
All teeth and no bite.
Caesaaaaaaaar!!!!
More than ONE SENATOR STABBED HIM sounds like a conspiracy to ME
good talk, clickbait title
Useful in convincing me to save my money on his book and stick to Goldsworthy, Mommsen et al.
Latin is my guess
Caesar: What is wrong with you people? I keep telling you I do NOT want to be King!
I just want to be Dictator for Life. Can't you tell the difference?
Eve门窗无线接触传感器（3包）
Ancient Grease
For some reason when I picture Julius Caesar I see Putin in my head.
Reminds me of JFK. What's past is prologue
What a great presentation!! They dont make History Professors like this any more. If could talk to a person of that era, it would would be Cicero by his breadth of experience in his years in this era and his depth of learning!! He stayed too long. Marc Anthony wanted him dead for his diatribes against Anthony in Senate, My understanding was Antony demanded his death as part of the agreement to join the Triumvirate!! Sad end for a great scholar of the olde Republic!! He brilliantly played off the political forces and played the game a long time but the historical forces of the time in the end brought him down!! He was an antique but did not realize it!!
Very informative. Well worth listening to.
The "Loose-Aggressive Gambler" syndrome.
Hardly important compared to Jesus
Who died and rose from the dead!
As some have already pointed @Theseustoo Astyages lame. All the arguments are based on this hypothesis. Historically speaking, we CAN NOT affirm with certainty that he wanted to be the king, therefore although very well done with some good arguments, the other side should have been displayed. Furthermore, the reforms obviously brought conflict some factions of the Roman Senate and would have caused a clash.
Good grief! A professor of history who cannot read between the lines.
To begin with: not dictator in perpetuity but commander.
Pray tell, would his belonging to the Populares faction mean anything, and that his family had to flee that nice kind humanitarian dictator Augustus Pinochet, I mean Sulla, had any indication on his politics? Does the fact that he forgave debts, distributed ration to the people, raised taxes on luxury, did land reform, etc etc all at the expense of the senatorial class, those “saintly men”, fabulously rich with huge land holdings and dozens of villas, worked by slaves in the hundreds and even thousands, had anything to do with his assassination by those same men? And he was such an arrogant dictator that he did not even persecute his enemies, even as they were plotting against him, by the way very uncharacteristic of roman ways, and so much of Caesar’s character that he does not look into. The fact is they were a mafia, and in fact that’s where the modern mafia got its inspiration for its modus operandi. Be real!
The republic of Rome was not for the people. This is dishonest spin in how this is portrayed. It was for their oligarch class. Caesar was a democratic reformer
Thank you Decimus is Judas nobody realize it
After that introduction I turned it off- who wants to listen to some rookie.
Literally said nothing new!
New is to bash Caesar some more... all part of the ministry of Culture's massive rewrite of history. Caesar's assasins, the family of Cassius, live, prosper, spread, still have power and gradually try to rewrite him into more and more of a villain while making themselves heroes...they are precisely today's Dem Senate in 2020, long planning their own dictatorship, they must assassinate the populist leader beloved of the people... and they begin by calling him a dictator and trying to make that label stick. Caesar turned down the Kingship twice.... good thing he did. It was a trap to have an excuse to kill him. They killed him anyways... that long time society of infiltraters and assassins I now call (from their later branches) the york salem bloodline, aka, English bloodlines, they took over England by York and infiltrated America (nearly complete) by the main first colony of Salem, Massachusetts. Same psychotics with blue Rh- blood, which indicates Chimpanzee genes, a chimpanzee species, born by lab in Crete and release in 1444 bc. It's alot to take in, in a paragraph, but that is the reality. Take it is a presupposition and you'll see it fixes most of the holes in history...
a Greek from Damascus?! lol how about a german from Mozambique?
simofyou Greece, under Alexander, conquered the Middle East. Read a book, prior to exposing your abismal ignorance.
The whole Levant was Greek in those days. Greek Christians were and still are a part of that world.
Well, Greeks can very well live in Damascus. Why Greeks couldn't live there? There were Greeks living in Macedonia and so on...
i keep thinking of the present beast in the white house whilst watching
he is a moron but i saw him coming.
I have bias against professors that refer to Shakespeare as "the bard"
apparently his primal source was the movie cleopatra (and a few bad documentaries).
what a joke...
annoying voice variation to high pitch
I wish these conspirators were here now to deal with that thing in the White House.
@,Mitch S : ah! But they were. But they were. In our version of Rome.
We you idolize past Psychopaths behavior .You are > ?
Highly credentialed and erudite tool delivers a partisan anti-Caesarian screed. Larded with half-truths and lies of omission. Even the video's thumbnail is not an image of Julius Caesar, but of Octavian.
Mediocre lecture at best. The fact that history is regarded only as department in his field of discipline comes out as pretty obvious after seeing his limited knowledge. Also i expected better rethoric skills from a humanistic studies proff
That's the difference between Washington and cesare Washington left office after 8 years and could have easily declared himself a monarch. The power didn't corrupt Washington as it did cesare and by leaving office he set the precedent of an 8 year term with power changing hands that has been the cornerstone that our Republic relies upon that has held our Republic together thru the most difficult situations ever faced by any n
bird dog 2020 that's why I can't believe how people think that Franklin D Roosevelt was a great man he would have stayed in office for the rest of his life if he didn't die that prick bastard most overrated president God bless George Washington
Washington read Seneca
What if Caesar was aware that the dangers to a true Republic still lingered in its own Senate and so he lived as a counterbalance to provide for those that were not elites? What if Washington trusted in the people (you and I) to do what is righteous in order for our Republic to prosper? How then should we answer the call? Alas, today, the Republic is nothing but a name that serves an Oligarchy. What is the difference between now and then? If Caesar were alive today, would he not be right (again) to oppose the status quo?
Actually, if Caesar didn't decide to keep the power, optimates would return right to blocking his legislation and reforms as they did during his consulship and the whole situation would just repeat.
Well I think Washington wanted very badly to be president just so he could leave office like Cincinnatus, of whom Washington was a true fangirl.
You know, I used to think Brutus was a coward and a traitor, and I still think he was wrong in what he did, but living in the times we're living in with the Trump Administration and it's controversy, I have a new understanding of the thinking of Brutus, and his concern for the threat to the Republic, and the idea Caesar was trying to undermine it and become a Tyrant. I think that's exactly what Trump was doing.
The Trump revolution (attempt) had parallels to the populist tide that supported G. J. Caesar, and the concerns of Trump undermining our Democracy was very real, so there were parallels.
Lol.. no..
@@bryansmith1691 I don't mean G J Caesar was a bafoon and a failure like Trump, Caesar was a hero. But I still understand Brutus.
And if you don't think Trump defiled and tried to undermine our Republic, well,... ha ha just keep watching Fox news and slobbering over Sean Hannity, cause there's no real help for you my friend.😆😰
remember what Booth said when he shot Lincoln. Gabriel take a nap...
@@liamodalaigh3201 you must not think I know J W Booth said "Sic semper tyrannus" like Brutus did. I wasn't drawing a parallel between the Lincoln assassination and Caesar's. I was drawing a parallel between the Roman crisis of the republic and our recent crisis (of the American republic)
@@gabrielfox457 you seem well meaning. crisis. you mean the democrats stuffing ballots and electing an old dotting criminal as president. thar crisis we now face with a vice president who cackles like a nut
Dictators get killed