It is extremely urgent to publish certain matters, which means overriding some taboos. Academia ingrains particular rules, such as not making statements without evidence. Even purely philosophical statements have sources for the ideas to create context. Without sources, ideas can be ungrounded, and the expression of ideas inadvertently conflicts with facts as a matter of inadvertence rather than genuine misunderstanding. I have to override these concerns. I have been researching these matters, and it may be a few years before my solid research can be concluded, but the issues have arisen today. I am pleading forbearance from my fellow scholars that I temporarily abandon the standard apparatus criticus.
There is a fundamental connection between the assassination of Julius Caesar and the attempted assassination of President Trump. Both assassination attempts were at turning points in history. Both assassination attempts were orchestrated by the contemporary ‘deep state’; both involved ‘deep betrayals’.
In the case of Julius Caesar the environment has been hidden by the failure of academia to look objectively at the evidence. Western academia has been obsessed in writing out foreign parties from any agency in Western history to its own detriment. Whereas Hegel, following Kant, saw history as an unfolding of a spiritual story, we can see that later classicists and historians saw history as a necessary narrative to serve the unfolding of a ‘true history’. As Kant explicitly writes, the ruler may need to mislead the people in their own true interest and later one would say rely on academia to further their goals.
Julius Caesar had returned from Egypt with Cleopatra. Up until then, Roman rule had been largely controlled under the Senate. Any alternative was considered a dictatorship. It is widely repeated that Julius Caesar did not have a son and heir, though this is clearly untrue. Caesar had a son by Cleopatra.
Many classicists made every effort to downplay the role of Cleopatra. Cleopatra was not a mere plaything. She had introduced Caesar to the Egyptian way of power. This was a way of power whose tradition went back millennia, whereas Rome’s power methods were recent and highly unstable. What ancient Egypt had was a model of a ruler that was not a private plunderer nor a personal dictator. The concept of a spiritual ruler above everyday struggles was new. On his return to Rome, Caesar struggled with the traditions of Roman rule and the chaos it engendered. He had been shown the power of the Egyptian model and would have been tempted to try and introduce that to Rome. In Roman eyes, unfamiliar with the ancient Egyptian model of the spiritual ruler, Caesar’s attempts to introduce another model would appear solely as attempts to obtain total and permanent dictatorship. Even Caesar’s friends would be alarmed. They would see Caesar attached to a foreign queen with a powerful cultural history. They must fear that she is imbuing Caesar with ‘dangerous foreign ideas’. That she has borne him a son creates the risk of his heir being brought up with these ‘foreign ideas’. Cleopatra’s attempts to have their son officially recognised would have alerted the political scene, the deep state of the time, to the fundamental issue at stake as they would have seen it. Faced with a living Caesar silence and delay may have been the safest and most tactful response.
Assassination became the sole solution given Julius Caesar’s extreme political skill.
Enter Octavian.
During his time in Egypt, Octavian also learns about the Egyptian model of governance if he had not already been given some introduction by Julius Caesar himself. One can imagine Julius Caesar considering it politic to share some of his thinking with his adoptive heir, on the other hand, these plans may have been too sensitive to share. Octavius’ actions speak volumes. He is made Pharoah of Egypt. Some Classicists suggest this was done without his knowledge. This beggars belief. Given Octavius’ power at the time who would dare act without his prior approval and if it were ever done how would Octavius’ spies and agents not alert him? Octavius’ bans Romans from visiting Egypt. This must have been because there was something they would learn that Octavius did not want known. One interpretation would be that Octavian was all too aware of the fate befalling his adoptive father when he tried to make himself the ‘Roman Pharoah’, and would be highly sensitive to allowing anyone to have a glimpse of where he was going politically.
Pharaoh is not a title but the name of the residence of the ruler, such as ‘While House’, ‘No.10’, ‘The Elysee’. Octavian transformed himself into what is now known as the Emperor. He lived ‘above’ the Senate , literally, politically and spiritually. He was the closest Rome could get to an Egyptian Pharoah. Compared to the earlier chaos, the period of rule by Roman Pharaohs was considerably more stable, though not without its many moments of excitement.
Caesar’s assassination arose at the beginning of the emergence of a new era: an era of Roman ‘global’ empire. It appeared at a time when one era was ending and a new era was about to be born. The Roman civil war that followed was bloody and deeply divisive. Octavian would have been troubled as to how to effect stable rule and the example of ancient Egypt with its lasting political arrangements would have required attention. Having himself declared as Pharoah would have been necessary. Could he have allowed anyone else to be declared Pharaoh and have that title, power and loyalty? At some time in the future given the uncertain dynamics of Roman politics, he might need to exploit that title and the loyalties that followed. His murder of Julius Caesar’s son and heir reveals much.
Why did Trump survive and Julius Caesar die? Spurinna, the soothsayer, warned Julius Caesar of the danger. Caesar was ill and may have been dying and already knew it. He may have sought to try the odds. He may have not understood how his actions had appeared. Less as making himself a pharaoh, more a hereditary dictator. Rome had already experience of managing Egygptian succession but without understanding the nature of ancient Egyptian rule. Prior to Cleopatra, the Ptolemies ruled as a foreign elite. This much Romans would immediately understand. Cleopatra spoke the people’s language and understood the people’s culture and, therefore, the basis of indigenous rule. To the casual eye, the role of the Pharoach might be confused with that of personal and hereditary dictator. Octavius went out of his way to avoid any such perception of his ambition.
Julius Caesar’s assassination occurred at the end of one era and the birth of a momentous new era. Barry Straus describes the assassination as the end of one civil war and the start of another recognising the transitional status of the event. We can see the attempted assassination of Trump as occurring also at the end of one and the beginnning of another era, or at the decline of an empire but also at the birth of a momentous new era. In both situations the ‘deep state’ was seeking to resist change, to prevent the arrival of a world they did not understand or control. In both cases, the resistance was followed by violent wars that divided former allies against each other and where much of the world was collateral damage.
Roman imperium was a mere interregnum on the scale of Chinese or ancient Egyptian history. To Santayana is attributed the statement: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. But what if that history is polluted and falsified? Western academia has a dominant role in the contemporary world academic narrative. One is tempted to rephrase a popular saying misattributed to Mark Twain: if you do not read Western historians you are uninformed, if you do read them, you are misinformed.