Unfair to Julius Caesar! |
Caesar had great qualities and abilities.Although no uncritical admirer of Julius Caesar, I recognise that he was a man of great qualities and abilities, and think that it is most unfair to compare him to the current American president. Clinton is to Caesar as the grin to the Cheshire cat; a public relations exercise to a noble predator. Caesar's personal courage was indisputable; he was the recipient of one of Romes' highest awards for valour. His accounts of inspiring his troops when their morale faltered, by entering the fray at the most threatened point and personally fighting in the front lines, although self serving, were credible to those who knew him. It is inconceivable that he would have fled his country to evade military service. Until recently the same might have been said of America's leaders. Caesars practice was to win his wars, (except perhaps for the raid on Britain): as it was with previous generations of Americans. Caesar, like Napoleon, was noted for his celerity and daring and determination.Had he been in charge of the recent American war against Iraq, it is most unlikely that he would have given up as soon as he started winning. He would surely have loved to have paraded Saddam Hussein through Washington, after looting his fortune and before executing him, (and if each of his senior officers could have expected to acquire ownership of an oil well or two there would have been no lack of vigour or enthusiasm in prosecuting the war to a rapid and successful conclusion.) Despite the mechanical advantages of the Americans, Caesar or Alexander's men probably covered a lot more ground per day than Schwartzkopf's, (after arrival in the area), considering the total time and distance of their campaigns. Caesar travelled light; the American president moves abroad within an entourage of 1600 servants and sycophants, quite in the manner of the luxurious oriental potentates whom the Romans despised. Caesar was not only a courageous soldier, a skillful organiser and a successful and popular military leader; he was also a man of culture, appreciative of art and literature,(and the successful author of his own propaganda and memoirs), and like all leading Roman politicians, an excellent public speaker. Not for him the sound bite or the ghost writer. Many others, including American presidents, have also been extremely energetic, but few have been as efficient. Which American president, especially amongst the recent crew, has been able to rival the range and quality of Caesar's abilities and achievements? He is said to have been able to master epilepsy, and to have exercised notable self discipline and self control. He could be ruthless, but also clement. He was never petty. It would have been beneath his dignity to break into his opponents houses and rummage through their papers, or to seek surreptitious access to their tax records. His troops sang ribald songs about his sexual expliots, but they and he would probably have been derisive about the sanctimonious and salacious fuss made about the American president's dalliance with his serving wenches.There we have a measure of the relative stature of the two men; one known for milleniia, and amongst peoples he never knew, for his qualities and his conquest of his world; the other, if he is to be remembered at all, as a brief footnote of petty,squalid financial and sexual scandal in a sordid era. |
| ~ Wilson Bertram |
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