Are you interested in history?

@helenS you have hidden depths, very attractive you know.

@Lostlostlost Now I feel flattered! 🌷

@Stereoguy Some think history does not repeat itself. How wrong they are! 😕

@helenS you know how I feel about you

@Lostlostlost I enjoyed our communication.

@helenS me too

@helenS Rome had it better than us - Caesar was competent, well respected, spent most of his life leading a war and fighting it himself from the frontline; no modern dictator or wannabe-dictator is anywhere comparable. Imagine if he sat his A$s in Rome while his legions fought his wars for him, blaming bone spurs and spending his time trying to screw the Roman lower class instead 😜

@Elessar Actually the whole story is a real tragedy. The most amazing commonwealth of antiquity destroyed itself. The thing that followed SPQR, the "Roman Empire", was based on slavery and violence. 😕

@helenS Slavery and violence were a huge thing also during the republican era, tho. (Late) emperors were extravagant for sure, but it's not that 100 B.C. Rome was, say, 2022 (a.D.) Rome. Also, even without Caesar's takeover the republic was on the trajectory of falling, under the heavy weight of corruption - essentially the same fate that the empire would succumb to, four centuries later.

Remember how little popular support the assassination of Caesar had received - the caesaricides had to flee. The early empire, especially under Octavian, was definitely a better period for the Romans as a whole than the late-republic. Even now, in hindsight, Augustus is considered one of the greatest leaders in human history, and the pax romana the most prosperous period in Roman history.

@Elessar The social base of the SPQR (when it was still healthy) consisted of small farmers, not slaves. Slaves were not welcome because "big" farmers could produce cheaper commodities than small farmers, using inexpensive slave labor.
These free farmers, conservative and stubborn, were not rich but they could live from their own work, and feed their families. Their main political intentions consisted of avoiding abuse of power, and avoiding sole reign (which is, for example, why SPQR had two consuls who could veto each other).
The wars against Carthago (especially war #3) destroyed small farming when Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean world – the peasants had to sell their property and were replaced by slaves. They went into big cities and their children became a parasitic mob which depended heavily on social welfare. That mob was the social base of the tyranny that followed after the destruction of the SPQR. Slavery was welcomed by the mob now because it meant bread was cheap. Wars of agression were also welcome because it meant new slaves. And it was that demoralized mob which supported warlords such as Pompeius, Crassus, Caesar and Octavian, super-rich criminals who hired the mob to build private armies which were loyal only to their warlord, not to the SPQR. Tyranny was the adequate form of rule for the mob. They wanted authoritarian leaders, and they got them.
Pax romana was as peaceful as a cemetary. It rested upon the blood and bones of millions of slaves.