3.1 | The End Of The Roman Republic | The One Where Julius Breaks Society - A Pillock's Guide To British History

What happened to Julius and the Roman Republic after he invaded Britain? Quite a lot. Including a few civil wars and a shiny new Empire. Transcript – The End Of The Roman Republic   We have spent a couple of episodes of our History of Britain with Julius Caesar. He features a bit in British history, but he was a bit more important for Rome. He was a massive nail in the coffin of the Roman Republic and brought about the Roman Empire. It doesn’t sound like a massive difference, but if you think about how that would go down now you get a better picture of it. The Roman Republic was ran a bit similar to a modern democracy. There was the Consuls, who were like Presidents or Prime Minister, the Senate who were like an Upper House similar to the American Senate and Assemblies where normal folk could get involved, like the House of Commons. In theory, this meant that Rome was run by its people. The move to an Empire meant that the place was run by one bloke, no matter how mad he was. Our politicians may be arseholes, but they are the arseholes we picked. Let’s roll back a bit, and have a look how the change came about. Before, and during the time Julius was knocking about in Gaul and Britain he was a member of a trio of politicians called the First Triumvirate. This was Julius Caesar himself, a very popular commander and politician, Pompey the Great, a very successful military general and Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the richest people in Rome. The three of them worked together to help each other dominate the Senate. They formed the Triumvirate in 59 BC, when they worked together to get Julius elected to the top job of Consul. The general tone of all of this is that the three men worked together for their own personal ends and they didn’t particularly get on. They didn’t even necessarily share a political view. Pompey and Crassus had both been Consul at the same time, and they didn’t get much done because of all the disagreements between the two of them. At the time politicians divided into two rough camps. They weren’t exactly political parties, but the two groups didn’t get on. The groups were the Populares, who were pro ‘the people’, and the more conservative Optimates who wanted to limit the power of the assemblies in favour of the aristocratic Senate. There weren’t just your standard squabbling political groups. Their conflicts contributed to a number of civil wars in the first half of Julius life. Julius was firmly in the Populares camp, while the others weren’t so much. As a bit of an intro into how powerful these three men were, you can look at their CVs during this Triumvirate period. Crassus was Consul in 55 BC (having already had the job, Pre-Triumvirate in 70 BC) He was also the Governor of Syria in 54 BC. Pompey had already been Consul at the same time as Crassus in 70 BC, but he got the job again in 55 BC (again with Crassus) and separately in 52 BC. Between 58 and 55 BC he was the Governor of Hispania. Julius himself was Consul in 59 BC and from 58 BC he was governor of Cisalpine and TransAlpine Gaul and Illyricum. The Triumvirate officially ended when Crassus died at the Battle of Carrhae, in 53 BC. fighting the Parthians in what is now Turkey, but it was unravelling before that. As has been the case through much of history, the political alliance was ‘strengthened’ by marrying one member’s daughter to another. While Julius Caesar was in Britain in 54 BC, his daughter died in childbirth. This was an issue, beyond the obvious grief, because she was married to Pompey, and there weren’t even any familial ties to stop the inevitable betrayal. As a side point, this sort of family ties comes up constantly throughout European history. It sort of makes sense, joining together two powerful families to make sure they can dominate a political landscape.