Some thoughts after Reading Historical Biography

Is the people in that context is a far cry from today's people? For example, people in the United States.

Somewhat different. For example, Giaus Iulius Caesar was not in fact given the mandate as Dictator by the people. Dictator was a specific office instituted in the Roman Republic after the Tarquins were run out in about 500 B.C. The King was replaced by two Consuls, each exercising the same authority, each elected, and each serving for one year. As the Consuls also lead the Roman armies, situations might arise in the city, or in the nature of a military threat, which constituted extraordinary and emergency situations. In those situations, the Senate would call upon someone to take the office of Dictator, having an absolute authority even greater than that of a Consul, but only exercised during the emergency. Then the Dictator was expected to yield his authority and return to his normal pursuits.

This happened, in fact, on many occasions, and the Romans had no reason to regret the institution. However, it would be a mistake to assume that "the people" chose the person to fill the office of Dictator. Dictators were appointed by the Senate, and the appointment--being considered as an emergency measure--was not subject to the vote of the people. To understand this better, we need to go back to more basic things about the city of Rome.

In Rome, there was an important social division. The people of the city were divided into two "orders," the order of Patres (meaning "fathers") and the order of Plebs (there is considerable disagreement among historians about when the order of Plebs appeared, and what the term derived from, so i won't offer an opinion on that). Only members of the Patrician order could hold magisterial office (high office in the city government or in the army) or participate in the religious college (the civic religion in Rome was very important, the Pontifical College was a very powerful body--these exclusions of the Plebeian order from office is the basis for many historians speculating that the Plebs arrived after the foundation of the city, and were admitted as free citizens on the basis of a reduced participation in government). So, when the Senate appointed a Dictator, "the people" actually had no say in the matter, since they were not members and could not be members of the Senate.

There were other means by which the Senate undermined democracy in Rome, but i won't go into that here.

Throughout the history of the Roman Republic, the constant theme of political strife was the struggle between the Patrician order and the Plebeian order. This lead to several "social wars" concerned with the rights of the citizen who was not a member of the Patrician order, and several "agrarian wars" over the distribution of public lands captured in war. On several occasions, successful military commanders would attempt to seize power in the Roman state by an appeal to popular causes among the Plebeians, and off everyone would go into another social or agrarian war. For our purposes we can simply think of them as civil wars which arose from any one of several causes.

At about the time that Gaius Iulius Caesar was a small boy, one of these social wars had resulted in the victory of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, arguably one of the greatest or even the greatest Roman military leader. In about 80 BC (you'd have to look it up for an exact figure), Sulla marched on Rome for the second time, and then was appointed Dictator by the Senate (probably after having intimidated them), and was given a special authority to make laws and reform the constitution. This was later ratified by an "Assembly of the People," which was very likely the result of a combination of Sulla's popularity with a large portion of the city's population, and the menace of his victorious army to anyone who would oppose him.

Previously, Dictators had only served for the duration of the emergency which had lead to their appointment, and in any case, for a term of not more than six months. Sulla served without term to his office, and could have served for life if he so chose. Sulla began executing people whom he considered a threat to the security of the Republic. That was nothing new, though, while he had been campaigning against Rome's enemies in the middle east, the Marians who had seized power in Rome did the same thing. Gaius Iulius Caesar was one of the proscribed individuals, and he had to flee Rome to save his life. Sulla's initial list had 1500 names on it, but many thousands were executed, some historians claiming as many as 10,000 were killed.

Sulla was not long in office when he resigned the Dictatorship, and gave up all the trappings of power. His aura of personal authority was sufficiently great that no one attempted to assassinate him, and he was elected Consul in the restored Republic.

But Sulla's example lead Iulius Caesar to take for himself the office of Dictator, after he had defeated his enemy, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (usually referred to in English simply as Pompey, or Pompey the Great) about 30 years later. In the case of Caesar, he didn't even have the bad authority of a rigged election of the people. He was appointed by a Senate reduced to a rump by the flight of his enemies, and anyone who thought that they might be proscribed by in the same way that Sulla had done. Caesar was assassinated not longer afterward.

Sulla might have had some slim claim to having been chosen by the people, although such a claim is suspect. Caesar's claim was even more dubious--no one can reasonably say that Caesar was chosen by the people to be Dictator.

To be frank and come to the point, Set, are you not realizing that you are challenging the point of some authoritative source?
The point that Caesar "was given a mandate by the people to rule as dictator for life" , as quoted in the starting thread, was made by the scholars who compiled American Heritage Dictionary.

Or actually you've realized that, but you keep expressing what you think as reasonable?

Yes, i am. First, for some perspective, the people behind the American Heritage Dictionary are lexicographers, they are not historians. But more important than that, we have the evidence of the Roman historians themselves--Titus Livius--known in English as Livy--wrote a biography in twelve parts, which has only survived in fragments. But Livy was a contemporary of Iulius Caesar and of Octavian, who became Caesar Augustus. Livy and Augustus remained friends, despite Livy's praise of Brutus and Cassius (conspirators against Caesar, and at least one of them, Brutus, one of Caesar's assassins). In fact, a man accused of treason in the reign of Tiberius (successor to Augustus) used as his defense that he had written nothing worse than Livy, and he pointed out that Livy praised Pompey while remaining the friend of Octavian. The later Roman historian, Dio Cassius, used and acknowledged his use of Livy's life of Caesar, which means that in one or more of the lost fragments, Livy must have described Caesar as the destroyer of the Roman Republic and a tyrant. This was the view of many people in the Patrician class. Caesar was twice appointed Dictator. The first time he was appointed Dictator, he oversaw the consular elections, was elected Consul, and then resigned the Dictatorship. That hardly recommends him as having been chosen by the people, given that the Senate appointed Dictators, and did so without reference to any wider vote. On both occasions that Caesar was appointed Dictator, the Senate was a "rump," meaning that those who opposed Ceasar had fled Rome before the vote.

Now, it is likely that Caesar was sufficiently popular that he might have been chosen by a vote of the people--but no such vote ever took place. Sulla is the only Roman ever to have been Dictator whose office was ratified by a vote of the People. But more than that, it is necessary to understand just how "democracy" worked in the Roman Republic. Only Roman citizens could vote, and at the time Caesar lived, that meant less than 1% of the free, adult male population of the Empire. In fact, at the time Caesar lived, not even all the free adult males in what is now Italy were Roman citizens. Even more crucial is how voting took place. The people of Rome, for voting purposes were divided into tribes. Each tribe consisted of one hundred centuries, and each century, supposedly, represented ten hearths, which is to say, ten households. In Caesar's time, there were fifteen tribes in Rome; which meant that, allegedly, there were only 15,000 households in Rome--then a city of more than a half a million people, and that is without considering the wider population of Roman citizens in central Italy. And voting was by tribes--so, in fact, if 51% of the people in eight of those fifteen tribes voted for something or someone, that measure would pass, even if all the rest of the people in those tribes, and in all of the other seven tribes voted against it. The Senate always decreed an odd number of tribes (there were originally three in the city), so that there would never be a tie vote. Therefore, it was possible that as few as 34% of the people would vote for something or someone, while 66% voted against it, and as long as that meant that a majority of tribes voted for it, it would pass. In Caesar's time, that meant that as long as a bare majority of eight tribes voted for a measure, it would pass, even if more than half the people voted against it. And, of course, there were only 1500 hundred votes cast, since the vote in any single tribe was determined by the vote of the centuries--and the Senate didn't care how a century came to cast it's single vote within a tribe, or how many people voted for a measure, as long as a majority of the tribes approved it.

So to suggest that Caesar was "given a mandate by the people" is more than a little naive. That's just not an accurate description of how political decisions were made in Rome, nor does it describe how Caesar came to be appointed Dictator. In fact, it is absolutely false that Caesar was appointed Dictator "for life." The second time Caesar was appointed Dictator, it was for a term of one year, and even that was a break with tradition. Sulla was the only Roman who was ever appointed Dictator with no term to his office.

Caesar was certainly popular with the people of Rome, and he made it his business to be popular with them. That is not at all a reasonable basis, however, to make a claim as extravagant as that he was "given a mandate by the people to rule as dictator for life." I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. Basically, Caesar, who understood the politics of the Republic far better than the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, made himself popular with the only people in the Empire who mattered politically, the mob in one city, Rome.

Now, suppose the system in the United States were rigged so that only the people of New York could vote for President. If they chose one man or woman to be President, even if it were by an overwhelming majority, would you consider it reasonable to suggest that that man or woman had been given a mandate by the people of the United States?

----Applause----
That extends my ken. Even though the extension is just a little bit, but it tells me about how to go beyond the sphere of AHD experts.

PS:
Why do you always spell Gaius Julius Caesar as Gaius Iulius Caesar, Set?

There are so many good secondary sources that it would be difficult to suggest which among literally hundreds of authors you should read. But to really understand the workings of the Roman Republic, it would be necessary to read the truly technical histories of the kind which academics write for other academics to read. Many people seem to just assume that because Rome was a republic originally, that i was therefore a democracy, too. But republic just means a government based on law, it doesn't specify the mechanism of legislation and administration. Rome was in fact an oligarchic republic, which means that it was essentially ruled by an aristocracy (the Patrician order). Senators were not elected, they were appointed by the Censor, who, as a high-level magistrate, was himself appointed by the Senate, and had to be a member of the Patrician order. Those appointed to the Senate had to be from the Patrician order. After the proscriptions of Sulla, and the heavy losses in the Patrician order during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, the losses in the Patrician order were sufficiently significant that many new Senators had to be appointed, and the system broke down. That didn't matter much, though, as Rome passed from being an oligarchic republic to being a bureaucratic monarchy.

My preference, though, is to read primary sources as much as possible. Livy is very entertaining and informative. You usually would want a high-quality translation though (unless you plan to learn Latin), and an edition which is well annotated, so that the author explains things about the Roman state which Livy doesn't explain. After all, Livy was writing for a Roman audience, and he not unnaturally assumed that his readers knew what the offices of the state were, and their function.

For that reason, another good read on Roman history is Polybius. He was a "Romanized" Greek who was writing for a Greek audience, and therefore he explained a great deal about the Roman state for his readers. He was a hostage in Rome for more than 15 years, and because of his relatively high social status, he moved among "the best circles" in Roman society. He was used as a source by Livy when Livy was writing his own history.

Livy's great work was known as Ad urbe condita--meaning (history) "from the foundation of the city." It covers the legendary period (almost all of the existing records were destroyed when the Gauls sacked Rome circa 390 BCE, except for those kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which held out during the occupation of the city--so that most of that period is considered to be legendary history, and not documented history) up to the reign of Octavian, known as Caesar Augustus. Livy was on good terms with Augustus, who apparently didn't resent Livy's low opinion of Iulius Caesar. Livy was also a distant cousin of the wife of Augustus, originally Livia Drusilla, who became Julia Augusta after she married the emperor.

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I refer to Giaus Iulius Caesar in that manner because there was no letter "J" in the Roman alphabet. There was also no letter "U," so that, technically, his name should be written GIAVS IVLIVS CAESAR. However, at that point, even most English speakers wouldn't know what the hell i was on about, so i use the letter "I" instead of "J," but i leave the letter "U" intact, even though it should technically be "V."