Caesar and Putin, on the Ides of March

The Ides of March are come!

Uncanny, right? 
Putin (left) and a reconstruction of Caesar’s face
The resemblance isn’t just physical...

2066 years ago today, a grisly murder took place in the Roman forum. At the feet of the statue of his great enemy Pompey, Julius Caesar, the man who had done so much to make himself autocrat of Rome, was struck down by the daggers of a group of conspirators led by Cassius and Brutus. He was stabbed 23 times.

He’d seized power by force. Obviously, that meant he’d broken the law. But the authority he’d taken meant he could duck any attempt to hold him accountable for his crimes to any court of law. 

In these enlightened days, and with 2000 years of civilisation behind us, none of these things seem likely to happen again. These days, if a man wants to abuse his power, he doesn’t avoid the courts, he just tries to appoint sympathetic judges to them. At least in the US. And then he uses expensive lawyers to browbeat his opponents into submission. 

As for attempts at assassination, a couple of millennia of progress have made it hard to get anywhere near enough to a would-be autocrat to do him any serious harm. Take the example of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. 

His background was far more appropriate than Caesar’s for a would-be autocrat. 

The Roman had been cursed with an education and a military career that inculcated values in him which, in a later age, might be called chivalric. So, for instance, both Cassius and Brutus had fought against him in previous civil wars. He decided to act with magnanimity. He let them live and even occupy senior positions in the Roman administration. Where they could prepare the conspiracy that ended his life.

Putin was a middle-ranking secret policeman in the KGB. That taught him the value of beating information out of suspects and bumping them off when he was finished with them. In other words, while he would be the Julius Caesar of Russia, making himself the autocrat, he’d use the methods of Cassius and Brutus to get there, but more successfully: the Roman conspirators were later crushed in war by the heirs of Caesar. Bumping off opponents works far better.

Not of course that Putin killed anyone. It’s just that there’ve been several convenient accidents, precipitated by unknown assailants, while he’s been in power.

Boris Nemtsov was deputy prime minister of Russia under Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. He died in an unfortunate accident involving four bullets fired into his back, a short walk from the Kremlin in Moscow.

Several Russians have accumulated immense wealth in the post-Communist era, turning them into oligarchs, men of enormous power based on their wealth (like Caesar, Brutus and Cassius). Some of them, though, turned against the boss, (like Brutus and Cassius). It was seldom good for their health. Boris Berezovsky, for instance, was found dead at his home in England. He’d apparently committed suicide, though his inquest couldn’t say for sure.

Autocrats need to build themselves an image of the great benefactors of their nation, the irreplaceable father- (or occasionally mother-) figure caring for their people. Undermining that image, character assassination as opposed to physical assassination, isn’t something the prudent autocrat can allow. Trump loathed criticism, but under Putin something can actually be done about it.

So, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who criticised Putin, was murdered by contract killers though, unfortunately, the Russian police don’t know who paid for the contract. Natalia Estemirova occasionally worked with Politkovskaya, and she also met an accident involving bullets, this time to the back of her head.

One of the things that the KGB could never forgive, was going over to the other side. Alexander Litvinenko defected to Britain, and was poisoned with radioactive Polonium, condemning him to a long and painful death. His accident occurred on British soil, suggesting that whoever wanted him dead didn’t feel at all limited by such tedious conventions as international borders.

And there are more. Far more.

One thing that hasn’t changed between Caesar and Putin is the use of military power. Caesar owed his wealth and his heroic reputation to his campaigns in Gaul. Contemporary accounts suggest he inflicted a million casualties among the Gauls, with a further million reduced to slavery, and some 800 towns or villages destroyed.

Most modern historians regard these figures as wildly exaggerated. The suggestion is that he was a bloodthirsty commander, but also one of the earliest spin doctors, controlling the message Romans received, by overstating the effect of his arms.

When it comes to controlling information, Putin’s from the same mould. He spins the information to say what he wants, shutting down any voices that might question him (where those voices don’t meet unfortunate accidents).

The difference between his spin and the Roman’s is that Putin wants to understate, where Caesar exaggerated. Putin claims there is no war in Ukraine. A nation, like Britain, whose borders can be ignored. In that Ukrainian non-war, it’s by no means impossible that his forces will destroy 800 town or villages. A million dead? Well, we’re a long way from that yet, but it’s hard to believe he’d be upset.

As for enslavement, he’s trying to bring the whole of Ukraine under his control. That would be 40 million people. I suppose that’s progress of a sort after 2066 years. 

Something to salute on these Ides of March.