Gaius Julius Caesar.
In all history, there are many better known Conglomerates than Rome. And there are many Romans more notorious than Julius Caesar. Caesar was a politician, a general and a pen, a man who contributed to the downfall of the Roman Republic in the first century announcement and the rise of the Conglomerate.
The nut of Cleopatra( and a great numerous others besides), the whopper of Gaul, the man who subdued Pompey Magnus, quick to forgive defeated adversaries, and a notorious supporter of the Roman common people, there’s little to say about Caesar that has not formerly been said.
Vercingetorix surrenders to Caesar at the end of the Gallic Wars; 8 times that devastated a region
But while a lot of attention focusses on his military feats at arms similar as Alecia or Pharsalus, or on his time as a politician in Rome climaxing in his suddenly severely getting picked to death while entering the Senate, he’d a important, important darker side. When Caesar marched into Gaul, he destroyed the fiefdom.
He slaughtered a lineage called the Helvetia who were trying to cross into Gaul, falling upon women and children with three legions and putting them to the brand( and he gasconaded about it in his book!) He repeated the trick with other lines, including lines who were seeking shelter.
Two German lines trying to do this were suddenly set upon by the General, who didn’t stop his bloodbath at the men of fighting age; those who posed no trouble to Caesar’s legions were set upon by Roman horsewomen transferred to chase and kill them. Caesar said they were planning to double cross him, but he would, would not he?
He gasconaded about his suppression of a lineage called the Baroness after a failed insurrection, and wiping them out so hugely that according to his book they desisted to live as a nation. Whenever any of this is raised, it’s constantly hand waved with the reason that all Ancient warfare was like this, and that Caesar did nothing out of the ordinary for the morals of his time.
But that’s not entirely true; numerous Romans back home at the time were floored by reports of what Caesar was doing in Gaul, to the point that some indeed supported handing him over to the Gaul’s. On the other hand, palm forgives numerous sins in the eyes of the people so numerous further were just too dazed by reports of heroic battles. He’s supposed to have killed a third of the Gallic population during his wars, and enslaved another third, a disastrous loss of life if the real figure is anything approaching that.
I understand though that some people will just read this, roll their eyes, and go to the commentary to charge me of assessing a 21st century morality on Caesar. And again, I would argue it’s not assessing 21st century morality because he got criticized for it by other Romans. Pliny the Elder, for case, said that he couldn’t attribute glory to Caesar because the body count in Gaul was an injustice to the mortal race.
Either, Caesar did all this for the cause of particular glory and plutocrat. He wrote a book in which he enough openly admits all of the terrible effects, and people have been cheering him on as he wades through blood in an illegal war of brutal subjection ever ago. Julius Caesar made a desert in Gaul, and he called it peace.
