I freely admit my knowledge of history is poor, and maybe missed something about the purpose of his assassination, but wasn’t it because he was trying to essentially become a totalitarian? The senate conspired to murder him for this, yet…their fears were still realized?
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It’s not reasonable to expect people to foresee where their actions will lead; but this is also why the wise advise not to take rash dramatic actions. Did Gavrilo Princip foresee the Great War? The rise of the USSR? Fascism in Europe? These are all consequences of his assassination of Franz-Ferdinand.
No one who participated in the assassination of Caesar lived very long after the assassination, (there were two brutal civil wars) and they didn’t foresee what was going to happen in the centuries that unfolded afterwards.
But it also speaks to a greater theme in history: are we living through the consequences of trends in history, and individual players aren’t that important? Or are trends the consequence of great people taking intentional action, rippling through the lives of others?
Caesar’s rise to power was possible because of fundamental flaws in the Roman Republic constitutional design, that were exploited by him and his colleagues. If it had not been him… there were others, who were just as dangerous, taking similar steps (His assassination took place in the context of a decades long series of civil wars, and all the players were deadly serious about winning).
His assassins saw the danger he posed as being uniquely personal to him, and estimated that with Caesar gone, the Republic could return to the way it was.
They were wrong.