The sort of flak that Mr Blair’s recent autocratic performances have drawn was also directed at Julius Caesar in his final year — from Cicero in particular — and we all know what happened to Julius Caesar.
At the start of the civil war against Pompey (49 bc) which brought Caesar to power, Cicero was already saying that Caesar had put personal advantage before ‘the safety and honour of the country’. Appointed dictator, Caesar effectively decided who was to hold what positions, and seemed almost to hire and fire consuls at will. On one occasion he had a friend made consul for an afternoon, at which Cicero joked ‘the consul’s vigilance was extraordinary: in his whole term of office, he never closed an eye’. Cicero tells us that decrees were drawn up in private houses, and that he was often astonished to find himself a signatory to them (‘letters have been brought to me from monarchs at the end of the earth thanking me for my motion to give them the royal title, when I was unaware even of their existence, let alone their recent elevation’).
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