The tyranny of Julius Caesar started when he was appointed special commander by the Senate. They did not know at the time, but this was a big mistake because such position would only lead to his conquering of Rome. Julius Caesar was a dictator in the Roman Republic who not only broke constitutional laws but also disregarded Roman morals. He saw a broken system and thought that the only way to fix what the Republic had done to the people of Rome was to rule himself. He was popularis (Frankforter, pg. 148) in the pursuit of freedom for the poor. But his ideas were completely against the government of the Republic. A main belief of the Republic was that no one person should have too much power. To prevent this from happening, the senate had a system in place for checks and …show more content…
However, once Caesar gained control of the senate was able to get around this by appointing whoever he wanted to office. Previous to this, the senate had attempted to stop Caesar from becoming a tyrant as explain by Frankforter, when they refused to extend the command of his army after his term as governor was over (Frankforter, pg. 148). However, this attempt failed as he eventually he gained control of Rome. It also failed because by the time he was already a tyrant with the support of the people. No one could stop him, or at least that was what he thought until the senate could not tolerate his actions anymore and slaughtered him. Suetonius was certain that everything Caesar did as an aedile led to his assassination. For example, he mentions that Caesar would accept privileges that no other man had before, such as “Uninterrupted consulship, the dictatorship for life, and the censorship of public morals, as well as the forename Imperator, the surname of Pater Patriae [ 'Father of his Country '], a statue among those of the kings, and a raised couch in the orchestra” (Suetonius section XXVII). He broke very important constitutional laws of the Republic