Caesar's+Domestic+Agenda+as+Dictator

Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar, 39-44.

He gave entertainments of divers kinds: a combat of gladiators and also stage-plays in every ward all over the city, performed too by actors of all languages, as well as races in the circus, athletic contests, and a sham sea-fight. In the gladiatorial contest in the Forum Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian stock, and Quintus Calpenus, a former senator and pleader at the bar, fought to a finish. A [|Pyrrhic dance] was performed by the sons of the princes of [|Asia] and [|Bithynia].   //Suetonius, starts his piece on Caesar's agenda by displaying the level of social dominance Caesar could show to the citizens in Rome. This is done by only listing the men of social rank in their games, while just listing events that Caesar paid for with men of lower social clout, remain just lists.//  2 During the plays Decimus Laberius, a Roman knight, acted a farce of his own composition, and having been presented with five hundred thousand sesterces and a gold ring, passed from the stage through the orchestra and took his place in the fourteen rows. For the races the circus was lengthened at either end and a broad canal was dug all about it; then young men of the highest rank drove four-horse and two-horse chariots and rode pairs of horses, vaulting from one to the other. The game called Troy was performed by two troops, of younger and of older boys. 3 Combats with wild beasts were presented on five successive days, and last of all there was a battle between two opposing armies, in which five hundred foot-soldiers, twenty elephants, and thirty horsemen engaged on each side. To make room for this, the goals were taken down and in their place two camps were pitched over against each other. The athletic competitions lasted for three days in a temporary stadium built for the purpose in the region of the Campus Martius. 4 For the naval battle a pool was dug in the lesser Codeta and there was a contest of ships of two, three, and four banks of oars, belonging to the Tyrian and Egyptian fleets, manned by a large force of fighting men. Such a throng flocked to all these shows from every quarter, that many strangers had to lodge in tents pitched in streets or along the roads, and the press was often such that many were crushed to death, including two senators.  // Campus Martius was used for temporary games by Julius Caesar. Specific location is unknown due to its short time of use and wooden materials in a densely populated city. The lesser Codeta was used for navel gladiatorial combats, much rarer, and more extravagant to a standard gladiatorial game. //

40 Then turning his attention to the reorganisation of the state, he reformed the calendar, which the negligence of the pontiffs had long since so disordered, through their privilege of adding months or days at pleasure, that the harvest festivals did not come in summer nor those of the vintage in the autumn; and he adjusted the year to the sun's course by making it consist of three hundred and sixty-five days, abolishing the intercalary month, and adding one day every fourth year. 2 Furthermore, that the correct reckoning of seasons might begin with the next [|Kalends] of January, he inserted two other months between those of November and December; hence the year in which these arrangements were made was one of fifteen months, including the intercalary month, which belonged to that year according to the former custom.   //The pre-Caesar calendar, [|Numan], was a lunar calendar, this was changed to a solar calendar, Julian. Caesar also introduced days and months to update the year to what it should be, before instating the solar calendar. Lunar calendars do not follow the seasons of the year, so they have to be altered to keep seasonal patterns. This is fine if you live in major cities of the Republic, dedicated priests keep the states time up to date, and with a large enough population conversing these populations remain unified. Issues with the calendar came from small towns and farms that were not in constant contact with the outside Republic. A simple rural farmer could keep his solar Julian calendar up to date easier than the lunar Numan calendar, thus making appointments less complicated and more profitable.// 41 He filled the vacancies in the [|senate], enrolled additional patricians, and increased the number of [|praetors], [|aediles], and [|quaestors], as well as of the minor officials; he reinstated those who had been degraded by official action of the [|censors] or found guilty of bribery by verdict of the jurors. 2 He shared the elections with the people on this basis: that except in the case of the [|consulship], half of the magistrates should be appointed by the people's choice, while the rest should be those whom he had personally nominated. And these he announced in brief notes like the following, circulated in each tribe: "Caesar the [|Dictator] to this or that tribe. I commend to you so and so, to hold their positions by your votes." He admitted to office even the sons of those who had been proscribed. He limited the right of serving as jurors to two classes, the [|equestrian] and senatorial orders, disqualifying the third class, the [|tribunes] of the treasury.

3 He made the enumeration of the people neither in the usual manner nor place, but from street to street aided by the owners of blocks of houses, and reduced the number of those who received grain at public expense from three hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. And to prevent the calling of additional meetings at any future time for purposes of enrolment, he provided that the places of such as died should be filled each year by the praetors from those who were not on the list.

42 Moreover, to keep up the population of the city, depleted as it was by the assignment of eighty thousand citizens to colonies across the sea, he made a law that no citizen older than twenty or younger than forty, who was not detained by service in the army, should be absent from Italy for more than three successive years; that no senator's son should go abroad except as the companion of a magistrate or on his staff; and that those who made a business of grazing should have among their herdsmen at least one-third who were men of free birth. He conferred citizenship on all who practised medicine at Rome, and on all teachers of the [|liberal] arts, to make them more desirous of living in the city and to induce others to resort to it.   //Liberalis, relating to the freeborn condition of a man. Caesar's action of freeing all teachers of the liberal ideals is philosophical induced. A slave, by definition, cannot know the meaning of liberal, because it is a condition of not being a slave, thus Caesar removes a developed social error.// <span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> //Caesar increased the rate at which a roman would have opportunities inside Rome proper, via increasing the positions of the [|cursus honorum](chapter 41). Increasing the opportunities for romans in Rome, he also decrease the motives for citizens to move from Rome proper.// <span style="display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> //Note on translation. The word used in the latin is normally translated as professor in english, and not the common word for teacher. Unknown if this is matters to the meaning, but regardless it is a difference.// <span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;">As to debts, he disappointed those who looked for their cancellation, which was often agitated, but finally decreed that the debtors should satisfy their creditors according to a valuation of their possessions at the price what they had paid for them before the civil war, deducting from the principal whatever interest had been paid in cash or pledged through bankers; an arrangement which wiped out about a fourth part of their indebtedness. 3 He dissolved all guilds, except those of ancient foundation. He increased the penalties for crimes; and inasmuch as the rich involved themselves in guilt with less hesitation because they merely suffered exile, without any loss of property, he punished murderers of freemen<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">[|41] by the confiscation of all their goods, as [|Cicero] writes, and others by the loss of one-half.

<span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;">43 He administered justice with the utmost conscientiousness and strictness. Those convicted of extortion he even dismissed from the senatorial order. He annulled the marriage of an ex-praetor, who had married a woman the very day after her divorce, although there was no suspicion of adultery. He imposed duties on foreign wares. He denied the use of litters and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except those of a designated position and age, and on set days. 2 In particular he enforced the laws against extravagance, setting watchmen in various parts of the market, to seize and bring to him dainties which were exposed for sale in violation of the law; and sometimes he sent his lictors and soldiers to take from a dining-room any articles which had escaped the vigilance of his watchmen, even after they had been served.

<span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;">44 In particular, for the adornment and convenience of the city, also for the protection and extension of the Empire, he formed more projects and more extensive ones every day: first of all, to rear a temple of Mars, greater than any in existence, filling up and levelling the pool in which he had exhibited the sea-fight, and to build a theatre of vast size, sloping down from the Tarpeian rock; 2 to reduce the civil code to fixed limits, and of the vast and prolix mass of statutes to include only the best and most essential in a limited number of volumes; to open to the public the greatest possible libraries of Greek and Latin books, assigning to Marcus Varro the charge of procuring and classifying them; 3 to drain the [|Pomptine marshes]; to let out the water from [|Lake Fucinus]; to make a highway from the Adriatic across the summit of the [|Apennines] as far as the Tiber; to cut a canal through the Isthmus; to check the, who had poured into [|Pontus] and [|Thrace]; then to make war on the [|Parthians] by way of [|Lesser Armenia], but not to risk a battle with them until he had first tested their mettle. <span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> <span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;"> //"Filling and leveling the pool in which he had exhibited the sea-fight," should be seen as a reference to chapter 39.4.// <span style="color: #808000; font-family: Georgia,Palatino,serif; font-size: medium;">//Recent to Caesar's life, Dacia had grown as a state, and as a military threat to Roman boarders to Pontus and Thrace. Suetonius wording gave Caesar an excuse that Dacia was a threat from migration.//

<span style="color: #808000; font-family: Georgia,Palatino,serif; font-size: medium;">//Suetonius ends this piece abruptly in a list of "adornment and conveniences of the city." These acts of increasing public works and transportation in and outside of the city of Rome increase previous statements in chapter 42. These works also increase opportunity and safety inside the Italian peninsula: transportation over the italic mountains, draining of diseased pron lands into farm land, and increasing the academic sources availability.//

<span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;">All these enterprises and plans were cut short by his death. <span style="color: #000066; display: block; font-family: georgia,palatino,serif; font-size: medium; text-align: justify;">

Questions on source
In what way did Caesar alter the Roman calendar 10/11month calendar? Answered above

How drastic was the differences in wealth that Caesar could push half of Rome's food welfare onto the property owners? Unanswered

What value did liberal arts have to Caesar's Rome to grant all teachers of it citizenship? Answered above

What was the Dacian threat to the Roman Republic? Answered above

Was Caesar's agenda a reason for his assassination? Unanswered

<span style="color: #808000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">//Unanswered but it should be noted that this work does references acts by Caesar that would be seen by his assassins.//

Who were Suetonius intended audience? Unanswered