If there are Americans today who think the Republican military leader and reformist politician Julius Caesar (100 B.C. - 44 B.C.) was the first Roman emperor, then they don't have themselves to blame for this mistaken belief. In reality it was Caesar's grandnephew and heir Octavian who destroyed the Republic and officially instituted the Empire in 27 B.C.. However, it is Caesar who has been viewed over the past two millennium as a tyrant who was assassinated by a group of conspirators whose only interest was saving the Republic from Caesar's kingly ambitions. You find this interpretation of his assassination in the most famous English language interpretation of Caesar's assassination, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and among most historians, including the 18th century Oxford historian Edward Gibbon, author of the modern magnum opus on ancient Rome, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In his latest book published last month, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, radical historian Michael Parenti subjects both ancient and modern writers he calls "gentlemen historians," and their interpretations of ancient Rome, to a scathing critique. By "gentlemen historians," Parenti means the class of privileged males, like Gibbon, who have written the histories of ancient Rome over the ages. By "gentlemen" Parenti does "not imply that they were graciously practiced in the etiquette of fair play toward all persons regardless of social standing, or that they were endowed with compassion for the more vulnerable of their fellow humans, taking pains to save them from hurtful indignities, as a real gentlemen might do. If anything, they were likely to be unencumbered by such sentiments, uncomprehending of any social need beyond their own select circle. For them, a "gentlemen" was one who sported an uncommonly polished manner and affluent lifestyle, and who presented himself as prosperous, politically conservative, and properly schooled in the art of ethno-class supremacism."

This attitude is reflected in the way ancient Rome has been perceived by historians comfortably situated in wealthy estates, government and the academy. In the gentlemen's narrative of ancient Rome, the Roman people are viewed as a parasitic mob interested only in bread and circuses. The brutalities of an empire built by military conquest and many of its inhumane institutions, like slavery, are seen in a positive light. The perpetuation of classic stereotypes about women, who show up from time to time in the official histories of Rome as ruthless patrician poisoners, are a part of this narrative as well. The assassination of Julius Caesar is the result of apersonal feud devoid of social content.

Parenti argues that Caesar was the last in a long line of social reformers who were assassinated by patrician hired death squads in the late Republic. He writes that "Just about every leader of the Middle and Late Republics who took up the popular cause met a violent end, beginning with Tiberius Gracchus in 133 and continuing on to Gaius Gracchus, Fulvius Flaccus, Livius Drusus, Suplicius Rufus, Cornelius Cinna, Marius Gratidianus, Appuleius Saturninus, Cnaeus Sicinius, Quintus Sertorius, Servilius Glaucia, Sergius Catiline, Clodius Pulcher, and Julius. Even more reprehensible, the optimates ("best men" among the aristocracy who controlled the Senate) and their hired goons killed thousands of the populares' (popular reformers we now know as "demagogues") supporters."

Parenti documents a decades long struggle to try to create a more livable situation for Rome's masses among a class of politicians known as the populares, who were kind of like the liberal Democrats of their era. Outside of a small class of no more than a few thousand families, who owned most of the land and controlled most of the wealth of the Empire, life was hard for the average Roman citizen and slave. If you weren't a slave exposed to the indignities of the exploitation of your labor and sexuality at the hands of your masters, you were most likely either an urban slum dweller or a landless day jobber in the countryside working just to put food on your family's table. Rents were horrendous for urban dwellers, with entire plebeian families doubling and tripling up in crowded single room tenements with no sanitation and or city enforced building codes. Many buildings burned and/or collapsed.

Meanwhile, the small farming class that fed Rome for centuries was broken by military conscription. This class farmed public lands they rented for a minimal fee. These lands were taken over, or simply stolen, by the aristocratic class and transformed into giant slave labor plantations, or latifundia, as Rome grew from a city-state into an empire. So land redistribution, rent control, better wages, limitations on the accumulation of wealth and corn doles for the poor were all policies political reformers tried to implement through the democratic political processes the Republic offered to them, and one by one they were assassinated by the hired thugs of the aristocratic class.

We also meet another influential orator and politician named Cicero in Parenti's book. We find that Cicero himself was a slumlord and slave owner who deeply despised Caesar for his reforms, in part because they cut into the rents he could collect from his properties. The author devotes an entire chapter to a witch hunt Cicero organized when he served as consul (The highest elected office in Republican Rome, which was served by two men) in 63 against one of his political opponents, the reformer and candidate for consul Cataline, culminating in his assassination and the slaughter of most of his supporters. The American reader can see parallels between the red baiting of Communists and New Dealers during the '50s by McCarthy and Cicero's witch hunt against Cataline. Cicero's politics are best described by a sentence in a letter he wrote to his wealthy confidant Atticus in 59: "My only policy now is hatred of the radicals."

In a radio interview Parenti said he didn't know anything about ancient Rome until he started his investigation that culminated in the publication of his latest book. I certainly didn't know much of ancient Rome, either, before reading this book. Not the Rome of aristocrats living on the backs of slaves and low-income tenants comprised of artisans, day jobbers, dockers, teamsters, etc.,. "The Assassination of Julius Caesar" not only illuminates aforgotten past in the history of Western civilization, it also informs the American reader of the parallels between our own republican system of government and that of late Republican Rome. --Rick Giombetti

I first met Dave Lippman (www.davelippman.com) as his character George Stumps, who was a "moderate clearcutter." Somewhere in the woods, 5,000 hippies, anarchists and vaudeville performers gathered at a fair, and George Stumps ended up on stage at 3 AM, entertaining us all. As he railed eloquently against Earth First! and tree-sitters, in his drawl, and lizard-skinned pointy boots, cowboy hat, and polyester suit, we wondered for a brief moment if we had let an infiltrator onto our stage.

Twelve years later, on August 2, 2003, I met George Shrub again, at his recent show at the UW Ethnic Cultural Center. He and I laughed at how it is chilling that we can recycle old performance material, without even changing names or places. It worries me when the same political satire we did a decade ago, is still completely relevant, as if written today.

George Shrub's recent Seattle showing was co-sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (www.palestineinformation.org) and HAYAAT (www.hayaat.org), the Palestinian human rights organization at UW. It was a benefit for the International Solidarity Movement, which is an organization that helps protect Palestineans in their homelands from getting shot for doing things like walking their children to school, or trying to water their five-generation-old olive groves now behind lines drawn in sand.

With his slicked-back hair, shiny metallic sunglasses, and suit, George Shrub admonished us with his tight lips, accusing us of being seen, in public, in groups, not shopping. He displayed a "large aerial photo of our world," which was really a colored map, with America, dead center. He noted how we are surrounded on all sides, and also were at the center of things. Using a pistol, automatic weapon, and space gun as pointers, he highlighted places of American interest on the map. He noted there were two Chinas, on either side of us. He pointed out Vietnam, the place "we rescued when it was invaded by, well, Vietnam." He talked about "Cubists" from Cuba, and El Slave-ador, and East Nicador and Mexico, "practically one of our neighbors." He pointed out the similarity in shape between Greenland and the continent of Africa. Admittedly, it is all confusing, which is why the maps are color-coded. He spoke of "Pentagonorrhea," which, of course, you get from ficking too many countries.

After a mandatory intermission, Dave reappeared as the serious satirist he is, sans the Shrub attire. He adapted "You Can't Always Get What You Want" appropriately to our government, accused Unitarians of burning question marks on people's lawns, identified terrorists as people who refuse to buy more stuff, and more. Lippman has been a dependable activist and political satirist for decades now. Catch him if you can! Kirsten Anderberg Copyright 2003