Legacies

T. R. Fehrenbach, in a piece on Reagan's legacy for the San Antonio Express-News, probes back into Roman history:

The rare rule of saints in history is a reminder: Images of Marcus Aurelius were revered in Roman households for a century after his death, but his emperorship flowed into failure. Aurelius himself grasped this; in his Meditations he wrote, what is the end of it all? A puff of smoke (the funeral pyre) and a legend — or maybe not even a legend.

This, from the ruler of his known world.

A historian of Julius Caesar's era seriously posed the question of whether it might have been better if Caesar had never been born. One of the greatest military leaders in human history, hugely charismatic, with keen insight into the troubles of his time, Caesar was also the destroyer of hundreds of thousands and the republic itself, implacable yet personally kind and generous, hated by most of the elite, loved by the common Roman citizen and soldier.

No one really understood him then, and no one fully understands him now. His legacy was not his conquests but his destruction of the last debris of republican rule, which allowed his successor, Augustus, to erect the Roman Empire.

American presidents are not emperors, but they are in a real sense elected kings. Unlike the various "greats" of the Old World, few have been warriors. George Washington was no Caesar; conscious of the lessons of Roman history, he helped create rather than destroy his republic.