Mary Beard

But he's brought up in a political structure which is built on a detestation of monarchy, and that's quite important, eventually, for Caesar, and a commitment to power sharing

and to no one amongst the traditional elite getting really above the others.

I mean, it's a hugely competitive society.

The rich and powerful at Rome are competing to hold offices that we call magistracies, but then not particularly to do with law.

And from that to gain military office too, because military office and political office are absolutely hand in hand.

And you've got a relatively small number of families who were in that political game.

But nobody, and this is the basic principle, nobody is...

for any length of time becoming above the others.

And that's why it's not really a democracy.

I think calling it a democracy is misleading.

The people, the ordinary people, and there are many, many, many more of those than the elite do have some power,

There are popular assemblies in which the Romans decide, for example, whether to pass this or that law, whether to go to war or not.

So the people do have that tremendous influence.

It's their votes that make it possible for somebody to become an official.

Yes, yes.

I mean, even the most radical, and Caesar in some ways is going to turn out to be the most radical, are from old, established families.

I think, though, that what is puzzling and what is the problem, really, of Rome at this point is that they've got, on the one hand, they've got this vast territorial empire, but they are trying to run that empire

on an infrastructure which was well-suited to running a small city-state in 400 BC, regular turnover of office, nobody having much power, but is woefully unsuited to really dealing with the issues and the problems that inevitably come with a large empire.

I mean, Rome's boiling.

And in the end, it's going to boil over, which is really, in a sense, what it does with Caesar.