Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Trump, the new Caesar?

Those who study history may know that Caesar was a man.  Gaius Julius Caesar was a Senator of the Roman Republic.  The path to the Roman Senate lay in getting elected, with the first step being a Questor.  The next, and optional, step was to be elected at Aedile, and then Praetor.   Members of Senate elected a Conul or two to run the republic.  At some point, Caesar was elected and managed to usurp power, founding the Roman Empire.

After the eventual fall of the last vestiges of the Roman Empire in Constantinople, the Germans fancied themselves as successors to Rome (despite, or because, their Gothic kin having sacked Rome) and founded the Holy Roman Empire.  The word Caesar had long become synonymous with emperor so the Germans called their emperor Caesar in German, Kaiser an the Austrians would do the same, even though both had a perfectly-good latin term, imperator.

Will english-speaking humanity (if it survives that long) in decades and centuries to come, call the ruler of the Americn empire (of whatever remains of it) "Trump"?

No comments:

Post a Comment