I was smiling to see a news item about our "Saving Caesar" game back last winter, in which the contestants voted, by majority, to 'save' Caesar, rather than have him assassinated at the Ides of March.

It made me realize that I have not really given much thought to what might have happened, had Caesar lived! He was only 56 when he died, so there's every reason, barring military accident, to think he might have lived another 10 years or so, as supreme Dictator for Life.

Hmmmmm. Thought-provoking!

It has long seemed to me (just my opinion) that Augustus actually had a better chance of inplementing one-man rule than Caesar ever did - Caesar's own sense of his dignitas meant that he was likely not to kill all his opponents, whereas his assassination gave Octavian just that excuse to do so. Although I have serious doubts that the remaining Boni would have ever worked with Caesar, in time they would have begun passing from the stage and their sons - perhaps less hostile to one-man rule - would have been coming up the Cursus Honorum. So he MIGHT have, in fact, survived and had the time to make many of the changes that Augustus did later, that would have solved some of the practical problems of a Republic governing an Empire. Although I don't think Caesar ever had the sneaky tact Octavian did, to cloak one-man rule under the impression of a mere "Princeps" among equals.

But then you have the whole issue of Parthia. If anyone could have conquered Parthia, I believe it would have been Caesar: but his absence for 3-5 years in the east would have meant that Marcus Antonius and others of his inner circle would have actually been governing Italia, and Antonius had certainly made a botch of it before - which might have led to an uprising against Caesar's administration in his absence. (Of course, Sulla gives the example that rebellion behind the back of an absent general doesn't necessarily mean that the general won't come back and knock everyone on the head).

It almost seems to me like the horrors of the Second Triumvirate, the blood-letting, and more was required to bring the Romans to an acceptance of strong one-man rule, and that Caesar on his own might never have done it. What do ya'll think?