Reddit reviews Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Land redistribution, citizenship for the Gauls living in northern Italy, and a law that made it so provincial governors had to leave balanced books and not take bribes while in office. There were probably others, but those are the ones I can find.

https://www.amazon.com/Caesar-Life-Colossus-Adrian-Goldsworthy-ebook/dp/B0015R3HJS/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=caesar&qid=1562375492&s=gateway&sr=8-4

This is a pretty good Caesar book I read a while back.

It's pretty nuts how much they tried to obstruct him, actually. He had just come off a great term as governor and wanted to hold a Triumph, a military parade that was usually the zenith of a Roman man's career. But his enemies refused to even let him enter the city to stand for election unless he surrendered his right to a Triumph. They thought he'd never give it up, which would let them deny him becoming consul at age 40, the youngest possible age and a huge honor.

When he shocked them by surrendering his Triumph to become consul, his conservative junior consul, Bibulus, tried to veto every piece of legislation Caesar passed. After enough time had passed, Caesar made a power-sharing deal with Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Pompey, the two biggest political bosses in Rome at the time. That gave him the cover to use gangs of armed men to beat and threaten Bibulus or his cronies away from using their veto. And even THEN, Bibulus tried to nullify every law passed that year by "watching the sky" and declaring that the gods had given omens declaring the legislation unholy!

Caesar was able to play Pompey and Crassus off each other masterfully to get his command in Gaul, where his conquests made him the equal of his two patrons. This lasted about 10 years, but when Crassus died in Syria, Pompey decided Caesar was too strong and allied with the conservatives to crush Caesar. They basically told him that he would surrender his wealth, his social status, and go into exile, or be executed. He said fuck that, and kicked off the REALLY big civil war that only ended decades later when Caesar's nephew Octavian achieved absolute power as Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Hundreds of thousands of people had died and most of the bloodlines that had opposed Caesar were extinguished. All because the now-slaughtered rich families didn't want to give up even a pittance to the common people!

As to why they feared him so much? There were other populist reformers that the ruling class didn't kill, most notably Pompey himself. Pompey, however, was of a new family and not really seen as a lasting threat. Caesar, however, had some of the most ancient and noble blood in Rome. He could trace his descent to most of the biggest figures in Roman history, and more recently he was the nephew of BOTH the populist reformer Gaius Marius and the aristocratic dictator Lucius Sulla. In Rome, long before the rise of capitalism, a distinguished bloodline could be far stronger than a great fortune. His impoverished upbringing in the poorest ghettos of Rome also gave him a connection to the common people that no other Roman leader could boast of, and they feared this aristocrat with a populist touch.

A good comparison would probably be if, say, one of the big billionaires in our system suddenly did a heel-face turn and dedicated his fortune to empowering socialist politics in America. There would be absolute pants-shitting terror in the ruling class. Firebrands like Bernie and AOC have to struggle with few resources against multi-billion dollar machines, but if you could wed that to a Koch-style influence complex? You'd be unstoppable.