"A new Caesar will come,” we are warned. But is this a genuine caution, or the shameless self-preservation of the liberal elite? With comparisons to Trump, The BBC and PBS team up to deliver a puzzling revulsion to Europe's greatest man of action: 🧵

Julius Caesar, master of Gaul, now faces his greatest challenge: Subduing the hearts of a selection of podcast hosts, human rights lawyers, and other such experts. Where is he going wrong?

We are reliably informed that Caesar ruined a land of blissful, uninterrupted democracy... The only man in Rome to be guilty of possessing ambition—Caesar—is portrayed as the cause, not a symptom, of the Republic's demise.

The message, repeated ad nauseam, is that Caesar is a populist—he doesn’t really care about the plight of the Romans. But rather than questioning the Republic and the senators who enabled a hungry, desperate people, the scrutiny falls on the man acting to ease their suffering.

Caesar's nemesis, Cato, filibusters to obstruct a bill that would reward Pompey's heroic veterans. When Caesar instead puts the vote to the people, bypassing the self-serving Senate, he is accused of 'playing populares'... The viewer is presumably meant to be horrified.

And so, after frequently comparing ancient Rome to our modern democracies... ...ominous music begins to play as Caesar... ahem... allows the people to vote on the matter! "...the echoes with Trump are obvious," exclaims Rory.

Episode two starts strongly: Caesar is accused of genocide against the people of Gaul, who he is also racist against. In case that didn't make you hate him, Caesar is then shown to randomly drown a man (?).

Caesar's conquest of Gaul is dismissed as a ploy for political gain, and his brilliant commentaries reduced to propaganda. Meanwhile, his Britannia expedition is mocked as a failure, with his greatness attributed more to his pen than his martial triumphs in Gaul and beyond.

When the Senate is accidentally set alight, the scene is impressively compared to the January 6th Capitol Riots of 2021: "...it's as terrifying as the spectacle of the Capitol being invaded by an angry mob under Trump."

After the Civil War, which, like Gaul, is entirely skipped, Caesar does not kill Cato but instead offers clemency. Rory then compares accepting Caesar's olive branch to appeasing Hitler in the 1930s.

At the festival of Lupercalia, Caesar is presented with a diadem (a crown). The docudrama suggests that Caesar wished to become king, but declined the diadem only upon hearing the crowd’s hostile reaction. In reality, it likely unfolded as follows: Antony presents Caesar with the diadem, and the crowd grows silent. When Caesar turns it down, the crowd cheers. When offered the diadem a second time, the cheers grow louder as he declines again. The event was most likely a calculated move, aimed moreso at publicly dispelling the embarrassing rumours circulating at the time that he sought to become king.

The thinly-veiled propaganda concludes strongly with a series of patronising speeches. In a docudrama aired shortly before the UK, US and French elections, the viewer is once again reminded to not take our ‘political norms’ for granted:

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