← Back to the front page

The Top Benevolent and Malevolent Dictators From History

Khalid Elhassan November 30, 2020 32 min

Augustus - Ancient Rome — 'The Emperor Augustus Rebukes Cornelius Cinna for His Treachery', by Etienne Jean Delecluze, 1814 - Augustus pardoned Cinna and gave him a government job. Van Go Yourself

10. The Rise of This Dictator Was Bad News for Rome’s Patricians

Cicero denouncing a Populares rival, Catalina, in the Roman Senate. Encyclopedia Britannica

Once he secured himself a consulship, Octavius promptly double-crossed the very Senate and senators who had bent the rules to get him the position. He reached an agreement with Mark Antony, and joined him in a power-sharing dictatorship. A generation earlier, after his victory in Rome’s first civil war, the dictator Sulla, head of the conservative patrician Optimates faction, had gone after the Populares faction that had stood for the Roman commoners.

Sulla murdered the Populares by the thousands in terrifying proscriptions. The conservative victory was not permanent, however. As seen below, once Octavius secured power at the head of the Populares, he paid back the Optimates in full, and with interest to boot.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.