The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare [1] is a play that is historical in nature, based on actual characters and events during the Roman era, in particular, the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate in the year 44 B.C. by Marcus Brutus and his co-conspirators, and the eventual turning of the tables on them and their defeat, two years later, by Mark Anthony and Octavius Caesar, the grandnephew and appointed heir of Julius Caesar. Thereafter, the Roman republic quickly collapsed and was replaced by imperial rule. In the year 27 B.C., Octavius Caesar was elevated to Emperor Augustus, the first in a long line of Roman emperors.

Today, almost two hundred and fifty years after the founding of the American republic, comparisons are being drawn by many observers between the demise of the Roman republic, wrought by Julius Caesar, and the current collapse of democratic governance in the United States.

It is said that history does not repeat, but that it rhymes, thereby lending itself especially to allegorical usage, which has been defined as follows:

Allegory is a narration or description in which events, actions, characters, settings or objects represent specific abstractions or ideas. Allegory generally operates on two levels as a literary device. The overt or surface narrative/description is meant to have enough literary elements to be a standalone work that is interesting and/or entertaining by itself. However, the emphasis of allegory is typically placed on the abstract ideals represented or symbolized by the work’s literary elements. In other words, the meaning behind the surface narrative has even greater value as a literary work. Though many allegories are intended to be didactic in providing a moral, ethical, or religious lesson, not all allegories set out to achieve this goal.

With these observations in mind, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar can be reimagined as an allegory on the decline and impending fall of the American republic, by substituting some of our present or past American politicians for Shakespeare’s leading historical characters within his play. The Bard’s text would remain largely unchanged, and the action would remain squarely within its original Roman setting. However, the substituted characters in a reader’s imagination will then serve to recall contemporary American politics, thereby drawing parallels between the Roman past and the American present.

Who would play the allegorical role of Julius Caesar? Some would argue that it is Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, because the term in office of both Julius Caesar and Richard Nixon marked a crucial turning point in the political life of their respective nations; and each thereafter met the same fate, one being physically assassinated in the Roman Senate, the other suffering a “political assassination” through impeachment by the American House of Representatives, followed by resignation when faced with the certainty of conviction in the American Senate. Others, for example, the renowned scholar Chalmers Johnson in Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic [2], have argued that it is George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, because he implemented a “monarchical doctrine” following the 9/11 attack on the United States, thereby unleashing “a political crisis comparable to the one Julius Caesar posed for the Roman constitution.” And yet others argue that the American Julius Caesar should be identified with Donald Trump, the 45th and now the 47th President of the United States, because what Richard Nixon set in motion, Donald Trump has brought to fruition! He is thus the heir to Richard Nixon and an embodiment of the oligarchical forces that gathered strength and worked to unravel American democracy following Nixon’s downfall.

Here are some candidates for our reimagined allegory: Donald Trump, whose ancestral family’s name was Drumpf, stated quite explicitly, prior to his reelection, that he would be a Dictator or Czar—a name derived from Caesar—on day one, making him a natural substitute for Julius Caesar. (Other options, as noted above, are Richard Nixon or George W. Bush.) The late Senator and war hero, John McCain, was indeed “the noblest” American “of them all,” but sadly, like Marcus Brutus, his “honorable nature” could “be changed” by the whisperings of a Cassius. Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has a “lean and hungry look,” and he’d make an excellent Cassius. Ex-Senator Marco Rubio, a weathervane ready to go wherever the wind blows and already possessed of a Romanized surname, is a “blunt fellow,” akin to Casca. Retired Senator Mitt Romney has a touch of Cicero; and current Senator Lindsay Graham, akin to Artemidorus, has devoted himself completely to the service of Donald Trump. Vice-President J.D. Vance is a natural stand in for Mark Anthony in Shakespeare’s play, as are the aforementioned “oligarchic forces,” embodied in an allegorical “Oligarchicus Caesar,” a substitute for Octavius (later Emperor Augustus). Finally, former President Joseph Biden would be a natural stand in for Pompey. If desired, the foregoing names can be suitably Romanized in a reader’s imagination—McCainius, McConnelius, Vancony, and so on—while all other characters in Shakespeare’s historical play could simply be retained.

It is important to emphasize that in such an allegorical reimagination of the play, the assassination in the Roman Senate would symbolize the conviction of a President in the American Senate, which can only follow upon his or her impeachment by the American House of Representatives, all in accord with the written principles laid down in the American Constitution. This is the only acceptable course of action, in marked contrast to barbaric Rome. The pen of the American Republic must always be mightier than the sword of Roman times!

Shakespeare’s language in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is unmatchable, a joy to read. However, not infrequently, one encounters a phrase or line that was easily understood by an Elizabethan audience but nowadays is almost impenetrable to a twenty-first century reader. For remedy, the Shakespeare Retold Series [3] of James Anthony (no relation to Mark Anthony) is invaluable. In Anthony’s own words, “Shakespeare Retold intersperses modern English, line-by-line and beat-for-beat, after each of Shakespeare’s originals.”  The result is extreme clarity without sacrifice of Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter, but unfortunately the magic of the Shakespearean language itself is lost. A different approach would seek to retain Shakespeare’s text as far as possible, but when it is obscure or incomprehensible, James Anthony’s retold text provides a replacement of a phrase or line, which can then be suitably altered by a reader of the original play to make the substitution as Shakespearean as possible (albeit lacking in the use of iambic pentameter).

An allegorical reimagination of Shakespeare’s historical play may have literary value, but much more importantly, it is a meditation on the larger tides of history and the rise and fall of empires. The Roman era, two thousand years ago, parallels our own. It was an era between gods. Its dominant religions and mythologies, like ours today, no longer provided satisfactory answers, and the new religions of Christianity and later Islam, which would gradually spread across Europe and the Middle East, were then only just beginning to take root. Again, bearing a resemblance to present day America, the Roman era was marked by feats of engineering on an enormous scale, excessive militarism, oft-unrestrained hedonism, and a law-driven but corrupted, oligarchic form of governance that masqueraded as a democracy. And, furthermore, the rediscovered masterpiece of Roman literature, The Nature of Things [4]*—*an epic poem composed by Titus Lucretius Carus during the lifetime of Julius Caesar—exhibits a surprising consonance with twenty-first-century scientific thought. (More detail on these observations and the masterful translation of Lucretius’ poetic work by A.E. Stallings can be found in The Nature of No – Thing, Reflections of an Algorithmic Scientist on an Era between Gods [5].)

Therefore, the title chosen for this essay has been adapted from the title of Edward Gibbon’s magisterial work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [6]. However, note that Gibbon did not directly address the collapse of the Roman Republic, his concern being the imperial era that followed its collapse. His first three volumes cover the period from 96 A.D. up to the end of the fifth century, A.D., beginning with the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, which included emperors of considerable renown, Trajan (98-117 A.D.) and Hadrian (117-136 A.D.), and ending with the sack of Rome and the extinction of the Western Empire around 479 A.D. Thus, Gibbon does not directly cover the imperial era of Augustus (27 B.C.–14 A.D.) and his immediate successors—see also the first paragraph of this essay—although he often harks back to that era in his discussion, for example, in this incomparable paragraph (italics and bracketed clarifications are mine):

To resume [i.e., to summarize], in a few words, the system of the Imperial government, as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined [as being] an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they [first] dictated and [then] obeyed.

Not all “princes” that succeeded Augustus followed these precepts, notable exceptions being Caligula (37–41 A.D.), the great grandson of Augustus, and Nero (54–68 A.D.), his great, great grandson.

It is an interesting coincidence that Edward Gibbon published the first of his six-volume masterpiece in 1776, the year of the American Revolution. Perhaps, unknowingly, he was providing a glimpse into the future trajectory of the American Republic, two and a half centuries after its birth.

NOTES

[1] Wells, S., Taylor, G, et al. (Eds.) The Complete Oxford Shakespeare: Volume III, Tragedies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1987. [2] Johnson, C., Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2006. [3] Anthony, J., Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, The Shakespeare Retold Series, Redbrick Books, U.K., 2021. [4] Stallings, A.E., Translation of Titus Lucretius Carus [c. 50 B.C.], The Nature of Things, Penguin Classics, London, England, 2007. [5] Nazareth, J.L., The Nature of No – Thing: Reflections of an Algorithmic Scientist on an Era between Gods, Atmosphere Press, Austin, Texas, 2025. [6] Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volumes I-III, Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, New York & London, 1910.

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