Why Julius Caesar Never Called Himself King

In the 1963 film Cleopatra, Julius Caesar is played by a man called Rex Harrison, which is of course a great irony because Julius Caesar hated being called Rex, which was the Latin word for king. He hated it because the Romans despised their kings. They got rid of their last one and they swore to never be ruled by a man who called himself king ever again. That's why they had two consuls, so that no one man would hold all of the power. That being said, Julius Caesar managed to exploit the system using a legitimate republican office to take supreme command of the Roman Republic all to himself. This was the dictatorship. A dictator was elected in times of national emergency. Think war, plague, pestilence. But Julius Caesar made himself dictator after winning a brutal civil war for his own political ends. In 44 BC, when Julius Caesar was dictator, he was taking a walk back from a Latin festival and he saw his supporters proclaim him, Rex, Rex. They were calling him king. Julius Caesar was a very savvy political operator and he decided to do a little play on words. He said, I am Caesar, not Rex. This was a genius bit of wordplay because Rex was also a family name just like Caesar. So he was literally saying to them, my name is not Rex. My name is Caesar. Even though he knew they were calling him king. He did this because he knew that even with his immense power that he holds now, he really shouldn't be calling himself king because of how much the Romans hated it. But this didn't pay off for Caesar because he took things a step too far when he declared himself dictator perpetuo, which means the perpetual dictator. In other words, I'm dictator until I decide I'm not anymore, forever. The more diehard republicans got together and started scheming to assassinate Caesar, which they did successfully in a scene that I'm sure most of us are familiar with. Julius Caesar's problem was that he forgave way too many of his political opponents. He also adopted an existing republican position. He really shouldn't have done this. And if you're an aspiring dictator, you should listen carefully to this advice. You should really kill all of your political opponents straight away so that they don't have the opportunity to do what they did to Julius Caesar. Also, you shouldn't accept an existing republican office like dictator or king or president. No, what you should do is you should make a brand new one, like the first citizen or princeps as they would have called it in ancient Rome. And actually to go a step further, you can adopt a brand new name. Call yourself the revered one, or as they say in Latin, Augustus. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you next time.