If you could eliminate one person from history...who would it be?

[wickerwoman]

411. Actually we agree.

As I said in my previous post, the Republic was doomed because it was tyrannical and elitist. Erasing Caesar from history wouldn't have made it less tyrannical or elitist (if anything just the opposite since his political rivals were the Optimates- the epiteme of elitest snobs).

Yes Caesar was a genocidal maniac. So were Pompeii and Sulla who also killed people who had surrended to them and butchered both foreign and domestic rivals. There were a series of "Republican crises" centered around the "Great Men" of the first century BC in Rome. Even if you erased Caesar, there would inevitably have been another "Great Man" crisis that would have led to an Empire.

It just wasn't possible for such a small group to maintain power over such a massive slave population or wider colonies absent modern communication and transportation technology. The Senate weren't willing to share power outside their small group, making it inevitable that a demagogue would come along and replace them with a cult of personality.

And erasing Caesar wouldn't have spared Gaul from genocide either since after all the money Pompeii raked in from his conquests in Spain and the Near East, some other ambitious, money-starved Roman would have been eyeing Gaul anyway.

It's actually a really interesting question since so many Great People seem to be products of their times or representative of wider trends that were going on anyway. It's hard to choose someone who by sheer force of personality or will changed the course of history by themselves.