ABSTRACT
By the time of Weber’s death in 1920, the Caesarism debate had already lost the considerable vitality it had enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Thereafter, with some notable exceptions, “Caesarism” became increasingly remote from public discussion, a once vibrant and visceral term giving way inexorably to specialist usage in political theory and sociology. To be sure, the popular novel, the theater, the cinema, and the study of literature all served to keep Caesar’s name alive during the remainder of the twentieth century. And Caesar proved a durable allegorical resource, too, in the hands of artists and intellectuals concerned to illuminate contemporary events and crises. During the dark years of fascism and National Socialism, in particular, the Roman dictator offered novel symbolic opportunities both for propagandists of the new regimes and their enemies, a point to which I will return.
