” and adding their defeated soldiers to his own.”
You’re right. If you read the rest of the article, Kimball makes note of it.
He uses Brutus as an example. He had fought with Pompey, was pardoned by Caesar and joined his forces. But that was also one of the things that led to Caesar’s downfall — the resentment that came with the pardons.
Kimball goes on to note that subsequent to Caesar, later dictators were far more brutal with former adversaries.
I suspect the pardons inevitably carried an implication Caesar was the better man, which of course he was. He excelled far beyond any of his contemporaries at everything he did. He even contended head to head with Cicero in eloquence.
What the aristos who killed Caesar probably resented more than anything was that he truly was the superior man, which is what aristo means. They were jealous more than anything.
I’m reading a book about the various civil wars that followed his murder. Really, really bloody. Not a lot of clemency going on.
There’s an old saying that he who strikes the King had better kill him. Caesar learned that the King had better kill those who strike him, or they’ll take another try.
But the author is right that the Republic was dead. Killed by the very aristos who were supposedly trying to save it. The last 100 years of the Republic reads like nothing so much as an empire ruled by competing mafia dons.