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Cincinnatus. That was the hero one-battle dictator who went back to his farm after.
I don’t know the history well enough to know how common it was or how real the story is to the way things played out. But I always sort of suspected that the Cincinnatus story was played up so much that we still know it thousands of years later, because of later Roman dictators who really wanted to plant it in the public imagination that benevolent dictators were real, and a totally excellent idea
Yes, thank you!
Yeah I guess it is quite possible, likely even, that his story was embellished in history, and it was certainly abused later as you say. But to my layperson's knowledge at least, every instance of historically recorded dictatorship before Caesar was relinquished willingly. I also think it quite possible that for a long time there was enough social pressure around such an office to keep it temporary, especially if it was indeed mainly directed against external threats like invasions.
My interpretation is that Sulla set a bad precedent for abuse of the office in domestic politics, Caesar used that precedent to try and kill the (senatorial) republic, and Augustus dealt the finishing blow.
But all of this is an etymological tangent in answer to a rhetorical question anyway. With the drift in meaning Trump basically said he wants to be king, and he might still get his second opportunity to be become Caesar.