José Antonio Páez

In the 120s BCE, the ‘Italian question’ became increasingly divisive and provoked bouts of violent conflict. In 125 BCE the people of Fregellae attempted to break away from Rome but were crushed by a Roman army under the same Lucius Opimius who a few years later eliminated Gaius Gracchus.

Cicero’s grisly death presaged a yet bigger revolution in the first century BCE, which began with a form of popular political power, even if not a ‘democracy’ exactly, and ended with an autocrat established on the throne and the Roman Empire under one-man rule.

What eventually did stop Pompey was a rival, in the shape of Julius Caesar, a member of an old patrician family, with a political programme in the radical tradition of the Gracchi and eventually with ambitions that led directly to one-man rule.

Il n’y a aucun doute : c’est vraiment Saint-Domingue-Haïti qui fait prendre un tournant décisif au mouvement d’indépendance créole. Afin de vaincre la résistance acharnée des troupes espagnoles, Simon Bolivar cherche à obtenir l’appui des ex-esclaves rebelles de l’État caribéen, où il se rend en personne. Le président est alors Alexandre Pétion, qu