The word “dictator” gets a bad rap. It’s kind of easy to understand why, given some of the people who fall under that title. Stalin was a dictator, as were Mao, Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Hugo Chavez, and Robert Mugabe, among others. Well over 100 million people lost their lives because of those guys over the last century, so there’s that.

Dictators take power, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally and then refuse to give it up. They rule by force of violence or the threat of such, and citizens can rarely do anything to protect themselves.

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But that’s today. The original Roman dictators were different, and not like Julius Ceasar, perhaps the most famous dictator in history. Ceasar took power and basically intended to keep it for life, and that’s the model most dictators through history have taken.

But that’s not how the dictatorship was originally supposed to work. According to Wikipedia, in the early days of the Roman Republic,

The dictatorship seems to have been conceived as a way to bypass normal Roman politics and create a short-term magistrate with special powers, serving to defend the Republic in war, or otherwise to cow internal civil unrest, especially if such unrest imperilled the conduct of war.

In other words, a dictator was needed when the normal bureaucracy failed to fix a problem. A dictator’s power was not unlimited, although for the specific purpose for which he was appointed, it was close.

Additionally, the appointment lasted only until the problem to be addressed was actually solved. In practice, a dictator’s term generally lasted six months or less, and, once completed, he would return to his previous position or, as Cincinnatus famously did, to retirement. (Notably, George Washington was hailed as a “New Cincinnatus” for his willingness to leave power after two terms.)

But here is the most important thing: A dictator never stopped being accountable for his actions. While dictators were in office they were virtually untouchable, but once their term expired they could be

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