Ursus

I forget where I read it, but there is a theory to that effect. Once the pagan Altar of Victory was removed from the Senate, it wasn't long before the city was sacked. Some people took it as a sign.

According to Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino: In the Republic fathers looked after the education of their own sons. Presumably the education was rather vocational, designed to teach the son to take over for his father. In the Empire, the wealthier sorts assigned a Greek slave called a paedagogus to teach small children how to read and so forth. In elementary school they learned reading, writing, and arithmetic from a teacher called a magister. In middle and higher school, they would teach rhetoric and Greek. Carcopino derides Roman education as being overly practical and dull in the extreme, designed to teach the most basic skills at the expense of a broader "liberal arts" education. But the wealthy could afford to send their children to the East where they would have a more Greek style education in the arts and sciences.

Pagan society did not draw much distinction between state and religion, true. But the Romans seemed quite willing to tolerate any faith that didn't upset the social order. In fact, the pious Roman was obliged to respect divinity where he saw it, and to respect other people's gods, lest he incur the wrath of that god. When the Senate ordered a crackdown on the Bacchus cults, it only limited the manner and the numbers in which the cults operated. It made no attemp to dishonor the god Bacchus himself, for the Romans thought to do so would incur the wrath of that deity. And whenever Romans conquered a country, they would usually set up shrines to the local gods to incur their favor (and they often saw other people's gods as local reflections of their own). As has been pointed out, the Romans were quite willing to tolerate Christ on his merits. Some even equated the Jewish god with Jupiter. But when the Christian cult itself started acting in ways contrary to Roman tradition and mores, that's when crackdowns occured. We say it's political because the offense was in not conforming to Roman traditions, not because Roman religion itself had any inherent doctrine which caused it to despise another religion. Indeed, Roman religion was quite tolerant - or at least quite practical - in living aside other faiths. The Romans themselves often practiced several faiths/cults at once.

While I certainly appreciate the politics of the Republic, I am interested in Rome as a cultural phenomenon, not just an historic one. The Empire is when "Roman" became a cultural designation for a wide variety of people, not just a geographical designation for a city on the Tiber. As far as the root identity of those of us descended from Western Europe, I think this is the era we can consider as our nativity.

I thought decimation was when every tenth soldier in a legion was picked out and beaten by the other troops as punishment? If it's what I'm thinking of, then cruel as it may be it seemed to work. Didn't Crassus try that after some failed attempts with Spartacus, and after he tried it he seemed to get better results from his soldiers.

It can be long and dry at times, but overall its good reading. I recommend it not just to Romanophiles, but to anyone interested in history or political theory.

Well ... the Romans had different values than we do. You wouldn't appeal to their sense of pity or sympathy. You would appeal to their sense of heroism, to your service to the Fatherland, to your good name and your honor. If you had something substantial behind your name - like being in a victorious military battle, or dedicating a public building to the masses - that might save your butt. I believe some captured Celtic chieftan about to get imprisoned or slaughtered recited his long list of heroic deeds, and the Romans gave him a "retirement" rather than the usual fate reserved for foes.

In their distant origins, before they became secularized, the gladiatorial games might have had Etruscan religious origins - blood sacrifices to the gods and ancestors, or some such. I think that needs to be taken in account since most very ancient societies practiced human sacrifice. ( Including possibly the people who would become the Jews. Their neighbors the Canaanites sacrificed children to their gods, and this practice may have influenced some of the early Hebrews. It puts that "Abraham almost sacrificing his son" story in a new perspective). As to the difference between us and the Romans I just think the Romans were a lot more blunt and honest. ;-)

Machievelli, Rennaisance intellectual and the father of modern political science, wrote a book called The Discourses on Livy. It's a treatise on Roman history as recorded by Livy. Machiavelli's goal was to trace certain patterns in ancient Rome and analyze the circumstances that made Rome great. He was writing for the rulers of his day, the rulers of the city-states of Italy who were just coming out of the Middle Ages. One of the striking passages in the book is the following: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/mac...49d/bk2ch2.html Now I'm not going to get into a debate about whether Christianity or paganism is better. And, by the way, no offense meant to Christians. But Machiavelli is saying that part of the appeal of Pagan Rome was its cultural values. The republican Romans had a society where service to the state through political and military office was the highest ideal. The Romans lived for glory and honor. Honor and glory were to be gained through virtus (manliness, or courage, bravery and strength) in service of the State. To Machiavelli this was a superior culture to the Europe he had known. In his view, the Romans were a great society because they prized mighty deeds and worldly glory, whereas the Europe of his day had anti-thetical values. For someone to say this in the middle of Christian Europe was rather shocking, and Machivelli has been profoundly criticized in the centuries since his writing. Since this is a forum about ethics and morality about Roman society, what would you say to Machievelli? Does having a strong culture and mighty republic mean emulating pagan Rome? If other cultural mores and religions obstruct our attempts to have a strong society, should we discard them?

Actually, if I were an early Christian and I thought the coming kingdom of God was just around the corner, I might actually want the chance to die and martyr myself for my faith. So I think your assumption that our hypothetical Christian would want to live might not be the best assumption to make. For people who thought the world was going to end soon anyway, and that by being persecuted for the faith they might get bonus points for the afterlife, another few years of an earthly life might not be all that paramount.

I'm jealous. You guys can look at Roman artifacts in your neighborhood. My own neighborhood is decorated with broken down moter vehicles sitting on cinder blocks.

Sory about the gender misunderstanding. Discordians are a neopagan (and somewhat counter-counter sect) that came into existence in the past few decades. There is nothing ancient about them at all. They are a very conscious mockery of organized religion. The point was that in the ancient world, I don't see Eris as having much of a cult. She would have been associated with her brother Ares, but Ares wasn't exactly popular with the Hellenes either. I could be wrong, but I think she was a more of a literary figure (as per Homer's Trojan War) than a widely worshipped deity.

From Jullius Caesar to the death of Marcus Aurelius. I like the personalities in play, I like the culture and architecture of early empire, and I like the religious cults that were in effect. Good times.

Roman religious politics compelled Romans to respect faiths that were ancient. Whatever other tensions Jewish religion gave to Romans, the pious Roman had to respect the Jewish faith as being ancient. When Christians first came on the scene, they were mistaken for just another zealous sect of Judaism. But as Hellenized Jews began converting Gentiles, Christianity became a new religion in its own right. The Romans became aware of this, and since their conservative mores were suspicious of upstart cults, particularly ones that made social waves, they were able to treat Christianity differently than Judaism. Since Christianity didn't have the austerity of an ancient Religion like Judaism, the Romans could and often did treat it as just some weird counter-culture cult that sprung up over night.

I agree with the primuspilus. The murder and enslavement committed by the Romans did not have a specifically ethnic focus, it was merely the usual operations of war and empire. We can't apply modern European obsessions with ethnic differences to Ancient Romans, who didn't seem to think in such terms.

Hey, he returned. Eris (Discordia to the Romans) is technically a goddess, the sister of Ares. I don't imagine she had much of cult, though. People wouldn't go out of her way to attract her attention. She is known to us mostly from mythology, in the prelude to the Trojan War. Hermes is the god of thieves, yes. You can think of Hermes as the god who crosses boundaries. He crosses physical boundaries since he is the messenger of the gods. He crosses metaphysical boundaries since he is the god who guides the souls of the dead to the underworld. And he crosses social and legal boundaries as a thief. If you want a less poetic explanation, Hermes started as a regional fertility god of Arcadia, a pastoral, sheep herding land that was ill policed. The sheep herders in this rough land would often steal each other's live stock, and this folk memory found its way into Homeric mythology with Hermes stealing his brother APollo's cattle. :-0

Well, you notice the Senate is listed first and the people almost an afterthought. Furthermore, "the people" when it came to elect the most important magistrates were divided into classes based on wealth, and the wealthier classes had a very disproportionate amount of power. I think a Republic doesn't presuppose the equality of everybody - that is a democracy. A Republic only presupposes the equality of the socio-political elite in whom the vast majority of power is concentrated. In the olden days a person's status in Rome was based on how much they could afford in weapons and armor. Of course the wealthy could afford the best armaments and were the natural leaders of the citizensarmy, and this carried over into political life as well. Roman society did revolve around service to the patria, and most Romans assumed that since the socio-political elite contributed the most, they deserved to rule. When the patricians did commit eggregious offenses, the plebians did revolt, of course, and checks and balances put into place. But the basic Roman ideal of elites serving as patrons to rest of Roman society as clients doesn't seem to have gone out of fashion. Modern ideals of egalitarianism seem out of place in Roman society. The only equality that mattered was the equality of those in the ruling classes, and that lasted until the late Republic and its various generals upset the balance.

"... Christians were put on trial and punished for political, but not for religious offenses. Rome was very ready to adopt any resonable faith of Oriental origin such as Christianity into the great "family" of empire-religions, and one emperor, Severus Alexander, wishing to venerate Christ, had a statue of Jesus put in the palace chapel upon the Palatine Hill in Rome. It was quite impossible for any sincere Christian to reciprocate with a like polite gesture without committing a sin of a "lapse", and it seems that the sect aroused the hostility of normal citizens by its breaches of accepted Custom and Conduct, and not by the nature of its Values and Virtues. Transferred into modern metaphor, what the others objected to was simply that when the band played God Save the Queen or The Star Spangled Banner a Christian put on his hat and sat down! From this breach of custom martyrdom came to pass... " Seltsman, Charles. The Twelve Olympians. 1960.

The interesting dichotomy was that while Rome usually held non-Romans in contempt, the Romans themselves were more willing than just about anyone else of the time to adopt outsiders into their culture. So, yes, what mattered was culture. And that, really, is how the Ancients thought of "race" - in terms of culture, rather than we moderns who think of it in biological terms. After 212 all free born males under the dominion of Rome were considered full fledged members of that culture, whether they were in Italy, Britain, North Africa, or the Near East. So the Roman "race" as it were embraced many different peoples from many different places, but which all had some degree of Roman culture in common. And while they disdained outsiders and their ways, most outsiders who served Rome and adopted Romanitas could then become Romans.

I am admittedly biased, but I think it's a good idea. Amazing how much we Westeners are embracing our classical heritage.

Sure. Go ahead. :-)

I was going to write something on both Hermes and Eris, but since you said you wouldn't be back to read it, I'm not sure what the point would be. I'm not sure what the point of making this post was even about. But I have a day off work, and am bored, so it's all good.

It is difficult, and perhaps even foolhardy, to tolerate any group whose ultimate goal is to overthrow society-as-you-know-it and replace it with whatever religious and/or political system they have dreamed up in their fanatic little heads. To put it another way, are you going to tolerate someone who is willing to imprison, torture or even kill you and yours for not confirming to some bizarre thought system? I wouldn't. Freedom is worth fighting for. I think the situation is not entirely different from early 1930's Europe, when the various European powers could have crushed the rising fascist threat in Germany while it was still small and growing. Instead, they decided to give peace a chance, and follow a policy of appeasement. In retrospect, that really didn't work out very well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe northern Italy is much more prosperous than southern Italy owing to, among other things, its proximity to the German and French economies. Some people in the North feel they would do a lot better without the poorer South to drag them along. So while certain ethnic rivalries may be in play, there is a solid economic factor in the separatist movement.

There was a lot of mixing of various Mediterranean peoples going on, and then Indo-Europeans invaded. So, they're probably a mix of a lot of people. The Romans themselves may have partially been aware of this as their own foundation mythology recounts how various peoples blended together to form the city of the seven hills.