Gaius Octavius

Then how can it be a 'great' vicyory?

In the general words of a 'certain party' (who shall remain unnamed), what 'proof' is there of this equality? Proof, not hear-say. Not the words of the anti-Caesar hacks. --------------- QUOTE(M. Porcius Cato @ Mar 24 2007, 01:41 AM) Funny that in the 22 years after the Gracchi no fewer than five different agrarian bills were passed. The senate sure was opposed to change, huh?

This goes to prove that the moniker 'Maladict' has deep, esoteric, and dare I say, arcane mean ing!

'Average' is a tough concept. If one averages the incomes of the Bill Gates types with those of the Joe Schmoe types, you would conclude that the Joes of the world have no reason to default on their mortgages. 'Politicians are liars; statisticians are damned liars.' 'Modal' (where the most people fall in a dispersion), might be a better concept to use. Then you might find that the 'modal' farmer had enough land to keep the wolf from the door. I believe that two iugera formed a common unit. As an aside, aerial photographs of Italy show the outlines of the ancient Roman iugera. They are bounded by trees.

How could this be? AoS, this is so not my fault. I tied him in a sack with an asp and a poodle and dumped him in the Nile, I swear it!!! His super sexy mom Isis must have had someting to do with it! Don't fire me, please! Should have . "Who will rid me of this ."

AoS, JR and Ursus: All that twaddle to say nothing!

Of course it is terrorism and not acceptable by any moral standard. (See my earlier posts.) So was London, Rotterdam, Warsaw and Coventry.

A poem!, you say. Methought I recognized it, but in your particular case, :wub: , I didn't think it proper to give you any satisfaction. So have a glass of 'water'.

Yeah!, go ahead and blame it all on the Glorious Neapolitans , you, you . Don Tomasso

This is a great thread, but "You are a bad one, Mr. Maladict." Make sure that it keeps going!

I want to agree with the above, but as much as my heart does, my mind won't. Insofar as the partisans were 'our' heroes, they were terrorists to the Axis powers. They were not, and are not protected by the Geneva Accords. They are/were subject, legally, to summary execution. That goes for from John Brown through to Osama. A child of five, made to attack a guard post, is a terrorist.

Well, at least a dollop of good news from the provinces.

First, most optimates (Cato, Ahenobarbus, Bibulus, etc) were plebs. Second, once the triumvirate was formed and they began the use of violence to dominate the political scene, opposing policy proposals were worthless--all they could do was establish the legal foundations for having the triumvir's coerced legislation overturned. "Watching the skies" was an act of civil disobedience in the best spirit of Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and all the others who have opposed despotism. (And, certainly not an act of obstructionism.) If we're talking about the immediate post-Sullan period, you're absolutely right that the status quo was unpopular: tribunes had lost their rights, professional bounty-hunters had grown rich from the proscriptions, wolves like Verres were sent to guard the Roman provincial flocks, the insurrection in Spain led to a tightening money supply (How is this known? Did the Roman Fed scoop up the loose change?) and thus sky-high interest rates (Of course, usury by the likes of Brutus doesn't come into play here.) and a crisis in debt. But Roman senators responded energetically to meet all these problems. The tribunate was restored by Sulla's own henchmen Pompey and Crassus. Anti-Sullans like Cato and Caesar worked together to prosecute the bounty-hunters, restore confiscated property, and kick the civil service parasites out of the treasury. Cicero--with no resistance from High Optimates like Catulus--dragged wolves like Verres to the courts. In every one of these cases, the people expressed jubilance, rewarding Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Caesar, and Cicero with higher offices and honors, and standing by them when they faced brigands like Lepidus and Catiline. Far from the senate sitting idly by while the people suffered, senators competed with one another to gain the favor of people by pursuing policies that the people approved. I'm so glad you brought this up. First, let's be clear about the laws under question. There were two. The first was the lex Iulia agraria. The second was the lex Iulia agraria Campania. To understand the relation between the two bills, imagine that I ask you to sign a contract accepting an ostensibly free lunch (who would refuse it?), and then I demand to sleep with your wife in payment. That's the essence of the two bills, but now to the details. The lex Iulia agraria was introduced to the senate on 1 or 2 January, the last day when Caesar could have had any bills sanctioned by the senate in time for the vote by the Tribal Assemblies. ( A perfect example of the 'People' of Rome being sovereign.) The bill--while needing approval almost immediately--had been crafted with care. The chief problem with most agrarian bills is that they contained hidden costs that were unacceptable, but Caesar's bill seemed to avoid all these: the land to be distributed to Pompey's veterans and 20,000 families were to be purchased with Pompey's largesse, and (more importantly) private property was to be respected--farmers weren't to be forcibly hauled off their plots of land and subjected to violence and starvation. (The so unfortunate magnates owned the most of the land. Weren't the 'little fish' to be compensated?)Moreover, so that these deals didn't provide massive clientele for just one man, the bill provided for 20 commissioners (though an inner circle of 5 made most of the decisions), and Caesar specifically excluded himself from participating lest he be accused of graft and kickbacks. According to Goldsworthy (who has an apparent distaste for such "cumbersome and tortuous legal prose"), "little or nothing within it could be reasonably criticized". Nothing??? In the history of republics, I know of no comparably far-reaching legislation--however reasonable--that have been passed on first reading simply because EVERYTHING can be reasonably criticized and improved, even the legislation of some darling of Venus. [Dear peasants, just you wait a little longer and we will obfuscate this to death or make it come out 'right' (as usual) - for us.] Consider just a few problems with the bill. Which of the eligible 20,000 families were to receive this unexpected largesse? Would it be first-come-first-served, or would they be chosen by lottery, or were they to be selected by the consuls themselves? And what prices would be paid to those willing to sell to the land commissioners? Would there be a set price, no matter what the land is worth--whether it was been carefully preserved through conscientious steps and back-breaking labor or left to neglect or rendered infertile by carelessness? And if the price were not fixed, would the commission be licensed to pay any price, no matter how exorbinant? And--this is most important--what if there weren't enough money to pay the sellers or, more seriously, enough willing sellers to settle all of Pompey's vets and these 20,000 families that were chosen by who-knows-what method? What then? ('Problems', problems!, ad nauseum.) Although we have no record of Cato's "filibuster", no doubt he (or somebody else) raised all these questions--as these are exactly the questions that any responsible statesman would ask. (From supposition to fact.) And for his questions, the ex-quaestor was not thanked, but hauled off to jail by that oh-so-reasonable Caesar! Let's be clear: if there is one thing that reason abhors, it is the silencing of questions. And this was too much for the senate, that one deliberative body of the republic, who walked out en masse, following the old grizzled veteran Marcus Petreius--who had by then seen more years of military service than Caesar had spent out of his diapers: "I'd rather be in jail with Cato", he shot at Caesar, "than in the Senate with you!"Did Caesar incarcerate Petreius?) As it turns out, Cato's concerns with the bill were entirely justified. After the bill was illegally passed (Truly?) through physical violence (including the smashing of the consul's fasces) and over the vetoes of three tribunes, (Do we know if these Children of the People were in the pockets of the magnates?) the senators were forced to swear an oath that they would uphold the law no matter what. No matter what? What if the bill proved impossible to enforce for all the reasons I listed? What if no one was willing to sell their land to the commission? What then? (The law is the Law.) After one senator heroically went into exile rather than take this Oath of the Impossible, the answer to "What then?" came into sharp relief: the lex Iulia agraria Campania, which contradicted all the provisions of the first law that it seem reasonable. By the bill, private property was not respected. Instead, the Campanian lands--lands that were settled by the heroes of the Punic Wars, (What was left of their progeny.) that had been in families for generations, (Once again, the magnates didn't own the most of the land.) that provided Rome with nearly one-fourth of her income, that had been expressly excluded by the first law precisely to gain passage of it--were to be confiscated from their rightful owners, who were to be left starving in the streets of Rome for the sake of Caesar's ambition. What a lover of the poor! What a champion of the people! What a friend of the dispossessed--that now dispossessed so many! Even a Caesar-toady (Yes, yes. Anyone who has a different view point from MPC is a 'toady' a 'water' carrier; even the 'lapdog' Petrach!) like Goldsworthy admits that "perhaps Caesar had always thought that its [Campanian lands'] distribution would also be necessary at some point, or maybe the realisation that his first law was on its own inadequate(Most laws are usually inadequate at first. That is why there is an amendment process.) came more gradually. If we knew this, we would certainly have a clearer idea of whether he genuinely hoped to win over the Senate to support his first land law, or whether he had merely wanted to put them in the wrong in the eyes of the electorate." In other words, it isn't clear whether Caesar was a fool or a scoundrel. Well, in my opinion, Caesar was no fool. (Neither was he the utter scoundrel you make him out to be.) Rather, the summative verdict of this Campanian law was best put forward by that titan of Roman history, George Long (1864), "This monstrous, this abominable crime was committed to serve a party purpose; and the criminal was a Roman consul ... too intelligent not to know what he was doing, and unscrupulous enough to do anything that would serve his own ends." (Of course and perforce.)

There are 'mementos' strewn all over the place.

Welcome aboard, AndrewLC. You will have a fair wind at your back here.

Ever think of marking them with what is on the inside on the outside? Will the 'new' hustings have an A/C?

Yes.

Mosquito, ne me pica pas. The Klingon said that it wasn't in Rome.

Only another quarter hour to go! Heart pounding! Then the Klingon gets another crack at it. Milan? The place where Diocletian parked himself? Novo Cartago?

AoS, Cos., would you be so kind as to translate what that babble you translated means in ENGLISH! The language you are trying (unsuccessfully) to get a handle on?

Yeah!, sure.

All hail ! N.B. Some exceptionally base personage excised my smilie for . Are you paying attention ? I'll get even with you!

Because of the trees, I think that it is Italy. Ostia? Nola?

"Out swords and to work with all." "Prince, pray God that is Lord of all, pardon your soul, for your time has come." "...and came to tell me - what?" "...this nose of mine that marches on before me by a quarter of an hour." "No, no my own dear love, I love you not." "...there he is, shod in marble; gloved in lead...." ------------------ "Cyrano De Bergerac" The Majesty! The Glory! The Panache! The Honor! The Pathos! These last few days, I have had the pleasure of seeing that flic again (for the umpteenth time). When a picture is done well, all of the elements blend as in a great symphony. The inimitable Jose Ferrer leads a marvelous cast of supporting actors. He won the 1950 Academy Award for 'Best Actor' for this pic. His diction; voice; emotion; gestures; un-exceeded. No blood; no gore. If one stretches his mind to its most outer limits, he will know that a person has been killed. As one may see, I do not think very highly of this movie.

Four cheers for PP!