georgious

I would like to thank both experienced intelocutors of taking the pains to answer to a novice like me.To the first I answer that I can not state specific evidence of the workings of clientelism in the Republic, just my educational experience as a young law student when my Greek textbooks of Roman Law mentioned the respective obligations of patron and client, the Latin origin of those words in the modern universal political terminology,the popularizing Once upon a time was Man which I read when very young, which in the chapter devoted to Rome shows a Roman knight receiving his clients-the same image reproduced in the penultimate episode of season one of HBO's Rome showing the recently created magistrate Vorenus receiving his clients, among them former comrades in arms and acting as intermediary between those and Caesar and the general aura that I have of Republican Rome.I know that this is not serious scientific evidence by a strong impression has been created on my which my latter knowledge, including Syme, has not dispelled. To the second interlocutor I have to answer that I agree with his point, Syme says that always an oligarchy lurks behind the facade despite the official label of the government-be it Republic or Empire, an idea promoted in the 20th century by sociologists as Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca as well as the political philoshopher Leo Strauss. Perhaps my generalization about clientelism been identical in Republic and Principate was rather sweeping. It would be interesting to compare the lot of plebs under the Republic and the Principate, I dimly remember a book by Burnt about Social Conflicts during the Republic.One though must not forget that even from the times of Monarchy the costitution of Servius Tillius for the voting system of the popular assembly of free Romans -the comitia centuriata- gave the the majority to the combination of the first class of the rich and the Equites who had more voting power than the rest four classes combined plus the proletarians. So Rome was very much an oligarghy during the Republic and I remember the opinion of a distinguised by Greek standards Romanist Petropoulos who sais that Roman law is imbued with an aristocratic spirit.As the late Castoriades said Rome always remained an oligarchy.You observe that the oligarchy of the Republic must have been prefferable to the autocracy of the Principate-I have an agnostic attitude towards so early historical periods whom I think we can reconstruct with difficulty- especially the mentality of the average citizen.But the observation of modern democracies in the West retaining their oligarghic character although more easily infiltrated by new men, although the careers of Cicero and Tacitus may prove that this was also possible in Republican and Imperial Rome respectively, is I think correct although I do not have direct experience of govermental duty but i watch elections in my native Greece and Europe in general.A most recent example of new man is the French premier Sarkozy who is not the product of ENA for example.The point is, they may be chasticized by their counterparts but are they chasticed by the voters?The point in an elective system is not about what the governing class thinks of itself but what voters think of the governing class which theoretically depends on their vote to remain governing class.Is popular perception and applaude a factor in the process of government or the governors judge the governors, therefore their criteria are absolutely irrelevant for the rest of us.Thank you about the allusion to the modern political system since my interest in Rome stems for my impression that our world resembles very much Rome and not Greece(unfortunately?)

Concerning history in general and Roman history especially one must point out that history is a not an exact science.It uses the finding of sciences-as paleography for example but historical writing is actually an art form. If anyone is a film-buff in IMDB I had an exchange with Mary Beard about the series I Claudius and I stated that what we have as evidence is ancient historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius of a very specific social class and social milieu on whose writings Robert Graves created a novel that was made to a series targeting a middle-class english-speaking audience.I offer this example of an audiovisual historical product as opposed to scientific historical writing to show how many intermediaries and distorting lenses exist between historical realities and how we perceive it. One must not only speak of historians but of their readers. For example in an introductory film about the series "Rome" a commentator said that what mainly separates us from the Romans is the Judaeo-christian ethic-Orwell speaking about Flaubert's Salambo said through an imaginative effort Flaubert made the Carthaginian mercenaries of Matho pre-christian re-enacting the stony heartedness of Antiquity.As far as history is concerned I am an agnostic only certain facts can be known as for interpretations those are conditioned by the historians and the reader's immersion in modernity- we shall never know how the Romans were because we always read ourselves in them. As Kant said we perceive reality but through the aid of certain categories ingrained in us without whom we could not perceive it-but the categories condition what we perceive as reality- it is the eye of the beholder.Objective history is a chimaera.As for famous historians I think they are the equivalent of tribal elders and foundation myth creators as Livy was for Rome for example.

I wonder if any among the erstwhile participants of this august forum is familiar with a rather old interpretation of the transition from the Republic to the Principate Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution. It is a rather old-fashioned historiographical essay stressing the role of personalities and the republican upper-class which controlled the Republic.As I posted in another topic concerning "Rome" the HBO series one must not idealise the Republic which very clientelistic and class-ridden/With the Principate this clientelism was trasferred in the person of the Princeps.Syme correctly paints not an over-indulgent picture of the protagonists of the period stressing that one must not idealize people who achieve honour and position through Civil War.An admirable chapter on the organization of public opinion and propaganda exists where Syme examines the propagation of imperial ideology through the patronage of artists, that is poets, by Augustus and his "Minister of Culture" Maecinas.In more modern terms Kipling comes to mind.

It is a very up to the point question. The term used is magistrate with a local addentum.Districy counsellor in the modern sense. The Roman cursus honorum was a shaky affair in those last years of the Republic since Sulla for example broke himself the rules he had posed about the time-limit one could hold a certain post before advancing to the next. The point is that the show is not intrested in the actual lagal desscription of the status of Vorenus but to the fact that he has entered the world of the civilians in the capacity of the world of the ruling- that is why he wears the clothes of power, the white toga and receives his clients. We do not know whether all Roman magistrates received clients but the show has to show that Vorenus has become a part of Caesar's system of government.Along comes the change in character.

I didn't detect any overt message in it. I think the mark of a good story is that all dimensions are shown, and the individual reader can read into it what they want. As for me, my favorite quote is from Titus Pullo. After Vorennus's scouting party crosses the Rubicon, and Vorennus complains the Republic is under attack and he is traitor, Pullo responds that the sky still stands and the earth remains. Yes. Life goes on - it may be a different dance but you still have to dance. For me the politics was a backdrop that effected the characters' personal lives and their relations with each other. The center of the show was not in fact the historical figures, but the two Roman everymen - LV and TP. At the end of Season 1, LV's involvement in politics and wars deprives him of everything he holds dear - his family and his dignity. At the end of Season 1, TP finds he is to give up his wild ways and find meaning by settling down with his lovely slave girl. I must say that the series- of which I have seen just seen season 1,ending with the assasination of Caesar, is admirable. Being a commercial series it submits to some cliches about Rome as opposed to the more academically oriented BBC's Roman Empire 6 episodes ,each devoted to certain top historical personalities. Instead Rome focuses except the machinations of the rich eg Caesar and his circle, to the lives of two average Romans, Vorenus and Pullo.But replying to the first message about the politics one must not overstimate the Republic which according to sources was never much of a Republic, dominated by a Senate, a very aristocratic body and essentially a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Note in the last episode of the first season the dismay of Brutus and his circle at the introduction of Gauls in the Senate as well as the elevation of a plebs Vorenus to the rank of a Senator. All this democratization of the Senate was the work of an autocrat, Caesar. One should idealize the Republican period as a democratic one since a very distinct oligarchy lurked behind the facade. One must not blame Augustus and his Principate. I do not think that he made the world a worse place for the average inhabitant of the Empire by turning the Republic to a Principate. The Republic was wildly clientelistic and you can see this process when Vorenus receives his clients-a micro-scale since Vorenus is just a minor magistrate then. Also do not forget that the whole reputed system of Roman law operated in the case you were a Roman citizen rich or poor-remember the spokesman's proclamation: true roman bread for true Romans.So the Republic was good if you were a Roman. How many of the Inhabitants of the Roman controlled Oecumene were citizens during the Republic? Can A statistician enlight us? I think a book by Garnsey about the Roman Empire has an answer, But I must say that I by heart rember a certain sentence that about the time of Augustus the fully-fledged beneficaries of the Roman legal system -that is those that could fully exercise the rights presrcibed by it were a shocking 1% of ther population! And do not forget that already by the time of the constitution ascribed to Servius the system of vote in the comitia centuriata-the assembly of the people gave the majority to the curiae of the first class with those of the knights at the expense of the rest four classes plus the class of the ploletarians. So another reason not to idealize the Republic.I think the series is accurate, for most of the people darkness was followed by darkness.

Of course I'm sure you'll agree that it beganas an economic/political marker and, as family fortunes tend to change over time, became a hereditary marker for the more powerful segments of society. It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. The patricians go back to the founding of the city, when Rome was just a village of huts. Given iron age culture, differences in family wealth and status are caused by family size (hence the fertility gods). My guess is that the patricians were simply the first big families in Rome--fertile and large in number, therefore wealthy and high status (for a bunch of people living in huts, that is). Since Rome welcomed immigrants, it was natural that there would be an us/them distinction. Just look at small towns in Appalachia that are the same way, with large long-established (but never particularly wealthy) families taking ferocious pride in their "roots" and seeking to maintain political and religious influence in their communities. EDIT: A better analogy might be Americans who take such enormous pride in tracing their families back to the Mayflower. These American patricians didn't begin as richer than the later immigrants, they were just first and long-established. In fact, those Massachusetts puritans were originally so far from rich that they were stealing and begging food from the natives. I think there's a great deal of truth to all this. You can find it today in small towns in my home town--or anywhere else I imagine--where older families are more well known and respected. Take a look at p 162 on Forsythe for an interesting take on the issue (I've inserted the paragraph for those who don't have access): Since WWII, one important trend in the study of this problem has been to take seriously the possibility that the late annalistic tradition was wrong about a patrician monopoly of the consulship from its inception to 366 BC and to regard the non-patrician names in the consular list as both reliable and genuinely non-patrician. this hypothesis has often been combined with an idea proposed by the Italian scholar De Sanctis that, like so many other things, the patriciate was the product of historical evolution, and the group of families which composed it did not become a closed, exclusive body until some time during th early republic. E.J. Bickermann reinforced the plausibility of this idea by pointing out its similarity t much better documented cases of self-defined closed ruling oligarchies in the free communes of late medieval Italy...De Sanctis's concept of the closing of the patriciate has been widely accepted and has been applied by various scholars to the surviving data in attempting to determine exactly when the patriciate came into being. Indeed, an evolutionary approach to the question of the patriciate's origin receives support from both the ancient literary tradition and archaeology. I would like to stress that there has been a later fusion between patricians and rich plebeians which created a new class of people under the label nobilitas.