Favonius Cornelius

In the Goldsworthy book he mentions also that Bibulus' son also died around that time as well, to add to the man's stress.

I'll take on your bet Cato, but I'm too lazy to bet with money. Our fiscal reputations will have to be the currency. I say that gas prices will remain low until a few days after the elections, after which they will rise again. That is my gamble. By November most of the nation is cold so if they remain fairly low then it would be artificial. This bet is assuming nothing major happens in the Middle East. The October suprise is Bush talking softly at the UN (Bush talking at the UN at all for that matter), and remarkably low gas prices.

I just don't think it's realistic or academically honest to isolate one man or one factor in a petri dish and claim that it alone is responsible for a thing on just about any topic. The world is a lot more complex than that. The reality is a wide variety of factors in varying degrees create the tides of history, not just one thing.

Well there you there you have it. You say 'previous civil wars,' by which you mean Marius vs. Sulla and Caesar vs. Senate, so without Marius and Sulla in which vastly more senators were killed and the senate itself reformed, then Caesar's war could possibly not have led to the fall of the republic? In fact Caesar grew up during that time, so isn't it possible that without Marius and Sulla, he would not have had it in his head that he could or needed to have total control, and lead a more standard senatorial life?

No matter where you go, you'll always find someone who has a large need to be right about a thing, but this emotional disease is most prevalent in academia. Even more so with the subjective ones, anything ranging from literature to history. Science mostly tends to shy away this arrogance because facts are facts. The focus on raw data does not leave much room open to debate. But where there is more opinion than fact, you leave open the possibilities and people can become entrenched in what they believe in, and this is exacerbated by the need to put forward new ideas, to be the revolutionary new brilliant thinker, that all universities are looking for. Besieged by the difficulties of intellectual pursuit, they fall back to entrenchment in the ivory tower, and let me tell you that fortification has plenty of rations for a very long siege indeed. The most well balanced approach to any field is to keep a level and accepting head. The act of searching for the truth is vastly more important than asserting that you have it. It is ok to be wrong, and noble to be able to admit it, because in the end everyone is wrong about something or another.

I agree. There is a tendency to posit more causes than are necessary, while there is a necessary and nearly sufficient condition for the fall of the republic--the behavior of Gaius Julius Caesar--that obviates the need to posit any additional factors. On the basis of Occam's razor, I favor simple explanations over needlessly complex ones. So you believe that the life and actions Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus and various members of senate at large had nothing to do with the fall? Before Julius Caesar, the Republic was just fine in your estimation? Why was the Republic not fine then after his assassination? Surely a robust system should have returned to normal?

Uh huh...

Obviously a guesstimation. I bow to your all encompassing assertive efforts to be more correct. I wonder what the total cost would be to purchase a few acres of land in prime realestate in the US for nearly every member of the American armed forces. That was generally what I was thinking of. I think there is plenty of flexibility in judging costs of things with such a comparison.

Speaking of numbers, price of gas here in San Diego has dropped some 40-50 cents. Amazing isn't it, the effect of fall has on gas prices? I'm sure the elections in a month have nothing to do with it! Corporations don't have ANY power in the government! Amazing gas prices, I've never seen them fluxuate as wildly in my 20 years of paying attention to them as with the last 6 years.

Um...Cato, I'm speaking in terms of buying power.

16 GB RAM? 2 TB of storage? "I did not know men could build such things."

I beg forgiveness for going off topic here, but I have seen the swastika used in illustrations of early Italians, and I am pretty sure I have actually seen it on some item...maybe pottery or something, I'll post if I can find it. I know at least that one of the Osprey illustrated books depicts an early Italian with swastikas on his tunic, and I think the RTR expansion to RTW saw this and adopted it for one of the units.

BACK IN LINE SOLDIER!

I use to be a pretty decent shot with a bow back in college, was a part of the archery club. Been years now though, but I bet its like riding a bike. Ah bow are fun.

Yes probably, but the money was mostly put to good use in paying soldiers to buy land and put them to productive work. As a benchmark I use Augustus' Res Gestae which gives money that Augustus generally had. If he paid out a few billion sesterces, then I think some hundreds of millions of sestercies would be a pretty good approximation for Pompey.

Difficult to say, but I would venture a guess at hundreds of millions of sestercies worth in loot, or the equivalent of trillions of American dollars.

I neither said nor insinuated that. Really I'd appreciate it if you would stop putting words into my mouth, this is the second time now. Thus far my posts and explanations are geared towards answering step's questions as to what kind of charges Caesar could look forward to if he let himself be at the mercy of the senatorial clique that increasingly was known for infighting and tearing down anyone who accomplished anything. I'll reiterate: aside from the major 'crimes' which we have already spoken of, there could be any number of mosquito attacks little men of all colors could tear Caesar down with. Caesar made himself many enemies in his rise to office, for all his sense of politics, still yet one of his weaknesses. They could be negligible, or if you put in the right man as the praetor, and the right jury (perhaps surrounded by Pompeian veterans), a simple crime could turn into something more just for the sake of it. Perhaps you could only charge a man so far for a particular crime, but add up fines and it can ruin him just as much as anything else. This isn't Cato the Elder's Republic though, this is the corrupt late Republic filled with hate and disorder. In these days retroactive electoral laws (leges Pompeiae 52 BC) were all the rage when even the most lawful were not afraid to use bribes and clubs to get their way. Caesar hardly started this theme, but he did use it, like most others. He could have ruinously been charged with any of these even if he made it past the charges that would have been leveled against him during his proconsulship. Perhaps even one of Bibulus' ridiculous declarations of seeing ill omens could be used against him. I never suggested any solutions, I am just giving what I believe to be the situation that Caesar faced. I don't really think there were any solutions, this is just another episode of the death of an unstable Republic, a Republic built for a city, straining under the weight of an Empire. If Pompey, Cato, and the boni are not the most capable then I don't know who is! If I may end with a quote from Sallust, a man who was there to see it all: "To bring you low these cowardly men would, if they could, give their lives...they would rather imperil liberty by your downfall than through you have the empire of the Roman people, now great, become the greatest." --R.P. 2.4.3-4 Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

I'm sure you can come up with a number of times when a senator was convicted of such heinous crimes as possessing too much silverware on his table, holding an iugra or two too much land, conducting 'business' on nefas days or any number of other insignificant crimes. It was a fundamental part of a man's political career to show his skill in the courts, and so when actual criminals did not present themselves, criminals would be made. Couple that with convictions depending heavily on the prosecutor

Ever notice how many Roman standards have a rigid hand icon at the top? Symbolic of a salute, or something else? Can't find a picture of one but this is basically it.

There was this guy who once said something along the lines of 'men willingly believe what they wish to be true.'

That's an important point indeed! I have heard conflicting things about the degree of Etruscan domination of early Rome, and knowing more about it would lead to knowing more about its military affairs as well. Seems over all like many things this far back, a consensis is still being built or never will be fully established. Thank you RW! I hope to make as much chatter as possible, and I hope you can help. With a name like that you are bound to know much about Roman military history.

And if any of that did not succeed in the prosecution of Caesar, countless other crimes could have easily been cooked up until he ran out of bribery money or supportive jurists. Even the greatest Roman statesmen through the history of the Republic were brought down on petty charges from petty men.

Etruscan derived from Greek???? I think not! Etruscan, as it was noted earlier, is not an Indo-European language; that much is known for sure. As of now, it's a linguistic isolet, meaning that it is not related to any other known language. Exactly, which is one of the major reasons why it is so difficult to pin down the origins of the Etruscans. Languages provide invaluable information about the development of cultures. I bet Etruscan was used by the Romans a lot with their religious ceremonies, particularly by the augurs. I think that augurs are the Latin version of the Etruscan haruspices, and young Roman aristocrats who were destined for priesthoods would study in Caere. Emperor Claudius wrote a book on the Etruscan language, if only it survived, it would probably totally change everything we know about this people! If you have not already, be sure to check our Ursus' excellent post on the Etruscans.

I have nearly completed my copy, about 80% done. An excellent book I highly reccomend it.

Yup, but it was a two way thing. Caesar refused to consent to opening any senate meetings (both must in order to do so), and Bibulus declared that he saw bad omens each day Caesar tried to convene the assemblies. That didn't stop Caesar from doing so anyway though.