Virgil61

That's Prof. Kenneth Harl, great speaker on Roman history. I've got his "The Teaching Company's" Roman lectures, good stuff if you ever get a chance.

When? And based on what evidence? Cato, it's been awhile so I can't answer exactly when or what evidence but I can concur that I've read contemporary archeologists and historians give the theory of an eastern source--either Asia Minor or the eastern Med--for Etruscans some credence. If I remember correctly it's partly based on linguistics and partly on ancient sources besides Herodutus in agreement with archeological timelines.

I second this. In so many ways--militarily, culturally and politically--the empire that came out of the Crisis seems at some levels fundamentally different from what came before it. It is a major turning point in Roman history.

A quadrigatus, pre-denarius Roman coin minted until around the time of the 2d Punic War. It consists of Jupiter with scepter and thunderbolt in a chariot driven by a smaller, slightly hard to see due to the small size, winged Victory with Roma inscribed below.

When I was in 7/8/9th grade his off-color albums (those vinyl things) were endless sources of crude but sometimes insightful amusement for my friends and I. An incredibly influential comedian who inspired some great, and some not so great trends in comedy in this generation. He had a tremendously difficult life, became ill and dropped out of the public eye for most of the last fifteen years but I was sorry to see him go.

I've got no opinion on it in terms of debating it. It's come up on this board before and it would be quite a story if true but I remember reading that there's not a lot of support for this theory by other archeologists. Unfortunately I can't remember where on the net I read it.

After reading this I reviewed the site again in a different light. 'Whacky' is the technical term I believe. Definitely stay away from that sort of thing.

UVA's a great school although I'm partial to UNC since I'm an alumni. I live in Arlington. Moved up from Chapel Hill where I went to grad school after many years of active duty at Ft Bragg.

I like the current setup as well. I think keeping the site from developing a too special a class is important and more inclusive. I appreciate the little extras that the contributors to book reviews get, with real life, job, family, etc, it does take a bit more work to develop those but I like the idea of the current site. I'm glad Primus thinks we shouldn't be moving towards a Nova Roma and will keep the focus on Roman history. By the way, can someone clue me in on Nova Roma, do people there really take that stuff seriously or is it just for fun?

I'm in Northern Virginia in the DC metro area. Tomorrow (today really) they're calling for a "wintry mix".

You're right, I should have not used "compelling" but maybe just a bit odd. Be that as it may, Sulla's general political stance was up Cato's ally even if his methods weren't always. His reactionary defense of the status-quo which entailed enhanced rights for the optimates certainly show him as their defender. Enhanced rights that gave them claims over public-lands over populares qualifies as a public feeding-trough in my mind and Cato certainly defended that. The same land, benefiting his class, that he opposed land-reforms for and to be distributed to veterans. He did notoriously upbraid those who practiced corruption--not the same as defending the status quo by the way--but it's his own failure to be consistent in upbraiding his own son-in-law and fellow-travelers, actually supporting their actions that paint him as a hypocrite. While exile was the common punishment at the time (though believe execution still technically legal), the harshness and finality of the death penalty as punishment would lend one to believe a trial more important than in the former penalty. The ramifications of not doing so had reprucussions on Cato and Cicero. No question the whole thing could have been handled better. The fact is that Cato and his party played the major role in the polarizing of Roman politics that led to the Civil War by their refusals to compromise. They were wrong period, and they paid the price. JC was a dictator like Sulla in name but most of the similarities end there. While dictator his partisans were the Tribal Assembly, representing the vast majority of the Roman populace, with whom he dealt with on state affairs--instead of the Senate. And in spite of ignoring the Senate he promoted 300 into their ranks, many of them from the populares including centurions, scribes and a few sons of liberated slaves. Perhaps outside the old constitutional structure the optimates liked but certainly an open move to a more democratic form of representative power ironically in spite of the dictatorship. JC, much to the disgust of the Athenian aristocracy, mandated a democratic constitution for the citizens there. In addition to the above entry of populares into the senatorial class, he also extended the franchise to some Gallic tribes and--shockingly--introduced Gauls into the senate. Yes he was still a dictator, ambitious and overstepped his bounds. The irony is that many egalitarian political gains took place. It wasn't an overthrow of the old order but in an inclusion into politics of a larger community of citizens. The reforms, mild by our standards, show how intransigent the old order was and what it took to move towards that inclusion. To be fair I only disputed his and other ancient sources on numbers, a stance most historians take I believe. I stated there was evidence that something more may have took place vis-a-vis Sulla and Cato, but I really didn't disparage Plutarch and that was probably my weakest argument in hindsight. Anyway, I'm gettin' a bit Cato'd out.

Seutonius very briefly discusses the fact that his father was on Otho's staff after the battle with Vitellius' legions and how he abhored civil war between Romans choosing death over continued resistance.

It's pretty good. How about one of the experts interviewed; Peter Weller. Besides having played Robocop, he's got an MA in Roman and Renaissance Art, teaches part-time at Syracuse and is working on a Phd as well. Shame he didn't get a role in HBO's Rome.

When you stated

If by policeman you mean a Southern county-sheriff in a small Georgia town circa 1933, then yeah, you're right. Like that "law-n-order" sheriff upholdin' da' law for the benefit of the "gentlemen" and betters of the county at the expense of poor whites and all blacks, Cato's role as "noble" Roman Republican was as a defender of the state-feeding trough for influential families at the expense of the citizenry. Not being aware of the existence of an anti-Cato argument in Roman studies you might be interested in a few more morsels of Cato-ology. Plutarch's "Life of Cato", where he claims a young Cato asked to slay Sulla and was overheard, is suspect. Sulla proscribed men for far less and went after JC for much less than threatened murder as well and there's no doubt he would have killed Cato as well. The truth is that Cato's family were close to Sulla and like most his friends, probably thrived under his dictatorship. He was honest, but in his usual hypocritical fashion when his bumble-headed son-in-law Bibulus lavishly--even according to the standards of the day-- bribed voters to get his way into the the consulship of 60 BC, he approved of it saying it was good for the Republic. He voted against a public thanksgiving for Cicero's time in Cilicia but but voted for one for the same son-in-law who did nothing special. But as usual, he could always bend the rules when it suited him. Cato, that defender of the Republic, also liked to twist the rules in his buddies favor even when it meant going against the old traditions such as when he tried to make tribunes be required to deposit a large sum of money to hold their offices, not exactly constitutional, but a fine way to limit the power of the populares. Of course he hated JC, so true to form, he again violated the constitutional tradition he's so enamored of defending, when he recommended Pompey as sole consul in 52 BC. Even then the stubborn old-mule or "dogmatic fool" as Mommsen called him, wouldn't let slaves be granted freedom if they took up arms because it wasn't right to deprive owners of their "property". Who can forget his murder of the Catiline conspirators in all contrivance to his dear Roman custom and his own defense of Milo's murder of a tribune of the people. That was Cato, when tribunes not in the pay of the optimates tried to impliment on behalf of the populares he was a stickler for legal formalities, but when optimates need to bend or suspend in order to protect their political and economic interests he treated the Roman constitutional formalities with the flexibilty of an olympic gymnast. Always the upholder of Roman morals, he trafficked his wife to an old rich man while she was pregnant with his child, remarrying her when he died afterwards. Publicy drunk on more than one occasion, he upbraided others for their drinking habits. Such is the "hero" of the Republic and we haven't even gotten to his rigid stupidity relative to the crisis with JC. His duplicity and reactionary policies were masked with the "love of the Republic" and became one of the great frauds of history. A fraud whose mythology when matched against his actions collapes and a hero to the "gentlemen" of the 18/19th century who despised and distrusted the common man as much as Cato did. By any stretch of the imagination he was certainly no better than JC.

What Primus said... Cato may not have responsibity outshining the combined total of those you've listed, but in the immediate months and weeks before the crossing of the Rubicon Cato, by convincing a large number of the Senate to refuse a compromise with JC, partially out of pure spite and a love of the Republi-- as in a feeding trough for optimates--holds a large portion of the blame. I'm not sure why you're shocked, Cato's intrasigence and contribution to the civil war has been commented in much of the literature about the end of the Republic.

Thanks for the effort sullafelix but I don't think this is the one. I'd found this myself and discounted it because the Via Aurelia, which it's on, runs up the Tyrrhenian Sea coast to Gaul while Castrum Novum (now Giulianova) is on the Adriatic coast on the other side of the Appenine mountains from Rome. Part of the problem might be that Castrum Novum/Novum Castrum (New Fortress) is such a generic name it might have been used more than once.

Whether it was justified to the extent of the total conquest is an open question to me. I'm not convinced of the casaulty figures as ancient sources are notoriously exagerrated, be that as it may they were probably quite heavy. In the background of the Roman mind the Gauls sacking of Rome was never forgotten. There are countless clashes between the two throughout early Roman history and even with the pacification of those tribes in northern Italy and southern Gaul it's probably no stretch to be aware of the power of the Gallic boogeyman on the Roman mind. As I've stated before there were rational motives at the start to become involved in the conflict, the movement of the Helvetii and the attacks by the Sequani and Suebi, all on the Roman allied tribe of the Haedui; defense of allies being a point of Roman pride. And more importantly, the seizure of large parts of Gaul prevented the German tribes from migrating into the region as the Suebi were beginning to do. Whatever the Roman view of Gauls, they understood the Germans were generally a superior foe and this denial of territory to them is in hindsight a very good move. And I'd repeat that once in control of that territory moves by the Belgian tribes agitating against them and uprisings by the Gauls would have been addressed by any sound commander. At the early stage at least involvement would've been justified by any governer--imagine a young Pompey in that position reacting just as aggressively--and it was also sanctioned at that point by the Senate. Even Cicero, always weary of JC, gave a speech in his praise that included the following: "...For as long as our empire has existed, everyone who reflected wisely on our commonwealth has believed that no country posed such a danger to our rule as Gaul...Now at last we can say that our rule extends over all these territories". From a strategic standpoint the conquest of Gaul was probably justified as a sound move that certainly helped Rome in pacifying a longtime enemy and denying territory to German tribes. In the end I think the answer is a justified intervention at the beginning coupled with an opportunistic and aggressive general in JC stretching it into a larger war of conquest. These were a series of campaigns and where the justification ends and opportunistic conquest used as a stepping-stone starts is a bit of a tangled web.

I might quibble with the Arts or mysticism as being under 'the Ugly', but for the most part our opinions converge on this.

If you find anything please let me know. There seems to be rather limited info on it because it was such an early colony and so close to Rome in the first place. I did find out it was rebuilt a little ways away from the original site in the Middle Ages. It seems to have been a minor colony who's purpose was to protect Roman interests on the Adriatic--hence Castrum-- but it's importance seems to have waned once the majority of the central Adriatic coast and surrounding Italian tribes were absorbed into the Republic.

Lex frumentaria is the price for grain paid by populares to the state not the farmer. The lex agrarian also limited the use of public lands to a specific amount of land per person to keep large concentrations of land from going to the optimates, which is what finally happened anyway. Be that as it may, the adjustment of agricultural prices to reflect market realities and the subsidy of prices is a damn better set of problems to face than the raping of public lands by the optimates marginalizing of hundreds of thousands of the populace into landlessness. Whatever the validity of criticism of how he went about it, it wasn

Part of the reform laws included forcing a percentage of the workforce be free labor rather than all slave. The "welfare state" was a large part a creation of the optimates who drove people from public lands in the great consolidations into slave estates of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, consolidations that wouldn't have happened and handouts that wouldn't have been needed had laws pushed through by tribunes like the lex agraria been upheld. False comparisons, they are the products of revolution and upheavals of the old order. My period of specialization is the Stalinist purges of the '30s, the linkages are tenous at best. Before the murder of the Gracchi, the move for reforms was a political struggle that often led to bloodshed but not outright revolution. Further a majority of the land in question was public land-- not private-- leased in huge lots by the Senate to their own rather than distributed among the citizenry. Public leases that over time became the personal property of the leasee then owner. As I've stated in other posts, the struggle for reform was, until the murder of the Gracchi, a study of compromise between the Senate and the populares. No one reads the play today, the point was the admiration for him was an artifical construct devoid of contact with reality that enjoyed propagaton for years. Of course Washington admired Cato, the point was he and the Federalist authors were the sort of audience it was directed towards and the play was popular among them, hence same Cato that the Federalist authors named themselves for. Cato was the Church-Lady of the Republic who was more interested in preserving the status quo for his public which consisted of the optimates, who denied returned legions land for their service, who let personal animus overcome any need for compromise and a hypocrite for whom the Roman laws were "flexible" when he needed to execute Roman citizens or justify the murder of a tribune of the people. He wasn't above some questionable practices in his own personal life, divorcing his wife out to Hortensius, a rich old man, waiting for him to die and then remarrying her with his fortune. But yes, he was fiscally honest. I explained the strategic and political issues that influenced the Gallic War, issues that any governor would have had to respond to and you made no mention the fact that Cato was gunning for him through personal spite. I'm not sure what your sources are, but there was no slaughter of Senators outside the battlefields that Cato and Co. were equally culpable for in the conflict. Your statement is also incorrect concerning public works; the Curia Julia, the Campus Martius, a new Senate House, draining the Pontine marshes and constructing a canal through the ismus of Corinth were just some of several projects JC pushed forth. As opposed laying part of the blame at sacrificing the interest of the Roman citizenry by maintaining the political and economic power of a few families, concentrating public lands in their own hands, driving landowners off other lands, murdering representatives of the populares and limiting the voting franchise? The road to collapse began two generations before with the murder of the Gracchi, the struggle between Marius and Sulla, Sulla's dictatorship and end of the great compromises between populares and optimates that occured with the Struggle of the Orders.

The system was shown capable of dealing with problems in the past , the fault lies primarily with the optimates that the system fell apart. I briefly outlined the historical struggle so you could understand that the system was a constantly changing process rather than a static one, it wasn

Good catch. I'm spoiled by Firefox, I've got it configured to with my own extensions. I still use IE for some pages and XP updates and I've seen IE 7, which has tabs like FF does.