M. Porcius Cato

I'd agree that there were no substantive ideological differences between Antony and Octavian, except that Antony had no political vision whereas Octavian apparently did. More generally, after Octavian, political rivalries seemed exclusively personal.

I tend to agree, but there remain quite a few figures who were prominent during the last generation (perhaps more so than Cassius) about whom we know very little (partly because they didn't keep up their correspondence to Cicero). Lucretius' patron C. Memmius (pr. 58), A. Gabinius (cos. 58), L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 54), Cn. Domitus Calvinus (cos. 53, 40), the Marcelli, and P. Servillius Vatia Isauricus (cos. 48, 41) were all prominent statesmen during their time, yet our knowledge of them is fairly scant in comparison to our knowledge of Cassius, Brutus, Cato, Antony, Caesar, and the others who managed to capture Plutarch's attention.

Cassius was fairly young when Crassus ignored his advice not to charge into open desert against the Parthians and when Cassius managed to save the remnants of the same army. How young do you want (and why)?

Unfortunately, I can't recommend a single good biography of Cassius. Smith's Dictionary has a nice entry (aside from its editorializing), but make sure you're reading the entry for C. Cassius Longinus and not his many relatives of the same name, many of whom were disreputable and Caesarian. I don't think the biography mentions it, but Cassius (and Brutus) were both kinsmen of Cato.

The "show" of vomiting? Strange sense of theatre!

Obviously personal and societal gain are not necessarily opposite motivations. If you're personally suffering under a dictator's grip, others probably are as well, and it's almost impossible to tell in retrospect which set of injustices is the prime motivating factor. That said, the one feature of the assasination that does help to disambiguate Cassius' motives was the fact that he chose to kill the tyrant at a meeting of the senate rather than having him killed in any of the other places where it might have been much easier. The symbolic value of killing Caesar at a meeting of the senate was to emphasize that the tyrannicide was NOT simply a personal matter. Rather, it was the fulfillment of every Roman's duty (and law since Publicola) and the means by which that servile senate might rehabilitate itself. Further, if Cassius had been motivated solely by personal grudge, why go to the extra bother of getting Brutus and others involved? The grudge could have been settled much more easily by other means. In my opinion, those who think the events of 70-44 BC were all just a bunch of grudges being settled have no understanding of the philosophical and constitutional issues at stake. Like children who think their parents divorce to punish them, these people are simply blind to the motivating factors that are beyond themselves. Real statesmen are motivated by principles, even including principles that benefit oneself.

I use Safari, and I like it much more than Firefox. A browser (like an operating system) shouldn't be in-your-face with huge icons and an enormous toolbar. Some of the mods of Firefox help a bit, but they still can't achieve the minimalist appeal of Safari.

Of course there were. At a minimum, the requirement was that a triumph had to have been voted to you by the senate. In addition, you had to have imperium by a lex curiata; if a lucky captain managed to kill 5000, his general--not him--would be eligible for a triumph. Further, to claim that Cato's bill did not raise requirements--only restricted the abuse of a priviliege--raises the obvious question, HOW could a bill restrict "abuses" of the triumph without raising requirements? More to the point, do you actually have a source that supports your claim about Cato's bill (which he proposed as tribune, if it helps you find one), or is this pure conjecture on your part?

So, no trance, just poisoning. No wonder they had back-up Pythiae.

Really? Next thing you know, you'll be telling me it's "Greeks" not "Grecians"!

I don't doubt that life in Britain was tough under the Romans, but the review makes two subtle but important points. First, everywhere else in the Roman world, the military administrators were much harder to live with than the civilian ones, so there's no reason to doubt that this was the case in Britain too. Second, the archaelological evidence in Britain has been coming much more from excavations of military than urban sites in recent years. Thus, the modern picture of life in Britain tends to be biased against the Romans more so than life in other provinces. Obviously, it could still be that the Romans were harsher in Britain than anywhere else, but it's also possible that it was the same kind of territory as any other.

So why didn't they simply say that? Why all the unnecessary propaganda? Why even post a justification for the list? Why not simply post the list with the reward?

I wouldn't say that I admire Cassius generally, only that he was the last to act on the old Roman spirit of "No man is king of me." As bad as was Cassius' extortion of the Rhodesians, I'd still say that it is preferable to have one magistrate robbing the Rhodesians than to have a monarch's legion of extortionists robbing everyone.

Peter Jones writes a review of David Mattingly's "An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54BC - AD409" in this issue's Literary Review. The full review can be read here. Brief excerpt:

I stand by this claim. The friends and families (whether by blood, adoption, marriage, or any combination of same) of the triumvirs were put on a list for anyone to kill and to collect a bounty. If some of these managed to escape, I'm glad of it, but I give no credit to the authors of this insidious announcement. Also, my claim that "the last true Roman was Cassius" belongs originally to the historian Cremutius Cordus, who was executed for the claim by Tiberius. That the senate and people of Rome sat idly while this happened rather proves the historian correct. As much as I admire a number of Romans who came after Cassius (Tacitus, for example), these are the very Romans who would claim that the Imperial regime began a centuries-long slide to servility. After Cassius, no one could say (as one famous republican did), "I am a Roman, and you are just a king."

What's my thought? Of impudent hypocricy, lies, slander, rationalization, and pure evil? Gee I don't know... A convenient falsehood but a lie nevertheless. Caesar offered no general amnesty after Pharsalus (when it might have brought a quick end to the civil war), preferring instead to dally with Cleopatra while the forces of the republic regrouped (master strategist that Caesar!) And when Scipio and his unseasoned troops then surrendered in North Africa, they were all summarily slaughtered. Caesar's excuse for slaughtering Scipio and his men was that he was having an epileptic attack at the time (!), but like his claim not to have stood in the presence of the Senate due to an acute bout of diaherria, the epilepsy excuse stinks to high heaven. By Pluto's thorny *$#%, this is rich! Although Pompey was clothed with supreme power, and had overthrown and added to Rome enemies far more formidable to the Romans (as opposed to the bunch of rag-tag iron age women and children that Caesar butchered by the hundreds of thousands), this POMPEY WAS SLAIN IN THE MIDST OF THE SENATE. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Moreover, and this is absolutely essential, ever since Publicola the killing of a man who declared himself king was required by law. Those cowards who failed to wield their daggers were the outlaws, not the liberators. As is well known, Caesar was known as king of Rome in everyplace but Italy, and he underscored this point by removing any tribune who contradicted his self-declared monarchy. Oh yeah?!? And WHY were these commanders and governors collecting an army? Because the lackeys of Caesar were collecting one as well and because they cast the first stone by assembling mobs to burn government buildings and the private homes and persons of their enemies. As for "barbarians", these toadies of Caesar were hip-high in the barbarian clients that Caesar had collected in his illegal war. And shall we even discuss these Caesarian boot-lickers' treatment of pro-republican cities? Just ask Livia's family about their mercy. Or the men, women and children of Praeneste, who were all murdered (regardless of their allegiances) by this craven cabal of cowards. And who exactly were on this notorious list? The very friends and families of Octavian and Antony, who--rather than trading indulgences for their loved ones--instead traded vendettas. If only some real Roman had been around to liberate their country of these new Tarquins! Unfortunately, the last true Roman was Cassius.

According to the History Channel, the Pythia at Delphi ate great quantities of laurel leaves so she could enter a trance and thereby deliver Apollo's oracles. Is there any pharmacological substance to this supposition? It sounds like hooey to me.

Funny you should mention Mithridates. Cato opposed a triumph for the victory over Mithridates because he said it had been a war won against women. Not that they couldn't fight or anything.

Imperium Byzanti non duravit tempus longius quam imperium romanorum.

Does anyone actually know what the official requirements for a triumph were? There certainly were official requirements because we know that while he was still a tribunus plebis, Cato passed a bill that raised the requirements, but for the life of me I can't find what he raised them to be. One further requirement we do know was that a person had to have imperium by a lex curiata before a triumph could be granted. On these grounds C. Pomptinus was denied a triumph for his victory over the Allobroges in 61. Not to be deterred by a mere legality, Pomptinus actually camped outside the pomoerium for several years while his friends pressed his claim. After several years of waiting, in 54, Pomptinus' former legate Galba finally brought a bill before the people for an illegal, pre-dawn vote, and Pomptinus got to enter the city in triumph. (Now if only Caesar had thought of that!) I guess the story simply illustrates how desperate people can be for a little parade.

All good points Sertorius, and I do agree that the triumph really wasn't the primary cause of the fall of the republic. After all, the rule-of-thumb about the triumph had been around a long time without inspiring men to resort to the kind of rotten, unconsitutional, Machiavellian machinations that Caesar went to to run the world's freest superpower into the doldroms of dictatorship. (Sorry, like my namesake, I get riled up about that bald whoremonger.) In any case, again welcome to the board, and I hope to hear from you much more often. A wondrous vision! I always admired Sertorius as a true patriot.

Ooooo, fun! A real brain-teaser! Ok, I'll take a shot. Are we using modulus 12 when we read time off an analog clock? That makes the next problem easy, in the duodecimal system, 1/2 = .6; 1/3 = .4, 1/4 = .3, 1/6 = .2, 1/8 (harder) = .16, and 1/9 (also harder)= .14. (Full disclosure--I cheated on the last two: my original answers were .15 and .13, not really sure why they're .16 and .14) BTW, I'm a big fan of the British Imperial system of measurement, even though I use metric in my scientific work, so I greatly appreciate your argument for the Roman system. Also, could you recommend an article on the development of the Roman system of numbers? It's all so fascinating! Are you at St. Andrews? I gave a lecture there a few months ago, and I talked about the dismal understanding that adults have of fractions--their attempts to estimate fractional magnitude are actually worse than if they simply guessed randomly and even worse than children's estimates (for a reason that takes us even further afield).

Welcome to the board, Sertorius. (And what a great choice for a namesake!) Just to quibble a bit with your post, you may note that many among your list of notables were not patricians, yet your opening line suggests that it was the patriciate who were alone in striving for excellence. More substantially, I agree with Primus that SOME standard was needed, but I see no reason why it should be 500, 5000, or 50000 slain--the NUMBER you kill is far less meaningful what WHO you kill, WHEN you kill, and WHY you kill. Moreover, sometimes arms should give way to togas, and triumphs should have been given to more substantive services to the republic than the mere making of deserts where men once lived. Nor is it clear that ambition (who called it "the vice nearest virtue"?) should have led to emulating the butchery of one's ancestors when there were so many more interesting things done by great Romans. Publicola's extension of civil rights to plebeians, the Fabii's defensive works at Cremera, Cincinnatus' resignation of the dictatorship, Appius Claudius' construction of the Via Appia and Appian aqueduct, Dentatus' construction of the Fall of Terni, Cato the Elder's Lex Porcia, Cato the Younger's reform of the treasury, Cicero's wise administration of Cilicia--all were far more beneficial to the republic than merely killing off another 25,000 Celts! And, yes, one could emulate the great military successes of a Scipio and do great service to the republic, but wasn't the real value of Scipio's success in the protection of Rome from Hannibal rather than the scale of the carnage per se?

Obviously Caesar was only running up the body count in Gaul for the sake of his triumph. He killed and enslaved on a scale was completely unnecessary for tactical reasons, and even by Roman standards, his carnage was unprecedented. So, I'd say in some sense the Empire does owe its very existence to a parade of vanity.