M. Porcius Cato

Cicero also defended Murena, and it was a case study of Cicero the Weasel. Murena was an old Sullan, and he bribed his way to an electoral victory. Serving as quaestor, Cato was on the prosecution; while still consul (best I recall), Cicero was on the defense. Cicero's argument depended on two variants of the same logical fallacy (the appeal to distraction). The first argumentum was that Cato's Stoicism maintained the law to extremes, and Cicero condescendingly poked fun at the classic Stoic disputanda. The second argumentum was that Murena shouldn't be tried because the republic was under threat by Catiline. Neither of these claims, obviously, were germane in the slightest to the issue of Murena's guilt, which Cicero all but admitted, but Cicero won nevertheless. (Cato, ironically it would turn out, claimed that Cicero was just over-hyping the Catiline threat for the sake of his client.) In every way, Cicero's defense was amoral if not immoral. Leaving aside the indignity of a consul attacking the person of a junior prosecutor and ignoring that Cicero's arguments were illogical, of all the people to condone bribery it should never have been a new man--in a republic, bribery is the ultimate crime that benefits the ruling class to the exclusion of the talented. Moreover, by protecting the dregs of Sulla, Cicero undercut any claim to uphold libertas, thereby suggesting that his defense of the republic was merely an instrument for maintaining his own power. I guess the overarching point is that even in the law courts Cicero could be a real ass.

Despite my personal affection for Cicero and admiration for some of his political goals, I think his statesmanship was so drastically undercut by his promiscuous compromises that he ultimately undid most of what he achieved. Nevertheless, I don't think we overestimate his influence merely because of the survival of his writings. His writings survived because Augustus published them, and Augustus published them because of Cicero's role at the nexus of Roman politics. For Augustus, Cicero's writings were a boon. Who could read the work of Cicero and come away with any remaining respect for Antony? Or believe that the Liberators deserved the mantle of government? Or even consider Augustus to be less worthy than Caesar? If Cicero had been a do-nothing nobody, no one would have cared what he had to say about these issues; but Cicero wasn't a nobody; people did care; and that's why Augustus chose to have them published. Note too what did NOT survive of Cicero's, including his pamphlet on behalf of Cato and almost any correspondence from Cato to Cicero. To my mind, our perspective is biased--not by what did survive--but by what did NOT survive.

Generally, I'd presume that a well-organized and efficient force has better morale than the opposite because its soldiers are enlivened by pride and by the expectation that they could overcome any future obstacles or threats. Insofar as discipline increases organization and efficiency, it would also increase morale.

Haggling with the gods has to appear on my top ten reasons for loving the Romans! Such a practical, no-nonsense approach to the non-sensory.

If there's to be as many as five total seasons with Antony, wouldn't it make sense for the second season to end with Phillipi?

But this is rather my point--if we don't know the reasoning behind the artifacts, the artifacts don't tell us how religious the Romans really were.

Prevailed over what? Yes, they weren't utterly wiped out, but no one was trying to do that, so against what exactly did they prevail? Perhaps literacy?

I've got to go further , the found evidence from the Provinces shows an avalanche of religious offerings, portable altars, cult temples , constant small dedicative items-I think the worst that could be said is that they were promisciously religious . At the risk of carrying this thread far afield, I wonder how "religious" to call the Romans. An old, if somewhat biased view, was that the Romans were not very religious, just awfully superstitious. The new view seems to be to take every superstitious Roman behavior as evidence of profound religiosity. Isn't there a valid distinction to make between religous blessings and superstitious behavior? For example, I don't really believe in any devils or evil spirits, yet I sometimes say "bless you" when someone sneezes--isn't it possible that many of the dedicatory items that have been found were offered in the same spirit?

I must be missing something--this is a Chad Vader video.

This is a really great counter-example: it seems as illustrative as it is convincing. OK, I was skeptical before, but I'm becoming fast convinced--at least when cash is in short supply, supplementary currencies will evolve. Just to nail it though--is this the only example of oil serving as a supplementary currency? Were there other entries like this, and did anything other than oil appear in the supplementary_value slot? Also, the delivery part seems weird to list as part of the price. I can understand delivery being part of the bargain, but why is it listed as part of the price? Not to maintain my thesis at all costs, but isn't it possible that the oil (like the delivery) was meant to be supplied by the seller (perhaps because the oil was needed to grade the output of the mill)?

But what is the point of designating these goods (like salt) a "surrogate currency"? Traditionally, currency is the unit of exchange that facilitates the transfer of goods and services. To say that metal is a currency is a real claim: after all, people could have gone around with pockets full of salt that they used to buy values (or pay taxes). But they most likely didn't. Most likely, salt, wine, olive oil, and wheat were simply values, just like tomatoes or labor, and people sold these values for a proper currency (e.g., metal) whenver the price was right. It seems completely artificial and unnecessary to say that in selling goods for metal currency, metal becomes a currency for exchanging "surrogate currencies". Given a distinction between currency and value, there is no need for the concept "surrogate currency". Maybe you were just trying to be diplomatic, but let's not confuse things.

And there were no rational disagreements at all about what would benefit Rome and its people? Then the early senate must have been ruled by zombies or robots! I wonder how these creatures handled the secession of the plebs. Or--maybe there were amicitia in the early senate just as there were in the late senate.

I agree that salt makes some sense as a medium of exchange, but I'm much less convinced that other food-stuffs would work, however much they were valued. After all, if you were a doctor and had the choice between advertising your services for a quantity of metal, salt, or tomatoes--which would you choose? Obviously, metal would be the first choice not only since it's always in high demand (meaning you can trade it later), but more importantly it's of uniform quality, can be saved forever, and can be subdivided without destruction. In contrast, if you accept tomatoes for your services, you could end up with a bad tomato, couldn't save it for very long at all, and couldn't use it to make change for another purpose. I grant that not all food stuffs are as lousy exchange media as tomatoes, but along the basic dimensions I've mentioned, food stuffs simply don't compare to gold, silver, and other metals.

How did the re-creation of the birthing chair compare to this image of one from the 2nd C. CE?

While I admit that this sounds good, I don't think this explanation for the collapse in the economy actually works very well. There was virtually no change in the number of soldiers needed to defend the border before, during, and after the largest collapses in the economy during the late empire, so how could this variable explain anything?

According to the website you link, the game won't allow healing, but the Romans were actually quite adept at treating wounds from battle (see this thread e.g.). Having some of the many Roman herbs listed by our Pertinax as healing 'potions' or healing kits might improve both historical accuracy and gameplay. Just a thought.

In the weeks before Iraq invaded, there were loads of unaccounted WMDs. In hindsight, it appears as though he really did destroy them (unless we are to believe they are hiding in Syria someplace), but let's not rewrite history: many, many, many sincere people believed that Saddam possessed WMDs and that they posed an intolerable threat should they get in the hands of al Qaeda. This belief was very probably wrong, but it was based on intelligence reports coming from London, Washington, and even Paris.

Yes, I agree with this entirely. Whether because he simply wasn't as vain as Caesar or because he simply understood the system better, Octavian succeeded where Caesar failed because he managed to keep some semblance of collegiality in place. For all his reputation as a 'master politician', Caesar was an amateur to Octavian.

Which edition did Ursus review?

This is simply wrong. First, Augustus assumed a number of powers for life, including Tribune-for-Life and Proconsul-for-Life, thereby giving him the power to veto anything he didn't like and to direct foreign affairs entirely as he saw fit. Second, the senate could not be said to have done anything 'voluntarily', as Augustus hand-picked the magistrates who were to serve in the Senate, and if he didn't like them later, he could have them removed (in 18 BCE, he purged 200 senators). In effect, the Senate did nothing voluntarily, and over time, senators simply quit showing up for work. The situation was so bad that the quorum rule had to be abondoned, thereby removing any pretense at all that the senate had any power. It was not the Senators who maintained Augustus but Augustus who maintained the Senators.

Has anyone had a chance to compare the third edition of the OCD to the third revised edition? The difference in cost is about $30, so I'd like to know if it's really worth it.

"L'etat, c'est moi" wasn't a good idea when Louis XIV uttered it, and it doesn't recycle well either. Octavian didn't murder his way to power to further Greco-Roman culture. You don't further Greco-Roman culture by imposing Oriental despotism on the very society that invented representative government, which is exactly what the Butcher of Perugia did. I freely grant that the end of the civil wars had some nice side effects, but the long-term consequences of the regime initiated by Octavian included proscriptions, secret police, the replacement of deliberative legistlation with autocratic fiat, and a long string of civil wars and anarchy, which were interrupted only by a few decent guys and plenty of plainly insane psychopaths. All of these ills were the direct consequence of a fatal flaw in the principate--there was no lawful mechanism of accession. To attain imperial power, you had to kill for it and be prepared to keep on killing for it. Thus, it's no surprise that nearly half of all the emperors died of unnatural causes or were otherwise violently deposed; in contrast, over a 500 year period of history, only around 5% of the consuls came to power through extraordinary means. If Octavian's Res Gestae were appropriately worded, it would have included the line "I found Rome a city of laws and left it ruled by fiat." THAT--not Virgil's love poem--was Octavian's most lasting legacy.

I though the TNT movie was pretty lame too. Spartacus looked like some wounded puppy throughout most of the series, and the fellow who played Crassus was a scenery-chomping ham. And, no, I'm Spartacus!

Did you just contradict yourself Cato? You said earlier the folks in charge of the treasury were lax? Unfortunately, the contradiction is not mine but the system's. There was a rational plan for handling newly conquered territories, but the implementation wasn't up to snuff. Before the quaestorship of M Porcius Cato, the treasury was in the hands of a cabal of civil servants who resented senatorial interference and used an arcane set of rules and regulations to keep anyone from figuring out what they were doing. What they were doing was loaning money out in sweetheart deals that never got repaid, failing to reimburse private citizens for their contracted sums, and generally leaving the state finances in a state of disarray. (I can't help but think of that great old British TV series "Yes, Minister".) After Cato, all this changed. Prior to his quaestorship, Cato boned up on sound accounting rules and practices so the civil servants couldn't pull the wool over his eyes, and after starting in the position, he set upon clearing up the books of the treasury with all the zeal of a military campaign: he tracked every dime, poured over every account, and generally hounded the rotten bureaucrats into shaping up or shipping out. Soon all the figures started falling into place and people found they had to pay money they thought they had gotten away with while others were finally paid considerable funds they had despaired of ever receiving. I daresay most of Cato's great reputation for honesty and energy was based on his prosecution of these shady apparatchiks. Anyway, I digress...

Yes, and over a long period of time, the lands acquired by conquest were auctioned off for lease. They weren't simply split up among the senators or emperor's favorites.