M. Porcius Cato

Great point. We could deduce this from Plutarch's biography of Cato Uticensis, which gives Cato's age when his father died. We also know the event (the Social War). I wonder if the MPC on the coin minted in 89 could be attributed to one of MPCs of the Licinian --as opposed to Salonian -- line. Unfortunately, I only have the first volume of Broughton's Magistrates. Nephele?

Thanks Nephele! I had no hopes for this posting, but I'm thrilled to learn of the The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits! How was it?

Republicans?? Maybe Republicans, but not republicans.

Here's an illuminating discussion I just discovered on Roman daylight savings. The source is B. L. ULLMAN (1918). DAYLIGHT SAVING IN ANCIENT ROME. The Classical Journal, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 450-451. The ancient Romans labored under the enormous disadvantage of having no way of measuring small periods of time, as we have with our seconds, minutes, and hours. They divided their period of daylight into twelve periods of equal length which they called hours. These, of course, varied in length according to the time of year from about forty-five to seventy-five minutes. Think of trying to run railroad trains on such a system! But the system had great advantages as a compensation-the Romans were not confronted with the great problem of daylight saving. The various occupations of the day were arranged with reference to sunrise- a certain engagement might be made for the end of the third "hour" after sunrise. To illustrate the advantage of this plan let us take a concrete example. On the longest day of the year (June 21 or 22) the sun rises in the latitude of Pittsburgh at 4:51 A.M., eastern time, and sets at 7:51 P.M. On that day three Roman "hours" after sunrise (counting an "hour" as one-twelfth of daylight) is 8:36 A.M. by our time. On the shortest day of the year (December 21 or 22) the sun rises in the latitude of Pittsburgh at 7:41 A.M. and sets at 4:55 P.M. Three Roman "hours" after sunrise is 9:59 A.M. Thus, on June 21 at the end of the third hour, one hour and twenty-three minutes of daylight would be saved in Pittsburgh as compared with December 2I. The amount of daylight saved would vary of course with the time of day that an appointment was made. In the afternoon they evened up matters by scheduling for the eighth "hour" in summer what would be put at the ninth "hour" in winter. We see too that this system had another advantage, one which the modern daylight-saving proposition cannot offer. It is as if we were to set the clocks ahead a different number of minutes every day during the summer, instead of a fixed sixty minutes.

That's a clever solution to the local problem, but then the rams would have been nearly useless for crushing quinquiremes, which was their original intent. What's the reason to think that the hands of Cicero were independently affixed? Seems to me a more tidy solution would be to tie up the hands with string and affix them to the head, which could be impaled rather properly onto anything sharp and pointy. In fact, if you don't do that, it's not clear exactly whose hands they are, which rather defeats the point. OK, now I need a shower.... this era in Roman history is disgusting.

Happy birthday, Augusta, and salve!

What's Crawford's reason for thinking it's not the father of Cato the Younger?

Personally, my favorites are the translations for the state over which the ferox puella governs: Terra Eskimorum (lol) and Terra Santae Elvorumque (ouch!).

Me too! And anyone else who wants to be notified can click HERE.

Absolutely. But immediately before the Ides, Cicero seems to have retired from politics to philosophy. From the standpoint of the Liberators, this retirement doesn't suggest that Cicero would have been the ideal guest for "that glorious banquet".

I think there must be a misidentification of one of the coins. The one attributed to Cato the Younger is dated 89 BC. But Cato the Younger was born in 95 BC, and I'm guessing he wasn't minting coins at the age of 6. More likely, the moneyer was Cato's dad, also M. Porcius Cato, but not M. Porcius Cato Uticensis.

Sounds bogus. The tip-off for me is the idea that the Roman treasury was depleted from too much aid to foreign nations and too much assistance to the poor. At least before Caesar got back from murdering Gauls, the treasury was so jam-packed with the gold of other nations that the Romans themselves didn't even pay taxes. The idea that they would have emptied that very treasury to send back the gold they looted is just bizarre.

This must be a first. In today's New York Times, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd drafted Gary Farney (associate professor of history, Rutgers University) to translate from English to Latin her own,

Given widespread literacy in the Roman world, it wouldn't have been difficult to find someone to whom you could dictate your message. That message could have been carried by any of a stream of travelers -- couriers, teamsters, traders, etc. I guess the interesting question has more to do with the intended recipient: Is the recipient literate? Does he or she expect the forthcoming message?

From the New York Times article, A Dead Language That

The Romans famously lacked stirrups. How much further they had to go is revealed at last (HERE).

You'll get no argument from me that Caesar was a scoundrel and that the Romans who watched him from the sidelines lacked moral fiber. But there's no simply no connection between support for Caesar and taste for delicacies. To take just one prominent example: Brutus was a Stoic, whereas Cassius was an Epicurean. Also, it's probably true that the ones doing the fighting during the expansion weren't delicacy-eating, fish-ponders. Obviously, those people will be relatively few in *any* era, but that only speaks to the base rate, not to the bias. To detect some *bias* caused by luxury, the crucial data is whether those who have the capacity for luxuries yet choose to avoid them are somehow more patriotic or more Roman or more virtuous than those who have the capacity for luxuries yet choose to embrace them. And on this issue, I don't see any connection whatever. With equal facility, we could list off luxury-loving patriots (like Cicero), luxury-loving scoundrels (like Clodius), luxury-hating patriots (like Cato), and luxury-hating scoundrels (like Marius). With all four cells of the matrix filled out nearly equally, I'll bet no bias will be detectable.

ROFL

Not really. Catiline, an arch-Sullan who had fed on the blood of Marian populares, only switched to the popular route after his career had stalled. This fact is quite clear in Catiline's letter to his old friend Catulus, lion of the Senate conservatives. To turn a phrase, populism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Don't worry Nephele, they'll restore it in good working order for you. But here's the question I have: do I need a background check to purchase this siege weaponry? I mean, you can't buy a Glock on ebay, but you can buy the kind of artillery that will knock over a house?!?

No one disputes that the changes listed (eating delicacies, et al) were part of a larger cultural shift. The question is whether this shift reflected actual moral corruption that led to the toppling of the republic. Sure, some Romans--Cato the Elder among them--thought so. But did their argument make any sense? I don't think so. If we take Cato's narrative at face value, the alleged corruption occurred between the era of M' Curius Dentatus and Cato's own day. So what was the state of the republic during this rise in luxury? Obviously, the state of the republic was never stronger! While the Romans were allegedly being 'feminized' by their love of delicacies and philosophy, somehow they managed to acquire Sicily, defeat Hannibal, subdue Spain, capture Greece, and lead the Roman republic to undisputed mastery of the Mediterranean. So much for the idea that trading porridge for dormice saps Roman virtue.

BTW, this thread belongs in the Res Publica folder.

His behavior afterwards suggests so. In a letter to Trebonius (one of those friends of Caesar who were so disgusted by the dictator's behavior that they joined the assassination), Cicero expressed regret that he hadn't been "invited to that superb banquet." Moreover, he worked tirelessly on behalf of the liberators, convincing the Senate to defend Decimus Brutus at Mutina, lobbying to get the Roman senate to recall Brutus and Cassius to Rome after they had left for Greece, and denouncing his son-in-law Dolabella for the murder of Trebonius. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to talk about tyrannicide than to actually risk your life committing it. Yes, Cicero was as disgusted by Caesar as any other sane and decent human being, but he nonetheless showed very little actual fortitude when Caesar was waging his war on Rome. While Cato was tearing his guts out lest he share the same air as that bald darling of Venus, Cicero was at home fretting over how his ex-wife and current one were getting along.

Of course, it wasn't only the Imperial family who flouted convention in their naming practices. In a sense they were all just following Brutus' lead, weren't they?

Yes. The accensi and velites were plebeian skirmishers in the 'Camillan' and 'Polybian' armies (respectively).