M. Porcius Cato

Amazing PP--how you find this stuff so fast never ceases to impress.

Leaving aside the Hollywood idea that Christians were thrown to the lions for their private beliefs, the Christians living in Rome did cotton to many pagan beliefs and rituals for which there is absolutely no precedent in the gospels. The belief that saints intercede on behalf of mortals is one such belief. There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus or even Paul that would support this fantasy, but there it was a fantasy that many pagans had. How do you explain the veneration of saints among (many) Christians if you do not think it originated in paganism? True. There are much better reasons to deny the existence of gods and saints.

I don't dispute for a minute that the Marian reforms and tactics were destabilizing. However, with the exception of Sulla (who failed to conquer all his enemies, btw), the Roman army proved capable of disposing of every traitor who raised his sword against Rome, including Cinna, Lentulus, and Catiline. Between the retirement of Sulla and the establishment of the triumvirate, there were real constitutional issues under debate, the most pressing being how solve the problem of preventing another Sulla or Marius. The solution, I maintain, was much closer to the republican ideals of Cato and Cicero than it was to the solution offered by the triumvirate, which is why the reign of the triumvirate exacerbated the symptoms I originally listed. As I have said many times, the republican system was not perfect, but it was preferable to the various forms of monarchy that followed it. Yes, I admit that the imperfections of the system left it vulnerable to traitors like Caesar, but the system that Caesar inaugurated (starting with the triumvirate) was also worse than the system it replaced, as measured by the symptoms I listed. If there is an alternative metric you would use to measure the health of the system, I'm all ears. Until then, I maintain that there is no good evidence that the triumvirate was better than even the imperfect republic. Then why didn't everyone behave as Caesar did if he was simply a mere pawn of his environment? Cicero lived in the same environment, as did Cato, Catulus, Hortensius, and many others. Yet none of these men went on a rampage against an iron age civilization and turn his sword on Rome itself. How would you explain this if Caesar's actions were merely a result of how the republic operated?

So what? The same would have been said of any number of lesser deities, titans, nymphs, etc in the Roman pantheon. And who knows how many of these mythical personalities had historical orgins. Herakles was said to have been mortal once. What's the difference between the cult of Herakles, the cult of Augustus, or the veneration of St. Rose? Looks like the exact same system to me.

Sigh. I wonder how much Roman history people pick up from war games. This kind of thing is always popping up.

Are you proposing each of these as independent hypotheses for the origin of the triumvirate? Why not add the personalities of the triumvirs? All of the factors you suppose to have led to the triumvirate had been around for 500 years. Why didn't a triumvirate emerge until it did if these factors were necessary and sufficient conditions for it? I don't think these factors do much to explain the triumvirate. Only one factor is needed to how explain the triumvirate emerged from the republic--the only novel thing to arise in this period, and a source of great evil: Julius Caesar. Nothing is inevitable. And most of the aspects of the system that you mentioned were not endemic to the laws and constitution of the republic (e.g., patronage, ancestor worship, intense competition--all these existed before, during, and after the era of the republic). The laws also did work against the maintenance of a triumvirate, which is exactly how Cato was able to turn Pompey against Caesar: Pompey had to either ignore the laws that he himself had obeyed or to side with Caesar against the whole system. In this way, the system was working to function as it had evolved to function--to prevent the dominance of any individual over the lives and property of all of Rome. There is no inaccuracy. Rather, you fail to draw an important (if elementary) distinction between scale and origin. Hitler--for example--didn't invent political murder, but he practiced it on such a wide scale that he stands out amongst all the evil dictators to have existed. Yes, the triumvirs did not invent political violence in the Forum, but they practiced it on a scale that dwarfs every other period in Roman history.

Not in any meaningful sense of the term. It did matter a great deal. As a result of free speech, men like Verres were successfully prosecuted. That's a system that's working, and it was that very feature of the free republic that the triumvirs destroyed. Give me a break. The little cups that canvassers used to spread around are hardly bribes. We don't have a detailed record of campaign finances, but we do have a pretty good sense of who was tried in the courts for bribery, and the incidence of bribery was astonishingly low. That isn't a proper object of government--it is quite frankly wishful thinking. No government will please all the people all the time. What matters is that the government conform to the rule of law. The triumvirs did not. You're ranting. Give some evidence for your case. What is the EVIDENCE that the senates in the provincial towns did not provide the government services which the people--who alone had the power to legislate--decreed by law? What is the EVIDENCE that 95% of the magistrates of the Roman republic were meritless? Take a look at the surviving list of magistrates of the republic--for how many of them do you have some evidence of incompetence and for how many do you have ZERO evidence of incompetence? And if you have ZERO evidence of incompetence, by what authority do you second guess the judgment of the people of Rome? Now I'm beginning to think you don't actually know what the Senate could and couldn't do at various points in Roman history. Sulla did not fix the gluttony of the Senate. Not by any stretch of the imagination. He succeeded in ousting the tyranny of the Marians, and he set himself up as a tyrant. The Senate was as helpless in this civil war as is a senate in any civil war. Nor did the triumvirate contain the "gluttony of the senate": almost all of the opposition to the triumvirs were on constitutional matters because there was a real constitutional debate happening in the aftermath of Sulla. If you think otherwise, provide the names and dates of the legislation that support your interepretation; otherwise, admit you're wrong. As I've repeatedly claimed on this very thread, I'm not claiming the Republic was a libertarian utopia. I'm claiming that the instability normally said to be characteristic of the republic was in fact more characteristic of the triumvirate. The republic was not a free state, but it was a freer state than the states that followed it--from the Caesars of the first century to the Kaisars and Tsars of the 19th. For all their freedom and prospertiy, republics are astonishingly rare in the history of the world, and in my view, the republican constitution is one of the greatest legacies that Rome left to the world.

Everybody knows about the praetorian guard, but I'm wondering about the origin of the personal guard for generals. The earliest use I can find is the group of Celtiberians who surrounded Sertorius. Caesar later had 900 German and Gallic cavalry as a bodyguard (obviously not with him at all times), but are these the only precedents for Romans using a personal guard for their commanders?

Isn't the veneration of saints a hold-over from paganism? Seems to me that many aspects of pagan religion were simply co-opted by the Christians. In this way pagan religion is still with us in much the same way that the Pantheon is still with us (i.e., as a Christian version of the pagan form).

An added benefit of the DVR is that many allow you to burn episodes to DVD. I've had Rome on DVD since the series ended, much to the consternation of the future Mrs Cato.

Very true. The suggestion has been made that the roll of non-resident Romans may have been allowed to vote via proxy. I'm not sure that this is right, but if it were, it would have been another cool feature of the republican constitution.

Just started an interesting book by Goldsworthy, "In the Name of Rome: The Men who Won the Roman Empire." Each chapter is devoted to a general--Fabius, Scipio Africanus, Aemilius Paullus, Scipio Aemilianus, Caius Marius, Sertorius, Pompey, Baldie (who gets two chapters for some reason), Germanicus, Titus, Trajan, Julian, and Belisarius--and how exactly he drew up his battle lines, trained his troops, etc. For the many forum readers who sympathize with the Great Man view of history and who think the Roman military is the most interesting feature of the Roman world, Goldsworthy probably provides just about everything you'd like (and more).

I don't know where else to say this, but "Hooray for a Republic subforum!" Feel almost as if my libertas has been restored.

[quote name='Julia C

Today, they weren't serving the Bison Grass, but I did enjoy a cocktail that involved Lagavulin and muxed grapes. Sounds strange, but it was really fantastic. (And yes, my talk went well--thanks for asking princeps.)

A public thanks to Pertinax for a superb list of must-sees in Edinburgh. In case you're interested, Harvey Nichols serves an absolutely fabulous cocktail and lunch. The closest American equivalent I can think of to Harvey Nick's is Barney's in New York, except the view isn't quite as good. Perhaps if Pertinax had been advising Roman visitors to Britain, they wouldn't have stopped at Hadrian's Wall...

Happy birthday, Virgil.

Frankly, this is nonsense. If you knew anything about the lives of real slaves (especially agricultural ones), you'd be ashamed to have written this.

Sure, everybody agrees that Octavian's portrait was of a young vigorous guy, which must have been what he wanted because he had that portrait plastered all over the empire. The unresolved question is--what's the rule (or rule-of-thumb) for determining how emperors had themselves depicted? OK, but again the issue here is this: her portrait is going to be seen by people who have seen Octavian's portrait; why the heck would SHE be the one portrayed as oldER and (frankly) uglier? My guess accords with the spirit of Suetonius: Livia was the arch-power-luster in the family, and she wanted to appear august even more than Augustus did.

Yes, being misunderstood can be annoying - but I guess that's life when you're not face to face. True enough. C'est la vie. I don't think LIVIA would have considered whether she was being portrayed as older than Augustus, but I think any normal woman (i.e., your average non-power-luster) wants to look better than her husband! Maybe I'm just a sexist, but I'll bet my statistics about preferences are about right on that. And the reason PP offered I think is right--she wanted to appear matronly, but surely that has to come into conflict with how glamorous she looked too. Apparently, for Livia, the look of power was more important than the look of glamour. That was sort of what I was getting at initially. And, yes, I know I'm treading into hot waters here.... Maybe Livia was just having a bad day when the portrait was done.

My first response would be that there was a general secular decline in the demand for sugar during the 100 years after the liberation of the slaves in Jamaica. This would have have decimated the old plantation economy, but due to liberation, the free peasant farmers had moved from a pure cash crop economy to a more diversified basket of goods, including coffee, lumber, and bananas. More honestly, though, we don't have GDP figures for this time (well, I don't; does anyone?), and lacking those, there's no way of knowing whether the more diversified economic base (1) saved Jamaica from ruin, (2) led to Jamaican growth, or (3) led to "economic collapse". So, this is hardly a counter-example--just counter-speculation. If we reason only from the hard facts we do have, the economic history of the American north and south (which have been subject to intensive historical econometrics) suggests that my thesis is right. Provide hard data showing otherwise, and I'll change my mind.

Then why didn't they? It's easy to say anyone can do something AFTER the technique is already known. Heck, many (maybe most) discoveries--ones that escaped everyone's attention for millenia--look obvious in hindsight. My whole point was, if you attack a fort you're laying siege. Hence engaging in some form of siegecraft, like fingerpainting (barbarian technology) is to the Mona Lisa (refined Roman superiority). Barbarians, through their simple and practical means, have a history of sacking Rome. Didn't Rome have walls? Not when she was sacked the first time. That's why she built walls. The second time the barbarians sacked Rome, they were let in.

This kind of thing simply drives me nuts. I said, what do we make of that fact that Livia had herself portrayed as "older than Augustus." Then, PP talks about her portrayal as an "older woman", but her not being an "old woman." Nobody said she looked like an old woman, just older than Augustus! Anyway, I don't think you were trying to twist my words, but there's no need to take down a straw man.

MPC can you give a link at all. please? Download iTunes. Then click this link