M. Porcius Cato

Let us suppose that Favonius' theory were correct. Even still, the same interpretation would apply to the Athenian public inscriptions--and the enigma remains unsolved: Why didn't literature (even PRIESTLY literature) spread more widely in Rome than in Athens by the 5th century?

The translation I gave is a reconstruction, and probably no reconstruction is definitive, but Bill Thayer has a bit more of the Lapis Niger text at his site: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gaze...lsen*/2/17.html

All fair hypotheses, though I don't think all equally probable. Cute idea--reminds me of an incident from Caligula's reign, in which he reportedly forbade some sort of common activity under penalty of confiscation, yet placed the announcement so high in the Forum that it was impossible to read, thereby providing Caligula with pretext to seize anyone's property at will. (The US tax code strikes me as similar in effect if not in intent.) There are a couple of problems with this explanation, however. For one, if the stele existed merely as a pretext for seizing citizens that they could be sold into slavery, it's an awfully ineffecient mechanism: why bother building the rest of the shrine complex for a ruse that requires so little? Second, the 'solution' to the enigma is simply to deny that a problem exists in the first place, and it does so through an opportunistic inconsistency--denying the implications of public inscriptions for the literacy of the Roman populace but not for the Athenians. While I suppose it is theoretically possible that Roman kings were simply more arbitrary than Athenian leaders, there is no evidence in favor of the assumption, so the hypothesis implicitly produces a number of assumptions in service of avoiding a hard problem. I don't think this hypothesis will do. Even granting this premise, there is a strong incentive to provide a written record of works of law, politics, and engineering, so the very practicality of the Romans should have led to at least SOME written record. Yet precious little exists. I also find this explanation to be awfully dubious on other grounds, as it tends to circularity. After all, how do we know that the Romans of the 6th century were more "practical" than the Athenians of the 6th century? The evidence is only from the fact that the Athenians of the 5th century left a greater literary legacy than the 5th century Romans. It's a coherent argument, but so are all circular arguments (by definition). But there are no mentions of lost 6th century histories are there? I have a slightly different hypothesis about the cause of the cultural difference: trade. The alphabet and all the mechanics and conventions of writing largely developed for purposes of trade, which spread knowledge of writing through the populace, who could use the technology for other purposes, such as to gossip with neighbors, to humiliate foes with graffiti, and to write love notes and curses and recipes and advice and all the rest. Literature--from Homer to Danielle Steele to JK Rowling--is simply a refinement of these everyday uses of writing. During the 6th century, Athens developed a large trading network throughout the near East, whereas the literate at Rome remained relatively more isolated than their Athenian neighbors and thus less integrated within a larger writing culture. Further, commercial ties brought not only wealth and an increased demand for luxury goods and entertainment, but also new ideas. This flow of information from Ionia to Athens led to a flowering of the literary arts, whereas Rome remained cut off from the circuit of ideas being exchanged through writing technology. Thoughts?

In the early sixth century BC, some agent of the state carved a warning on a stele near the Lapis Niger: Now here's the enigma--the Lapis Niger inscription apparently predates any of the public inscriptions to be found at Athens, indicating that a large number of ordinary Romans (the kind who drove draught animals) were literate at least as early as the Athenians. Yet over the next few centuries, the literature of Athens skyrocketed, whereas the literature of the Romans lay relatively dormant. Why didn't literature flourish in Rome as it did in Athens?

Given that the empire grew much more quickly in the early years than the later ones, the growth was not exponential--it was more logarithmic than exponential.

All of this evidence merely shows that the Celts put up a fight, not that they were able to breach Roman walls with enough of an army remaining to pose much threat to the Roman camp. Driving defenders from a rampart is a long way from breaching the wall. So what? They lost [/i]time--some strategy the Celts had: irritate the Romans into giving up! Very nice that he sallied out with all this iron age equipment, but to what benefit? "To overcome" is not the same as "overcame". Sounds impressive, but if the fortifications were anything like the ones used by Trajan, this simply means that the Gauls tore down the timber palisade that wrapped around another line of fortification. Look, let me see if we agree on one proposition: The Celts had no siege engines, and what siege equipment they did have (if you're counting grappling hooks and ladders) were insufficient to defeat any fortified force of Romans.

This simply doesn't jibe with my recollection of the campaign. Caesar took city after city by smashing down fortifications with massive siege engines--more massive than usually required because the Gallic fortifications were less susceptible to catapault attack than to the stone walls used by other neighbors of Rome.

The evidence from Caesar is not yes--the evidence is that a small group of Celts had some siege tech for a single engagement, but never before or after. Classifying ladders and grappling hooks as siege tech is also a long, long stretch.

OK--some Celts once captured some Romans and their siegeworks and, using them both, some Celts were able to make use of the siegeworks on one occasion. Is there any evidence that this was anything but a temporary and short-lived gain? Were any Celts able to use this capture to build their own? To operate their own? For how long? Getting back to the overarching question--the one that gave rise to this thread--were the Celts a threat to walled cities? If the answer is--Yes, but only if they can manage to get their hands on Roman siegeworks, I'd say that Roman cities were pretty safe, as siegeworks were not normally left out for a bunch of long-haired Celts to come and get.

OK, fair enough--missed the important qualifying clause from Goldsworthy, so I got nothing.

If the Romans were the only ones with siegecraft technology, how did the Persians successfully overcome the defenders of the Athenian Akropolis? How did Alexander defeat the number of walled cities that he did?

What check would there be on their power? What cost would they incur for bad legislation? It's easy to be reckless and stupid when you've got nothing to lose--and most of the Roman head count had little to lose and much to gain by voting to send Italian farmers out to get booty for the Roman mob. Seems to me that keeping the proposal of legislation in the hands of the senate was critical. What the Gracchi did was open up a Pandora's Box of reckless, short-sighted legislation. Sounds like an OK plan, but who would have command of the legions? Would they be obligated to at least protect the province?? And if so, who would decide what constituted a threat? Nahh, that's just a problem for us. The organization of the Roman republic was sort of like a tinkerer's garage--the tinkerer knows EXACTLY where everything is, just no one else does! This seems like a solid reform--but what would be the domain of the Colonial Assembly? BTW, while we did have a thread on this before, it's valuable to return to these issues from time to time. Presumably, people have learned something new since last they thought about these issues!

"Food insecure" doesn't mean getting food from soup kitchens or going hungry even occasionally. "Food insecure" includes anyone who doesn't have enough of the right categories of food for an "active, healthy lifestyle" immediately accessible (probably many bachelors) as well as those who occasionally go hungry for a meal or two. According to this report, "How many people were hungry in the Nation? That can't be answered precisely from these data. About 7.8 million persons - 5.1 million adults and 2.7 million children - lived in households classified as food insecure with hunger. Not everyone in those households was hungry, however. Households are classified based on whether anyone in the household was hungry because of lack of resources. In this survey, it is not possible to ask separately about the experience of each person in the household. Most of the adults in these households were hungry at times during the year, but most of the children were not. Children - especially younger children - are usually protected from hunger until hunger among adults reaches quite severe levels. Work is underway to estimate the prevalence of hunger among children." So, no--there aren't 20 million Americans lined up at soup kitchens, nor 31 million, nor even 10 of the 250 million Americans. From the White House's website:Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz:

This explanation fits the Weerdinge men (who were gutted), but no one else. Perhaps there was more variation to Celt practices than known to Strabo?

Specifically for the senatorial elite??? Then why did the senate give such extraordinary powers to Pompey so he could crack down on the brigands? And why pick out senators as though they were the only ones (or even mostly the ones) to rely on cheap slaves? As I recall, a consul's daughter was once kidnapped by the pirates and never recovered--do you really think that the senate was such a nest of vipers as to orchestrate this?

What's interesting about this bit of slanting is that it (as far as I can tell) has absolutely no political or moral lesson associated with it. It's as if the teachers want conformity of opinion for its own sake. Disgusting.

What do you think the reasoning for this was? To prevent slaves from offering testimony themselves? Whom would this benefit?

What is your source on this? or this? or this? These claims sound like pure propaganda from someone who doesn't know the facts.

Absolutely not. Media portrayals of violence are more ubiquitous now than in the 60s and more gristly now than in the 60s, yet the incidence of violent crime has been steadily falling for several decades. It is true that if you show children videos of aggressive behavior (e.g., PowerRangers), they go ape-sht for a little while. However, the effect is only temporary--PowerRangers doesn't turn kids into psychopaths. It is also true that little psychopaths love violent media--but though they love the virtual gore, but it's not the virtual gore that made them psychopaths. In my opinion, the whole hype about media violence is stupid, and it reflects the most naive version of the Standard Social Science Model that you'll ever encounter. According to this model, people do and think what they see others do and think. The problem with this simple-minded theory is that it simultaneously explains everything and nothing at all. For example, media images of beautiful, self-confident women are thought to lower women's self-esteem by reminding them that they're not very beautiful. Yet why should the beauty and not the self-confidence be the behavior that is modelled? The SSSM has no answer. Same problem applies to the 'violence in the media' scare story. Take the famous "Bobo doll" experiment performed by Bandura. In the experiment, kids are randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the first, they watch an adult beat up a Bobo doll (an inflatable doll, about 4' tall). In the second, they watch an adult do other, non-violent stuff in the presence of a Bobo doll. As the story almost always goes, kids in the modelled condition beat up Bobo, whereas kids in the non-violent condition did not. WRONG!!!!!!! Read the experiment: kids in BOTH conditions beat up the Bobo doll at equal rates and in equal amounts. The only difference between the two conditions was that kids in the modelled violence condition showed more IMAGINATION in their violence (e.g., pretending to shoot Bobo with another toy, play acting dramatic scenes of confrontation, etc.). Further, some models actually LOWERED violence. When female modellers hit Bobo, the rate of violence among boys was REDUCED. For the increased imagination of the experimental group, for the sex differences in aggressive behaviors, and for the interactive effects of child's sex and sex of modeller, the SSSM has no explanation. Thus, even for the best possible case of media influencing violence, there are other factors that are vastly more important and overshadowing. Age: 32 Gender: M Occupation: Professor

No Cato, I was talking about the Imperial state. There is no such thing as the Imperial state. Now you're just making up categories (as you were making up quantitative comparisons) to support your viewpoint. If you want to make an historical argument, you have to stick to the facts and be willing to let them change your mind.

! You really need to read more Roman history. I'm sorry, but to claim that republican insitutions were never ignored is to betray either a total lack of knowledge of how the republic worked or what happened between 133 and 42 BCE (or both) that any conversation with you on this topic is pointless until you do more reading. At that point, I'd be happy to take up this issue with you again. Until then..

Still more painful to watch--why don't you try actually consulting a list and counting the number of unconstitutional transfers instead of making numbers up? It matters for your claim that one system was more stable than the other. If the principate were more stable, then it's laws needn't be ignored every other emperor! Your characterization of "strain" and "crumble" is a metaphor, not a proof. Support your arguments with facts not analogies. lol! Just a few exceptions! I guess the Punic War was nothing but a string of Roman victories (with a few small exceptions like Cannae, Lake Trasimene, etc)!!!

These are non sequiturs. First, the people do not speak with one voice. Some people support one candidate, others support another. Sometimes, the same candidate acquires and loses the support of the majority. Unless you have specific evidence of vote tampering, you have no basis for claiming that the candidates elected did not represent the will of the people just because you happen to think the people voted for the wrong person. There were all kinds of special courts that were dedicated to prosecuting people who engaged in fraud or bribery or other election violations, and it's quite remarkable how seldom the losers in elections ever availed themselves of these courts. Second, OBVIOUSLY statesmen competed for power and worked against one another. This is true of every system of government, including the principate. Competition did not lead to the downfall of the republic for 450 years for a darned good reason--the winners took office and left office when their terms expired. It was only when the winners refused to leave office (e.g., Caesar refused to leave his post when it expired) that civil war broke out. BTW, I'd love to learn the difference between a "fake lie" and an "authentic lie".

Again Cato we've been down this road many times before, you just can't have a disasterous scheme that lasted almost 500 years. You're talking about the Republic I presume. The Republic, not the principate, lasted 500 years. Nice to have you as a convert to the republic trex. Here I have to disagree--the republic allowed for ambition to be a strength, not a threat. It was only when republican institutions were ignored that ambition became a problem.