M. Porcius Cato

I have to disagree with you in your view on why the roman empire collapse. First and foremost, the creation of the empire by Augustus was not view as the reason why it failed. The creation of the empire by Augustus was a good thing for Rome. The old republic before Augustus created the empire was not proven to govern Rome proper. ... What really hurt the Roman empire, was the political instability that occured after Emperor Commodus was murdered in 192AD. From 192AD to 284AD when Diocletion became emperor, the Roman Empire went thru so many emperors due to political infighting. I agree with Scerio--this political infighting was a direct result of there being no mechanism of succession such as existed during the republic. Moreover, civil war and unconstituional transfers of power long predate this period. There was no legitimacy to the rule of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero; the civil wars after that were also an effect of the fact that Octavian failed to develop a mechanism of accession; and the only way that subsequent emperors could keep a lid on the simmering civil wars was to engage in systematic poltical murders. Hence, "at Rome the slaughter was constant". Yes, there were a handful of good emperors who managed to secure the rule of an adopted successor. But if you count up all the emperors who served during the principate, nearly half died of unnatural causes or were deposed violently. That's not a sign of a healthy political system. So, no--Octavian's scheme was a disaster for Rome.

Yes, but not what we might call Marianism--i.e., use of the Popular Assembly and military force to raise arms against the state in support of a coup. Lepidus, Catiline, and Caesar proved that. Pompey and Crassus too were listing in that direction. And note that of these five, four were 'Sullans', Marianist Sullans we might call them!

Where do you get 10 times? Why not .1, 1, or 100 times? You pulled this number out of your ... head. In fact, during the first 250 years of the empire, there were more unconstitutional transfers of power than during the last 250 years of the republic. Moreover, ignoring the stability of the first 300 years of the republic is completely unjustified. The 'responsibilities' of the republic prior to the Roman revolution were not "half" that of the late republic (the source for this figure is also manufactured whole-cloth). Moreover, any objective measure of 'responsibilities' (indexed, for example, by the number of provinces) has to be adjusted by the total manpower available for the administration and defense of those provinces. As has been pointed out many times, the problem of succession for the principate was never really solved, and the political chaos and erosion of civic spirit that it engendered completely undermined the so-called Pax Romana and contributed to the ultimate collapse of the classical world.

Nice--from 79 (when Sulla abdicated) to 69, every consul was a Sullan. I'd bet also that nearly every Sullan was a magistrate. No wonder Sulla felt it was safe to retire.

So, it sounds like we have three categories of Sullans: 1) Friends and officers who served with Sulla in the East and supported his march on Rome, including Lucullus, C. Curio, Cn Dolabella, and Ap. Claudius Pulcher; 2) Those who joined with Sulla only when the civil war made it profitable for them, including Q Metellus Pius, M Crassus, and the Lentuli; 3) Those who deserted the anti-Sullan camp at the last minute to save their own hides, including L Philippus, the Valerii Flaccii, M Lepidus, and Pompey. Catulus doesn't quite fit in any of these categories. He seems to me to be a principled anti-Marian, and it's not that he was "doing Sulla's bidding" but doing what came naturally for him--opposing unchecked demagogues like Marius, Cinna, Saturninus, etc from depriving the Senate of all power. BTW, it would be interesting to generate a list of consuls and magistrates for the 70s, with each magistrate categorized by their connection to Sulla. It seems to me that the 70s was the Decade of the Sullans.

Does anyone think the number of American forces in Iraq--or any number--could really avert a civil war?

Do you mean against "someone like Marius", "any New Man", or "any New Man who was also like Marius"? Catulus was, by the way, a pleb himself, so someone among his ancestors was a New Man. And he also seemed to have no problem with Cicero. So, wasn't his opposition to the Marians chiefly due to a principled stand in favor of the Senatorial check on the Popular Assembly (which had the only power to pass laws)? Egad--Catiline was quite the monster wasn't he? Did Catulus oppose or support the move to restore tribunician power? Lucullus? I know Lepidus supported the restoration, and I'd assume Pompey and Catiline did as well, but do we know for sure?

Generally agree with what's been said about Pompey, and it could apply equally well to the sudden populare moves of Catiline, Crassus, and Lepidus, but what was Catulus' motivation or Lucullus'?

Pompey, Crassus, Catiline, Lepidus, Catulus---the men who supported Sulla and profited from his reign at one time or another is a virtual Who's Who of the late republic, with many of them inveterate enemies of one another. What's going on? Were the supporters of Sulla bound by anything other than fear of proscription and greed? Why were the Sullan reforms so quickly overturned? Why didn't the opposition to Sulla--the shadow government of Sertorius--put down their arms and reconcile with the senate once the Sullan reforms were overturned?

Hi, Dr. Heather. What modern advances--whether in statistics, economics, population modelling or whatever--have most influenced your examination of the past, and which advances do you think have the greatest unrealized potential for improving our reconstructions of the ancient world? My best, Cato

And what would prove that the conspirators were right in killing him except his own unlawfulness? BTW, "greatness" is entirely subjective--"lawfulness" is not.

I am. He makes me laugh. This had me in stiches:

This is a good one. Sort of cheating isn't it? We drop gender much more than they did. Ah, yes--the lost wisdom of ethnobotany revealed in a lost language. Someone ought to write a book about that...

I've the same impression. And no flattery taken--my namesake is Cato Uticensis not his great-grandfather.

I wonder if there is a single great scientist in history that wasn't spectacularly wrong at least as often as he was spectacularly right. The nice thing about science though is that only the hits count; the misses are almost always forgotten!

"To prevent chafing: When you set out on a journey, keep a small branch of Pontic wormwood under the anus." Cato the Elder was a real hoot, no? Rustic as they come, possibly mean as they get too, but always a hoot.

Yes, part of the justification, but even Aristotle uses the rather ambiguous claim that slavery should be limited to those who by nature are slaves. As I recall he argues against even taking slaves through conquest, because the defeated in battle are not necessarily incapable of self governance. Good point--maybe we should start a topic on slavery to get to the bottom of this.

Who claimed that there was NO death from exposure?? Of course infants died. The whole justification for slavery was that slaves were akin to the living dead--people who were saved from death (e.g., during war, being saved from exposure, etc) and therefore lived at the pleasure of their owners. The claim that infants died from exposure AND were enslaved go hand-in-hand.

Interesting...Anyone find parallels between the nazi concept of Liebensraum and Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny? "Manifest Destiny" didn't come from Jefferson. It came from a newspaper editor of the 19th century. The concept predates the 19th century to be sure, but the justifications for the Louisiana Purchase and the invasion of Czechoslovakia differed dramatically. (Regarding the "Trail of Tears", on the other hand...nevermind--let's get back to free speech or even better ancient Rome!)

Exactly--just like Hitler's willing executioners, Stalin had plenty of people with petty grudges and small minds to turn to. That's exactly why things like the Holocaust museum are needed--to remind people what happened, to defiantly state "Never Again", and to foster introspection instead of shrugging.

Big fan of price controls and feudalism are you?

I'm utterly opposed to politcal correctness and private speech codes, but there really is an enormous difference between those private sanctions and government-imposed ones. The media and pressure groups are not exercising 'thought control' anymore than you are--they are attempting to persuade others, and anyone is free to argue back, disbelieve, ignore, whatever. And they frequently do. The important point is that the media (insofar as it is deregulated) does not speak with one voice--but the State does. In my view, there is an enormous difference between a university firing Irving for his views (which is fine as far as I'm concerned) and the state putting him in jail for these views. If you don't think this difference matters, why don't you ask Irving for his opinion? I agree. Which is why I disagree.

Most languages have words denoting concepts that exist in the minds of nearly all speakers but not in all their languages. For example, I'm sure you've thought of the poor mothers of the world whose children have died prematurely. In English, there is a word for people whose parents have died (i.e., orphans) but not a word for people whose children have died. This might be tough, but can anyone think of some nice Latin words that perfectly express a concept you have but for which there is not even an approximate synonym in English? I'm not talking, btw, about words for things that don't exist any more (when was the last time you saw somebody carrying a pilum?) or words for concepts that are awfully close but not exactly the same (e..g, auctoritas isn't QUITE the same as authority, but it's pretty darned close).

Exactly! And why weren't the Communists hauled up on charges of crimes against humanity? Why is Lenin's corpse--like a fish in a box--still on display in Red Square? Why can people deny the crimes of Pol Pot, or Mao, or Stalin? In fact, if every intellectual who denied Stalin's crimes (like Bertrand Russell) were in prison, half of the universities of the 1940s would be empty! Why are there memorials to the Holocaust all over the world, but none to be found for the victims of Stalin's orchestrated Great Famine or Mao's blood-soaked Cultural Revolution? Where are the Amnesty International fund-raisers for victims of class genocide???? OK, I'm done. But this issue REALLY gets me steamed.