M. Porcius Cato

Almost unbelievably, there were no birth certificates or public records of who was and was not a citizen. When a dispute arose over whether a person was or was not a citizen, it was the first matter to be decided, and it was decided like many such issues--through testimonia. In some ways this seems strange, but I distinctly recall the effort it took to assemble all the necessary documents required to get an American passport and thinking, "Oh for heaven's sake! Just ask anybody--I'm obviously an American citizen!" My bet is that this is the sort of reasoning that most people would have used to justify their testimony-based citizenship claims.

Quite the opposite. According to Veyne's chapter on slavery in "A History of Private Life" (pp. 54-55):

If extending citizenship cheapened it and led to low participation, then why was Italian participation quite high even after they gained citizens' rights? I'd suggest that extending the citizenship per se was a smart move, as long as citizens had the potential to climb higher for serving Rome more. That was very much the case during the republic, when Rome extended citizenship without a loss of provincial participation.

Unless you were named Tiberius Or Ovid...

Sheesh, gimme a break! I thought I was impatient! Whoa! OK---nice to have you back.

Given that children in the ancient world often started working from about the age of 4, it's important not to exaggerate the costs involved. A docile child, accustomed to a life of servitude, might in fact be more economical to use as slaves than wild Goths who might slit your throat while you're sleeping.

Just to be clear--there are no American laws prohibiting racism, racist language, or racist writings. Social ostracism, of course, will be swift, and many employers (who are at liberty to fire anyone they wish at any time) would be likely to remove racists from their businesses, but unless racist language is accompanied by the use of physical force or the threat of it, it's legal. What Irving did would be legal in the US. Virgil can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think it's important that we're clear about what is and is not legal.

I'd nominate Aristotle--the "nous" or "intellect" of Plato's Academy. The father of logic and nearly all the sciences, Aristotle's naturalism, empiricism, and basically secular moral philosophy represented not only the apex of ancient thought, but these ways of thinking were also enormously influential during his own age, in the Arab world of the middle ages (where he had a strong influence on Averroes), and from there (via Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas), they played a supremely important role in bringing about the European renaissance. To Aquinas, Aristotle was simply The Philosopher. To Dante, "the master of them that know." Like Newton's alchemy or Galileo's wrong-headed notions about the tides and about how to calculate longitude, Aristotle certainly left us some howlers (like the notion that snakes have no testicles), but given the scope of his intellectual acheivements and the research programs that he started, I think almost all science and most of philosophy owe a tremendous debt to Aristotle. Even a scientist as late as Darwin could write of Aristotle (in a letter to a friend): Not enough? Here's a personal anecdote attesting to Aristotle's continuing influence. A colleague of mine, when entering grad school in cognitive science back in the 1960s, was concerned that he hadn't taken enough courses to prepare him for the research he was to conduct at an Ivy League school. His mentor (a giant in the field) told him that if he had read Aristotle's De Anima that he had all the background he needed. (!) My colleague, I might add, did indeed go on to be hugely influential himself--nearly single-handedly defining a great many current fields of research within the disclipline. I hasten to add that Aristotle is not--as the medieval scholastics maintained--the be-all and end-all of human knowledge, but I do think that being the start-all of almost all science should suffice for title of "greatest mind".

What good would that do? It takes a lot more than gunpowder to make a gun!

If it's really true that the Library of Alexandria was destroyed by Caesar's stay in Egypt, it's yet another reason to have hoped that Caesar had been defeated at Pharsalus.

You have my sympathy. Arguing with European anti-Americans makes me see red--to have to deal with stupid American provincialism simultaneously would leave me in the mood to jail everyone! (I am assuming you weren't the one hauling up the old 'poor dental hygiene' argument, right Virgil? Please!? ) The Austrians and Germans I know are among the most anti-racist people I've met, and I do understand their desire to stamp out all traces of Naziism. HOWEVER, the honorable thing would be to embrace the principle that is the most anti-fascist one imaginable--individual liberty, even liberty to say repugnant things. I simply can't see the sense in atoning for past violations of individual rights by means of further violations. BTW, I'm not claiming any kind of American superiority on this issue. Quite the contrary, American college campuses (including the one where I teach) have all kinds of insidious speech codes, and they're borne of exactly the same premise that gave rise to the Austrian ones. Needless to say, I condemn these codes as well.

Here your logic holds up fine, but your facts don't. The Athenians DID try to build an empire. What do you think they were doing in Melos? Or in Syracusa? Or in Asia Minor? The problem they had wasn't that they lacked ambition to rule--their problem was political. Since they were a direct democracy, the mob had the power to have generals and admirals executed when the latter didn't satisfy the mob. Consequently, the Athenians were continually attempting to expand their power, but without the benefit of able generals and admirals their 'fanaticism' was insufficient. So, again, the factor that explains the rise of Rome compared to Athens is not an issue of ambition, but one of government. BTW, this whole topic is treated by Polybius, a Greek whose histories were devoted entirely to the matter of how Rome could have risen so quickly to rule the world. Not mentioning his explanation--which is largely that Roman religion and government accounted for the rise of Rome--strikes me as odd.

A couple of points about Lucullus are worth underlining. First, his energetic prosecution of the rapacious publicani--in addition to being admirable--puts the lie to the almost ubiquitous claim that the "senatorial faction" was only interested in milking the provinces. Although Lucullus was deep optimate--he was the third part of the Catulus/Horentisius anti-Pompeian axis--he was truly beloved by the Asian provincials for revitalizing the territory. Second, Lucullus was an important benefactor of Roman cultural life. Although his political enemies may have envied him for his display of wealth, Rome was a better place thanks to Lucullus. With Hortensius, he was a patron of the poet Archias, whom the Pompeians cynically attacked. Lucullus' history of the Social War, written in Greek, was still read at the time of Plutarch. In Cicero's eloquent defense of Archias, I think one can hear the values of Lucullus strong and clear.

So from the Strabo text it seems possible that a Druid, dressed in his finery, had a couple of murderers torn to bits--not as a sacrifice, but as a gristly execution.

I'd bet the newborn would be screaming his or her lungs out, so the chance of being found would have differed substantially from zero. Moreover, Roman law (I'm pretty sure) allowed you to enslave foundlings, so there would have been a pretty strong motivation for picking up the abandoned baby.

That doesn't make the law right or justify the imprisonment of an historian. Moreover, it strikes me as the height of hypocricy to demand that the Muslim world appreciate the value of free speech over religious sensibilities (in the case of Salmon Rushdie and the Danish cartoons of Muhammed) while there is no outrage in the West when a man is jailed for his anti-Semetic* opinions. But that's exactly what makes the law worse than ineffective--it creates sympathy for behavior that is otherwise completely unsympathetic. Even his chief accuser in the case realizes this and asked the court to let him go. * Yes, I know that Arabs are technically Semites too. Put the flamethrower down.

No, it simply assumes that no other factors are correlated with fanaticism that are also related to rising, which is an assumption that the opposite claimant would need to make as well.

Who had the highest status in this society? Kings or priests? Or were they the same class?

Let me make this simple. If the property of fanaticism causes rising, and the Romans, Celts and Germans were equally fanatical (as you claimed), then the fanaticism of Romans, Celts and Germans would have led to equal levels of rising. If science, technology, and politics causes rising, and in these the Romans were superior, then Romans would have risen above Celts and Germans. Romans did rise above Celts and Germans; therefore, fanaticism does not cause rising, rather science, technology, and politics does. QED.

The cape is ritualistic, but so are the fasces and many other symbols of government power. Again, isn't the evidence equally consistent with the idea of execution?

Therefore, the factor that allowed the Romans to excel over the Germans and Huns was not fanaticism but their advanced science, technology, and political system. Do tell me you are able to grasp this.

Augustus' daughter Julia might have been a wonderful person to meet...

Looks to me like an ordinary execution. Why favor something as elaborate as human sacrifice?

And a speech I highly beleive was inspired by and partially written by Aspasia. Why?