M. Porcius Cato

It's not the numbers; it's the targets. The targets were the enemies of Sulla and his henchmen, not enemies of Rome. Sulla violated the pomerium and acted without a senatus consultum ultimum. Perhaps this was justified in light of Sulpicius' illegal maneuvers (an arguable point to be sure) but what happened thereafter was score-settling. It's too bad that the Marian Junius Brutus hadn't the rectitude of the Catonian Junius Brutus.

Judging by Roman literature, not everyone shared Gellius' rustic, cracker-barrel sense of humor. I imagine the many Romans who were educated in Greece (like Cato and Caesar) would have rolled their eyes too.

*raspberry* All right, all right, I promise not to finish all my glossary items with "Caesar couldn't be stabbed enough."

This is a great idea. So, where should we post our glossary entries? And will the glossary be continuously updated and published, or will we have to wait for a critical mass of entries? Also, I noticed that quite a few of Plutarch's Romans aren't listed on the Roman Statesman page.

What is your evidence that the Roman republic at the time of Sulla was too corrupt or too large to defend itself?

Me too.

You're over-stating an already strong case. It's enough to indicate that arabic numerals include 0 and therefore allow an economical expression of a greater range of values. To try to tie technology to numeric notation is a stretch. Using Roman numerals, for example, the total water delivered to Rome was greater than that delivered to New York City until around the 20th century, and the sanitary conditions in ancient Rome was greater than the level of that enjoyed today by about 1/2 of the modern (Arabic-numeral using) world's population. Even in the history of mathematics and science, the discoveries of men like Archimedes and Euclid indicate that a non-Arabic system of numerals is not a serious impediment to progress. Obviously, great advances in mathematics have been made since the adoption of Arabic numerals, but I can't think of any that have been made BECAUSE people started using 37 instead of XXXVII.

Truly remarkable that some of the most consistent defenders of Caesar are also apologists for Sulla.

The Gelzer passage relies I think exclusively on Sallust, one of Caesar's partisans. The interesting thing about Sallust's reconstruction of events is what it omits. By tradition, the order of speeches in the senate went by seniority, meaning that Caesar and Cato would have been among the last recognized to speak. Therefore, most of the major legal arguments for execution would have been made by the time Caesar and Cato rose to speak. Thus, Caesar's main job was to lay out the full legal case against the majority, and speaking after Caesar, Cato's job would have been almost entirely in the rallying spirit of "Hey Guys! Remember all the arguments you've been making for the last 3 hours!?! Ignoring them now has consequences!" By focusing entirely on the debate between Caesar and Cato (whose rivalry would have loomed large by the time of Sallust's writing), Sallust was able to downplay the legal case for execution--on the one side, we have a full legal argument (Caesar's) and on the other side, we have only an appeal to consequences (Cato's). In my view, this has a distorting effect on our appreciation of Cicero and his achievement as it neglects the legal argument that would have been made for Cicero's position.

No of course not--that would be absurd. I'm not arguing that Caesar was Forest Gump (although that's a funny idea!), but only that his political strategy wasn't perfect--by relying on violent, cynical, popular agitators, Caesar was bound to find his henchman putting him in a difficult spot (hence my mentioning the Bona Dea business). This isn't really a major point, by the way--as Caesar had his Clodius, Pompey had his Milo, and Cato had his Bibulus. Politics makes embarrassing bedfellows.

I want to respond.....but it's not thread related. I'll just quietly hope that everyone knows the mark of a real man is actually self control. [applauding] Well said Germanicus!

Didn't Caesar's campaign for Pontifex Maximus put him so far in debt (from bribing people to vote him the priesthood!) that Crassus had to bail him out? Caesar only got out of his debt to Crassus (830 talents, or about 1/8 of Crassus' wealth) by pillaging the wealthy villages of Hispania Ulterior. Now I don't mean to suggest that Caesar rushed off to Hispania Ulterior (illegally I might add) merely out of concern for paying his debts: the only time he was concerned about money-lenders was when he needed them himself. No, Caesar was in a hurry to get out of town because his wife and buddy Clodius had just been up to, er, some sort of funny business during the sacred rites to Bona Dea. Yeah, that Caesar sure was a master politician--when his allies couldn't control themsleves, he simply ran away. Masterful.

If you're asking about favorite sites in general then I'd say Art & Letters Daily. One of the best things on the 'net if you ask me, a real feast for the mind. I totally agree--A&L Daily is the best thing on the net. That, UNRV, and the New York Times.

Not obvious at all. What are the numbers, and how do they compare to all the other candidates?

Yes your correct there but i thought were were talking about why 1234567890 came into use instead of I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X etc. Roman numerals are also as accurate as Arabic numerals.

A decimal system is no more accurate than a base-12 system or a binary system. Think about it.

I'd like to point out once again that *on this thread* there have been arguments raising Caesar's bad points, ones defending Caesar against these charges, but there is still not a bullet list of Caesar's "good points," which was what was requested by the student (who will probably never bother posting again to thank anyone). Instead, we have been treated to more of tflex's brilliantly cogent "Hail Caesar" argument, and he has now been joined by another whose list of Caesar's good points is also just "Hail Caesar". If the friends of (ancient) dictatorship don't begin listing Caesar's good points soon, I'm going to have to do it myself--and I really don't want to at all!

That'd be one hell of a guess !! What contemporaries do you mean ? Just general opinion that repeating personal rumors was beneath Caesar's dignity. It's in Cicero's correspondence with Atticus and others. Plutarch says the same. Cicero I think called it "impudent rubbish" as best as I recall. It's discussed a fair amount in the Everitt book.

More on the other points later, but I'll point out that Caesar himself wrote an "Anti-Cato", which was used by Plutarch in his Life of Cato. Caesar's contemporaries and modern historians both regard the work (as best we can guess at it) to be Caesar at his pettiest.

Simple mathematics shows that anything that delays when a woman begins to have children will have a dramatic effect on population size over the long term. I'd also add that the population of Europe would not be increased by increasing also the number of nuns and priests!

Caesar didn't have to occupy the lands of the Aedui once the Helvetii and forces of Ariovistus had been repelled. He only stuck around for the plunder and for the fame. Moreover, the Germans (as almost always) were too busy fighting amongst themselves to justify Caesar's pre-emptive war. And it certainly wasn't for any protection of Rome that he invaded Britain--that was just showing off. Rome already had a fine, tax-paying province in Gaul prior to Caesar, and the number of men, women, and children slaughtered by Caesar deprived Rome of an unfathomable quantity of future taxes had they been incorporated into Rome slowly and gradually. Caesar's battles were lop-sided in their effect, but that's not saying much given the that Gallic tribes were mostly subsistence-level, iron age farmers with virtually no military might at all (they didn't even have decent siege works!). I do grant that Caesar's actions had a powerful psychological effect. But we have a name for that kind of purposeful slaughter of non-combatants--it's called terrorism. If the charges were baseless and the jury were fair, Caesar would have been acquitted. The jury, which would have been drawn from a random sample of the senators, almost certainly would have been fair. Around 95% of them had previously voted for Pompey to lay down his arms with Caesar in an effort to avoid civil war. Given this, the likelihood of finding a jury that would convict Caesar would have been vanishingly small. In addition, engorged on gold of Gallic tribes, Caesar could have bribed his way into anything. As you may recall, bribery is how Caesar got elected in the first place. BTW, does anyone want to bet that the person who started this thread for a homework assignment will never post again?

No problem, Tobias. We all get hot when it comes to Caesar. For the record, I agree that Caesar wasn't as bad as Hitler, but Caesar did kill and enslave a very, very large number of Gauls who posed no threat to Rome at all. Caesar boasted that he killed a million and enslaved another million. Maybe Caesar's aims weren't technically genocidal, but I simply don't think his aims in Gaul were praise-worthy either.

What are the casualty figures for Chalons? Also, tflex asked about all battles up to the industrial age, so I still think the battle of Leipzig would be the bloodiest--about 90,000 casualties (as I recall).

I'm just talking about this thread. And defending Caesar against my charges simply means Caesar is innocent, not that he is great--there's a difference. I sincerely and earnestly applaud you and your ancestors for opposing tyrants, dictators, and oppressors. Which raises the question--why support the dictatorship of Caesar? He was a dictator too.

I think it was the Battle of Leipzig.