M. Porcius Cato

When during the Republican period was there a population decline? It certainly wasn't between the Punic War and the age of Cicero. Shortly after the Punic War, there was baby-boom, such as is typically experienced when men come home from war. For an interesting review of a very good book on this, see Rome at War. (Long story short: Brunt was wrong.)

True--just as there is a useful distinction to be drawn between intensive and extensive growth, there is an equally useful distinction to be drawn between intensive and extensive demise. Intenisve growth/demise can be seen in the rise/fall of luxury goods and the material goods that make a comfortable life possible (not that only material goods matter, but they do matter and they do provide us with a record). Extensive growth/demise can be seen in the expansion/contraction of borders and spheres of influence. During the republican era, there was both an intensive and extensive rise. During most of the imperial period, the intensive rise continued at a much faster rate than the extensive one. During the early dominate, there was an extensive decline but it was not accompanied by an equal intensive decline. After the Germanic invasions, there was both an intensive and an extensive decline. This is admittedly a simplifying pedagogy, but in broad outlines it's correct.

I don't know the statistics for classical histories in particular, but my hunch is that the internet has increased book sales of both used and new books on classical civilization. I know my personal spending on Roman history skyrocketed after Amazon came along.

At most, the state of Roman mathematics could explain why the Romans did not rise further, but it can't explain why Roman Europe fell when it did, why the Roman east (overwhelmingly) fell when it did, and why Roman Africa fell when it did. On the other hand, Germanic invasions just so happen to occur at the beginning of each of these falls, leading quite a few historians to suspect that barbarian invasions probably played a larger role in the fall of Rome than the fact that Roman children weren't very good at mathematics. It's a radical idea, I know. I don't doubt, however, that the Roman empire fell--so much pottery, so many roof tiles, and so many coins simply disappeared that if even if the Romans themselves did not describe the fourth century as an apocalypse for them (which is exactly how many described it), the archaeological evidence would justify our calling it an apocalypse on their behalf.

I find Mary Beard's op-ed to be mildly irritating. While it is true that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus issued a sumptuary law (115 bce) prohibiting the consumption of dormice, the practice quite obviously continued apace. Apicius has a recipe for them (no. 397) and the Cena Trimalchionis of the first century CE depicts the creatures being eaten roasted and covered with honey and poppy seeds. I suppose one might argue that the recipe was given by Apicius to satisfy historical curiosity rather than contemporary tastes, and one could plead that the famous banquet scene was meant to depict consipicuous consumption. But those arguments are weak indeed. After all, why would Apicius include just one historical recipe, without giving any indication of the fact? And if we're to take the banquest scene with a grain of salt--why suspect only the dormouse detail? Why not all of it? It seems to me you can't have your dormouse and eat it too.

Interesting article in the Times on the Roman origins of golf in Brittania. Actually, I can't find anything definitive at all on paganica. Martial has a line or two on it, and there's this ancient field-hockey page. Anyone have information about paganica?

While academic credentials are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of good historical research, the credentials correlate so highly with quality scholarship that they shouldn't be treated as irrelevant.

I agree whole-heartedly. I only ask for full-disclosure about the credentials of the author and, where there is an agenda, to make that agenda clear. I take these two sets of facts--the author's credentials and agenda--to be indispensable to a good book review.

Nice to discover this. My university library and JSTOR still don't have any of the issues since 2002.

For starters, take a look at the thread on Reforming the Republic. Somewhere, I included a fairly decent list of reforming legislation from this period of time, and I also listed the advocates of this legislation.

Why don't you take a look at Fergus Millar's "The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic"? He completely demolishes this cynical mythology.

A very quick google search shows the book to be on the syllabus of at least two courses on the classics at UCLA and Penn, a review by at least one journal on ancient Rome and an endorsement by a classical historian at Minnesota. Not conclusive perhaps, but at least the equal of many secondary sources we've used here on UNRV. I think your google search was too quick. The courses you list just don't support your point. The "UCLA" course is not a course taught by any faculty, and it isn't even UCLA--it's part of the Plato Society of the UCLA Extension program, which is an organization run by extension students. The course is on fictional treatments of Caesar, and it lists Parenti's book as supplementary text. After a fairly long google, I've yet to find a roman history journal to bother with Parenti. A review was written in "International Socialism Review", "People's World Weekly," and was mentioned in the Journal of Critical Education Studies. The name of the latter journal is worth clarifying: "critical studies" has been academic code for "neo-marxist" since about the time the Berlin Wall fell. According to its own website, the People's World Weekly is a direct descendent of the Daily Worker and "The PWW is known for its partisan coverage. ... We are partisan to the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women, youth, seniors, international solidarity, Marxism and socialism. We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views." I'm still looking for that endorsement by a classical historian. Normally, I don't care if people like or don't like a book. But let's not unwittingly turn UNRV into an echo-chamber for the ravings of the Daily Worker. Controversy is fine--but Parenti's book is essentially a political pamphlet that merely uses Roman history as a backdrop for his modern political arguments. We normally keep a tight leash on that sort of thing from posters to the forum, and there's no reason we should do an end-run around that policy through our book reviews.

If anyone is still not clear on why Parenti's book is controversial after my comments, I'd be happy to elaborate. BTW, the book is not controversial among professional historians of ancient Rome; the book is hardly considered even worthy of attention. I'd also add that while being a university-employed classical historian may not be a necessary condition for writing a decent bio of Caesar, comparing Parenti to Gibbon on any other grounds is simply so absurd on so many levels that I'm simply dumb-founded by the comparison.

While not exactly a biography, a superb overview of the political career of Octavian is provided by Ronald Syme in "The Roman Revolution." I don't agree with his conclusion, which I find facile in comparison to the rest of his book (see Erich Gruen's "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic" for a similar point), but I think Syme's book manages to mobilize an army of details against the Augustus-worship that has plagued Roman history since his propaganda-machine first got started.

What!? LoL... and just what are his viewpoints? This I gotta hear... It's just what you'd expect--"everyone who opposed Caesar was a mean, ruthless, greedy, friend of the evil rich; benevolent Caesar was a persecuted friend of the poor." What's really remarkable is Parenti's complete disregard of any scholarship whatever that competes with his pre-arranged viewpoint: poor=persecuted; not poor=persecutor; populares=savior; optimates=reactionary. It's so simple-minded that you want to hurl the book into the nearest dumpster. Plus, the Latinless author can't even manage to say Pompey's name correctly in interviews. You yourself mentioned that Parenti's book was controversial; since you did not indicate the nature of that controversy, I'm happy to fill in the blanks.

Any friend of the Republic was a friend of mine, especially those who offered reforms that would secure the republic against future autocracy, future corruption, and future abuse of provincial tax-payers. At various times, optimates and populares would have had my support. In this I differ from hypocritical, knee-jerk partisans of Caesar, who ALWAYS hate the optimates--even if it means complete dictatorship and the everlasting disenfranchisement of the people of Rome.

Parenti is a Michael Moore-style hack with no background whatever in Roman history, which is why his viewpoint is so far outside the mainstream. Moderator note; this post was split from Recommendations Solicited

I would call it a Scipio argument.

Garum really does sound awful. For what do you use Nam Pla? Also, for this dish, how do you keep it from being too dry if you use pork or beef?

I would simply observe that in a republic where the power and rule of law transcend any individual, people can be free to be as vain and/or self-interested as they like while posing no threat whatever to the security of the state. Under such a system, the very competiton for honors provides a kind of dynamic stability, much like the stability of a bicycle while being pedalled. Bring the pedaling to a stop and the bicycle is not stable enough to support the rider, who would topple to the ground; bring an end to the competition for honors, and the state too would have to topple. In short, faction is not necessarily a threat; vanity is not necessarily a threat; greed is not necessarily a threat--as long as there are good laws and the laws are stronger than any one man or any one army. The problem is not human nature; the problem comes only when government attempts to ignore human nature--and a triumviral monarchy ignores human nature and turns harmless faction, vanity, and greed into a threat to the system. Why? I certainly grant that all discussions and deliberations must finally come to a point where only one of various alternatives are put to action, and I also agree that some one person or group must be held accountable for the success of the alternatives that they profer. However, I don't see any necessary reason for it to be a top dog. More importantly, top dogs typically can make many, many, many stupid decisions without any consequence to their power; whereas in a competitive system, a single mistake can tip the balance of favor to one's competitors.

It is said that the statues of Aphrodite were based on a famous Athenian courtesan, Phryne, who in addition to her beauty had a wickedly smart intellect that often landed her in court, where she faced charges of impiety. On one such occasion her boyfriend Hyperides presented his whole defense of her by baring her breasts to the jury. Impressed, they found her innocent. Like Hyperides, let me offer the following defense of my favorite poem in all Latin literature, De Rerum Natura, by unclothing just one part (1.50-100)

Many of the effects of lead are cognitive. Without wide-scale norms, standardized testing, and a means for obtaining behavioral reaction times, how could they trace cognitive effects back to their source?