M. Porcius Cato

I agree that policies must be responsive to conditions, but I don't see that the principate was the best response to the conditions that destabilized the republic. As we've discussed in that thread, there were many solutions to the problems of the republic that could have avoided one-man rule and its attendant problems of accession. Sure, the first 200 years of the principate were not quite not as tumultuous as the final 80 years of the Republic. But even during that first 200 years, the problem of succession for the principate was evident. Of the 19 emperors who served during this period, 47% were either killed or killed themselves. In contrast, during the last 200 years of the republic (246 - 46 bce), there were 400 consuls and only 8 suffect consuls. I agree that both systems had problems that ended up crippling them. For the republic, the basic problem was that the constiution was optimized for a municipal government rather than a nation-state. For the empire, the basic problem was the problem of succession. The fact that both systems had problems that ultimately led to their downfall, however, doesn't mean that both were equal in merit. A republic *can* grow beyond the municipal sphere, if it enacts some reforms that are in keeping with the basic character of the republic; and the republic *was* reforming (in fact, reform measures initiated in the senate were more than twice as numerous as the reforms initiated by tribunes), though clearly these reforms were not passed fast enough to simultaneously deal with expansion and with the politician-generals who were doing the expanding. In contrast, the principate's problem of succession was evident even during its formative years, and the problem never got better. This is because a monarchical system--by its nature--has no supervening mechanism for filling the empty position of emperor.

From the paper I cited above:

So was the mishap this morning a bug or a feature?

Jung! Speaking of frauds....

Augustus may have closed the gates to the temple of Janus, but the Principate did not close the doors to civil war. During the long reign of the republic (509 - 49 bce), there were nearly 950 legal and peaceful transfers of executive power, with only a few, brief periods of anarchy (375 -370), civil war (21 years, all in the last century of the republic), or dictatorship (only 8 years including Sulla). These brief interruptions to the peaceful norm comprised less than 8% of the total history of the republic. In contrast, the brief and despotic regime of the princeps tottered continually between totalitarian repression and complete chaos. During the era of the principate (about 300 years, 27 bce - 284 ce), the number of princeps (including claimants and usurpers) totalled 78. Of these, nearly 50% were assassinated, executed, committed suicide, or were otherwise deposed violently. Further, roughly 40% of the years during the principate were passed in civil war, anarchy, or divided rule. To compare the republican system to the system of the principate by looking only at the last 80 years of the Republic and the first 80 years of the principate is simply cherry-picking the data. To judge the two systems, you have to look at the average year in both, not the worst years in one and the best years in the other. The last years of the Principate were far worse than the last years of the Republic.

If ever there was a Big Lie in Roman history, it was the self-serving notion put forward by the Julio-Claudians that they saved the world from an unstable system. Fortunately for us, we have Broughton's "Magistracies of the Roman Republic." Now we can evaluate the claim for ourselves. Try it home: Count the number of peaceful transitions of consuls under the republic and divide by the total number of consuls; then count the number of peaceful transitions under the principate and divide by the total number of emperors. When you do this, you will see that it simply was not the case that the principate brought stability to an unstable system. It is obviously true that the republic was replaced. But it was replaced by a less stable system. This surely can't be news to you--modern historians have been advocating this view at least since Erich Gruen's masterpiece, "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic". I certainly don't wish to argue that the Republic needed no change as it acquired more territory. But almost all of the necessary changes simply amounted to expanding their already extant policies in Italy to newly acquired territories. This is a very far cry from requiring one-man rule. I realise Phil that you despise representative government and yearn for dictatorship (unless you've changed your mind since your last post expressing this opinion); however, it's best to keep these proclivities from interfering with your ability to do the math.

I understand your point about poets seeing themselves as 'seers' strongly implying that one of the functions of the shamans was as a poet/story-teller (in addition to being a drug-dealer/healer). That's not an unimportant function by any means (I love Roman poetry!), but I do think it's independent of the religious function. True, the stories told by poets often were riffs on the mythology (like the story of Icarus), but the very variability of the mythology undercuts its potential as a monolithic source of religious authority (unlike, say, Hebrew mythology which was canonized). I wonder if the evolution went from shaman to mysteries to public religion. Seems like the mysteries fulfilled functions of both the shamans and the priests, but I don't know of any evidence that would put the origins of the mysteries prior to that of formal religion and posterior to that of shamanism.

I think shamans were simply ancient drug-dealers (including healing drugs), and the rest was for show. Paracelsus, I think, said he learned everything he knew about medicine from the witches, and it seems likely to me that once the various functions of the shamans became independent professional specialties, the uselessness of the shaman's religious mumbo-jumbo became increasingly more apparent. I'd also like to challenge the notion that religion offers some sort of unique cultural experience. There are plenty of substitutes now and historically, including museums, dance, theater, sports, and the like. I think a Rome without Roman sculpture, architecture, theater and sports would have been much less Roman-feeling than a Rome without Sanctified Bird-watchers and Holy Barbeques.

Everything before the "and" made sense, so I'll address that (is English not your first language?) Abolishing the politician general would have been a great reform. Generals make lousy politicians, and politicians seldom make decent generals. Still, I don't see how this reform could have worked in the Roman context.

Then you'd probably like Cicero's De Officiis. I'd also point out that each of these traditional values are questionable--they might be right, they might be wrong. One purpose of philosophy is to sort out these kind of issues. For example, pietas to what? To one's family? To one's freedom? To the freedom of one's neighbor? What if these pieties conflict? The traditional code offers no guidance at all. I think the only way to make a virtue-ethics work is by providing some sort of hierarchical structure to the virtues by reference to an overarching standard and purpose. Without this, any list of candidate virtues is bound to face the problem of conflicting goals. If our goals are in conflict, we dont' know what to do, and if we don't know what to do, we're just playing by the seat of our pants, and avoiding this is the whole point of having virtues in the first place.

The case that has been made against the principate has not depended on the desire to avoid the evil character of the Emperors themselves. This isn't an illegitimate goal, but it's not the central reason for preserving the republic. The central problem of the principate is that it has no supervening mechanism of accession, leading to violent conflict during the interregna. And the point isn't even that civil wars were necessary to resolve issues of succession but that the LIKELIHOOD of these wars was made necessary by one-man rule. Therefore, the point that there were large swaths of time without civil war is a red herring: there were still many, many MORE years of civil war during the principate than during the republic.

To prevent topic-creep (and especially a replay of the optimate-populare bake-off), I want to postpone the matter of who did and did not advocate the reforms that were necessary to make the republic work. On what was needed: Given Sparta's military successes with two kings, why would it be necessary to abolish the co-consulship? When did divided executive authority undermine Roman ability to respond to threats? If there were crises that required one consul to take charge, the senate had the power to authorize the move temporarily--so why make it permanent? But Pompey didn't need to be a dictator to deal with the pirates, so I don't see how his example supports your claim. If the senate is merely the body of ex-magistrates, senatorial opposition to provincial candidates to the magistracy is moot as long as provinicials have the opportunity to run for office and to have their votes counted in proportion to their numbers. Probably, voting laws needed to be reformed for this to happen, and the office of the censor had to be eliminated. However, with these changes having been made, Roman senators could huff all they'd like about the New Men, but it wouldn't make any difference. But what exactly would this entail? Moreover, did the Republic need to evolve from a municipal government into an imperial government, or did it simply need to become a nation-state? That is, did the city of Rome itself have to subjugate all other cities to maintain its own freedom, or could it serve as the princeps of a nation of cities, each of whose citizens had rights that were equal to those of the Roman mob? I think the Republic simply needed to evolve into a nation-state rather than into an Imperial power. Here's a list of reforms that I think could accomplish this while preserving the republican form of government: (1) reform of the voting laws to prevent exclusion of provincial participation (on the model employed in Macedonia), (2) limiting the duties of the censor to regular census-taking (on the model practiced under Augustus), (3) legal rights extended throughout all newly acquired territories (on the model proposed by Fulvius Flaccus), (4) modernization of the public financial records (on the model employed by Cato in Cyprus) (5) recruitment of soldiers, military support, and veteran's benefits being provided exclusively by the Senate and/or lower magistracies according to pre-defined legal standards, and (6) temporary public-ownership of all slaves acquired in the course of military campaigns so that they could be sold at public auctions held throughout the empire with all revenues being transferred to the public treasury (on the model used for the distribution of conquered land). As far as I can tell, these six reforms would incorporate provincial interests into state-wide government, increase government revenues by recapturing the rents charged by publicani, reduce provinical exploitation by corrupt governors and thereby increase provincial wealth and potential for military self-help, reduce magisterial corruption, and prevent the formation of client-armies. Taken together, I think these six reforms would allow for a stable republic to stretch from the Danube to the Pillars of Heracles and from the Shetlands in Scotland to the sands of the Sahara. Am I missing any reforms?

These aren't mutually-exclusive positions, Virgil. It's possible that the mind was shaped to be religious *because* it offered a political advantage. Historically, religious belief has correlated with increased status and therefore sexual access; we also know that religiosity (like suggestibility and empathy) is heritable; therefore, as long as religious belief confers status, it is biologically likely to predominate in the population over time. To increase the prevalence of atheism through a similar biological mechanism, it would be important to improve the reproductive potential of atheists by undercutting the social status of religious belief (e.g., through ruthless mockery) and by increasing the status of non-religious belief (e.g., through money, power, and prestige). Whether this evolutionary scenario is correct or not, I don't know. But it is possible that both of you are correct--religion exists for both political and biological reasons.

Not for scientisists it isn't.

On Stoicism, I disagree with my namesake. Lucretius' philosophy seems much more on track to me.

Why? I thought ursus was Latin for bear.

I mostly agree with Skarr, but insofar as ignorance is a necessary part of growing up, won't there always be religious zealots eager to indoctrinate the young with their dogma? And if so, how many generations will it take before people get wise to this game?

As thinking people, we have beliefs about knowledge, about what is right and wrong, and about the nature of the world. Which Roman philosopher's views do you find to be most compatible with your own?

Get a Mac!

Thought you might enjoy a photo I took while in Rome this summer. Note the focal point: the Roman Senate building, still standing while the Basilica Julii is in ruins. Yes!

Didn't the liberators meet at Servilia's house afterwards? I think I read that in a primary source somewhere or another. Anybody else have a similar recollection? PS This thread needs to be moved from the Army forum.

Absolutely! Judging by the success of consular successions, I think there was about a 92% chance of getting a peaceful transition to further constitutional rule during the republic. That's definitely better than 50% (coin flip), and also much better than the principate where the chances of even getting a lawful succession drop to roughly 40% (if my sources are right and i'm counting correctly).

American religious broadcaster and all-around wacko Pat Robertson was talking to God recently (or at least stopped taking his meds), when Robertson learned that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was caused by the Vengeance of God. Apparently God is none-too-pleased about the Likud-founder/bolting prime minister "dividing God's land" . No word from Robertson yet about why God was OK with Saladin and his little capture of Jerusalem. Maybe God just likes turbans. Or maybe Pat Robertson isn't really the question-asking type.

I remember the sculpture from a class on Greek art, so I'd be sort of surprised if Caesar had it commissioned (among other reasons).

Huh?