M. Porcius Cato

I'd say! Did you pick up that expression in NC? I never heard it until I lived i TN for a couple of years. True enough. But killing your own girl??? That's really low. I knew a guy in college who was gung-ho to join the FBI. Scariest dude I ever met in my life. Really.

Having the British play Romans has a nice benefit though--different British pronunciations are strongly associated with class, which was obviously important in Roman society. Plus, you can have non-Roman Italians speaking a kind of affected, posh accent to indicate their attempt to appear more Roman than the Romans (like the pronunciation of the Iron Lady). How could you accomplish that with American pronunciation?

Ahhh...but which were the causes and which the effects? With the goal of preserving the republic, should latin rights have been expanded to all the provinces, including Sicily, Egypt, and Trouser-wearing Gaul? If so, how could that have worked, practically? Also, which agrarian laws would have reduced the patron-power of generals, and which would have only increased their patron-power?

Have you ever read Paul? "Slaves obey your masters"? "Wives obey your husbands"? Christianity did nothing to curtail patriarchy, and patriarchy ruled Europe until about the Industrial Revolution.

I've faithfully watched every episode of Sopranos, and I have to say it--I hope the FBI arrests Tony Soprano and his whole crew. After Christopher had Adrianna whacked, the Soprano family lost the last of my sympathy.

Perhaps, but then wouldn't this undermine the command structure considerably - if Junior officers were able to second guess their commanding officers ? Yes, if individual junior officers could second guess their commanding officers, it would completely undermine the command structure. However, if *all* the officers (or a very large majority of them) think the general has lost his marbles, they should be able to veto an action for further review, or something. Obviously, the defense of mutiny has a checkered history, but when it comes to marching on one's own capital, I think it's pretty darned likely that the mutiny is justified. yes, I do agree with this, but I remain concerned that the method of recruitment, supply, and so forth, go quite beyond mere veteran's benefits. BTW, has there been a thread on how soliders were recruited? My knowledge here is very patchy.

That's a really nice analogy--I can see it exactly. (Except the reincarnation thing of course.)

Very interesting. Of the factors you mentioned, which was most lacking in Russia--transparency, enforcement, or laws? Sorry--not to take the discussion off of Rome, let me rephrase that: of the factors you mentioned, which one do you think is most important to address in order to reduce corruption, and which do you think was most lacking during the Roman republic?

I'm not so sure about this--let's say the Senate had a standing policy of awarding X benefits. A general could always demand, and sometimes win, X+1 benefits--in fact it was very much in the general's interest to pretend that the benefits awarded by the senate were penurious, so he could increase his reputation as a "soldier's general" and gain all the credit for their benefits himself and thereby have an easier time raising an army in the future. Perhaps the key reform lay in how soldiers were equipped and supplied?

An evolution without change is a contradiction. This is a tautology, not an explanation. I'd suggest that your cynicism has affected your logic, and I'd strongly urge you to refrain from your anti-American criticism. It has no place in a discussion on Rome.

Yes, the Dying Gaul is very Hellenistic. Although I love the classical style too, the realism of the Hellenistic style always grabbed me a bit more--even if the subjects tended toward the tragic and even maudlin.

Good points. Am I correct to assume that plunder wasn't a very significant factor when Rome was doing battle on behalf of allies? Perhaps if the Senate had taken measures to prevent campaigns of conquest on some sort of equitable basis (i.e., not playing favorites with one general over another), they might also have prevented the rise of the client armies. What about the notion that Marius' opening the legions to the proletariat created the client army? It doesn't seem to me that the prior wealth of the soldier was as large a force as the other factors mentioned in creating dependence on generals. Thoughts?

This portrait always elicted my sympathy for the Gauls more than my contempt for their weakness. How do you think Romans reacted?

It's interesting that in both Caesar's and Sulla's marches on Rome, it was only the officers who deserted. Perhaps if junior officers had greater collective power, they might prevent rebellion. I'm not saying that junior officers are always right (in American history, it was a group of junior officers who attempted to make George Washington king), but they might raise the cost of rebellion somewhat. Alternatively, if junior officers had greater authority among their legionnaries , they might also prevent a rebellion. Ideas?

I don't think all humans are inherently corrupt enough to render a state inoperative, but I do agree that there are enough humans are in all societies that there have to be safeguards to prevent the most potentially corrupt people from ruining their government. At least I think this is the lesson from reform efforts in modern "banana republics"--perhaps Virgil might be able to comment on this with more authority.

IMO, the feature distinguishing gut-level tribalism from deliberate racism is the issue of innate potential. Namely, can children born to parents of a "bad"-tribe but raised in a "good" tribe ever rise as far or be as good or have the same abilities as children born to parents of a "good" tribe and raised in a "good tribe". If ancient Romans were anything like modern Mongolian tribesmen, Yucatec farmers, or even American preschoolers, it's likely that they would answer that children born to Roman parents had an innate advantage over children born to barbarian parents even if both were brought up as Romans. That's racist--but it's simply the way people reason about all kinds of biological kinds (see e.g., the story of the ugly "duckling"). To call Roman society, racist, by the way, isn't much of a cultural criticism. Racism is endemic to all human cultures and you can find it even more strongly in children than adults, suggesting that racist attitudes aren't something that they pick up from the wider society (like learning to spell).

What in Hades is this thread doing in the Imperium Romanorum? This is a completely modern question about ownership of artifacts. The issue of whether Rome is a "Eurpopean" thing is a red herring. PS rvmaximus--spell-check!

Neither the similarity of the republic to the monarchy nor the similarity of the prinicipate to the republic demonstrate that each form of government served a purpose at their time. This is an utter non sequitur. If the monarchy served its purpose at the time, what exactly was that purpose? Whose purpose? Did it do so better than the alternatives? It's as if you assume that whatever exists (and whenver it exists) is for the best, which is simply intellectual laziness. It may be true that what existed *was* for the best--but one cannot *assume* that it was merely from the fact that it existed. The evidence must come from the consequences of the change, not the incrementality of the change.

But again, if Soldier loyalty could be to the Senate and People, rather than an individual general, you wouldn't need a military court. It also seems that even if the Senate gave assurance to soldiers based on service, a general would just outdo them if he wanted to buy loyalty. So how would you increase soldier loyalty to the Senate and People of Rome? It's interesting that even in Caesar's army, there were those who abandoned him when he crossed the Rubicon. Were there any similar desertions when Sulla marched on Rome? This might provide a clue as to what reforms might work.

Why? Judging by your interest in Roman History, you're surely not of the opinion that only "practical" topics are worthy of study, are you? Not to suggest that the Largest Prime Number in the Universe hasn't a practical application, but the practical applications came after people were already competeting to find super-big primes. I'd guess that most of what we know in science originally had no practical interest at all--people just wanted to know how stuff worked, and after they did, they could play with it in lots and lots of ways.

But again, if Soldier loyalty could be to the Senate and People, rather than an individual general, you wouldn't need a military court. It also seems that even if the Senate gave assurance to soldiers based on service, a general would just outdo them if he wanted to buy loyalty. Good point. Perhaps the only check on an ambitious general is another ambitious general (or two or three).

So, your suggestion would be, perhaps, to limit tribunician power? I would say, find a way to increase the legions' loyalty to the state as well. This could be done in a number of ways. Stricter control over the entire military system by the senate (well, in this case, what's left of it) is necessary, but does little to actually increase loyalty. Instead, it handles the problem of the wayward generals. In order to increase the loyalty to Rome it would first have to be discerned what exactly is making the men disloyal to the state. Those problems could then have been addressed. It could be something as simple as better rations, on increased wages, which would boost morale. Hmmmm.... I'm not so sure increasing wages alone would increase loyalty to the republic itself. After all, if the legions come home to find that their farms are in disarray and that their farms on depleted Italian soil can't compete with the newly conquered provincial farms, wouldn't they be loyal to whomever can win them another farm? Since this was normally their general, legionnaries would still have their primary loyalty to their general. Your overall strategy seems right, but it seems to me that standardizing veteran's benefits across generals removes the economic motivation for putting general over state. I agree completely, but here again we face the problem of how to prosecute generals who did things they should not have been rewarded for (see the Gallic Wars thread for my argument why Caesar--for one-- should have faced trial). How can you prosecute a general who has several legions at his disposal? Perhaps they should have had a military court?

I don't think we should go there cato, thats about as realistic, or possible, as the "Roman Legions vs Aztec Warriors" threads. I meant the question rhetorically, but if there are Roman Legions vs Aztec Warrior threads, I was inviting trouble, wasn't I? (That's a rhetorical question too).

That's right--and there are Carthaginians not far from Chicago too! http://www.carthage.lib.il.us/

But Polybius himself distinguished democracy from a republic when discussing the Roman form of government. So did James Madison. Surely we needn't apply the 'media nut-job' label to Polybius and Madison!