M. Porcius Cato

But can they be trained equally well to disobey authority when that authority is morally wrong? Rising to command a Gestapo goon-squad is one thing, rising to oppose one is something else entirely.

OK, Germanicus, that clears things up. I think there were three factors working together to produce men who are willing to push the limits of the constitution--that is, men like Marius, Caesar, and Sulla. The first factor is the meritless ambition produced by naive nativism. Caesar's weeping at the bust of Alexander may sound like a Plutarch-style legend, but I don't doubt it. In one of Cicero's best orations (against that half-witted father-in-law of Caesar, Lucius Calpurnius Piso), Cicero delightfully dumps scorn on the pretentions of the aristocracy, on their fawning over the "commendation of smoky wax images," and on the defeated candidate who weeps, "What shall I say to the images of my ancestors?" The notion that one's ancestors conferred some divine right upon these men--and Caesar and Sulla would have been first in line to drink the "Ancestry is Destiny" KoolAid--was a powerful factor in producing an ambition that cannot be defeated by evidence or by law. The second factor, related to the first, is the exclusivity of the Roman aristocracy. As long as advancement was produced by coalitions of blood-lines rather than merit (not mutually exclusive of course), the magistracies presented themselves as nearly an impenetrable thicket of family connections--just count the number of magistracies held by the patrician Claudii, Aemilii, Cornelii, and Valerii. And these noble families were merely the tip of the iceburg--beneath them were the 50+ patrician households who hadn't held office in ages, including the Julii and that mediocrity Servius Sulpicius Rufus whom Cicero defeated. Plebian families had to fight tooth and nail to cut through this thicket--among them, great champions of the Republic and inveterate enemies of the monarchy, including Catulus, Metellus Pius, Lucullus, Domitius, and Cato. Others plebes, however, including Pompey and Marius, were quite willing to toss aside the constitution for advancement, though notably not to the same degree as patricians such as Sulla and Caesar. To cut through the thicket of blood-lines, Pompey and Marius--unlike Cicero and Cato--relied on the force of arms rather than the power of persuasion. By this means, anyone of military talent or just dumb luck--whether degenerate patricians like Caesar and Sulla or new men like Marius and Pompey--could roll the dice and attain office. What prevented other great generals of frustrated ambition (such as the Scipii) from smashing the republic was simply their misplaced confidence that their aristocratic connections could ensure their political fortunes, much as it had for ages. When the old patrician families made it clear that this was not the case (qv the Gracchi) *and* they failed to recruit military talent to defend their interests, the stage was set for the rise of the politican generals, that is, men like Marius, Sulla, and Caesar.

How long did the bloodsports go on after Christianity was the state religion? Christ's message of peace and brotherhood was nothing the Hellenistic world hadn't heard before. If Aristotle's Ethics had been digested to one hillside talk and given in the form of parables, we'd probably have never heard of Jesus and the games would have discontinued anyway. In my opinion.

Spartacus himself probably hadn't much chance in Italy, but if he could have used his legendary leadership abilities to to unite the Germans... his chances would have been better. Slightly on-topic, but weren't the Bacaudae a bunch of slaves who successfully resisted Roman authority for a long time? It's late empire, so my knowledge is scant.

I agree with most of what Ursus said. Most people are conformists, are more servile than empathetic, and are thus prepared to commit the worst evils in obedience to authority. The famous experiments by Stanley Milgram, replicated in hundreds of cities across the globe, should convince everyone of this conclusion. If you're not familiar with the experiments, they went like this. First, a naive subject would enter the lab and be introduced to another person and the experimenter. Next, the experimenter would explain that the study was on the effects of punishment on learning. The subjects would draw slips of paper--one reading

My favorite mythical beast was Julius Caesar. Being deified, he does qualify, no?

That's the thing; they were apparently working hand in glove with each other, and the fact that Brutus was married to a young lady named Claudia, daughter of Appius Cladius, governor of Cilicia might signal a closer relationship then usual. Or it may be that Brutus' name was used to provide a veneer of respectability and authority to what Appius Claudius was doing and that Brutus had little knowledge at all of what his father-in-law was up to day-to-day (doubt very many of us do). Also, recall that Cicero's correspondence was in the hands of Octavian, and when he published Cicero's letters, Octavian had every motivation to depict Brutus in the worst light possible. After all, Brutus had soundly defeated the little Caesar in the first battle of Phillipi, and poor Little Caesar's feelings were hurt ever after. Consequently, any exculpatory evidence could have been excised. Furthermore, Cicero himself was a bit of a braggart who resented competition from the old families of the Republic, and Cicero would have been eager to highlight the contrast between his own governorship and that of his predecessor. Most importantly, however, Appius Claudius was tried on charges (and acquitted), yet Brutus was never charged at all. In light of all these facts, I'm hardly inclined to moderate my praise of the young man who struck a mighty blow against the forces of dictatorship and the rising tide of pernicious monarchism. By the way, what is this thread doing in the Military forum anyway?

Almost all spending by the state was on the military, so of course the direct costs of the dole were relatively insignificant. However, by forfeiting Egyptian taxes in lieu of grain, the effective cost of the dole was probably equal to that of all the taxes collected in Spain or any other wealthy province. One of these days, Virgil, I'd like you define "optimate" because you seem to use the term so flexibly it encompasses just about anyone (and at any time during Roman history) who opposes something you support. First off, while soldiers were away on campaign, their lands lay needlessly fallow. Putting those lands to use--with the owner's consent--was wise policy. However, property rights were not always protected (certainly not by populares!), and some soldiers had their lands expropriated by their neighbors. We have no idea how widespread this was (quite obviously not all the landless were veterans or even poor), nor do we know whether those who expropriated the land were optimates or populares. Second, the subsidy that T. Gracchus supported to help the victims of their neighbor's theft was vastly less expansive than the true dole used in later years. Your explanation of the dole as a kind of veteran's benefit fails to address the transformation of this temporary subsidy into the free-for-all, middle-class entitlement that it almost immediately became. By G Gracchus, senators were standing in line with everyone else for their share. So, let's immediately disabuse ourselves of the fancy that this dole was simply a reparation to dispossessed veterans. The question is how to alleviate even suddenly-affected areas. Frankly, we Americans SHOULD have heartburn over how we alleviate starvation. Our stupid solution is to pay American farmers for their grain, to be shipped thousands of miles away, and to be distributed for free. The alternative--paying regional farmers and distributors for their product, to be shipped along available local routes, and distributed freely among the affected--at least ameliorates the regional economic disruption caused by the free distribution of grain and provides aid more immediately. As is typical, American altruists are more interested in appearing to help the needy (including American farmers) than in actually doing anything to help get rid of the need. And what happens with this suddenly wealthier group of parasites? They gain a political upper hand, wield power over their honest neighbors, and start on a path of expropriation and waste that sends their nation further down the sink hole than ever before. This is the story all over Africa. As long as unproductive and armed parasites have unlimited power over the productive citizenry, no amount of foreign aid will ever be enough--as any Swiss banker could tell you.

From an Amazon reviewer: "This is a book which was written in 1927 and is very dated. The author has no foot notes and the book does not have a bibliography." Hmmm....again, not what I'm looking for. I mean, I can read Plutarch if that's all I'm after.

From the chief propaganda organ of the ruling Communist Party.... Perhaps we'll next learn that Falun Gong's meditation practices were behind the Catilinarean conspiracy?

Our innate mechanism for categorization partly explains the universality of racial prejudice, but only partly. All categorization gets you is the lumping of people into groups where individuals are treated as units and treating people with the same looks into the same kind. In addition, we must also have a mechanism for detecting causal relations, that is, not just a mechanism for lumping like-with-like, but also a mechanism for detecting like-generating-like. Without this, there is no reason why a racist would view (say) a child of an enculturated Roman as having less potential in a Roman environment than the child of a Roman who emulated barbarians. Without this, there would be no reason to worry so much over blood lines, of intermarriage, and so forth. Again, this mechanism is also adaptive insofar as it solves biological problems in which the same looks don't equal the same kind (e.g., camoflauge, mimicry, sexual dimorphism, aging, cosmetic surgery, and so forth).

Which town?

I saw this on Amazon too, but I was wondering whether anyone on this forum had read it and could recommend it.

According to the Christians, which cults were considered more sexually 'degenerate' than the Isis cult? Also, Ursus, what are your sources on the ancient Isis cult if I want to learn more?

I've been interested in Rome since I was a kindergartener (albeit a weird one), so I can't say I trace any interest in Rome to the movie Gladiator, but I do think the movie was significant for a few reasons. First, like the mini-series "I, Claudius", it wasn't the standard "sandals and swords" epic. Movies like "Antony and Cleopatra", "Quo Vadis," and even "Spartacus" never really get into the truly personal lives, goals, and conflicts of all their characters. In contrast, the fabulous speech by Commodus to Marcus Aurelius on the Stoic virtues was a perfect illustration of what Stoicism was not and what was at stake in promoting it among the aristocracy. Until Gladiator, the only premise animating Hollywoodized Roman Emperors seems to have been "Be bad." With cardboard characters like the Nero in Quo Vadis, who could care? Second, unlike most of the Cecile B. DeMille movies set in the ancient world, Gladiator did not have a single reference to the Biblical world. Consequently, Romans could be their full-throated, unapologetic, wonderfully pagan selves. From the opening battle sequence to the unveiling of the Colosseum, there was never any doubt who ruled the world and why--"ROME is the light" not some backwater Judaean mystic. Third, like LOTR after it, Gladiator exploited CGI to create a visually-rich historical world. Again, dressing everyone in white togas and sandals is box-office suicide simply because it is boring to watch, and even the otherwise interesting "I, Claudius" suffered from a visual palette that more-closely resembled a pajama party at the Playboy Mansion (not that I've ever been) than the epicenter of the "grandeur that was Rome". In the end, Gladiator managed to combine the best of what came before it, to avoid most of the tired cliches, and to foreshadow elements of even better movies to come. So, even if it doesn't lead to a second renaissance of Cicero-reciting schoolboys and Cato-admiring revolutionaries, it was a pretty damned good movie.

Can anyone recommend a really good book on Sulla? I'm looking for something that's narrative, up-to-date, and accurate. Works by scholars who regard archaeology, anthropology, and economics as passing fads in ancient history are not welcome.

Germanicus, what do you mean by "men like Sulla, Cicero, and Caesar"? What distinguishing common denominator did you have in mind?

I've ordered the book on Cicero, and I look forward to learning about the primary evidence in favor of the claims against Brutus. Disentangling Brutus' role from Appius Claudius' is obviously the critical issue here, and there's nothing in your posts that manage to do this. Again, it's merely another argument of guilt-by-association. However, even if all the claims were true, they in no way argue that Caesar was right to usurp life-long dictatorial powers, and so my opinion remains that Caesar deserved death and his assassins deserve our praise. Sic semper tyrannis!

There is every economic reason to think the grain dole would have INCREASED the threat of Roman starvation. If the state provides any commodity for free, demand skyrockets as people have no incentive to economize and restrain themselves. At the same time, farmers in Italy and elsewhere would have had no reason to transport their grain to Rome as long as the price in Rome is less than can be had elsewhere. If Rome were the only market for Italian grain, many farmers would have gone bankrupt, had to sell their farms, and would have thus crowded into Rome and ended on the dole themselves. Presumably, wealthier farmers could have survived the loss of Roman income, but they would have been foolish not to switch their production from grain to other goods. Thus, as soon as the supply from the state-run graineries ran out, the only grain available in Rome would have been the grain held by hoarders, and then there would have been little available grain within economical shipping distance to Rome. (A problem Rome "solved" by shipping all its grain from Egypt, thereby turning Egypt into the ancient world equivalent of a modern oil-state.) Most likely, there was always some sort of rationing system in place to contain these ill effects of the grain dole on the supply side. However, if you look at the history of the dole, it becomes clear that what started as a temporary subsidy (under the Gracchi) soon became an unmitigated addiction, a permanent drain on Roman resources, and a politically destabilizing force. The grain dole should have been eliminated, but few had the courage to deny the mob what they wanted (including Cato), and those who plagued Rome with this backwards policy were rewarded politically in their own day and still enjoy support today among the economically illiterate. (To any still suffering from the delusion that an economic short-fix such as free grain will alleviate starvation, I invite you to examine the effects of western aid to Africa, which is provides a test-case for the hypothetical effect of free grain on the alleviation of starvation.)

Pretty sure it was the Utica episode. I don't think even the gossipy Suetonius had anything about Octavian and incest. This was just weird--it didn't fit the character of Octavian or Octavia.

Pro Milone...Pro means what? For--doh! My bad. Forgot which side Cicero was on. Better take my meds.

Phil--Io Saturnalia! --Cato

Relevant to the protein discussion: Caesar's Gallic Wars (hat tip to Germanicus) mention that the troops ate lentils, a cup of which contains 18 g of protein. Presumably this was sufficient to keep the troops strong if not the very image of the muscle-bound gladiator. Thanks to all for your very enlightening comments.

Generally, I agree. My guess is that the Liberators avoided getting Cicero involved because they knew what a blabber-mouth he was and that they suspected he wouldn't have the stomach to follow through. Cicero, I think we can both agree, was a very fine lawyer and his rise was an accomplishment in its own, but he was never able to match his political vision with actions that were equally worthy. I admire the Phillipics as an eloquent (if belated) protest and a fitting (if now quixotic) attempt to prevent the permanent loss of Roman freedom, but Rome's need for a Washington was greater than its need for a John Adams or Patrick Henry.