M. Porcius Cato

Nobility? Oligarchy? Aristocrats? Are we talking about the Roman republic or about 18th C. France? The Roman term nobiles translates as "the known": the nobiles were 'known' because their families were consistently ELECTED to magistracies by the public. Far from being an oligarchy, the nobiles failed to have even a majority of seats in the senate in Sulla's day, and Sulla himself opened up the senate to hundreds of New Men. Given the openness of the Roman republic to new men and its reliance on the votes of its citizens, the Roman republic was very different from the hereditary aristocracy of feudal Europe. Magistracies were not landed titles--they were one-year elected appointments.

Optimate and populare are not mutually exhaustive categories. Thus, simply showing that Sulla killed many populares doesn't make him an optimate. He can be part of neither category. If you want to ignore Cicero's definition of optimate, that's fine. Can you suggest an alternative definition that is consistent with actual Latin usage, that has the virtue of being applied in a straightforward manner, and that can actually be applied to a half-dozen or so cases? Cicero's definition can do all that.

Yea but people like Sulla were diehard Optimates following the path to no end. Sulla an optimate? I don't think so. As a political term, 'optimate' is an invention of Cicero: "Omnes optimates sunt qui neque nocentes sunt nec natura improbi nec furiosi nec malis domesticis impediti--The optimates are all those who are neither criminal nor of morally unsound character nor wild nor living adulterously." By that definition, Sulla was no optimate (nor popularis for that matter).

This sounds like Mommsen again. Since Mommsen's time, new archaeological evidence has shown evidence of widespread smallholdings (aka, peasant farming) before, during, and after (1) the import agreement with Sicily and (2) the Punic Wars. For a systematic look at this issue, see Nate Rosenstein's Rome at War. The idea that the Roman farmer was turning into landless proletarii is the biggest myth of the history of the middle republic (except maybe the one about Rome salting the earth at Carthage).

Lovely post, Faustus. I hadn't noticed that the Romans failed to distinguish between the rat and mouse, but of course you're right. Another page with more of Horace's satire (and a wonderful reading), see HERE.

Given that the revolt concerned a desire to be represented in Rome, it would make little sense to attack Rome itself. The best policy would be to eject Roman legions from Italian land, to deprive Rome of its provincial taxes/auxilia/infrastructure, and (most importantly) to cut off Roman access to Ostia. In 90, there was no way that Rome could have supported its population and army for very long without relying on its provinces, and the provinces could have used this dependence to strategic advantage.

Regarding Tiberius Gracchus: I think a decent case can be made for the idea that he was principally interested in sticking it to the senate to avenge the treatment of his father.

I agree completely. Thanks for the reference to Rubinstein's book.

Nonsense. During most of republican history (i.e., with the exception of the very early republic), consuls were elected by the Comitia Centuriata, not by the senate.

My favorite scene in HBO Rome is HERE.

Bibulus was married to Cato's daughter Porcia. Thus, Cato was Bibulus' father-in-law, not the reverse.

Goats were my first thought too, but that's just a guess. But maybe they just let it grow long (better for grass crowns that way).

The headline of the article, "Tomb of Cleopatra and lover..," made me wince. To think that Mark Antony is today known principally for being that Egyptian whore's lover...ugh.

His campaign against the Cilician pirates was revolutionary, was it not?

Here, we must confess, the Gauls had one up on the Romans: they used soap, instead of urine, to wash their clothes.

Full story HERE

I'm having difficulty telling. I compared this one with a few images found online and, while they all appear to have pretty much the same bearded features, the eyes seem different on this one. Wish we had a resident art history expert, but I think that's consistent with the idea that all the surviving Lucius Verus portraits were marble copies of the same bronze original. Because the bronze original would have had hollow eyes, the copyist would have had to improvise to drill pupils into the marble. (I think that earlier copyists didn't even bother with the drill--thus, not only are there no drilled pupils, but even the hair is rendered as shallower and thus looking less full and luxurious.)

Isn't this portrait of Lucius Verus just another copy of the original we've seen copied before?

But aren't those nearly the perfect imports since they're less profitable goods? Consider the iPod. Analysts find (see HERE) that although almost the whole shebang--the hard drive etc--is made in Japan and Korea, Americans take $163 of $299 off of each unit--despite the fact that the iPod and its sundry parts aren't even made or assembled in the US. Given this, wouldn't you rather be Apple than Toshiba? I sure would!

Actually, I quite love worcestershire sauce and the flavor that it imparts on food. And I do know how it's made! (I even made my own once...it came out fine, but it was a pain in the arse to get all the ingredients.) I'm with you on this one Doc, a splash of worcestershire sauce can turn an average meal into a great meal. What are some creative (and appetizing!) uses to which you put worcestershire?

The two goddesses mentioned were unfamiliar to me. I still don't have Hananeftis identified, but Ollototis is apparently a Celtic goddess, discussed HERE.

Output is measured in inflation-adjusted dollars and indexed for the first year. The fed reports concern only recent monthly changes, which still reflect near record levels of manufacturing output. Right now the Obama and Clinton camps are sniping at each other about the 'pain' in 'rust belt' states like Pennsylvania, which (last I checked) had an unemployment rate of 4.9%--a rate of employment that would be the envy of almost any industrialized nation on Earth--and a GDP comparable to the whole Netherlands.

Sulla added 4 praetors, but the courts were made permanent in 149. See PP's table.

With April 15 around the corner, I found myself suddenly interested in Roman taxes. How much did Roman citizens have to pay? How did the tax rate change over time? How did tax policy differ among the various grades of Roman cities? Unfortunately, I've found vastly contradictory information on the topic. For example, the UNRV article on Roman taxation reports that in the early days of the Republic, "The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% and sometimes would climb as high as 3% in situations such as war." In contrast, this article at Cato Journal reports a tax rate that is ONE HUNDREDTH of what is reported on our site, "In the earliest days of the Republic Rome's taxes were quite modest, consisting mainly of a wealth tax on all forms of property, including land, houses, slaves, animals, money and personal effects. The basic rate was just .01 percent, although occasionally rising to .03 percent. It was assessed principally to pay the army during war. In fact, afterwards the tax was often rebated (Jones 1974: 161)." Then there is the article on the Vectigalia in Smith's Dictionary, which alludes to a 1% sales tax imposed after the civil wars. What civil wars? Presumably the Sullan wars, since it's mentioned by Cicero (e.g., here)--but nothing about the tax appears in the UNRV article. In any case, if anyone has a good article on Roman taxation to recommend, I'd appreciate it.

I blogged earlier about the robust health of U.S. Manufacturing, so I was miffed to read that the word hadn't gotten out to the Washington Post, where Harold Meyerson recycles the same old myths in his critique of NAFTA. The amazing thing about the free-traders' arguments is that they never change. Today's free-trade commentaries make the same points as the pro-NAFTA editorials of 1993-94. Now, as then, bilateral trade is a win-win proposition for the peoples of both signatory nations. It raises living standards in developing nations. An educated American workforce has nothing to fear from competition. [...] Read these commentaries, and you'd never know that America has gone from being a nation that manufactured things to a nation that manufactures debt. Manufacturing (as Kevin Phillips points out in the forthcoming issue of the American Prospect, which I edit) accounted for 25 percent of America's gross domestic product in the 1970s but just 12 percent in 2006. Finance, which amounted to 12 percent of GDP in the '70s, amounted to 20 percent in 2006. Sigh. The figures presented are correct, but completely misleading. Yes, it's true that manufacturing accounts for less of the GDP than it used to--but that's not because manufacturing declined but because other sectors of the economy skyrocketed even faster than manufacturing did. The fact is that U.S. manufacturing output has TRIPLED (yes, TRIPLED) since the good old days of the 50s when manufacturing was king of the economy. Seems like the anti-free traders are attempting to revive manufacturing by manufacturing lies.