M. Porcius Cato

The early history of Rome is murky, but the exclusion of plebs from public office apparently led to a century or more of civil strife. Expanding the civil rights of plebs was a long process, leading to many compromises that (1) shaped the list of magistracies that we take as canonical, including the office of pratetor urbanus and curule aedile (originally, set-asides for patricians after the magistracies were opened to plebs), and (2) provided for a set of checks and balances within the system (e.g., the traditional check by the senate on the proposals brought to the people for vote, the check by the people as a whole on the magistrates that comprised the senate, the check by the censors on the senate roll, etc). These checks and balances had the effect of stabilizing the Republic from the shifting winds of popular sentiment (e.g., from perpetual agitation for debt relief and land reform), thereby providing stability that allowed for the long-term planning and capital accumulation necessary for large-scale projects (e.g., the construction of the Roman road networks and aqueducts). On the other hand, the stability of the constitution also meant that adaptation to novel conditions (e.g., the acquisition of new provinces) was never as fast as some desired (e.g., in the enfrachisement of the Italian allies).

Roman urban water technology. Cool!

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The problem, JR, is that if you regard morality as subjective, then 'rights' are a meaningless concept. If you truly accept this premise, then you should expect our indifference when you are mugged. "Hey, maybe that's just your mugger's culture!" In contrast, if you regard humans as moral ends in themselves--and not means to others' ends--then a basic syllogism follows: All humans possess certain unalienable rights; Africans are humans; therefore, Africans possess unalienable rights. Given that the whole function of the American government is to protect these rights, any American government that fails to do so--that makes slaves of its citizens--loses its legitimacy and is rightfully destroyed by Americans. Now, as a subjectivist, what is your objection? If you were consistent, you shouldn't condemn the North at all. After all, maybe it's "just our culture" to insist on human rights.

Funny--I had just finished reading that review on the BMCR web site before navigating to UNRV.

The northern states had or would soon have sufficient votes to outlaw slavery outright. The right of Congress to pass laws protecting human rights--even unenumerated rights--lies in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The status of Africans as human is an objective fact, and it implies that they are not and cannot be held as property. Thus all laws prohibiting kidnapping, torture, murder, and the rest would logically entail the abolition of slavery. Yes, it's true that some Southern aristocrats found nothing immoral with slavery--but they were pigs. It's also true that some Germans found nothing immoral about gassing Jews, and vast numbers of people found nothing wrong about confiscating the property of the 'bourgeoisie' and starving them to death--but the Nazis and Communists were pigs too. And pigs have no right to govern men. Firing on Fort Sumter was an act of treason. There was absolutely no Constitutional mechanism for South Carolina to secede. Lincoln had every right to have all the rebel commanders hung. A nation or a state that violates basic human rights--and slavery IS a violation of basic human rights--loses any moral sanction to govern. On this, see the Declaration of Independence: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e., securing human rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..." A slave state is certainly a "Form of Government [that] becomes destructive" of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and thus for any American, "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

They had equal rights. What are you talking about?

Yes, they did. They had every legal right to outlaw slavery in the US, and they certainly had every moral right. In contrast, the South had no moral right whatever to keep slaves, and their secession was illegal.

In defense of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally included a passionate assault on slavery and the slave trade in the list of grievances against the king. Nor was this Jefferson's opinion alone. Paine, Adams, Franklin and many other Founders were violently opposed to slavery and wished to find a practicable way to abolish it.

I'm not a fan of the game where we find random similarities between the US and Rome. BUT, I think there are clear influences of Roman literature and civilization on the American republic. For fun, here's a bit of real graffiti from Philadelphia (story HERE):

There are a number of competing theories. Summarizing the reconstruction by Livy et al., Forsythe (A Critical History of Early Rome, p. 147) writes: According to the ancient literary tradition, Rome's last king, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), was a cruel tyrant. He murdered Servius Tullius, usurped royal power, oppressed the senate, and worked the Rome people to exhaustion by making them labor on the sewer system of the Cloaca Maxima which drained the runoff from the hills into the Tiber. He even used underhanded means to quell opposition throughtout Latium in order to make himself the leader of the Latin League. His downfall, however, resulted from the outrageoous conduct f his wicked son Sextus. His rape of the viertuous Lucretia and her consequent suicide so angered the Roman people that they rose up in revolt, banished the Tarquin royal family from Rome, and replaced the king with two annually elected consuls and a priest called the rex sacrorum, who held his office for life. By a (suspiciously) remarkable coincidence, this revolt occurred in 510 BC, the same year the tyrant Hippias had been driven out of Athens (also stemming in part from a tyrant's botched love-affair). Also, in 304 it was established that 204 annual nails had been hammered in the cella wall of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, implying that the temple had been dedicated in 509 or 508. Moreover, an inscription on the outside wall of the temple, taken as a foundation stone, named the official after whom the year was named--Marcus Horatius, the same name as one of consuls supposed to have held office in the second year of the Republic. (In fact, the Marcus Horatius named was a descendent who renovated the temple in 378.) Thus, the beginning of the Republic was based on a correctly calculated date combined with a case of mistaken identity. Here's another reconstruction (quoting again from Forsythe, p. 148): A. Alfoldi (1965, 72-84) has offered a compelling picture of the event that might have brought about the end of the Roman monarchy. Following in the footsteps of earlier modern critics olf the ancient tradition surrounding the beginning of the republic, Alfoldi has argued that the monarchy ended as the result of the capture of Rome by King Porsenna of Clusium. Tarquinius Superbus either could actually have been deposed by Porsenna, or he could have fled from Rome after Porsenna's defeat of the Romans and advance upon the city. Tarquin then took refuge among the Latins, while Porsenna used Rome as a bridgehead in an attempt to expand his control in Latium. This situation resulted in the battle of Aricia in 504 BC, in which the invading Etruscans, led by Porsenna's son Arruns and supported by the occupied city of Rome, fought against the other Latin states, which received important military assistance from Aristodemus of Cumae. When the latter were victorious, Porsenna withdrew from Rome, and the Romans were left to face alone a coalition of the other Latin states, who supported Tarquin's restoration as king. Eventually this standoff was resolved in the battle at Lake Regillus of either 499 (Livy 2.19-20) or 496 BC (Dion Hal 6.2.ff), in which Rome defeated the Latins or at least fought them to a draw, and Tarquinius Superbus went into exile at the court of Aristodemus, who was now tyrant of Cumae.

Sounds right to me: the Grachhan reforms, esp those of G Gracchus, broke the system of checks and balances that had been in place. With the equites having a monopoly on the courts, they could--and did--put their extortionate tax-farming operations outside the law. So much for the nonsense that the Gracchi were out for the "little guy". (In my view, they each wanted revenge on the Senate: Ti Gracchus to avenge his father's treatment, G Gracchus to avenge his brother's. Most everything else was a thinly-veiled cover.) In contrast, Livius Drusus was a real reformer: his carefully-crafted proposals would have re-established the checks and balances that had been destroyed by the Gracchi and would have transformed Italy into an authentic nation-state.

This is really great Pertinax. Just yesterday I was thinking, "Why don't the museums recreate whole rooms?" If you encounter any new furniture in Pompeii, do share your photos with the immobile vulgus.

For the most part he did. It just took him a bit longer to do the job, and the death of many opponents was masked by the fact that they occurred in battle. Just to underline PP's point, you can look at the number of individuals killed during Sulla's proscriptions versus Caesar's civil war: In this chart, each dot represents one individual named in the sources as having been killed in proscriptions, civil war, riots, and so forth. It's true that we have much more source material for the period after Sulla than for the period before, but this is largely offset by the fact that the data in the chart doesn't make use of Cicero's voluminous correspondence (yet). BTW, my chart is just a fancy visualization of the hard work by PP. See his excellent Political Violence in the Late Republic.

There's a new service from Wowio.com that allows users to download books for free. The selection is limited but a few title on Rome are available, including: The Age of the Gladiators: Savagery & Spectacle in Ancient Rome Rupert Matthews Rome in Africa Susan Raven The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars AD 226-363 Michael H. Dodgeon and Samuel N.C. Lieu (Eds.) Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars AD 363-628 Geoffrey Greatrex and Samuel N.C. Lieu (Eds.) 69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors Gwyn Morgan Tools of the Ancient Romans: A Kid's Guide to the History and Science of Life in Ancient Rome Rachel Dickinson The Roman Philosophers Mark Morford Being a Roman Citizen Jane F. Gardner

But without both sides you don't get any views to be at odds with. What you appear to be saying is that you don't like 'traditional history', you like 'history' that is argumentative. Surely that's not the attitude of a historian? You seem to assume that all alternative "sides" have already been discovered (by whom I wonder, if not historians?), and historians are merely to regurgitate the arguments that others have presented. I'd say that that's not history--it's elementary school. My view is that the job of an ancient historian (inter alia) is to discover novel re-constructions of events that better fit new and old information. That certainly is the attitude of great historians, like Momssen, Munzer, Meier, Hopkins, Syme, Millar, Brunt, Gruen, and Rosenstein. Each of these figures presented bold new appraisals of the available evidence in light of novel advances in fields like philology, prosopography, archaeology, sociology, economics, demographics, and so on. Out of context, my statement appears too sweeping. To be clear, Goldsworthy seems a fine military historian; his reconstruction of the battle of Cannae in light of the topography was both novel and highly ingenious. So, I'm certainly not trying to question Goldsworthy's talents generally. Rather, what I said was that Goldsworthy ignored much of the evidence on Caesar's career from Cicero's letters; these letters form the critical "intellectual ammunition" needed to enter into the large controversies on Caesar's career, which Goldsworthy generally avoids. For example, Goldsworthy appears to accept uncritically that Caesar's civil war was motivated by Caesar's desire to avoid prosecution. The counter-argument comes from evidence from Cicero's letters, which detail Caesar's peace offers to Pompey (which was to enter Rome as a private citizen, to run for the consulship for the standard time of two weeks, and thereby placing himself at total risk of prosecution), as well as the fact that Cicero had never heard from Caesar that he was motivated by the desire to avoid prosecution (Cicero thought Caesar had gone mad). This is just one example of a hot-button issue that Goldsworthy side-steps completely. Others include his agnosticism regarding the role of clientele in Roman politics, the extent to which "factions" were sufficiently stable to influence long-term policies in Rome, whether Caesar's career is continuous with previous legislative agendas or not, etc. For 'exciting', see above. I certainly don't think all of these historians were necessarily correct, but they all provided an analysis that was novel and generalizable (e.g., the prosopographical approach could be applied to any historical period, not just ancient Rome). In this, the historians I mention were not just good classicists, but good historians.

Example? He sure doesn't take this tack with the lex Iulia agraria, which he describes as a perfect piece of legislation that could not be improved at all. Absolutely! That's why I'm not a fan of Goldsworthy--his account is boring and pedestrian. In contrast, I like authors to present a consistent and coherent view of historical events, that IS at odds with others' opinions but not any of the facts. That's the fun of ancient history. The jigsaw puzzle is missing pieces, and there are alternative possibilities about what the missing pieces are and thus how it all fits together.

While a statesman can be divisive without being great, I don't see how a statesman could be great without being divisive. Can you name any statesmen who undertook momentous domestic reforms who was not divisive? Moreover, under what scenario would a system of oppression be opposed by the oppressors themselves? Whether Lafayette, Lincoln, Alexander II, Yeltsin, or Mandela, agents for freedom typically encounter violent opposition from the privileged parasites they seek to overthrow.

I think the most important book on Caesar is Meier's. He understands the full political context much, much better than Goldsworthy, who I think perennially runs from historical fights because he hasn't the intellectual ammunition to stake out a ground and defend it. Also, on purely military issues, I found J.F.C. Fuller's discussion of Caesar's campaigns to be highly illuminating.

Let's suppose that your observation is correct. How does this observation lead to a criticism of Lincoln? It wasn't Lincoln who fired on Fort Sumter. Had the South been ruled by reason and had not resorted to initiating an armed rebellion, your list of ills could have been avoided.

I don't share his evaluation of Caesar, but--more fundamentally--I don't agree with his approach to source materials. First, his approach is to treat competing source materials as if they were merely supplementary. That is, to simply take all available accounts of an event, purge them of obvious local contradictions, and then report them all as if one historical source could supplement the details lacking in another account. The problem with this approach is that it yields non-local contradictions in the historical narrative. I've given an example in an earlier thread re: Goldsworthy's account of the lex Iulia agraria and lex Iulia agraria Campania. Second, I think Goldsworthy relies far to little on Cicero's letters for evidence, and he relies far too much on Caesar's own writings and those of his followers. The simplest explanation for this is that Cicero's letters are not easy reference materials (historical bombshells often occurring in asides on other matters), and it's not economical to focus on these when you're attempting to put out another book every 11 months. So--Yes, I don't share Goldworthy's opinion of Caesar, but that's probably due to a difference in our reading of the facts themselves.

Graduate classes in the US typically involve very little lecture and a great deal of discussion. If students read material reliably, all classes could focus on the evaluation and discussion of materials.

Here's a nice interview with Goldsworthy.

Are you suggesting that the federal government couldn't legally abolish slavery? I don't see why not. The Constitution places clear limits on what states may do. For example, states may not negotiate foreign treaties, regulate trade with other states, or deprive US citizens of the right to vote. What counts as a US citizen is also not up to individual states to decide. Thus, if Congress decides that all US-born humans--regardless of sex or ancestry--are citizens, states have no Constitutional basis for interfering with that.

Both Latin and Greek are necessary for reading primary source materials on ancient Rome. Additionally, there is a vast secondary literature that is only available in German and French. Proficiency in both ancient languages as well as German would be a real asset. Re: graduate programs. Choose your potential mentors first, then focus on the school. I was very lucky to have found a graduate mentor who was a good fit for my scholarly interests, but many are not so lucky. Take luck out of the equation by pro-actively identifying who will be a good fit. So, if you want to focus on the Roman Republic, identify the leading scholars working today (e.g., Erich Gruen at Berkeley), and apply there. Also, ace your GREs.