M. Porcius Cato

Sure, that's possible. Cicero didn't seem to think Caesar was involved, though Catulus charged him. It's possible that Catulus was just sore about recently losing to Caesar in the election for pontifex maximus. It's also possible that Catiline, who approached Crassus, also approached Caesar, who said nothing about the event despite its importance. Secondary sources typically report that Caesar was under a cloud of suspicion, but nothing more definitive is ever raised. Not that I'd put it past Caesar.

By that standard, nothing in ancient history will ever impress you.

You don't think Caesar was involved in the trial of Caius Rabirius? Not surprising--it's only attested to by all our sources.

The original stats were computed from the base probability of somebody being named Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Mary Magdalene, etc., and the probability of those common names (except Mary Magdalene, which was Greek) being combined by chance so that they formed just the relationships found in the tomb and in the Gospels. The resulting figure was astonishingly low, indicating that it was very unlikely that these four names just happened to be found together and to match the relations in the Gospels. The problem is that the key step in the calculation depends on the four names being found together, but in fact (and this wasn't revealed initially) the connection among the names couldn't be validated by any archaeological evidence due to mishandling of the tomb materials. We have a thread on this somewhere else.

The two events occurred in the same year. In Cassius Dio's history (Dio Cass 37.26'1-28'4, 37'2), the trial of Rabirius comes first, thereby setting up the rationale for suspecting Caesar's involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy. Same in Suetonius (Suet:Caes_12'1).

The hydrocarbon that is the most likely candidate is ethylene, which has the fragrant odor described by Plutarch and has been cited by previous scholars. The cognitive effects of ethylene depends greatly on the dosage. At low levels (90% O2/10% ethylene), the Pythia would have experienced only mild euphoria; at moderate levels (82-90% O2), the clarity of her speech and alertness would be affected; at higher levels (64-82% O2), she would have been fatigued, belligerent, illogical, and seeing things; still higher levels would have resulted in loss of consciousness and death. Given these numbers, whether the Pythia muttered gibberish or answered questions articulately probably depended on the concentration of ethylene in the closed, confined space in which she worked and how long ago she had last gone out for some fresh air.

Don't you think that the law ascribed to Numa (whose reign is super-sketchy) sounds suspiciously similar to the seisichtheia of Solon (for whom we have much more reliable evidence)? BTW, a good book on Solon is "Solon the Thinker" by John Lewis.

Cannae, also by Adrian Goldsworthy, provides the best discussion of that battle that I've seen in print.

For what it's worth, Tacitus relates the same rumor in the Annals, where he describes the opposing views on Augustus' legacy expressed at his funeral.

Nice list. 5 Feb 46: In Utica, Cato commits suicide in protest of Caesar's victories.

So, in your view, Tacitus was wrong that there were two views about Augustus? That, in fact, there was only one view--that is, unanimous praise for the butcher of Perusia? That's very difficult to believe. If that's not your view, what alternative interpretation should we be "careful" not to overlook?

Why not ask what the Romans thought of Augustus? In recording the funeral of Augustus in his Annals, Tacitus records two opinions expressed by those in attendance. On the day of the funeral soldiers stood round as a guard, amid much ridicule from those who had either themselves witnessed or who had heard from their parents of the famous day when slavery was still something fresh, and freedom had been resought in vain, when the slaying of Caesar, the Dictator, seemed to some the vilest, to others, the most glorious of deeds. "Now," they said, "an aged sovereign, whose power had lasted long, who had provided his heirs with abundant means to coerce the State, requires forsooth the defence of soldiers that his burial may be undisturbed." Then followed much talk about Augustus himself, and many expressed an idle wonder that the same day marked the beginning of his assumption of empire and the close of his life, and, again, that he had ended his days at Nola in the same house and room as his father Octavius. People extolled too the number of his consulships, in which he had equalled Valerius Corvus and Caius Marius combined, the continuance for thirty-seven years of the tribunitian power, the title of Imperator twenty-one times earned, and his other honours which had either frequently repeated or were wholly new. Sensible men, however, spoke variously of his life with praise and censure. Some said "that dutiful feeling towards a father, and the necessities of the State in which laws had then no place, drove him into civil war, which can neither be planned nor conducted on any right principles. He had often yielded to Antonius, while he was taking vengeance on his father's murderers, often also to Lepidus. When the latter sank into feeble dotage and the former had been ruined by his profligacy, the only remedy for his distracted country was the rule of a single man. Yet the State had been organized under the name neither of a kingdom nor a dictatorship, but under that of a prince. The ocean and remote rivers were the boundaries of the empire; the legions, provinces, fleets, all things were linked together; there was law for the citizens; there was respect shown to the allies. The capital had been embellished on a grand scale; only in a few instances had he resorted to force, simply to secure general tranquillity." It was said, on the other hand, "that filial duty and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask. It was really from a lust of sovereignty that he had excited the veterans by bribery, had, when a young man and a subject, raised an army, tampered with the Consul's legions, and feigned an attachment to the faction of Pompeius. Then, when by a decree of the Senate he had usurped the high functions and authority of Praetor when Hirtius and Pansa were slain- whether they were destroyed by the enemy, or Pansa by poison infused into a wound, Hirtius by his own soldiers and Caesar's treacherous machinations- he at once possessed himself of both their armies, wrested the consulate from a reluctant Senate, and turned against the State the arms with which he had been intrusted against Antonius. Citizens were proscribed, lands divided, without so much as the approval of those who executed these deeds. Even granting that the deaths of Cassius and of the Bruti were sacrifices to a hereditary enmity (though duty requires us to waive private feuds for the sake of the public welfare), still Pompeius had been deluded by the phantom of peace, and Lepidus by the mask of friendship. Subsequently, Antonius had been lured on by the treaties of Tarentum and Brundisium, and by his marriage with the sister, and paid by his death the penalty of a treacherous alliance. No doubt, there was peace after all this, but it was a peace stained with blood; there were the disasters of Lollius and Varus, the murders at Rome of the Varros, Egnatii, and Juli." The domestic life too of Augustus was not spared. "Nero's wife had been taken from him, and there had been the farce of consulting the pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived and not yet born, she could properly marry. There were the excesses of Quintus Tedius and Vedius Pollio; last of all, there was Livia, terrible to the State as a mother, terrible to the house of the Caesars as a stepmother. No honour was left for the gods, when Augustus chose to be himself worshipped with temples and statues, like those of the deities, and with flamens and priests. He had not even adopted Tiberius as his successor out of affection or any regard to the State, but, having thoroughly seen his arrogant and savage temper, he had sought glory for himself by a contrast of extreme wickedness." For, in fact, Augustus, a few years before, when he was a second time asking from the Senate the tribunitian power for Tiberius, though his speech was complimentary, had thrown out certain hints as to his manners, style, and habits of life, which he meant as reproaches, while he seemed to excuse. However, when his obsequies had been duly performed, a temple with a religious ritual was decreed him.

Depictions of cavalry in art support the idea that the horses came in two sizes. In addition to the well-known depictions of the smaller type of cavalry mount, paintings of the neighboring Samnite warriors depict horses of the larger type: . This image is taken from a tomb in Paestum, an Italian town later allied with Rome and likely to have supplied Rome with her auxiliary cavalry (equites extraordinarii). A vase painting from 2nd cent BCE Capua shows similar proportions: .

Yes. The lectures by Garrett Fagan were excellent. He's a really marvellous teacher.

The "ex-" comes from the Latin for "out of" or "from". The financial uses above are related to the commercial uses of ex (e.g., ex warehouse, ex ship, ex elevator), which referred to the price paid for the good coming out of the warehouse, ship, elevator, etc (thus, without having to pay for the costs of storing the good in the warehouse, ship, etc).

I agree with Ursus. The factors listed by Mommsen were trivial: how on earth did "eating delicacies" cause Caesar to cross the Rubicon? It's absurd. What Mommsen lists are actually the effects of a strong and growing economy, not the causes of the fall of the republic.

Not only respected post mortem. Cicero and Cato had many admirers in their own lifetimes. Cato's reputation for honesty, for example, was the source of the phrase, "I wouldn't believe it even if Cato said it was so."

If the people didn't want to be cannon fodder, then they should have quit voting for magistrates that led them into new wars. The fact is that the Roman electorate loved to watch foreign rulers brought to Rome in chains, and so they voted for ruling elites that delivered them what they wanted. That's democracy -- it gives the people what they want, whether it's good for them or not.

I assume it means killed.

What are you talking about? There is no such thing as "the proconsul of the Roman state," only proconsuls of provinces. And Antony's allotted province was Macedonia, though Antony decided that he would rather have Decimus Brutus' province in Cisalpine Gaul. This is what led Antony to besiege Brutus at Mutina, which is what led the consuls Pansa and Hirtius to attack Antony. There was no "compromise" offered by Antony, only a one-sided demand. How's that? If you're talking about the confessed Catilinarian conspirators, then I assume you realize that they were guilty of conspiring with the Allobroges to attack Rome itself. You're certainly right to criticize Cicero's justification of Octavian's private army, but the comparison between Octavian and Catiline is stretched.

No need for the hypothetical--at Philippi, Octavian and Agrippa were so soundly whipped by Brutus that Octavian was left hiding in a swamp, waiting for Antony to save him. Without Antony, there would have been no Augustus.

Cato had been dead for two years in 44, so I doubt he could have contributed directly to the discussion of preventing another Caesar. But there was already discussion of what to do. First, there was Cicero's discussion of the ideal constitution in "On the Republic" and "On the Laws"--two enormously influential works in the history of political philosophy. These weren't purely abstract works either--he discusses practical as well as theoretical political matters. Second, there were concrete proposals coming from all sides. Even Antony had passed a law outlawing the dictatorship once and for all. So, Yes, I do think a constitutional solution would have evolved over time (probably not all at once, as Cicero's own vanity often got the better of his reason), and the enormous progress made in the previous centuries suggests that future solutions would have emerged as well.

That superb banquet was indeed one course too short, but to save the republic from another Caesar or Sulla, there had to be centralized, civilian control of the armies. Without that, nothing could prevent a putsch, and as soon as Marius was able to take control of the armies from the senate, the potential for civil war was available for any unscrupulous traitor to exploit.

This is a good question about an extremely complicated and contentious issue. Sources for this article would help enormously.

That the proceeds should be assigned to Ceres, Liber, and Libera is significant. These deities were strongly associated with plebeian interests, with the Temples of Ceres, Liber, and Libera being on the north slope of the Aventine Hill, the famous site of the Secession of the Plebs. (Some say that the Temple of Ceres was founded in the same year as the Secession of the Plebs.) The strong Ceres-plebeian connection is also indicated by the fact that the Temple of Ceres was the headquarters of the plebeian aediles, was where the records of the plebs were kept, and was the site from which frumentaria were issued. In many ways, Ceres was the patron goddess of the plebs.