M. Porcius Cato

Probably the most influential woman in American history was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." After this novel, the "peculiar institution" of enslaving blacks became the "abominable institution" of human slavery. Her impact is best summarized by the (apocryphal) quip attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who met her by saying, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

Good question. First, the primary distinction between curule and plebeian aediles is that patricians could not hold plebeian aedileships, and in the early republic, plebeians could not hold curule aedileships (or--if you go back far enough--any aedileship). Because plebeian aediles were the aediles of the plebs, they were elected by the concilium plebis, which was charged with electing tribunes of the plebs and plebeian aediles. Second, because patricians held special religious significance (viz., in bird watching), their offices also held special religious powers. Consequently, magistracies that possessed these religious powers were called "major magistracies" and those that did not were called "minor magistracies." This issue is taken up in Gellius (13), who quotes the augur Messala: In the edict of the consuls by which they appoint the day for the centuriate assembly it is written in accordance with an old established form: "Let no minor magistrate presume to watch the skies." Accordingly, the question is often asked who the minor magistrates are. On this subject there is no need for words of mine, since by good fortune the first book of the augur Messala On Auspices is at hand, when I am writing this. 4 Therefore I quote from that book Messala's own words: "The auspices of the patricians are divided into two classes. The greatest are those of the consuls, praetors and censors. Yet the auspices of all these are not the same or of equal rank, for the reason that the censors are not colleagues of the consuls or praetors, while the praetors are colleagues of the consuls. Therefore neither do the consuls or the praetors interrupt or hinder the auspices of the censors, nor the censors those of the praetors and consuls; but the censors may vitiate and hinder each other's auspices and again the praetors and consuls those of one another. The praetor, although he is a colleague of the consul, cannot lawfully elect either a praetor or a consul, as indeed we have learned from our forefathers, or from what has been observed in the past, and as is shown in the thirteenth book of the Commentaries of Gaius Tuditanus; for the praetor has inferior authority and the consul superior, and a higher authority cannot be elected by a lower, or a superior colleague by an inferior. At the present time, when a praetor elects the praetors, I have followed the authority of the men of old and have not taken part in the auspices at such elections. Also the censors are not chosen under the same auspices as the consuls and praetors. The lesser auspices belong to the other magistrates. Therefore these are called 'lesser' and the others 'greater' magistrates. When the lesser magistrates are elected, their office is conferred upon them by the assembly of the tribes, but full powers by a law of the assembly of the curiae; the higher magistrates are chosen by the assembly of the centuries. Nothing in the preceding section (or any other ancient source) suggests that the plebeian aediles were not magistratus. As far as I can tell, they were magistrates by even the strictest Roman definition.

This 4th Century Italian marble is exquisite. You can still see the paint on it!

Adam Smith is not only the father of modern economics and responsible for the liberalization of international trade that has financed most of the big ideas on this list, Smith's idea of the "invisible hand" is precisely identical to (and a predecessor of) Darwin's idea of "natural selection." Biologists and historians of science have noted many times that Darwin's "most dangerous idea" owed its genesis to the Scottish economist Smith, and any list of the 100 most influential people in history should include Adam Smith. He was one of the greatest geniuses of an era that is humbling in its talent.

Hirtius and Pansa were loyal Caesarians who had a bone to pick with Antony. If anything, Octavian should have been their allies. Not that I'd put it past the little power-luster to kill the consuls for leadership of the Caesarian faction.

I really wonder whether some of you know that the difference between a Roman and a Gaul goes deeper than the lorica hamata. Leaving aside a few bad apples (like Caesar), the Romans were not indiscriminate butchers, and the notion that "All prisoners were either executed, sold to slavery or put to death during games in the arena" is pure Hollywood. First, the senate placed boundaries on this kind of behavior. Consider the Third Macedonian War, in which P. Crassus and C. Lucretius Gallus assaulted the pro-Macedonian cities of Boeotia, plundered them brutally, and sold their inhabitants into slavery. By the reckoning above, you'd think they would have won a triumph for this kind of behavior. But in fact they were censured in the senate. Moreover, an envoy was immediately dispatched to find those in bondage, and the enslaved Greeks were immediately freed. Indeed, by the treaty of Nabis in 195--a treaty that was entirely dictated by the victorious Romans--it was forbidden to take slaves from the Argives and any Argive slaves--whether publicly or privately held--were to be immediately freed. So much the idea that "Mercy was seen as a weekness [sic]" Second, when the Romans were brutal, it was almost invariably as a form of retribution, not casual bloodlust. On this see the discussion on the destruction of Corinth, which came in response to local demagogues stirring up a war that would have brought conflagration to all Hellas. Third, the practice of enslaving prisoner's wasn't even distinctively Roman, but standard Hellenistic practice. The farms of Greece and Carthage were fairly teeming with Italians and Romans after the Hannibalic War. For some reason, no one ever mentions this fact. The Romans could certainly be merciless to those who betrayed them, but for the most part, the conduct of war was guided by Roman interests, and--unlike the Gauls--the Romans were rational enough to know that brute force is not sufficient to build an empire.

Nice summary of this lovely holiday HERE.

Let's compare apples to apples. In 81 BC, the dictator Sulla proscribed 600 political opponents in what was arguably the worst political violence in the history of the Roman republic (not counting civil wars or violence to non-Romans). That's 600 proscriptions per 800,000 Roman citizens, or .075% of the population. Let this rate of political murder be called a "Sulla". Between 1939-1945 CE, the dictator Hitler proscribed at least 240,000 Germans in what was arguably the worst political violence in German history (again, not counting violence to non-Germans). That's 240,000 proscriptions per 80 million German citizens, which is proportionately 4 Sullae. Between 1928 and 1935 CE, the dictator Stalin killed 11 million Soviets--and the communists were just warming up. That's 11 million of 164 million Soviet subjects, which at 6.7% of the population is proportionately 90 Sullae. Now where are the barbarians--in ancient Rome, where there was only 1 Sulla, or modern Europe, where there were at least 94?

Wasn't the deciphering of the Antikythera Mechanism published in Science for the first time this year? That's got to be the coolest bit of classical scholarship ever.

Caesar did not enter the senate until his quaestorship in 69, which according to Dio (37, 52), occurred the same year as his famous lament--at age 33--quasi pertoesus ignaviam suam (as though utterly disgusted with his own lack of energy). So, no--he did not enter the senate at a much earlier than normal age. He entered the senate at a much later than normal age. Why so? Maybe because he spent so much time in Bithynia... Yes, I see that Keaveney uses nearly the same language that you do, but Keaveny also cites no source for this supposed "alteration (or, if you like, concession)" of his own lex Cornelia annalis. I'm guessing that the reason that no source is cited is that Keaveney has inferred this "concession" from the incorrect assumption that Caesar was born in 100. If Sulla allowed patricians to advance along the cursus honorum at an earlier age, there should be evidence of this advancement for patricians other than Caesar, and the evidence should not be found stemming from the careers that predated Sulla. I'm sure a quick look at Broughton's Magistracies will clear this up.

But isn't this reasoning circular? The only reason to believe that Sulla reformed the lex Villa is the assumption that Caesar was born in 100. Once this untenable assumption is dropped, there is no need to infer that Sulla reformed the lex Villa. Furthermore, Caesar's extradordinary ambition was nowhere in evidence in his early career. A late bloomer, he didn't even start the cursus honorum until he was 30 years old.

I met a librarian in my Roman history class that was so smokin' hawt she could have distracted me from a lecture on Cato. Come to think of it, she DID distract me from a lecture on Cato! EDIT: And she helped me with my overdue fees!

Meh ... she was a librarian! According to Rutgers, librarians are sexy (as well as famous, radical, and smart). Frankly, G-Manicus, you should fear a group of people devoted to discovering the answers to questions like "What is the nutritional value of human flesh?" (the strangest question of the year asked of the librarians at New York Public Library).

We discussed this issue at some length HERE. The deciding vote was cast by T. Rice Holmes, who took up the issue in his artice, "Was Caesar Born in 100 or 102?". Holmes' conclusion was that "it is in the highest degree probable that Caesar was born in 102." All of the arguments we considered in the thread were also considered in the article, but Holmes additionally considers numismatic evidence that we neglected, copying errors regarding dates in Plutarch's life of Pompey, and the existence of an ancient source (Eutropius) that definitively puts Caesar's birth in 102. If we accept Holmes' conclusion, Caesar did not hold every single office of his life illegally, thus we needn't impute a vast populare conspiracy to explain how he came to hold the consulship when he did. At the same time, though, we also needn't assume that patricians and plebs had different age requirements for office.

I hate this movie too--librarian-bashing and all.

So I'm clear on this then, Sulla was still considered afterwards to have been the legal Dictator of Rome? (no matter how repulsive his reign may have been) I don't think so, but it would be worth collecting evidence on the matter.

All or nearly all of his acts were overturned, but there wasn't one formal body that reviewed acts as being constitutional--adherence to precedence was the responsibility of every magistrate.

Constitutionally, dictators were named by consuls not by the senate, and the term of the dictator ended when the term of the consul ended. That didn't happen in the case of Sulla because both consuls (Marius and Carbo) were already dead--of natural causes in the case of Marius and by Sulla's orders in the case of Carbo. With both consuls dead, the normal course of events would be to have the incoming consuls take office early. Instead, the princeps senatus, Valerius Flaccus, was made interrex (by what authority I don't know), nominally to oversee elections. Instead of running for consul, Sulla--already wet in the blood of the proscribed--ordered Flaccus to revive the dictatorship (dead for 120 years!) and name him dictator. Flaccus complied and the rest is history. Now for the most important point--that I forgot until now--Sulla' proscriptions began long BEFORE he even held his illegal dictatorship.

What was your objection to the pledge?

I'm for the free market in education, but I should say that I don't think it's a panacea. If the state monopoly in education were ended, a wide variety of competing educational philosophies MIGHT be put into practice, but it could also result in many minor variations of the dominant philosophy of education (Dewey). Moreover, even in the best case scenario, there would still be the problem of knowing which methods were actually working and which ones weren't. My guess is that a free market secondary school system would resemble the university system, where the reputation of different schools depends much less on the quality of training delivered than on the quality of the process of choosing already talented and motivated students. Not that that's entirely a bad thing.

But who are "they"? Suetonius could be talking about 2, 20, or 200 different men (and may not even know the difference himself). Other than that I think we have only two specific cases--Catiline and the murderer of Q. Lucretius Ofella. Back to the point of the thread--as quaestor, Cato could only charge Catiline and the centurion who murdered Ofella with holding ill-begotten gains, and he couldn't try them for having committed murder, which (like treason) were cases that couldn't be pressed by private individuals. The higher court that presided over murder cases was Caesar's court. Caesar apparently decided for Catiline and against the centurion who murdered Ofella. I don't see any way to justify finding Catiline innocent and the centurion guilty. If the proscriptions were not legal because they were issued by an illegal dictatorship, then they both should have been found guilty. If the proscriptions were legal because the dictatorship was legal, then the centurion should have been found innocent whereas Catiline should have been found guilty.

Since illiteracy and innumeracy undermines self-sufficiency, they also undermine freedom. But shouldn't that be the argument against a state monopoly in education? Competition typically promotes efficiency and innovation, so if we want better schools for a free society, maybe freedom should extend to schooling itself.

This is an old post, but FWIW, there is copious data on this topic in Rosenstein's work, "Rome at War."

But the scenario where people were acting as free agents WAS the case. Catiline, for example, was known to kill for personal gain and then have people added to the proscription list after the fact, and he is one of only two people who were specifically named in the sources as being prosecuted. Per vim--by force. If Sulla's dictatorship was enacted by force rather than by a free act of the senate, the dictatorship itself was not legal.