M. Porcius Cato

I'd like to see you when you got back and to find out if anyone believed you.

No, I don't. If I claim immunity for committing murder and theft by order of the Klingon Council, the court has every right to dismiss my claim as patent nonsense and refuse a hearing on the matter. It could be that Caesar refused to hear arguments because the Cornelian law, being passed per vim and after Sulla's legal term as dictator had passed, were moot.

Sulla decreed that the children of the proscribed could not seek magistracies. After Sulla, the ban was opposed by Cicero (Pro Roscius) and others, and the ban was certainly gone by the time of Caesar's dictatorship (when its abolition ceased to have any value).

Wasn't there a hit put out on Caesar himself?

My god, these documentaries will say anything! It was Catullus who made the oral hygiene comment about Egnatius, as any Latin student should remember: 39. Your Teeth! : to Egnatius Egnatius, because he has snow-white teeth, smiles all the time. If you

Yeah, but then you did that whole back tracking thingy ... I only back-tracked on whether Caesar's office was praetor. Apparently, his office--iudex quaestionis--was a kind of deputy-praetor. I didn't back-track on Caesar's involvement, and it was in my back-tracking post that I mentioned the Cornelian laws in the first place.

You do I realize that I brought up Caesar's involvement with Cato myself, as well as the reference to the Cornelian laws, don't you? Moreover, WHICH Cornelian laws were relevant? Those by the tribune Cornelius or those by Sulla?

I wouldn't say the norm but ex post facto laws (and even laws that named single individuals) happened fairly often. Also, it's not entirely clear that those who were prosecuted were acting legally in the first place. To know this, we would need to know who exactly was prosecuted (clearly not everyone), what legal immunities they enjoyed (clearly not infinite), and whether the charge was murder or simply holding state property. If the latter, there are certainly many instances of people having their property legally confiscated.

You're welcome, and I especially had you in mind when I quoted that bit from the book, as I remember you had given somewhere on the board a similar quote about a Roman citizen being greater than a king. What was that quote, exactly? I thought it brilliantly captured the Roman spirit. Still trying to track down that famous phrase. Here's another allusion to it.

Hold on... Nephele has very sweetly reminded me that Caesar was not praetor in 64. Here's what E. G. Sihler (1911) says: In this same year, 64, Caesar for the first time was a presiding and directing justice in a Roman court: not praetor as yet, but as ex-aedile, he was chosen a kind of deputy-praetor, or supplementary one, called by the Romans iudex quaestionis. His court was that entrusted by cases of murder (Suet., 11). Now Caesar, with impressive consistency, made responsible and treated as murderers those men who, for turning in heads of the proscribed, had received the bounties of Sulla out of the public treasury, and he refused to consider as a defence the immunity specifically granted to such executioners by a certain paragraph of the Cornelian laws. It was politics, though, rather than striving for justice, for Caesar specifically selected the case of the man who slew Lucretius Ofella by order of the dictator, and he received the penalty (Dio., 37, 11) But Catiline, similarly prosecuted, was acquitted. The public marvelled at both results. A commentary will readily suggest itself to the intelligence of my readers. Catiline was among the assets of the future. Herr Sihler is almost dogmatically pro-Caesar (like most of the German scholars of the day--no wonder they fell for Bismarck), and facts sometimes elude him, but at least I was right about Caesar being on the court that Cato would have dragged those blood-stained Sullan toadies. As for the "certain paragraph of the Cornelian laws", Sihler cites no sources, and I'll see what I can dig up.

Thank you Nephele! That book is simply perfect for what I'm looking for. If you have any other recommendations (especially books that would capture a smart girl's interest), then don't hold back. "Even the smallest of Romans is the equal of an Etruscan king!" I love it!

Pyro

Sulla himself was beyond legal prosecution, not his accomplices, and there was nothing barring his acts from being overturned and his actions declared as invalid due to their being enacted per vim. Further, there were many (like Catiline) who killed citizens and THEN had their names added to the proscription lists. Furthermore, no law entitled murderers to their victim's property--that policy was entirely at the whim of the dictator. BTW, does Plutarch mention the identity of the presiding praetor for these cases? As quaestor, Cato had the role of protecting the treasury, so his legal power for wresting blood money from the Sullans depended entirely on his finding a cooperative praetor. Any guess who that would be? Gaius Julius Caesar! Yep, they started off working together to free Rome from all the bad Sullans. In fact, it was Caesar who helped Labienus (the tribune for that year) set the relevant precedent by trying Rabirius for the murder of Saturninus. If only Caesar hadn't been seduced by the dark side of imperium...

I'm interested in the constitutional history of the Roman republic, and the far-reaching constitutional reforms of Sulla were being targeted for repeal immediately after he resigned the dictatorship. Thus, debate on constitutional law was frequent, including what reforms had been (and had not been) tried in the past. Another period where we see this affecting historiography is in the annalists of the period surrounding the Gracchi, where early history was being reframed by current events.

The route on Google Maps is modern, and I should have clarified that, but I only wanted to illustrate the geography because the Thayer map depicts the Via Flaminia in the old Roman "triptik" style (i.e., by landmarks rather than by absolute direction).

Six months isn't enough time to lift the veil covering the early republic, so I guess I'd spend my time studying with the jurists and historians who lived through the tyranny of Sulla. At that time, Romans were desparate to put things back on track, and so interest in political and legal history was unusually high.

Really? A citizen couldn't import goods from non-citizens? Then how did Rome trade with her neighbors? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post, but I thought there was only one restriction on trade -- senators couldn't engage in sea trade (legally).

"We are all Greeks," Shelley once wrote, rather exuberantly. It's easy to see why he'd say that. As Rabbi Michael Lerner observed, "Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes." Only Lerner wasn't giving Hellenism a sales pitch. See, not every one is a 'Greek' in Shelley's sense of the term, including sectors of far-left post-modernism, the evangelical Christians, most of the Islamic world, the Taliban... and then there were the Maccabees, whose struggle against Hellenism is celebrated during Hanukkah. Christopher Hitchens asks that we call it quits.Bah, Hanukkah: THE HOLIDAY CELEBRATES THE TRIUMPH OF TRIBAL JEWISH BACKWARDNESS

Am I missing something? Yes, you are missing something. Not only was Caesar the father-in-law of Pompey and not vice-versa, there was no office of triumvir (the triumvirate was a purely informal arrangement) from which the senate could remove Caesar (even if they wanted to), nor was Caesar actually removed from the office of consul by the decree of the whole senate or any portion thereof. You might have meant couldn't remove Caesar. There was no office of triumvir from which the senate couldn't remove Caesar? The double negative makes no sense.

Am I missing something? Yes, you are missing something. Not only was Caesar the father-in-law of Pompey and not vice-versa, there was no office of triumvir (the triumvirate was a purely informal arrangement) from which the senate could remove Caesar (even if they wanted to), nor was Caesar actually removed from the office of consul by the decree of the whole senate or any portion thereof. Pompey's only son-in-law was F. Cornelius Sulla, who was killed by Caesar's troops in 47. Wrong on so many levels...

Very imaginative, but there was no connection whatever between Italian participation and the aims of the optimates or populares (insofar as those terms have any real meaning). Cicero and Pompey, for example, would have been considered optimates, yet they were Italians and were consistently in favor of Italian interests. Among populares, I can think of absolutely no legislation (passed or merely proposed) that would have benefitted Italians. On the most contentious matters of the day--the sundry leges agrariae--Italians were almost uniformly opposed to having their land confiscated for the sake of some Roman general's second-handers.

If you want to get from Rome to Ariminum in the late Republic, you would take the Via Flaminia, which begins in Rome (of course) and ends in Ariminum. Bill Thayer provides a virtual road trip down the Via Flaminia--well worth visiting his site if you're not up for the journey yourself. Google Maps.

Right. Byzantine scholarship was apparently not up to the standards of Polybius, Thuydides, and Tacitus.

Just noticed that our Marcus Cicero above is from Tusculum.

It's interesting to note how quickly this misconception about Caesar arose. From Eusebius: In Hyrcanus' reign, in the (?) 184th Olympiad [44 B.C.], Julius Caesar became emperor of the Romans, for 4 years and 7 months. And after him, Augustus (Sebastos in Greek) was emperor for 56 years and 6 months. In his reign, Herodes was the first foreigner to be made king of the Jews by the Romans; his family came from Ascalon, and he had no right to the throne. From the Chronicon Paschale: Gaius Julius Caesar was appointed to be the first emperor of the Romans. [457'A] Up to this point, the Roman government was administered by Brutus, Collatinus, and the other consuls who followed them, for 393 years up until the year of these consuls, which was the 5th year of Cleopatra and the first year of Gaius Julius Caesar. The dictator Julius Caesar was not born in the normal way, but after his mother died in the ninth month [of pregnancy] she was cut open and the baby was pulled out. Therefore the baby was called Caesar, which in Latin means "cut out". When he had grown up and shown great bravery, he was created triumvir along with Pompeius and Crassus, who were ex-consuls, in the first year of this 180th Olympiad, and the government of Rome was controlled by these three men. B After the death of Crassus, who was killed by the Persians in a battle fought in the region of Persia, the dictator Caesar remained with his army to fight in the west. Then he was removed from the office of consul, or triumvir, by the decree of the whole Roman senate, with the agreement of his father-in-law Pompeius the Great. Angered by this, Julius Caesar established a tyranny over the Romans. He waged war against the Romans, and attacked Pompeius the Great and the Roman senate. After marching on Rome and capturing it, he killed the senators. This Julius Caesar, as dictator or emperor, ruled over everyone in an arrogant and tyrannical fashion for 4 years and 7 months, from 12th May of the first indiction.