M. Porcius Cato

I took three years of college Latin, but it was so long ago that Cicero was a guest lecturer. Now, I can skim Latin well enough to find the proper names I'm looking for and to approximate the meaning of what I'm targeting, but it's painful, inexact, unrewarding, and less useful to me than even trigonometry (which is saying something). The only good that came from my years of college Latin is the ability to translate graffiti in HBO's Rome, to know better than to write " ", and to know that if I took MUCH more Latin, I could read some really good poems.

For rule of what? The whole point of the republican system was to prevent anyone from being ruled by their magistrates. The magistrates were there to be ruled by the laws, not for the citizens to be ruled by the magistrates.

Adultery as policy? Unreal.

L Carbo? Ahem.

Yes. See Pliny. (Can't find English translation)

I dunno quite a coincidence No. Parallel evolution, I would say. Like the wings of the birds and of the bats. Isolated populations develop analogous structures to face similar problems. I agree.

How do you determine whether the primary sources are mistaken, and what evidence would support your re-evaluation of the primary sources?

I'm up to the chapter on Pharsalus, and so far it's been superb.

Congratulations!

I'm guessing they went to an all boys' school (the type of place they still teach Latin).

Historically speaking, EB is far more faithful than RTR--almost absurdly so (e.g., my name would be rendered Marcvs Porcivs Cato).

That's really clever.

If Rome survived, would we have " "?

Nice find.

No faith should be put in any view. That said, of Plato and the "nous" of his Academy, Aristotle was by far the more original thinker, and he is undoubtedly the one more responsible for the development of logic, the sciences, secular humanism, natural rights, and literary criticism. Moreover, the rediscovery and popularization of Aristotle by Albertus Magnus probably had a larger influence on European history and the emergence of the Renaissance than any other single event (including even the discovery of Cicero's letters by Petrarch). Through Albertus Magnus, Aquinas and Maimonides, Aristotle's thinking almost single-handedly elevated Europe from the abyss of faith and force to a world that was safe for what John Herman Randall. called the "passionate search for passionless truth".

The passage in Dio Cassius shows that Appius Claudius prosecuted both Caesarians and neutrals alike. This is entirely consistent with the passage in Cicero showing Appius on a rampage against men with too many pictures, sculptures, and other luxuries.

Aristotle, Dio Cassius, Livy, and Polybius--they all refer to an assembly in Carthage. Aristotle and Polybius would have had good information on this. Aristotle had assembled written descriptions of the constitutions of all the major city-states. Polybius would have had access to the ambassadors to Carthage. Is there any good reason to doubt their reports?

Here's an interesting hint from one of Cicero's letters: I almost forgot what above everything else I was bound to write to you. Do you know that the censor Appius is doing marvels? Busying himself about statues, pictures, land-owning, and debt with the greatest vigour? He is persuaded that his censorship is a kind of soap or soda. I think he is wrong: while he is meaning to wash off stains, he is really exposing all his veins and vitals. Hurry home, in the name of gods and men! Come as quickly as you can to enjoy a laugh, that a trial under the Scantinian law should be before Drusus, and that Appius should be making regulations about statues and pictures. Believe me, you ought to make haste. It appears that Appius was on some sort of quixotic rampage against luxury, and it's possible that the eponymous owner of Sallust's Gardens may have been one of the casualties. If so, this would an ironic end for Sallust's career in the senate, given his own rhetoric against luxury.

Wasn't Sallust leading a riot after the murder of Clodius? Wasn't he culpable in the burning of the senate house? If my recollection is correct, I'm guessing that burning down the senate might get one expelled from it!

There were certainly latifundia in Campania. That's not at issue. The problem is that leased smallholdings (i.e., "peasant" farms) were also very common in Campania, much more so than the large villas (for a review of the archaeological evidence, see N. Rosenstein's "Rome at War". For an on-line review of the legislation, see Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic: Cicero, in his second speech upon the land bill of Rullus, when speaking of the consequences that would follow its enactment, declared that if the Campanian cultivators were ejected they would have no place to go, and he truly says that such a measure would not be a settlement of plebeians upon the land, but an ejection and expulsion of them from it. Did it pay to send out a swarm of 100,000 idle paupers who, for two generations, had been fed at the public charge from the corn-bins of Rome, simply in order that a like number of honest peasants, who had been not only self-supporting but had paid a large part of the Roman revenue, should be compelled to sacrifice their goods in a glutted market and become debauched and idle? Writing on the lex Iulia agraria Campania, Long wrote: "This monstrous, this abominable crime was committed to serve a party purpose; and the criminal was a Roman consul ... too intelligent not to know what he was doing, and unscrupulous enough to do anything that would serve his own ends." What a friend of the dispossessed was Caesar, who dispossessed so many! If I were a populare (which I'm not), I'd say, "No wonder Caesar had so many nobiles on his side!"

How would your theory account for the fact that the west declined long before the east?

You can download the CQ article from JSTOR. If you don't have JSTOR access, I can send you a PDF of the article. But if as many were rendered homeless by the lex agraria Campania (and there is evidence that very many families were left homeless to make room for Pompey's vets--there is a discussion on this issue elsewhere), then it seems that Caesar may have been playing zero-sum politics: in effect, robbing farmer Peter to pay soldier Paul. Also, the large number you cite refers to eligibility, not to the beneficiaries. The number of actual beneficiaries is unknown. The struggle of the orders was a struggle between two hereditary classes--patricians, who were descended from the founding families of the city, and plebeians, who were newcomers after the founding of the city. (In this sense, the Roman historians were probably onto something when they depicted Romulus--the founder of the city--as the one who ordered the city into patricians and plebeians.) Historically, the plebeian order had an interest in maintaining the power of their tribunes, and certainly many of the events in the late republic were centered around tribunician power, and also the struggle of the new newcomers (esp non-Roman Italians) to attain civil rights. In this sense, there is some continuity between the struggle of the ancient hereditary orders and the events of the middle to late Republic. However, there were other issues at stake too, including especially the problem of containing political violence in Rome, which--by threatening to topple the state entirely or leaving it in the grip of a Sulla--posed the greatest threat to plebeian civil rights since the patrician Appius Claudius the Decemvir raped the chaste plebeian Verginia (or whatever that legendary event is meant to stand for).

Based on the evidence quoted by Asclepiades, I'd say that a stronger case could be made for Rome exporting democratic ideals to the Etruscans than for the Etruscans exporting democratic ideals to Rome. Not only does this make sense of the chronology, but it also fits in with the overarching message in Livy.

What's the evidence for an Etruscan democratic assembly prior to 509? As far as I know, there is no such evidence. Assuming they didn't have a democratic assembly (they were, after all, said to be ruled by kings), they couldn't very well be the inspiration for the tribal assemblies in Rome.

...at some time, but not all the time. BTW, I was curious about whether the ancient Indians really had democratic states as well (to some extent, that is). And I came across this fascinating passage in Q. Curtius Rufus' History of Alexander, which is referenced in an interesting article, "Democracy in Ancient India".