M. Porcius Cato

Please do. Anon. Yes, he was REALLY different from others. And you continue to misrepresent even the secondary sources even while you totally ignore the primary sources. This is what makes conversation with you impossible. NO secondary source says, "Cato was corrupt." That is NOT the historical verdict on Cato, and if you'd bother to quote the whole context in which the Gruen mistake occurs it will be plain that this is the case. I'm just about finished wasting my time with you on this issue, as you repeat yourself endlessly without addressing (1) how to distinguish a mistake in Gruen from a non-mistake, (2) how to conduct a principled (i.e., non-cherry-picking) review of the literature, and (3) what exactly it takes for you to recognize a "brain fart" when you make them given that your approach is to totally ignore the primary source literature.

Your "HAHAHAHA, oh to live in an idealistic world...!" wasn't an honest mistake. If you had been honest, you would have checked whether I was right about the ancient sources. Instead, you maintained AGAIN your incorrect view, you repeated it several times in different discussions (I'll link to them if you'd like) even when I provided counter-evidence about where Cato was serving and what the ancient sources said about Cato's conduct in Cyprus. This is what causes a discussion to deteriorate--when one side conscientiously points to sources and the other side flippantly ignores the sources and proceeds as though nothing has happened. This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about! None of the secondary sources say that "Cato was as guilty as the rest of em". Why not? It's easy to see why. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Gruen wasn't mistaken about Cato's involvement in the election of Bibulus. Does that show that Cato was as guilty as the rest of them? No way. You'd have one mark against Cato against mulitple marks against Caesar (for his election to pontifex maximus, for his election to the consulship, for his bribery of Curio, etc etc.) Further, you'd be left scratching your head why Sallust, a partisan of Caesar, was convinced of Cato's incorruptibility; why Cicero thought Cato was lily-white; why the Romans had common sayings like, "I wouldn't believe it even if Cato said it". Etc Etc. Maybe you think that you're entitled to exaggeration and flippant disregard for the facts, but it drives me nuts, and it's NOT honest.

No, I did NOT imply that "any opinion that isn't [my] own is dishonest." The evidence can support more than one reconstruction of events, and I've had lots of disagreements about the best reconstruction where the issue of intellectual honesty was never involved at all (e.g., on the Vettius affair, on whether Caesar was born in 100 or 102, on the best reconstruction of the Catilinarian conspiracy, etc). What I said is that dishonesty is maintaining a falsehood in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As an illustrative contrast, I think Gruen is mistaken about Cato's role in Bibulus' election, but I don't think he was being intellectually dishonest. In contrast, if Gruen had said that Cato was guilty of ripping off the provincials in Crete, then someone had pointed to the source material on Cato's career (which fail to mention that any role for Cato in Crete and report that his performance in Cyprus had been exemplary), and then Gruen had replied "HAHAHAHA, oh to live in an idealistic world...!" THAT would have been dishonest, and it would have led immediately to the deterioration of the discussion. It's one thing to make an error; it's entirely another thing to scoff at the evidence showing that you are in error. The former is inevitable; the latter is dishonesty.

Of course, you don't NEED citations--you can post whatever you'd like, turning conventional wisdom on Roman history on its head. You can post that Cincinnatus was aiming at regnum, that Scipio was a sleeper agent for Hannibal, that the Gracchi were really Boni, that Sulla was a populare, that Cato was as corrupt as Verres, and that Julius Caesar was a misunderstood defender of the republic. Frankly, I'm very happy to hear bold revisionism that challenges the conventional wisdom because it highlights how many facts we take for granted. BUT if you want to go down this path and you don't want to sound foolish and make yourself a subject of mockery, then your bold claims need to be supported by evidence. What is evidence? Evidence consists of observations that point to a cause. This is the real basis of what is and isn't primary. For example, if Bob is an eyewitness to a crime and Tom merely overheard a conversation from another eyewitness, Bob's testimony is more evidentiary than Tom's because Bob can point to details that led up to and followed from the crime, whereas Tom cannot. In this scenario, Bob is more primary than Tom. Can a modern scholar beat the ancient sources in terms of presenting primary evidence? Sure they can. If an ancient source says that the Etruscans came from Asia Minor in the 10th century BC, but modern scholars find that the DNA of ancient Etruscan remains in the 10th century more closely resembled the DNA of 10th century non-Etruscan Italians than 10th century Pergamenes, the modern source has evidence that more closely points to a cause of Etruscan origins than does the ancient claim. But the key here is that the modern scholars do have to present the DNA observations to support their claim. A general authority on DNA who made no study of ancient Etruscan remains would not be credible on this point, even if he studied the DNA of many other ancient peoples. Now on the issue of Cato's alleged bribery, none of the ancient sources say that Cato engaged in bribery. None. Of the historians writing on Cato, the only contemporaries were Sallust and Cicero, who were positively effusive in praising Cato's incorruptibility, and Caesar, who hated Cato but also never accused him of engaging in bribery. Now what new evidence is offered by my favorite scholars on Cato's alleged bribery? Again, none. And, yes, I'm disappointed that Gruen--in a paragraph praising Cato to the moon--claims that Cato organized a slush fund for Bibulus, but if he had presented evidence (even a footnote of support), I'd have to engage that evidence seriously. Instead, it's clear that Gruen is making an inferential leap, which isn't entirely arbitrary, but it IS conjecture. Note also that Gruen never goes as far as you do in saying that Cato was as corrupt as Clodius and Caesar. That really would be an unreasonable conjecture because it would absolutely fly in the face of the testimony given by Sallust and Cicero. And since you quote me at length, I should point out that this isn't the only howler you've offered about Cato. I have in mind your repeated claim (that you maintained long after having been corrected on the point) that Cato was guilty of extortion when serving in Crete, despite Cato never having even been to Crete and despite the fact that his service in CYPRUS was praised to the moon in all the ancient sources. Now I find it troublesome when people are so lazy that they don't even bother checking basic facts that are easy to look up. And though I understand that not everyone realizes that even a minor falsehood can reverberate throughout a chain of argument and threaten to upset all subsequent inferences, I understand also that many people are happy to dwell in their fantasy of Rome even if threatens to mislead novices who don't know better. But to maintain a falsehood in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is raw dishonesty, and to maintain that Cato was as corrupt as Caesar is as good an example of such dishonesty as any I could imagine arising in the study of the Roman republic. And this dishonesty is the reason that things deteriorate.

Absolutely there is a limit to the expansion of gold and thus to the expansion of prices. If we were to go back to the gold standard (at $733 = 1 gold dollar), there would certainly have to be a change in denomination, but there's no reason that one couldn't trade any number (or denominations) of proxies for gold reserves. The gold standard doesn't protect against every deflationary pressure known to man. Obviously, if the sum total of goods triples overnight, the gold value of each of those goods will decline. Don't know. I just deleted anything that didn't have to do with the topic of gold. My general policy is to try to keep threads focused on one topic at a time and to purge all emoticons that I can find.

Sure its possible. "Cato was not averse to sponsoring grain laws, thereby outbidding his opponents, or to indulging in bribery, if this could bring supporters into power." Gruen. Another mistake? Are these noted and often quoted scholars less qualified than you to interpret events? How qualified is a primary source that is 100+ years removed from events? I don't think that Gruen and Syme are less qualified, just mistaken. There are seven different primary sources that described the campaign of Bibulus, and none of them claim that Cato engaged in bribery. The lack of an historical source cannot be overcome by any number of scholarly credentials. The quality of an historical claim is directly proportional to the evidence on which it is based, and claims that are made on the basis of zero evidence have zero credibility. BTW, I'm happy to be proven wrong about anyone's indifference to facts (or ability to retain them). But when I go to the trouble of finding, citing, and linking to a dozen or more primary sources and the result is greeted with a causal scoff and a failure to return with any new information whatever, you can bet that my 'abrasiveness' is not caused by a lack of kindness but by exasperation at the failure to reciprocate the exchange of information. Presumably, it's the exchange of information that distinguishes this forum from a "debating society."

Typically, banks made loans and conducted business via bank notes that were redeemable in gold, which were kept in deposit. This is really no different from the fiat currency that we all expect banks to disburse on demand. Then, as now, there was a short-term risk of runs on the banks, which banks dealt with then, as now, by borrowing from other banks. Of course, the cost of a panic isn't trivial, but the benefits of stable currency are well worth it.

I've already reviewed the PRIMARY source literature on this topic for you, and it's clear that Syme is mistaken (gasp! yes, it's possible for secondary sources to be mistaken). Why don't you go back to claiming that Cato eats babies? Or at least come up with some new falsehood to spread around the fora like viruses in a nursery. More broadly, it's quite instructive that an indifference to facts (or the inability to retain them) so strongly predisposes one to support for Caesar.

There were numerous safeguards to assure that the ballot wasn't fixed, so your claim that the ballot was easily fixed comes out of thin air. Besides, it's totally disingenuous to argue simultaneously that Caesar was elected because he was popular AND to argue that Caesar could not be elected because the system was stacked against him. You can't have it both ways. Either Caesar was popular enough to get elected in the first place and thus--if he remained popular after killing most of his enemies in the civil wars--had nothing to fear from another election, OR Caesar was PART of the political machine that stacked the deck against outsiders and thus--again--had no reason to fear elections once he had supreme power. Is too much to expect even the most elementary logic from Caesar's cheerleaders? Have you never asked yourself just once why--if Caesar were so popular--he quit running for office and (indisputably) accepted this unheard-of office dictator in perpetuum? If you have even the slightest sense of sincere sympathies for the populares, doesn't this betrayal of the sovereignty of the people send shivers down your spine? For a populare, this defense of Caesar's dictatorship is pure, shameless hypocrisy.

My stemma for Porcii Catones:

How do you know that the majority of plebeians wanted Caesar? Because Plutarch told you so? How did he know? There were no polls in the ancient world, except one--the ballot. So if the majority of plebeians wanted Caesar, then Caesar had no reason to fear being defeated in election. Yet Caesar instead had himself declared dictator for life, thereby depriving the people of any chance to express their opinion one way or the other. Now if Caesar were really so popular with the people, as opposed to being a contemptible populare poseur, why -- at the summit of his power -- didn't he give the people a chance to express themselves? Why did he arrest their tribunes? Why did he appoint their magistrates? Why did he act--not like a man of the people, winning one election after another as Marius did--but like an ordinary Hellenistic tyrant? I'll tell you why--Caesar didn't have the love of the people; he had the love of his army, and he figured that that was all that mattered.

According to Forsythe, the original patrician gentes were: 1. Aemilii ..... 9. Nautii 2. Claudii .... 10. Postumii 3. Cloelii .... 11. Quinctilii 4. Cornelii ....12. Quinctii 5. Fabii .... 13. Servilii 6. Furii .... 14. Sulpicii 7. Julii .... 15. Valerii 8. Manlii .... 16. Veturii For discussion see here.

Pompeius, I really like your approach to these problems: methodical, with an eye towards conducting future statistical analyses. Ultimately, if we want to say something historically meaningful about influence from the data that we can gather from Broughton's Magistrates, we'd like each row to correspond to an individual with a column for: a unique identification number, praenomen, nomen, cognomen, other name(s), years of censorships, years of consulships, years of praetorships, years of aedileships, years of quaestorships, years of tribuneships, total years of imperium, patrician status, status as princeps senatus, year of ovationes, and year of triumphs. From this data, we could discover what variables predicted election to various magistracies and honors. For example, in being elected consul, how much did it help to come from a patrician family? from a family that held many, few, or no prior consulships? from a family that celebrated many triumphs? were two ovations just as good as one triumph? in attaining the consulship, was it better to be a plebeian aedile or a tribune? did the effect of all these variables depend on the historical period? We could also address whether some families waxed and waned in their likelihood of imperium. We could graphically depict the struggle of the orders over time through the relative dominance of the orders in the various magistracies. And we could find out whether specific laws (like the lex Licinia) or specific precedents (like M Curius Dentatus) played a larger role in accelerating the rise of the plebeian magistrate. A good database of magistrates could really allow us to answer some interesting questions about Roman history.

Great--this is a valuable piece of information. Nephele has posted the number of magistrates per family (thus, G. Marius would count only once under Maria); this lists the number of consular magistracies per family (thus, G. Marius would count six times under Maria). Once we get the number of consular magistrates per family, we can begin the statistics again.

For comparing patricians to plebeians, restricting the starting point to the lex Licinia (367), as Pompeius does, is a good idea, though I agree strongly with Nephele that having a stopping point of 31 makes the most sense, since that's when the lex Saenia changed the composition of the patriciate. Alternatively, keeping the time frame constant (509-31) would at least help us make proper comparisons to assess the overall effect of the lex Licinia.

"You psychopathological flunkey, you are sadly mistaken you think you can browbeat the UNRV!" Ooops.. "DPRK"

Seems to me that Etruscan influence in Rome was enormously strong even when Rome was not under her political dominion. Etruscans immigrated to Rome in large numbers, brought their culture and values with them, and later served Rome in the very highest capacities. If you're writing a paper on the topic, make a list of the notable families that came from Tusculum etc, and you'll see that the very best of the Romans were often Etruscan.

It's funny--on the Ides, I get calls and emails from all my old college friends wishing me a happy Liberation Day. Thanks to G. Manicus, I can now return the jibes with a special Ides-mas card.

First, apologies for the appearance of condescension; it wasn't my intent. I'm also not denying that there were pressures relieved by the secret ballot: I'm simply raising the question of what pressures they were. If the pressures that were relieved were merely social pressures (as Cicero implies, probably disingenuously), then the introduction of the secret ballot wouldn't be expected to cause any change in other forms of pressure. Persuasion--the same type of influence that Cicero used in influencing the crowd at Verres' trial. There were contiones for exactly this type of influence to work. A misunderstanding. I didn't mean to imply that the patron/client relationship did not exist, but that it is a myth that the patron/client relationship obligated clients to vote as their patrons wished. Also, thanks for the quote from Dionysius--that's a real gem. Without source material like that, it's impossible to make rational decisions about the conflicting claims to be found in secondary sources, which cannot be treated as sacrosanct authorities.

From Greenspan's new book: pp. 480-481: "I have always harbored a nostalgia for the gold standard's inherent price stability--a stable currency was its primary goal. But I've long since acquiesced in the fact that the gold standard does not readily accommodate the widely accepted current view of the appropriate functions of government--in particular the need for government to provide a social safety net. The propensity of Congress to create benefits for constituents without specifying the means by which they are to be funded has led to deficit spending in every fiscal year since 1970, with the exception of the surpluses of 1998 to 2001 generated by the stock market boom. The shifting of real resources required to perform such functions has imparted a bias toward inflation. In the political arena, the pressure to make low-interest-rate credit generally available and to use fiscal measures to boost employment and avoid the unpleasantness of downward adjustments in nominal wages and prices has become nearly impossible to resist. For the most part, the American people have tolerated the inflation bias as an acceptable cost of the modern welfare state. There is no support for the gold standard today, and I see no likelihood of its return. [...] We know that the average inflation rate under the gold and earlier commodity standards was essentially zero. At the height of the gold standard between 1870 and 1913, just prior to World War I, the cost of living in the United States, as calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rose by a scant 0.2 percent per annum on average. From 1939 to 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of the post-cold war wage-price disinflation, the CPI rose nine-fold, or 4.5 percent per year. The reflects the fact that there is no inherent anchor in a fiat money regime. What constitutes its "normal" inflation rate is a function solely of a country's culture and history. In the United States, modest amounts of inflation are politically tolerated, but inflation rates close to double digits create a political storm. Indeed, Richard Nixon felt the political need to impose wage and price controls in 1971 even though the inflation rate was below 5 percent. Thus, while political considerations mean that the gold standard can be ruled out as a way to suppress a forthcoming rise in inflationary pressures, ironically, politics driven by an irate populace just might accomplish the same purpose." What follows is a very scary scenario regarding the combination of the collapse of social security and currently high inflation, requiring a rise in the interest rate in the double digits and a "return of populist, anti-Fed rhetoric, which was lain dormant since 1991." Greenspan's book is definitely worth a read.

It looks to me like Massinissa didn't need any goading from Rome, that Carthage was just as "puffed up" as Cato reported, and that while Rome was guilty of favoritism, politics in Carthage were turning anti-Roman and belligerent, which led to Roman demands becoming successively more strict and unacceptable, until at last Carthage declared war on Rome. Writing of the events of 153, Appian relates By and by (as frequently happens in periods of prosperity) factions arose [in Carthage]. There was a Roman party, a democratic party, and a party which favored Massinissa as king. Each had leaders of eminence in position and in bravery. Hanno the Great was the leader of the pro-Roman faction; Hannibal, surnamed the Starling, was the chief of those who favored Massinissa; and Hamilcar, surnamed the Samnite, and Carthalo, of the democrats. The latter party, watching their opportunity while the Romans were at war with the Celtiberians, and Massinissa was marching to the aid of his son, who was surrounded by other Spanish forces, persuaded Carthalo (the commander of auxiliaries and in discharge of that office going about the country) to attack the subjects of Massinissa, whose tents were on disputed territory. Accordingly he slew some of them, carried off booty, and incited the rural Africans against the Numidians. Many other hostile acts took place on both sides, until the Romans again sent envoys to restore peace, telling them as before to help Massinissa secretly. They artfully confirmed Massinissa in the possession of what he had taken before, in this way. They would neither say anything nor listen to anything, so that Massinissa might not be worsted in the controversy, but they passed between the two litigants with outstretched hands, and this was their way of commanding both to keep the peace. Not long afterward Massinissa raised a dispute about the land known as the "big fields" and the country belonging to fifty towns, which is called Tysca. Again the Carthaginians had recourse to the Romans. Again the latter promised to send envoys to arbitrate the matter, but they delayed until it seemed probable that the Carthaginian interests would be utterly ruined. At length they sent the envoys, and among others [Marcus Porcius] Cato. These went to the disputed territory and they asked that both parties should submit all their differences to them. Massinissa, who was grabbing more than his share and who had confidence in the Romans, consented. The Carthaginians hesitated, because their former experience had led them to fear that they should not receive justice. They said therefore that it was of no use to have a new dispute and a correction of the treaty made with [Publius Cornelius] Scipio, they only complained about transgressions of the treaty. As the envoys would not consent to arbitrate on the controversy in parts, they returned home. But they carefully observed the country; they saw how diligently it was cultivated, and what great estates it possessed. They entered the city and saw how greatly it had increased in wealth and population since its overthrow by Scipio not long before. When they returned to Rome they declared that Carthage was to them an object of apprehension rather than of jealousy, the city being so ill affected, so near them, and growing so rapidly. Cato especially said that even the liberty of Rome would never be secure until Carthage was destroyed. Livy then writes: It was said that a very large Numidian army, commanded by Arcobarzanes, son of Syphax, was on Carthaginian soil, and Marcus Porcius Cato argued that although this force was ostensibly directed against Massinissa, it was in fact against the Romans, and that consequently, war had to be declared. Publius Cornelius Nasica defended the opposite, and it was agreed that envoys were to be sent to Carthage, to see what was going on. They rebuked the Carthaginian Senate because it had, contrary to the treaty, collected an army and timber to build ships, and proposed to make peace between Carthage and Massinissa, because Masinissa was evacuating the contested piece of land. But Hamilcar's son Gesco, a riotous man who occupied an office, provoked the populace to wage war against the Romans, so that when the [Carthaginian] Senate announced it would comply with the Roman wishes, the envoys had to flee to escape violence. When they told this, they made the [Roman] Senate, already hostile towards the Carthaginians, even more hostile. [...] Gulussa, the son of Massinissa, told that a levy was conducted in Carthage, a navy was being built, and that without any doubt, they were preparing for war. When Cato argued that war should be declared, and Publius Cornelius Nasica said that it was better to do nothing too fast, it was decided to send ten investigators. [...] The envoys returned from Africa with Carthaginian ambassadors and Massinissa's son Gulussa, saying they had seen how an army and navy were built in Carthage, and it was decided to ask for opinions [of all senators]. While Cato and other influential senators argued that an army should immediately be sent to Africa, Cornelius Nasica said that it still did not seem to be a justified war, and it was agreed to refrain from war if the Carthaginians would burn their ships and dismiss their army; if they did less, the next pair of consuls should put the Punic War on the agenda. [...] Between Marcus Porcius Cato and Scipio Nasica, of which the former was the most intelligent man in the city and the latter considered to be the best man in the Senate, was a debate of opposing opinions, in which Cato argued for and Nasica against war and the removal and sack of Carthage. It was decided to declare war on Carthage, because the Carthaginians had, contrary to the treaty, ships, because they had sent an army outside their territory, because they had waged war against Massinissa, an ally and friend of the Roman people, and because they had refused to receive in their city Massinissa's son Gulussa (who had been with the Roman envoys). [...] Thirty envoys came to Rome to surrender Carthage. Cato's opinion prevailed that the declaration of war was to be maintained and that the consuls, as had been agreed, would proceed to the front. When they had crossed into Africa, they received the three hundred hostages they had demanded and all the weapons and war engines that were in Carthage, and demanded on the authority of the Senate that the Carthaginians rebuilt their city on another site, which was to be no less than 15 kilometers from the sea. These offensive demands forced the Carthaginians to war.

Last fiction I read was Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March. It was very silly: Caesar, Clodius, Cicero, Catullus, Cato, Brutus--all hanging out together in 44 BC, trading letters and dinner engagements (which had to be hard for Clodius and Cato, since in 44 they had been dead for years).

If bank notes are redeemable in gold, there is no need for a national currency.

But why destroy Carthage while leaving so many other wealthy cities intact?

In his new book, Greenspan repeats his views about the overwhelming benefits of the gold standard for a stable money supply. I'll see if I can find the original quote because it's quite revealing. I should add that a gold standard doesn't mean that people would have to actually carry out transactions in gold. All that matters is that bank notes are redeemable in gold.