M. Porcius Cato

If you don't believe in a correlation between slavery and the spread of technology, what is the argument you're making with respect to the cotton gin? If there's no correlation, what's your point?

That's demonstrably false. Looking at the radar, rocketry, computational power, aerospace and atomic power of the 20th Century, the Third Reich was a bit player, and its use of slave labor wasted more productivity than it gained.

Nice examples. It doesn't really undermine my point though -- there's a distinction between invention and adoption. It could be that slavery undermined adoption more than innovation per se.

I agree that slavery inhibited adoption of technology, but adoption isn't the same as innovation. Was there any technology created during the Renaissance that compares with the steam engine, the Antikythera mechanism, or the invention of concrete? Maybe -- but I don't know what it would be. Also, let's not forget the massive gains in labor productivity brought about by the specialization and trade that flourished under the umbrella of the Pax Romana. Archaeological evidence points to several such gains (and losses). Iron age tribes that had previously raised scrawny cattle now had the capacity to feed cattle during the winter months, leading to a massive increase in average size -- once the barbarians came, the cattle returned to their Iron age scrawniness. Iron age tribes that had previously lived under moldy, unhealthy thatched roofs were covered by more durable tile roofs -- until the barbarians came, and the thatched roof crept back. Same story for pottery. Covering Spain, Gaul, and Britain with all these industrial goods -- and they *were* industrial goods -- couldn't have happened unless someone, somewhere increased the number of goods they produced, and since the hours in the day didn't increase, it must be supposed that someone, somewhere increased the number of goods they produced per hour. That's an increase in labor productivity.

But for what end? You can't save the republic by smashing its laws. Had Cato chucked his principles and raised an army, he would have made himself a Catiline -- and one facing the combined forces of Pompey and Caesar. I think Cato realized that the only shelter from the gathering storm of civil war lay in Pompey's fickle patriotism.

Just to clarify--M. Porcius Cato didn't annex Cyprus due to some insult to Cato. Cato was sent to Cyprus due to a law passed by an assembly (probably under the eyes of Clodius' goons). Clodius had every reason in the world to nominate Cato for the task. The standard rationale attributed to Clodius is that the nomination was "to get Cato out of the way", but that seems radically unnecessary -- the goons of Clodius and Milo had already put Cato and the remnants of the anti-Triumvirate very far "out of way". The more plausible motivation for appointing Cato was economic. First, the republic had been deprived of nearly 1/4 of its income by settling Pompey's vets in Campania, and Clodius' lex frumentaria was bleeding the state of its remaining cash. Obviously, stealing 7000 talents from some Hellenistic potentate isn't a problem -- as Pompey and his kind well knew from their own experience. The problem is finding someone who will turn the loot over to the state. For this task, Cato was the *perfect* choice -- he was devoted to the claims of Roman law over the claims of some king (*cough* Caesar! *cough*) and he was scrupulously honest. Plus, the other choice would have been Gabinius, who almost certainly would have kept a large share of the gold for himself. Thus, by choosing Cato, Clodius managed to bankroll his corn dole, co-opt an opponent of both Clodius and Cato (i.e., Gabinius), and thereby forestall criticism that he and his patrons had bankrupted the state -- and, frankly, nothing in any of this could have been opposed by Cato on any principled grounds. The only risk that Clodius ran was that Cato would keep the money for himself -- but that was hardly a risk: Had Cato kept the money, he would have done far more to cripple the optimates than any good that would have come from the money itself. Plus, what would Cato (who was already rich) going to do with 7000 talents? Buy himself a tunic and some shoes??

One key point about the longevity of circulation of coins from the Roman republic--as opposed to ours -- is that Roman coins were minted in species (gold and silver) and hardly debased. In contrast, the silver content of American coins has debased enormously -- consequently, (1) you'd be a fool to spend a silver quarter when you've got a zinc one handy, and (2) it's not as likely a silver American quarter from 1850 is going to show up in a field in Kenya as it is that a more recent one would do so. From this perspective, it was the stability of the economy of the Roman republic that propelled its money so far in space and time.

Thank you all. Another wonderful Ides with no dictator-in-perpetuum.

Just in time for the 2054th anniversary of the "noblest Roman"'s finest hour, the British Museum is showing the famous Eid Mar coin, minted by Brutus as he and Cassius rallied republican forces in Greece. The coin, on loan from a private collector, is one of only two gold pieces bearing the famous Phrygian cap and daggers, and it is the only one regarded as authentic. (BTW, it would make a lovely birthday gift for the anti-Caesarians among your friends and family...)

University of Connecticut professor uses role-playing games to teach Latin and ancient society. His blog is HERE. Seems like a really cool idea. Learning languages requires having something to connect the words to, and a language with words like pila, lustrum, and Robigalia desperately needs an artificial world for that to happen. Plus, it looks like fun.

Personally, I'm pretty appalled by the whole Third Punic War. Carthage needn't have been destroyed.

Caprica is my current favorite TV show, but waiting a whole week for it is an agony I haven't experienced since BSG.

As I recall, he was rather more charitable than I would have been. Thanks for reminding me to look up his treatment.

Hopefully not a special commission to Cyprus, Clodius. Glad you liked Gruen's book -- it's not as anti-Caesar as I would have written it, but it's pro-republic, which is more important.

It's even worse than mere baldness. As I pointed to an earlier thread, some Roman commanders were jeered at for their ancient comb-overs.

I'm away from my own (unburned) library, but as I recall, Antony made the effort to ransack other libraries in the Hellenistic world in order to replace those caused by Caesar's burn through Alexandria. In any case, it would make for a fun urban campaign in a video game -- even if it would annoy Caesar's apologists.

I agree that it's unlikely that there was any conspiracy to fudge Caesar's numbers. But that doesn't make Caesar's numbers accurate. Inaccuracy could come from the mere fact that no one really bothered to do a head count of the killed Gaul. The fact that the numbers were all round ones like one million almost certainly means that the numbers were estimates and not real counts. And when we're estimating numbers, inaccuracy grows with the real number estimated. Thus, a difference between 1 and 10 Gaul would be noticed, but a difference of 999,990 and 1 million Gaul wouldn't be (though the numerical difference is identical). The fact is that we just have no idea how many people were exactly involved in these Gallic adventures, and the archaeology is just too limited to discern whether Caesar's estimates were even within an order of magnitude.

Presumably Caesar would have been called to account for any peculiarities in his account after he returned to Rome. But on his return to Rome, he found his opponents elsewhere, no?

Cool!

From a gameplay perspective, it's important to have a mix of battle types. Dyrrhachium was interesting because it featured very heavy use of archers and slingers against a fortified position -- typically, Roman armies didn't rely so heavily on archers, and it's interesting to note that hardly a man escaped Dyrrhacium uninjured despite the low number of casualties. Also, Ruspina is interesting because it shows why the Numidian cavalry were rightly famous: under the command of Labienus, Caesar's legions were not just decimated by Labienus, they were cut down by a third. It would be interesting to see if players could improve on Caesar's outcome or (better) improve on that of Labienus'. Finally, the siege of Alexandria is interesting because it features a very small militia successfully defending a fortified position in wait for a huge relief force. Here the challenge to outdo Caesar would be to avoid burning down the library of Alexandria as Caesar did.

I know his own "diary" was a major source of our knowledge about the campaign against the Gauls. but is Caesar's writings the only source of our knowledge of the war really? Caesar's commentaries on his Gallic adventure were not for his own private use (as in a diary), but for political propaganda. It's useful to note in this context that Caesar refers to himself in the third person ("Caesar", "he") and not in the first person ("I"). Unless Caesar were quite mad, it's unlikely he'd use the third person for himself in his own diaries. (Though this is someone who claimed to be a descendent of Venus...) We do have other sources for the war, but I don't think they're really dispositive of the numbers Caesar faced. Our other sources are archaeological -- so, we can go to Gergovia (say) and excavate for Roman war machinery, but it won't tell us how many Gallic women and children were clapped in chains and sent to Rome. For that kind of information, we rely on Caesar (who claims to have enslaved a million men, women and children).

Aside from Hercules (who was apparently battling serpents from the crib), none of Rome's most successful commanders were soldiers "from an early age on". Rather, they typically worked up from a low level command (as a military tribune) to gain successively greater experience and responsibility. Like modern officers, who start as second lieutenants not as privates, Romans gained expertise in leadership through a set of experiences that were not those of an ordinary soldier.

Totally -- this was just one of many times I was yelling at the screen. I'm tempted to shake my fist and demand that hour of my life back, but I was at least pleasantly surprised that the Getai and Thracians were given *any* time in a sand-and-sandals flick. Normally, movie-makers treat all non-Greeks and non-Romans as interchangeable, nameless 'barbarians' who only fight Romans and Greeks but never each other. Don't get me wrong: I'm not asking for some politically correct vision of barbarians as noble savages (like in that wretched movie Avatar). Far from it -- the more accurate the portrayal of barbarians, the greater the glory for Rome, who knew how to use its intelligence about barbarian tribes for its brilliant strategy of divide and conquer.

Thanks Nephele. You're right that there are quite a few cognomen with the double-p -- that doesn't really bother me since cognomen are often imports (e.g., Damasippus), and the cognomen itself is a bit of an innovation anyway. But Maty's got the example that I just can't wiggle out of for anything -- Iuppiter. By Jove, Iuppiter is as Italic as it gets, isn't it? But then why do we render it as Jupiter? (The J-part I get.)

While doing some research on Roman Gaul for an upcoming trip to France, I came across the name of a Gallo-Roman landholder named Clippius, who lent his name to Clippiacum (now Clichy). The double-p in Clippius struck me as Latin-atypical, though I'll bet you'll immediately recall one prominent exception: Agrippa. Now, there's something funny thing about that name too. First, where did it come from? Supposedly, there was an early patrician family that used Agrippa as a praenomen but mysteriously went extinct. I say 'supposedly' because this family seems to have been discovered under Augustus (who wanted his Vipsanius Agrippa to be a patrician), and from out of nowhere "Agrippa" was also being promoted as the name of some long lost Alban kings. If we can agree that that line of praenomen-bearing Agrippae is pure bunk (and *really* where else does one find Agrippa as a praenomen?), then where did 'Agrippa' really come from? Then, the original funny business to explain: How common were double-p names among proper Roman republican families anyway? I toss in 'republican' as a delimiter in this context just because I want to try to find something Italian in origin, and after the 1st C, Italy was simply filled with the dregs of the whole empire -- non-Latin names and all. Any thoughts?