M. Porcius Cato

Given the number of raw mistakes you make about the republican constitution (e.g., the powers of the senate, the role of the various assemblies, and role of the plebiscite), it's no wonder you think that there were no democratic elements in the republican system. I'll start a new thread on this since it's a perennial topic of debate that comes up whenever we talk about Sulla, Caesar, Augustus, and Tiberius, each of whom dealt major blows to the chief democratic elements in the classical republican system (i.e., the powers of the tribunes, the freedom of contiones, and the election of magistrates).

If he does then that is a marked departure from the stance taken by the Synoptic Gospels. Mark, and Matthew who copies him, state unequivocally that the entire Sanhedrin were present at the trial (Mark 14: 53 - 65). Interesting. It's further evidence that John is more reliable than the Synoptics.

Octavian was a pleb, as was Pompei, and the Grachi bros...Plebs being all those who weren't patrician. Correct me if I'm wrong someone. You're not wrong. Also, there were no educational requirements to ascend the cursus honorum. M. Curius Dentatus was pretty darned close to a dirt farmer, yet he rose to highest office through his military talents, which were formidable enough to defeat Pyrrhus. Look through my list of Roman leaders and you'll find one pleb after another--L. Junius Brutus, G. Licinius Stolo, G. Marcus Rutilus, M. Curius Dentatus, G. Lutatius Catulus, Q. Fulvius Flaccus, C. Flaminius, M. Livius Salinator, T. Quinctius Flamininus, M. Porcius Cato, etc etc--standing toe-to-toe against patricians. The fact is that patricians were just a portion of the founding families of the city, and in a city of so many immigrants over so much time, it shouldn't be surprising that these families were greatly out-numbered, out-moneyed, and out-politicked (for better or worse). I know I started a whole thread on this topic someplace. [edit: HERE it is.]

If the disciples were armed hooligans, keeping Jesus in custody would pose the risk of armed conflict (or at least protest) for his release. Once Jesus was dead, however, his followers had no figure to rally behind. Jesus had to die before the festival, and the Romans had to do it lest the high priests be sullied by the impurity. In this very limited sense, Jesus died for others (though IMO that hardly seems like something worth celebrating). Also, John depicts only a meeting at the house of Caiaphas, not an assembly of the whole Sanhedrin. I guess it's possible that the whole Sandedrin might have met (and might have fit) in the house of Caiaphas, but there's nothing in John that suggests that this was the case, and if against Jewish law, it seems unlikely that they would have done so. They typically followed these laws ... religiously.

The Roman republic ran pretty smoothly for most of 500 years, so I guess I'd like to know when you're talking about. Polybius, for one, didn't think that corruption ever occurred in Rome and that bribery was so rare that it was punishable by death. Now, how do you explain this Polybius' belief if opposite beliefs were expressed in a common saying of the Romans themselves? Surely, this suggests that bribery was not always rampant, a fact which is also supported in the increasing number of bribery trials that are reported in the literature. Fine, but if you're getting the same offer from both sides and no one can know how you actually behaved, then the bribe of party A offers no real incentive. Changing the timing of the bribe does nothing to save this. There were also repeated laws against sumptuary, but that doesn't prove that luxury really undermined the soul, and repeated rituals to secure the favor of the gods, but that doesn't prove that the gods really exist. The mere fact that laws were passed against bribery doesn't show that the bribes were effective in swaying elections. The fact is that if you're getting bribed by both sides in a secret ballot, you can choose the side you like and still collect a reward. Rather than disputing what should be a self-evident fact, why not seek a different explanation for the laws against bribery? You're absolutely right that we needn't assume that the Romans were misguided in their laws against bribery, especially if we reconsider what the laws aimed at obtaining. Let's suppose that the Romans realized that, under universal bribery, bribery became worthless, but thought that no one participant could unilaterally desist in the strategy without harming his own chances. In this way, the anti-bribery legislation wasn't about obtaining FAIR ELECTIONS; anti-bribery legislation was about obtaining CHEAPER ELECTIONS. That, I submit, is a bill that an optimate and a populare could agree on.

Ironic, given that Cassius' treatment as tribune was offered as a pretext for Caesar's march on Rome. After Caesar's treatment of the tribune Murullus, Cassius must have been totally disgusted with Caesar.

But this is exactly what John reports to have happened--Pilate tells the Jewish authorities to deal with Jesus themselves, and the Jewish authorities protest that they were not able to do so, presumably because their laws required them to maintain their ritual purity for the upcoming Pascha. Purification and its maintenance explains most of the religious events leading up to the Pascha, and it explains also the refusal of the authorities to enter into the "unclean" house of Pilate. Hence, the otherwise absurd song-and-dance that has Pilate going out to hear their complaint in the courtyard. Patent nonsense. John betrays absolutely no sense of anti-Semitism. As an aside, let me simply point out that the facts are what they are, irrespective of how anti-Semites choose to abuse them. Even if it were true that the Jewish authorities were paragons of innocence in Jesus' prosecution (which I doubt), and even if you succeed in pinning the "crime of deicide" on the Romans alone (which I think is equally unjust), it wouldn't reduce anti-Semitism one iota. Racial hatred doesn't feed itself on facts but on fear, envy, and arrogance. For this reason, I totally oppose the idea of twisting our understanding of Jesus' trial to address medieval prejudices and gratify modern sensibilities--especially when it amounts to substituting one scapegoat (the Jews) for another (the Romans). Source? Also, John doesn't depict a meeting of the whole Sanhedrin. You answered your own question, which is that Jesus was militant--apparently even instructing his followers to arm themselves with swords (so much for Jesus as the Prince of Peace)--and they wanted to quietly have the Romans dispose of him to ensure a tranquil holiday.

Millar cites a vast assembly of secondary scholarly material, with titles like "Remarks on the Neirab Texts", "The Cuneiform Tablet from Tell Tawailan," "The Aramaic Ostracon," etc. If you're looking for primary written source material, then important sources on the Roman Near East are Josephus (Jewish Wars, The Antiquities), Strabo, and Polybius. But these authors provide much less information than is needed to grasp the extent and manner by which Romans Hellenized the Eastern Mediterranean. To get that you have to have a secondary source that assembles the vast archaeological, numismatic, and non-Greco-Roman literature into a coherent narrative. This requires fluency in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc. The mind reels at the size of the project.

Huh? If John got the chronology of human events right, that's a purely historical matter that stands independent of any theological concept whatever.

Absolutely nothing I have said in this thread has anything to do with theological argument, nor does anything that Fergus Millar said in his work that I cite above. You do realize that you're not only asking for a summary of his book but for a summary of his use of sources as well? Perhaps the thrust of your question is how much Millar relies on John. And the answer is almost not at all. His only consideration of John occurred in his chapter on the trial of Jesus, which was a tour de force on how to use source information critically. The real message of that chapter, which was written simply as a student exercise, was that it's not possible to cobble together all the contradictory sources on a topic--one filling in details for another--without establishing a primary, reliable source against which to evaluate the others. The specific case of Jesus was simply to make the historical method plain by re-working a familiar example.

Disappointing. I've been spending nearly this whole thread advertising Fergus Millar's argument in favor of John. See above. Also, nothing in the against-John link above has anything to do with John; it's about the Jesus seminar.

From a public relations standpoint, the tribune incident was a fiasco for Caesar regardless of whether it occurred prior to or following the Lupercalia. BTW, I don't really take my counter-argument to be persuasive, but my reasons come from a different way of looking at the chronology. Let's look at all of the events from a slightly different point of view--not Caesar's , but Brutus'. When exactly did Brutus decide to kill Caesar? What was the point at which Brutus' private doubts about Pompey became a private animus against Caesar? When was Brutus' private animus against Caesar turned into a patriotic crusade? When did Brutus' crusade catch fire among the other Liberators? When did the Liberators decide that they had to act NOW and not later? I think the clue from Nicolaus of Damascus shows all the signs of an already extant conspiracy at the Lupercalia, and sources also hint that the real turning point to this public event was the violation of the tribunes. I'm guessing that for families that had supported Marius (like Brutus' family), this must have been the point at which private disgust with Caesar acquired the flame of patriotism. In fact, it would be interesting to count up the number of conspirators who had been tribunes themselves. I'm also guessing that the rumor of the Sibylline prophesy precipitated an apparent imperative for immediate action--the Sibylline prophesy would have to be announced prior to Caesar leaving for Rome, when the Senate would presumably decree him king, as directed by the Sibylline books. It's entirely possible that the Liberators felt (rightly or wrongly) they had to prevent this decree by killing Caesar prior to the Parthian expedition, and the last meeting prior to this would be 15 March. If they weren't acting on this assumption, it's difficult to imagine why they wouldn't welcome Caesar's leaving Italy, which would normally cause him to lose his status as dictator and which could have resulted in his death anyway. Granted that this is all (evidence-based) conjecture, but even if you don't agree with this chronology, I still think it's productive to try looking at the events from Caesar's perspective, from Brutus', from Antony's, from Cicero's, and so forth. Otherwise, there is a tendency to see one person as the agent of all events, and that's obviously absurd.

Not really. There are three firm dates surrounding the event in which Caesar violated the sanctity of tribunes Murullus and Flavius. The first occurred on 26 Jan 44, when Caesar entered Rome from the ritual of the Feriae Latinae, whereupon someone hailed him rex and Caesar haughtily replied, "I am Caesar, not king". The second occurred on 15 Feb 44, which was the date of the Lupercalia. The third was 15 March 44. Somewhere in this period must be an additional three events relating to Caesar's regal ambitions (or eagerness to disdain them): the Murullus and Flavius incident; the event in which Caesar disdained to rise for the senate when granting him some new honor; and the event in which it is 'discovered' in the Sibylline books--shortly before Caesar's expedition to Parthia-- that only a king can conquer Parthia. Thus, it's entirely possible that the Lupercalia was meant to more ostentatiously repeat the events of 26 Jan 44, and having found that the crowd was in fact divided, Caesar was emboldened to foster the monarchical cult by suppressing the tribunes who discouraged it. Plutarch's chronology makes perfect sense from this standpoint, and even more sense if we assume that the suppression of the tribunes was meant to clear the way for the Sibylline prophesies. Ultimately, almost any independent interpretation of the sources requires some sense of what really happened at the Lupercalia. For example, the account by Nicolaus of Damascus, who had eyewitness testimony to Caesar's assassination, differs greatly from that of Plutarch, with Nicolaus essentially depicting the event as an attempt by the Liberators to trap Caesar into taking the crown. If this view is correct (and it is entirely consistent with what little Cicero says of it), then the Lupercalia incident can't have been an attempt to salvage Caesar's handling of the tribunes. In general, my approach to chronology is to take Cicero's letters and speeches as virtual gospel (actually, better than that if you're following that thread!) on the grounds that his descriptions were at least contemporaneous with events, and thus it was highly unlikely that he altered the sequence of events described in his earlier letters to accord with his later outlook. In fact, if Cicero ever edited his letters at all, I'd be shocked. It's for this reason that even the most slavish of Caesar's cheerleaders and the most inveterate haters of Cicero nevertheless rely on Cicero's letters for chronology. I'd suggest that Cicero holds the key to understanding the events of early 44.

Each of these topics could be---and has been!--addressed in a page, a book, or a series of books. Let me suggest a few leads to help you approach these topics so you're not floundering around just trying to find the right literature. Comparing the religious views of whole societies--especially vast empires like Persia and Rome--is bound to oversimplify matters greatly. Think about trying to compare the religious views of Americans (which encompasses widely differing sects of Christians, atheists, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists) and Iraqis (which spans the same gamut, albeit to a different degree of each element in the mix). It's probably more interesting to focus on one or two common elements across the religions. For example, each of these cultures has left us a written record of their creation myths, i.e., how the world was started and how humans came to be. Comparing the stories found in the Hebrew myths in Genesis (Adam/Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah, and all that) to those found in the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh and the stories in the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphosis (about Pandora, Deucalion, etc) would help to illustrate some of the similarities and differences. On Rome versus Alexander, read Polybius. (Can't help with Egypt.) Read Perikles' funeral oration in Thucydides, parts of Aristotle's Politica and parts of Polybius. If you really want to understand the difference between Athens and Sparta, read "The Trial of Socrates" by I. F. Stone from cover-to-cover. Read all Herodotus and all Thucydides. "The Landmark Thucydides" is the best version IMO. Don't watch the 300; if you already have, pretend you didn't. Two great places on this site for this topic: the history of Roman law and the men who wrote and fought for these laws. Also see the Cambride Companion to the Roman Republic and (even better) A Companion to the Roman Republic (Blackwell), which has a very good narrative history of the republic in just four sweet chapters. These are the sources, but as Nephele says, the comparing/contrasting/THINKING is up to you. BTW, this looks like a whole course on Western Civ and not one class project.

On the office of dictator, that epitome of truthiness, Wikipedia, has a nice piece here. Or, better, there's the entry in Smith's Dictionary here. Finally, here is Smith's deflationary account of Cincinnatus' career.

Every generation has to remake the world, but chiseling religious symbols into the faces of the great women of antiquity--that's just rotten.

Source Material: Dion Cass. xliv. 9, 10 ; Appian, B. C. ii. 108, 122 ; Plut. Caes. 61 ; Vell. Pat. ii. 68 ; Suet. Caes. 79, 80 ; Cic. Philipp. xiii. 15

Interesting. Might be worth checking other dictators too for their post-career moves.

But the worst vandals weren't anarchists; they were the Christians who took over the whole empire. As just one example of many, look closely at this portrait of the beautiful courtesan Phryne, and you'll see the sign of the cross carved into her forehead and down her visage. This kind of religious vandalism occurred over the whole empire, and it was far more destructive than the petty vandalism committed by teenagers.

That was a great scene. Pentangeli, btw, was referring to the manner of death of two different people--Seneca, whose veins kept clotting and required a hot bath to open them up, and Petronius, who had opened his veins during a final dinner party. Both of them, I believe, were implicated in the Pisonian plot against Nero, and I like to believe that they were guilty. Nero was a Fredo when Rome required a Hagen.

Only ex-consuls were eligible to be elected dictator, so all dictators were already senators to start with. Also, the dictators I cited span well into the middle Republic, though thankfully the office had a bit of dust on it prior to Sulla. BTW, are you trying to say that Parson Weems LIED about the cherry tree incident?!

Maybe it's propaganda, maybe not. Matthew offered a decent explanation of why Joseph wanted to live in Galilee despite his family connections in Bethlehem, the hometown of David. If you add that Mary had been ..er.. a frisky young woman, it might also explain why she would seek to live outside her hometown, and in Galilee probably no one thought to ask her any uncomfortable questions about Jesus' biological father. And if your Dad tells you that you're the descendent of David and your Mom tells you that she knew God (in the biblical sense), you could very well convince yourself that you're the Messiah. There was this one guy, bald as a peach, who thought he was descended from Venus, and ... oh, never mind.

I don't think it's a fairy tale either. But even if it were in the case of Cincinnatus, there were plenty of other dictators who willingly gave up total power. Why should this be surprising? The office of dictator was only rei gerendae causa--"for the matter to be done", typically no longer than six months. Indeed, of the many dictators of the Roman republic--Titus Larcius, M Furius Camillus, L Quinctius Cincinnatus, M Valerius Corvus, P Cornelius Rufinus, L Papirius Cursor, Q Fabius Maximus Rullianus, M Valerius Corvus, A Claudius Caecus, A Atilius Caiatinus, Q Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Q Fabius Maximus Cunctator, M Junius Pera, M Fabius Buteo, P Sulpicius Galba Maximus, L Cornelius Sulla, and G Julius Caesar--only the last two served for more than six months, despite the perpetual immunity of the dictator from prosecution. Thus, there were plenty of people who behaved like perfectly good Cincinnati, even if they weren't called Cincinnatus.

LOL. That's my favorite too. Have you ever noticed what cognitive parasites these village theologians are? By 'cognitive parasitism', I mean that the naive theology implied by the comments above comprise nothing more than cribbing the notes of scientists. In fact, none of these alleged facts about God had ever been known about God before--not until critics realized how the scientific findings did not jibe with Genesis and apologists had to reply to the critics. And the funny thing is it's heresy! After all, nothing in Genesis says that "God created the light on the way to earth so that we could see them" and nothing in science implies as much either. The only way to reach this absurd conclusion about God is by mangling scientific findings to fit the Procrustean bed of Genesis. If I were a theist (which I'm not), I'd be outraged by these stupid arguments. I'd say to the village theologian, "Genesis is just a human story about God, and I'm not going to piss off God by making Him out to be a monster just to save my great-great-great-....-great-grandfather's bedtime story."

Also, see Roman Leaders for quick reference on important figures from the republican era.