M. Porcius Cato

There is no evidence that the ordinary soldiers who followed the orders of defeated Roman hostes--including Sertorius, Lepidus, Brutus, Catiline, Sextus Pompey, Cassius, Brutus, and Antony--were ever thrown from the Tarpeian Rock or punished in any other way. Had Caesar been defeated, the only ones to suffer from his defeat would be those killed directly on the battlefield and the legates who--taking no sacramentum--freely followed him in his treason.

What are you talking about? How did their choices increase after the Marian reforms? If anything, their choices decreased. Initially, there was no sacramentum. Then, the sacramentum was restricted to the vow not to abandon formation in battle. Finally, after Marius, the sacramentum was expanded to obey one's legates.

PP is right that Gaul wasn't a sinkhole as big as Brittania, which gobbled up a quarter of the Roman army with only a tinkling trickle of tin in re-payment, but the defense of Gaul from Germania made it much less valuable than the East. Economically, Crassus had the right idea.

Evidence that the Roman senate was modeled on the Carthaginian? Seems unlikely to me given the vast differences. Whatever Dido may have thought, Aeneas was not her husband. And this is pure fantasy anyway--what the heck does it show about real Punic influences on Roman civilization?

My heavens, Yes! To grasp the enormity of what we don't know, just look at what we do know of 20th century America. We have: vast forests of photographs and newspapers from competing sources with different points of view, huge vaults of news reels depicting Presidential speeches and armies at war and recent inventions, detailed diaries and letters from people of all walks of life, probability-sample opinion polling on political and cultural issues, comprehensive archives of Congressional deliberations and roll call votes, DAILY economic data on publicly traded companies, MONTHLY economic data on labor and wages, archives of all patents, tradmarks, and 99.9% of all published books, magazines, and journals. For modern historians, the chief problem isn't data collection, but data compression--rather like the problem of reducing the file size of a digital movie without affecting picture quality. In contrast, the chief problem of the ancient historian is the lack of basic data--rather like trying to assemble a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle from a few dozen pieces (and no puzzle box cover to help).

A bias in which direction--to inflate or deflate the effect of civil war? I don't see how my measure is biased in either direction, which is to say--it's not biased. If you mean that there is a confound in the comparison (as opposed to a bias), then it's easy to rectify: simply compare years in the last century during and not during civil wars. Again, you'll see that Roman rule expanded less during periods of civil war than during other periods.

Good question. Also, I don't see the revolts in Judaea as indicative of much except the incompatibility of polytheism and monotheism. Since the Parthians were polytheist, I don't see why it should have been any more difficult for Rome to control this area than for the Greek Seleucids, who ruled for two centuries. Nor do I see how Parthian cultural differences were any obstacle to Roman rule: the Romans were normally great at accommodating foreign cultures, including Carthaginian, Iberian, Egyptian, and most of the old Achaemenid Persian Empire. If the Romans could control this motley bunch, why not Parthia too? Moreover--and I think this is the critical issue--Parthia would have been a good trading partner for Rome. The markets of the Roman Empire would have given Parthian merchants and aristocrats a compelling interest to keep things peaceful. This is one reason that Roman Africa, Egypt, and Asia was vastly less costly to maintain than Roman Britain.

My vote would be to post by festival: the narrower the topic, the more in depth the discussion and the greater the learning.

Where does one obtain a goat-skin these days? Also, is it your interpretation that the celebrants of the Lupercalia wore an Optio-style wolf-skin, too?

BTW, this thread doesn't belong the Humanities folder.

Already exists. See list here.

Diminishing returns on investment explains why Rome stopped expanding northward, southward, and westward--but not eastward. Just look at the massive loot acquired by Septimius Severus by taking Ctesiphon in Parthia. In the long run, expansion to the Indus River Valley could have turned the Indo-Parthian empire into another Roman Africa--rich, productive, and peaceful. Furthermore, Roman Parthia would have broadened the conduit from Rome to China, thereby benefitting both. Unfortunately, Rome was too busy wasting its money and manpower on Caesar's stupid expansions into iron-age nations that were easy to defeat because there was nothing worthwhile to gain.

In addition to influences from Etruria, Southern Italy was colonized by Greeks who had a large and beneficial influence on Roman civilization (in the literal sense, city-ification).

Obviously you should divide by the number of years in each of the two categories. Also, there were more than 20 years of Civil War just in the last century of the republic. Social War: 91 - 89 (~3 years) Marian Civil War: 88 - 82 (~+7 years) War with Sertorius/Lepidus: 83 - 72 (~+10 years) Catiline: 62 (~+1 year) Caesarian Civil War: 49 - 45 (~+5 years) To this, add all the years of civil war during the principate and dominate. Cassius' thesis wasn't restricted to the republic, but generalized over all Roman history.

You must be proud. Where is Augustulus going to university?

Did Roman civil wars prevent conquest? There's no need to wax poetic about human nature here. Just look at a timeline of Roman history and count up the years that Rome invaded other nations WHILE being at war with herself and the years that Rome invaded other nations WHILE NOT being at war with herself. The years accumulating in the second category far outweighs the first. Surely this lends credence to Cassius' point. Looking beyond the timeline, I think one can also make the reverse case: not only did civil war prevent foreign conquest (at least temporarily), foreign conquest itself tended to be destabilizing and at least facilitated future civil wars. Had Caesar's Parthian legions not been assembled, the troops marshaled in the field at Phillipi would have been much smaller. Had Caesar not had an army to play with in Gaul, his crossing of the Rubicon would have been a big yawn. Had Pompey not been campaigning in the East and gobbling up foreign clients, he would have had no cause to join in the tremendously destabilizing triumvirate with Caesar. Had Sulla and Marius not been waging war outside Rome, their civil war would have been a toothless squabble as well. Even the Social War was all about the drafting of Italian troops who had no share in the spoils and no say in their mustering. From the moment that Tiberius Gracchus jumped over the walls of Carthage, nearly every generation of Roman was plagued by victorious warriors who forgot the arts of peace once they were home.

Marius is infamous (perhaps to a degree that is unwarranted) for opening up the ranks of the Roman legions to the landless, propertyless "head-count" of Rome. The result: an army that unquestioningly obeyed its commanding officers, even when the officers threatened to topple the republic (and finally did). The widely-vaunted alternative to this ever-present threat--in the US, most recently revived by Douglas MacArthur; elsewhere, seen in military coups from Venezuela to Pakistan--is "civilian control," with military officers accepting the implict charge to accomplish the civilian mission no-questions-asked. Is this the best alternative? A recent piece in NYT Magazine suggests that civilian control--at least as it is currently practiced--has its own problems, especially the problem of rewarding generals who fail to give frank advice to civilian leadership. It's a fascinating article, and well worth reading. My first impression is that "private armies" versus "civilian control" is a false alternative--the real alternative to private armies are armies that uphold the laws--that would be the real Anti-Marian Reform. Beyond that, generals who fail to give frank assessments of what can be realistically accomplished are guilty of a derliction of duty--not just to their commander in chief, but to their country.

Sandra Shaw, a sculptress in Toronto, accepts commissions for portrait busts that would strongly evoke the Greco-Roman attitude toward portraiture. Her website is http://www.sandrashaw.com. I've seen her work in person, attended her lectures, and discussed ancient art with her at some length. I think she would understand, appreciate, and admire your goals. Good luck.

Our chief contemporary source for Cato's significance isn't Cicero, but Caesar's own partisan Sallust, who held Cato in much esteem despite detesting Cato's nominal allies. In contrast, Cicero wrote less about Cato than did Sallust, and Cicero's attitude towards Cato ran hot and cold, depending on whether Cato was helping Cicero or hindering him at the time. Ironically, one of the people who most helped catapult Cato to fame was Caesar, whose Anti-Cato was published right after Cato's death and while Sallust was writing his own histories. Thereafter, everyone who opposed Caesar, the Julio-Claudians, or whatever emperor was around, looked back to Cato as the Cassandra of the republic and a model Stoic. In one respect, a similar relation holds between the American founders and George III--if the role of king had not existed, there would have been no role for the republican revolutionaries.

Bad story. End of review.

I thought the Aventine was heavily populated. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any non-habitable public works on the Aventine aside from the temple of Ceres.

Good idea--another thread. Also, you may care to read over a related thread that I started a long time ago, "Symptoms of the Triumvirate, Not the Republic: Stereotype of the Republic is Completely Off-base"

In Plutarch's Life of Cato the Younger, I'd always found one episode particularly mystifying: his divorce from Marcia, of whom he was reportedly fond; Marcia's hasty marriage to Hortensius, Cato's wealthy friend and admirer; and Marcia's return to Cato's household. The mind reels from the possible explanations for this sequence of events, and--natural gossips that we are--probably most of the more salacious explanations have been offered on this forum. Thanks to an excellent article by Hattie L. Gordon (1933), The Classical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 10, 574‑578 and thanks to Bill Thayer's indefatigable efforts to publicize all that is known about ancient Rome, this episode now seems much clearer. Personally, I was somewhat surprised by how boring the whole thing turned out to be, but in case you too were wondering about this juicy tidbit from Cato's life, you can read the whole article at Lacus Curtius.

Or for freedom to perish.

Or perish.