M. Porcius Cato

If I can interject a couple more elementary questions: WHEN did Catholicism grow? What is the starting date? How is its size being estimated?

The Guardian claims it to be.

Of course he deserved to die. On top of being a pathological narcissist, Caesar was a traitor who plunged the greatest free republic of the ancient world into a monarchical system that plagued Europe for over a 1000 years, until the deaths of the last Kaisars and Tsars in the early Twentieth Century. By depriving Rome of popular sovereignty, Caesar eliminated the only legal mechanisms of succession, and he paved the way for the crises of the Third Century and the collapse of the whole empire. After so many imitators of Caesar had plunged Rome into anarchy and civil war, all of Caesar's military conquests were reversed, and the whole Roman system gave way to the Dark Ages of the barbarian hordes. For all this, Caesar couldn't be stabbed enough. In spite of this moral judgment, however, it's clear that the actual assassination of Caesar was poorly done, and he should have faced a legal trial. As a purely practical matter, assassinations almost never achieve the assassin's political aims--not in the case of the original Tyrannicides (Harmodius and Aristogeiton), nor in the case of the Liberators (Brutus and Cassius), nor in the murder of Abraham Lincoln (John Wilkes Booth), nor in the case of Archduke Ferdinand's killer, nor in the case of Rabin's killer. So, while I think Caesar deserved to die, the republic deserved that Caesar face trial.

From the life of Tiberius: He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction. Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips on condition that if the theme displeased him he was to have a million sesterces instead, he chose to keep it and actually hung it in his bedroom. The story is also told that once at a sacrifice, attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother, the flute-player, too; and subsequently, when they complained of the assault, he had their legs broken. Where in the life of Augustus does Suetonius discuss Tiberius' innocent enjoyment of boys?

Looking confused, Cato attempts to find an educated Greek to talk to. "The paradoxes of Zeno," Cato thinks, "are simpler than the women of Rome."

Statistic? Evidence? Or is this pure hot air? So what? It's still a tiny, tiny risk. Put this statistic in context. According to Levitt and Dubnar, "In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 millionplus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means that roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.)" Thus, the likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) differs by a factor of 100. Following the logic that a marginal risk of only 20% should lead to a ban on handgun, we should ban swimming pools too.

Well, then, that would be a really pointless point. If the murder rate in Poland is higher than the US (which it is), who cares whether the manner of murder is gun, rope, knife, or candlestick???

Simply stunning: wrong in almost every possible detail. Prior to the Twelve Tables, written laws certainly existed (see here for one surviving example; see the Leges Regiae for still earlier exempla). These laws were not arbitrary ones used exclusively against plebeians. In fact, none of these early laws even mention plebs. Second, the first great victory of the plebeians must have been the expulsion of the Tarquins, and--following that--the reforms of Publicola. Moreover, as important as the Twelve Tables were for private law (and they almost all deal exclusively with private law, not constitutional matters), they enacted no Solonian-style seisictheia. The attempt to recast the Twelve Tables within the late republican mold is simply an ahistorical fantasy. Third, Claudius was not the only one who made it possible. The codification of the laws were proposed by a tribune, Terentilius Harsa. The men who sat on the board that was charged with the codification were largely--like Claudius--from the new clans that immigrated to Rome: Romilius, Tarpeius, Aternius, Quinctilius, Curiatius, Sestius, and Genucius. Moreover, according to Strabo and Pliny, the codification itself had a Greek source--Hermodorus, an Ephesian who was residing in Rome at the time--and some of the language on the tables have a clear Greek source (e.g., poena used to refer to a penalty). Thus, Claudius was really only a bit player in the whole drama, and he was certainly not "the one who made it possible and who conducted the whole process of making this law". Fourth, the claim "All the senate and patrician class was against him while he had full support of plebs!" is logically impossible. Claudius himself was a patrician. Moreover, given the harsh punishments stipulated by the Tables for debtors, it seems scarcely credible that they had the "full support of plebs!". Quite the contrary, the best explanation for the resolution of the conflict of the orders is that the harsh penalties for debt (e.g., debt bondage and slavery) were abolished. Finally, the content of the Twelve Tables matters enormously. This wholly absurd interpretation of the Tables as a great constitutional victory for the plebs gains absolutely no credence from even a cursory reading of the Tables, which concern themselves with utterly ordinary private law and no position that anyone could regard as popularis.

OK--who were these young, aggressive tribunes? Did they form anything like a real faction? Did they support one another's legislation--or veto it? When they stepped down from the tribunate, did they continue to work together (if they ever did)--or did they go their separate ways, competing with another sometimes and cooperating at other times? In my view, Sallust's sweeping generalizations are terribly unreliable and almost invariably marked by the kind of bitter cynicism that comes from the dashed hopes of naive utopians.

Are you watching the same series as the rest of us? When was there any reference to the compromise of the law courts? Caesar was portrayed not only as refusing to compromise the trial of Pullo, despite the intercessions of his friends, but also leading Vorenus to prevent a rescue of Pullo. Moreover, the rhetorical skills of Antony were credited with his prevailing over Brutus.

Well, thanks God consitution of my country dont give the right to have weapon as personal freedom so I can go outside without need to consider if the people walking on the street are armed or not. They must not teach statistics in your country either. Since 1993 the U.S. handgun murder rate has decreased 48 percent, even as the number of privately owned handguns in America has increased by more than 20 million. Meanwhile, your beloved Poland has a higher murder rate than the US. Gee, come to think of it, they must not teach Roman history in Poland either. Did you know the Romans had NO GUNS yet found plenty of creative ways to kill one another?

Happy birthday Ilian! And many thanks for your excellent posts on Cicero's letters.

If you haven't read it already, enjoy Harrison Bergeron.

Fergus Millar, Erich Gruen, and Nate Rosenstein are currently my favorite modern historians on the Republic, although I'll always have a soft spot for Lily Ross Taylor. Meier and Lintott are also very good. I wouldn't recommend that anyone start with these writers, however.

"Believe me, Brutus, as one not given to self-depreciation, I am a spent force. The Senate was my right arm, and it has lost its cunning." I do wonder what would have happened had Cassius and Brutus returned to Italy--as Cicero begged of them-- and won Lepidus to their side.

I loved Vonnegut. Welcome to the Monkey House was one of my faves in high school.

In my opinion, this is a question for social psychology, not ancient history. In Caesar's case, we have a group of men whose very survival over the past 8 years depended on their cohesion and their unquestioning obedience to their officers. These officers, too, were mostly ambitious legates without better prospects, so they too had a strong motive to follow Caesar. Under similar circumstances (in any age for any leader), the pressure to conform to the group and to obey the leader is very great. Thus, it should not be surprising that it took a long time for Caesar's men to finally mutiny, and it should not be surprising that only a handful of men deserted Caesar (Labienus being one). The promise of loot and glory probably made conformity for the rest easier, but I don't think it was definitive.

I would question the premise that the Head Count made up a significant portion of the Roman armies in the late Republic. Two cohorts, I believe, were assembled from the Head Count to fight in the Servile Wars, and they were utterly annihilated. Being viewed as indifferent soldiers, the Head Count seldom constituted much of any later army, which normally comprised Italians in great number. On this, see P. A. Brunt's enormously influential article, "The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution," JRS, 69-86; the rejoinder in "Rome at War" by Nathan Rosenstein; and two complementary articles in the Blackwell Companion to the Roman Republic (which I'll be reviewing soon, I hope). PS Gosh it would be nice if there were a way to upload Brunt's article to the UNRV site so everyone could read it!

Thanks for the pointers. A nice entry on Lucius Accius here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate an on-line source of Accius material (yet), but I'm sure we're all familiar with one line of his: Oderint dum metuant.

I agree. We know that close work is esophoric, which distorts the shape of the lens and has the effect of myopia. Still one wonders what prodigious readers like Varro did to help him in advancing age.

Glad to bring Lily Ross Taylor's book into the mix. Taylor's book turned me on to Roman history more than any other, even if it's thesis is one that I have been gradually moving away from for some time. That said, your historical narrative seems approximately correct. OK, in the interest of this experiment, let's take Cicero's definition seriously. Who would be optimate given his definition (and the timeframe we're talking about)? I'm guessing he would exclude these 12: Vetteius, Vatinius, Gabinius, Clodius, Antonius, Sallustius, Lepidus, Milo, Caesar, Verres, Catalina, and Curio. And he could include these 12: Lucullus, Hortensius, Cicero, Cato, Bibulus, Domitius Ahenobarbus, Favonius, Lentulus Spinther, Varro, Memmius, Calvinus, Manlius Torquatus, and Scipio Nasica. It's an awfully partisan definition, to be sure, but at least it has the virtues of being clear-cut and generating an open-ended list. Not bad.

And why would you put Claudius in the populare category? Claudius, a patrician, forbade intermarriage between patricians and plebeians and suppressed plebeian civil rights. He was a Tarquin or Sulla in the making. How is this populare? Your definition of populare seems to be anyone who would be king. This may well be a coherent category, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the label 'populare'.

The Parthian empire was indeed a strange mixture of feudalism, federalism, and nomadic tribal rule. Still, if they were centralized enough (and rich enough) to issue a common currency, it should be no surprise that everyone from Crassus, to Caesar, to Trajan should have coveted the chance to conquer them.