M. Porcius Cato

Very nice post Bryaxis.

Another worthy essay. One question I had about it concerned the tribunate from 133 to 43. The essay implies that the tribunes' power grew too strong during this period. But how? Certainly none of their official powers grew; during the royal rule of Sulla, they actually declined. This leads me to think that another explanation for their disruptiveness is required. Isn't it possible that the tribunes played a more disruptive role over time--not because their powers grew, but because they increasingly ignored the vetoes of their fellow tribunes and increasingly often appealed to the military to buttress and finally replace their own role? It appears to me that the independence of the tribunate declined, and it was this decline in independence that undermined their ability to serve their vital role in protecting popular sovereignty, until at last it withered to nothing.

I also thought this was an outstanding essay. One question that it raises concerns why and how Augustus was successful in changing the political culture in Rome. During the republic, nothing seemed to delight the voters more than military conquest. Magistrates who wished to campaign on other strengths (rhetorical, legal, administrative, etc) had enormous difficulty: in fact, arms never really made way for togas, as Cicero prematurely proclaimed. In contrast, Augustus burnished his reputation, not by expanding the borders of the empire, but by bringing the blessings of law, order, and peace. I think it would be interesting to compare Augustus' attempts to shift the standard for evaluating Roman statesmen to previous attempts during the republic.

I agree that this was an excellent essay. One question I continue to have, however, concerns the strength of mobile troops. Arguably the heavy infantry of the Roman army was better than any phalanx or warband, and strength here may be the most important factor in warfare (as Virgil has argued). However, against guerillas (e.g., Sertorius' and Hermann's) and horse archers, the Romans certainly faced difficulty. Indeed, even when Romans possessed overwhelming cavalry strength (as at Pharsalus), they didn't seem to know what to do with it. Aurelius comes down pretty hard on Fuller for expressing this view, but I'm not entirely convinced by this response to Fuller. When we look at how Roman-trained officers (again, Sertorius, Hermann, and Labienus come to mind) chose to fight against Roman armies, it seems that they often attempted to exploit the weakness the army had with fast, hard-hitting mobile troops. Wouldn't we expect Roman officers to know best what the weak spots were in their own army? If so, aren't their tactics revealing about which part of the Roman army they thought was weakest?

I agree. Whatever the minor (and growing list of) historical inaccuracies, it was a good series. I hope they don't "strike the set": Rome itself looked great.

Fun last episode, but Atia outlived the series.

In the case of the exhibit, present tense; in the case of the NYT, past historic. Since Orwell and Hemingway, most Western liberals woke up to the nature of Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War; however, as the NYT piece makes clear, not all have.

On the origin of some collegia, see Plutarch's life of Numa Pompilius (Num. 17). Also, the Bacchanales were discussed in Livy 39.14f. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "In the Ciceronian age the collegia became involved in elections and other political action; many were suppressed in 64 BC and again by Caesar, after a temporary revival by P. Clodius Pulcher." Additionally, Augusts' Lex Iulia ended rights of association and required that all clubs receive Imperial sanction, and Trajan forbade all collegia in Bithynia (Plin. Ep. 10.34). The senate, however, gave blanket approval to burial clubs in an extant senatus consultum. Lintott's (1968) Violence in Republican Rome may be useful.

Congrats to The Augusta, Aurelius, and Publius Nonius Severus! Thanks for contributing such fine essays.

One howler that no one's mentioned is that the Roman senator serving as emissary to Egypt was Bibulus. This is almost certainly impossible: Bibulus died commanding the Adriatic fleet in the civil war. While he had three (possibly, four) sons, two were killed in Egypt by Roman soldiers long before the civil wars, and at least one of his sons died at Philippi. How any of these Bibuli could have served as a Roman senator entrusted with the negotiation of grain supply totally escapes me. At least the kinky sex was possible.

As I say, I'm not a fan of Sulla--abolishing the tribunate was dubious, the proscriptions were beyond the pale--but one of his lasting reforms was a good one: automatic elevation of all magistrates to the senate. This had been almost a de facto policy, but making it de jure strengthened the tie between the people and the senate, which was a sound move.

The state religion was undoubtedly subject to political manipulation, though not in the way Truth described. That the state religion should be used as some kind of a tool of political control was claimed by Romans and non-Romans alike. Among Romans, there was (1) Cicero's teacher Q. Mucius Scaevola, who claimed that of the gods of poets, philosophers, and leaders, only the third was healthy because it allowed them to deceive the public, (2) Marcus Terentius Varro, who claimed that the gods should be made appealing to the people more so than according to what was natural, and (3) Cicero, himself an augur, who frequently claimed that his policies were ones that the gods would favor and championed the augury on the grounds that it was for the public welfare. Among non-Romans, there was of course Polybius' famous view (possibly picked up from the Scipionic circle) "seeing that every multitude is fickle and full of lawless desires, unreasoning anger, and violent passion, the only resource is to keep them in check by mysterious terrors and scenic effects." There were also plenty of episodes in which the state religion was used as a political tool. The Roman religious calendar, for example, set when magistrates could and could not call the people, limiting the days of potential public business (comital days) to just 150 days per year. In addition, the number of comital days could be increased by means of inserting intercalary months, thereby providing terms that were longer for some magistrates than others. For this reason, Cicero petitioned Atticus (who had friends among the pontifices) not to insert any such days while Cicero was on provincial duty, and the seditious Curio, eager to promote more laws, suddenly switched to Caesar's side when the pontifex maximus promised to insert an intercalary month for him. Most dramatically, we have from Cicero's letter: "Lentulus is an excellent consul...He has removed all the comital days, for even the Latin festival is being performed again and there has been no lack of thanksgivings. In that way, resistance is offered to ruinous laws." (The thanksgivings to which Cicero referred, by the way, were for Caesar's victories, which had the effect of stymying his own tribunes!) Moreover, the auspices themselves were effective. When Pompey, as consul and augur, conducted the praetorian elections of 55, he waited for the vote from the centuria praerogativa, and seeing that it went to Cato, immediately dissolved the assembly on grounds that he heard an inauspicious thunder, and then--keeping Cato's supporteres from the forum by force of arms--reconvened the assembly to vote in Cato's opponent. Later, Antony used the same tactic. Moreover, as a pretext for suspending the call of assemblies, various magistrates used the tactic of watching for omens, including Bibulus, Clodius, Milo, and Curio. For these reasons, it's not difficult to see why Cicero claimed that the augury was "the highest and most responsible authority of the state... For if we consider their legal rights, what power is greater than that of adjourning assemblies and meetings convened by the highest officials... or that of declaring null and void the acts of assemblies presided over by such officials?" In fact, the abuse of the Roman religious calendar and augury is only the tip of the iceberg. Sibylline prophecies were purchased by Crassus to obstruct Pompey from bringing an army to Egypt. Haruspices were used to sanction Cicero's war against Catiline. A scandal at the Bona Dea festival was used to discredit Clodius. And on and on. Now it should be clear why an aspiring monarch, like Caesar, should have made the post of pontifex maximus such an early and important priority. It came with more than just a tony address.

Great review in the NY Times. I don't know what is more disheartening: (1) how violently totalitarian Communists--like the lackeys of Stalin--celebrate their resistance to local authoritarian fascists--like the thugs of Franco, or (2) how naively Western liberals buy into #1.

Probably. Brooks is their token Republican.

The normally horrifying David Brooks horrifies again, but at least with a classical reference: For 2008: An American Themistocles?

Normally, job security precludes me from answering that question (especially when my alma mater Michigan plays my employer and arch-rival OSU). But I don't have any reason not to hope for OSU's win tomorrow, especially since it's my only hope for a respectable showing in the New York Times Pool.

The thing that bothers me about the question, "Who killed the Republic?", is that it assumes that the republic "fell" rather like the fall of the French Ancien Regime, or the Third Reich, or the Soviet Union. But these "falls" were objective, public facts that everyone at the time could and did observe: the beheading of a king, the suicide of a dictator, the resignation of a General Secretary. In contrast, when (and in what) do we observe the "fall" of the republic? In 59, with activation of the "Three Headed Monster"? In 49, when Caesar marched on Rome? In 48, after Pharsalus? In 46, after Utica? In 45, after Munda? In 44, after Caesar's assassination? In 43, when the lex Titia sanctioned a junta to create a new constitution? In 42, after Philippi? In 31, after Actium? In 28, when public affairs were handed back to the Senate and People of Rome? In 27, when public affairs were again handed back to the Senate and People of Rome? In 23, when Augustus took the title of Princeps? In 14, when Tiberius took the title of Princeps in monarchical fashion and effectively abolished popular election to the magistracies? A good case could be made for any of these (my own vote would be for the lex Titia, when the people of Rome assented to their own disenfranchisement), but it's worthwhile to note who the dominant players were in all of these: Caesar and "Caesar".

I am certainly no fan of Sulla, but I'd be happy to revisit the issue. See here for discussion.

Many senators--including Livius Drusus and his supporters--did foresee this and constantly said as much. But they weren't in the majority, either among populists or optimates. They weren't in the majority simply because they were drawn from the same pool of people with the same prejudices as the popular assemblies that elected them. Expecting the majority of these elected magistrates to take a principled stand against the voters who elected them is optimism bordering on naivete.

It wasn't just the senate who avoided civil rights for Italians--it was the people of Rome! Everyone who supported Italian rights--T Gracchus, G Gracchus, L Drusus--they were all killed, and they were all abandoned by the people once they publicly supported Italian rights. Blaming the senate is completely unfair.

Funny that in the 22 years after the Gracchi no fewer than five different agrarian bills were passed. The senate sure was opposed to change, huh?

By this time I think things escalated to such such situation that Caesar could and did abuse his power and did irreparable harm to the republic. But still, I think this law was beneficial to the common people, who were after all Caesar's power base. Also it does not mean that Caesar necessarily planned all this in advance or it would have followed original law if the latter was supported by Optimates. Optimates, by opposing the first law, were open to accusation that they were being merely obstructionist and greedy of the interests of senatorial class (which in fact they were). Come now, look at who opposed this Campanian law: Clodius! Clodius--the quintessential populare--was in fact so adamantly opposed to the law that he refused (for a time) to be reconciled to Caesar even when he needed Caesar (as Pontifex Maximus) to give him his plebeian adoption (see here). The fact is that the Campanian law was a notoriously bad piece of legislation that did nothing for the people at all--and how could it: it dispossessed as many it rewarded. Rather than being a populare move, it was a political spoil for Pompey, pure and simple, and everyone from Clodius to Cicero to Cato to Catulus could see it.

If attacks on a location were *aimed at* civilians (as opposed to aimed at industrial capacity, command-and-control, or military targets that were embedded in civilian locations) *in order to terrorize* (as opposed to destroy the capacity for waging war), then it was a terrorist attack. Also, knowingly killing civilians is not the issue--targeting civilians is. Consider two hypothetical situations. Situation A: a cop must kill a would-be suicide bomber to remove the threat, but the only shot with a 90% chance of hitting the bomber also carries a 40% chance of killing a hostage; the cop takes the shot and kills the hostage. Situation B: a cop must kill a would-be suicide bomber to remove the threat, but he takes the shot only when he has at least a 90% chance of killing the hostage. Situation B involves targeting civilians; Situation A does not. The question in war is whether one attempts to maximize damage to military targets (which is legitimate) or whether one attempts to maximize damage to civilians (which is not).

The lack of a uniform isn't what defines a terrorist: targeting civilians to spread terror does. The partisans who attacked Nazi troops were heroes, whether they wore a uniform at the time or not. Had the partisans gone to Berlin to suicide bomb beer halls, I'd be fine with calling them terrorists. But they didn't do that, and it shows what an enormous difference there is between the partisans and al-Qaeda.

First, most optimates (Cato, Ahenobarbus, Bibulus, etc) were plebs. Second, once the triumvirate was formed and they began the use of violence to dominate the political scene, opposing policy proposals were worthless--all they could do was establish the legal foundations for having the triumvir's coerced legislation overturned. "Watching the skies" was an act of civil disobedience in the best spirit of Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and all the others who have opposed despotism. If we're talking about the immediate post-Sullan period, you're absolutely right that the status quo was unpopular: tribunes had lost their rights, professional bounty-hunters had grown rich from the proscriptions, wolves like Verres were sent to guard the Roman provincial flocks, the insurrection in Spain led to a tightening money supply and thus sky-high interest rates and a crisis in debt. But Roman senators responded energetically to meet all these problems. The tribunate was restored by Sulla's own henchmen Pompey and Crassus. Anti-Sullans like Cato and Caesar worked together to prosecute the bounty-hunters, restore confiscated property, and kick the civil service parasites out of the treasury. Cicero--with no resistance from High Optimates like Catulus--dragged wolves like Verres to the courts. In every one of these cases, the people expressed jubilance, rewarding Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Caesar, and Cicero with higher offices and honors, and standing by them when they faced brigands like Lepidus and Catiline. Far from the senate sitting idly by while the people suffered, senators competed with one another to gain the favor of people by pursuing policies that the people approved. I'm so glad you brought this up. First, let's be clear about the laws under question. There were two. The first was the lex Iulia agraria. The second was the lex Iulia agraria Campania. To understand the relation between the two bills, imagine that I ask you to sign a contract accepting an ostensibly free lunch (who would refuse it?), and then I demand to sleep with your wife in payment. That's the essence of the two bills, but now to the details. The lex Iulia agraria was introduced to the senate on 1 or 2 January, the last day when Caesar could have had any bills sanctioned by the senate in time for the vote by the Tribal Assemblies. The bill--while needing approval almost immediately--had been crafted with care. The chief problem with most agrarian bills is that they contained hidden costs that were unacceptable, but Caesar's bill seemed to avoid all these: the land to be distributed to Pompey's veterans and 20,000 families were to be purchased with Pompey's largesse, and (more importantly) private property was to be respected--farmers weren't to be forcibly hauled off their plots of land and subjected to violence and starvation. Moreover, so that these deals didn't provide massive clientele for just one man, the bill provided for 20 commissioners (though an inner circle of 5 made most of the decisions), and Caesar specifically excluded himself from participating lest he be accused of graft and kickbacks. According to Goldsworthy (who has an apparent distaste for such "cumbersome and tortuous legal prose"), "little or nothing within it could be reasonably criticized". Nothing??? In the history of republics, I know of no comparably far-reaching legislation--however reasonable--that have been passed on first reading simply because EVERYTHING can be reasonably criticized and improved, even the legislation of some darling of Venus. Consider just a few problems with the bill. Which of the eligible 20,000 families were to receive this unexpected largesse? Would it be first-come-first-served, or would they be chosen by lottery, or were they to be selected by the consuls themselves? And what prices would be paid to those willing to sell to the land commissioners? Would there be a set price, no matter what the land is worth--whether it was been carefully preserved through conscientious steps and back-breaking labor or left to neglect or rendered infertile by carelessness? And if the price were not fixed, would the commission be licensed to pay any price, no matter how exorbinant? And--this is most important--what if there weren't enough money to pay the sellers or, more seriously, enough willing sellers to settle all of Pompey's vets and these 20,000 families that were chosen by who-knows-what method? What then? Although we have no record of Cato's "filibuster", no doubt he (or somebody else) raised all these questions--as these are exactly the questions that any responsible statesman would ask. And for his questions, the ex-quaestor was not thanked, but hauled off to jail by that oh-so-reasonable Caesar! Let's be clear: if there is one thing that reason abhors, it is the silencing of questions. And this was too much for the senate, that one deliberative body of the republic, who walked out en masse, following the old grizzled veteran Marcus Petreius--who had by then seen more years of military service than Caesar had spent out of his diapers: "I'd rather be in jail with Cato", he shot at Caesar, "than in the Senate with you!" As it turns out, Cato's concerns with the bill were entirely justified. After the bill was illegally passed through physical violence (including the smashing of the consul's fasces) and over the vetoes of three tribunes, the senators were forced to swear an oath that they would uphold the law no matter what. No matter what? What if the bill proved impossible to enforce for all the reasons I listed? What if no one was willing to sell their land to the commission? What then? After one senator heroically went into exile rather than take this Oath of the Impossible, the answer to "What then?" came into sharp relief: the lex Iulia agraria Campania, which contradicted all the provisions of the first law that it seem reasonable. By the bill, private property was not respected. Instead, the Campanian lands--lands that were settled by the heroes of the Punic Wars, that had been in families for generations, that provided Rome with nearly one-fourth of her income, that had been expressly excluded by the first law precisely to gain passage of it--were to be confiscated from their rightful owners, who were to be left starving in the streets of Rome for the sake of Caesar's ambition. What a lover of the poor! What a champion of the people! What a friend of the dispossessed--that now dispossessed so many! Even a Caesar-toady like Goldsworthy admits that "perhaps Caesar had always thought that its [Campanian lands'] distribution would also be necessary at some point, or maybe the realisation that his first law was on its own inadequate came more gradually. If we knew this, we would certainly have a clearer idea of whether he genuinely hoped to win over the Senate to support his first land law, or whether he had merely wanted to put them in the wrong in the eyes of the electorate." In other words, it isn't clear whether Caesar was a fool or a scoundrel. Well, in my opinion, Caesar was no fool. Rather, the summative verdict of this Campanian law was best put forward by that titan of Roman history, George Long (1864), "This monstrous, this abominable crime was committed to serve a party purpose; and the criminal was a Roman consul ... too intelligent not to know what he was doing, and unscrupulous enough to do anything that would serve his own ends."