M. Porcius Cato

Is monotheism ethically superior to polytheism? Maybe just the reverse, says UCLA's Mark Kleiman, in THIS exchange.

Speaking of which, I'm traveling to York (from Manchester) this week. If anyone is in the vicinity and wants to have a pint, shoot me a note!

During the republic, that simply wasn't true. Individuals freely, openly, and often belligerently opposed magistrates holding imperium. As a result, we have some of the most beautifully anti-authoritarian invective the West has ever heard (Catullus should immediately spring to mind, as well as the tradition of soldiers singing obscenities at their triumphing generals)--to say nothing of the graffiti. In addition to these popular displays of individual freedom against the magistrates, the legal code itself contained a great number of safeguards to protect the individual against abuses by magistrates (e.g., the leges Porciae), who were regularly sued in the courts by political opponents for any range of offenses. If any senator in Mussolini's Rome had greeted him on the senate floor as "her Royal Highness" (as Favonius greeted Caesar), he would have found himself swinging from a lamppost. That's the difference between the Roman republic the Roman fascists.

How's that? Why would basic economics promote looting again? That makes no sense. Given the costs and risks of locating, securing, smuggling, and finding a buyer for authentic antiquities (which the buyer still doesn't know to be real), the price of authentic antiquities has always been much higher than the cost of fake antiquities. I can see why there would be a pressure to make fakes as realistic as possible, but as long as making realistic fakes is cheaper than looting the real thing, the forgers would seem to have a permanent competitive advantage. As far as I can tell, looting -- not forging -- hurts archaeology, which is presumably why forging is only a Class B misdemeanor (not felony) in all the U.S. states I know of. It's true that the scoundrels who think they're buying real antiquities are being defrauded, but so what? Is consumer protection to be valued over the protection of antiquities? Given the inability of even a police state like North Korea to stop the black market from operating, I seriously doubt that there is any set of laws or procedures draconian enough to achieve for archaeology what the forgers have done peacefully and for free. Maybe you're just a fan of the police state, Sylla? As for me, I'm much happier with the success of the "invisible hand" than the iron fist.

Nope, you don't have it right. Here's the explanation from the article: Because the eBay phenomenon has substantially reduced total costs by eliminating middlemen, brick-and-mortar stores, high-priced dealers, and other marginal expenses, the local eBayers and craftsmen can make more money cranking out cheap fakes than they can by spending days or weeks digging around looking for the real thing. It is true that many former and potential looters lack the skills to make their own artifacts. But the value of their illicit digging decreases every time someone buys a "genuine" Moche pot for $35, plus shipping and handling. In other words, because the low-end antiquities market has been flooded with fakes that people buy for a fraction of what a genuine object would cost, the value of the real artifacts has gone down as well, making old-fashioned looting less lucrative. The value of real antiquities is also impacted by the increased risk that the object for sale is a fake. The likelihood of reselling an authentic artifact for more money is diminished each year as more fakes are produced. Rather than mutual neutralization, forgers drive out looters by undercutting their prices due to a fixed, competitive advantage. This is basic economics, and it doesn't have anything to do with "anarcho-capitalism".

A lovely, very thoughtful piece in Archaeology on the salutary effects of Ebay for the world's antiquities.

What a wonderful inversion of the truth! One wonders, for example, what would constitute a 'competent' form of government if not a system -- like the Roman republic -- that had managed to sustain itself over 500 years, growing from a tiny city surrounded by enemies to the undisputed power of the whole Mediterranean, evolving laws and establishing individual rights that even today would be the envy of many "republics", and protecting the growth of innovations (such as the system of clean, potable water) that today only about 50% of the world's population enjoys. If THIS were an incompetent system, I really do wonder what a competent one would look like! It certainly wouldn't look like the system that rose up out of Caesar's destructive wake. That comparatively short-lived system was a very model of dysfunction. Indeed, if you count up the years between Octavian's principate to the fall of Rome, nearly HALF of the system's ruling executives came to power due to the murder or violent overthrow of the incumbent princeps/dominus/rex/whatever. In comparison, the republican constitution resulted in fewer than 5% of its successions following a similar course. I submit that a constitution that cannot change executives peacefully and without civil war is the truly incompetent system -- and that is exactly was the Roman people got when--beginning with Caesar's dictatorship--the constitution of the Roman republic was ripped apart and the people lost their power to choose their tribunes and magistrates by plebiscite. I also wonder what on earth is meant by "ruling oligarchy". Can it really be that Divius Julius doesn't know the difference between the ancien regime of Louis XIV and the Roman republican system whom French revolutionaries sought to emulate? What possible meaning of "oligarchy" -- except the most tautological -- could be truthfully applied to the republic?? An "oligarchy" is a rule by the few. But let just one volume of Broughton's Magistrates of the Roman Republic fall on your foot to disabuse yourself of the fantastic notion that only a few ruled Rome! Oh, you might say, but the magistrates were the oligarchy. But then what form of government is NOT an oligarchy? A government not run by magistrates? And what then would run the government? Maenads? Of course not -- every government must be run by men, and the number of men is limited. What truly distinguishes an oligarchy from its antithesis is whether the same small number of men always rule the state -- yet this is exactly what one had under that Julio-Claudian dynasty. Only DJ's admiration for this dynasty could explain his willingness to ensorcel himself with the inversions of facts and language in the post above.

WW, which translation of Plutarch do you like?

Since 312 BC, waterproof concrete was used widely--in aqueducts, in public baths, and in both private and public buildings. For the the great salting vats used in the manufacture of garum, it was obviously indispensable. For more, see the Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Ancient World.

I'm sorry, but I think we obviously have a complete and utter disagreeance over the events of the lat years of the Republic. Yes, I do think we have a complete 'disagreeance' over the events of the last years of the republic. It would probably be more constructive to exchange our reasons for disagreeing in separate threads than to have a lengthy and wide-ranging back-and-forth on a thread ostensibly about the Ides.

'Civilization' is derived from the Romans' word for city (civis). Seems about right to me: ten minutes' drive outside the city and I see nothing but trouser-wearing barbarians...

What clementia!

Did Caesar trust that his life was so indispensable to the republic that his assassination would be unthinkable? Probably. Did he take any precautions so that his death -- whether natural or artificial -- would not upend the state? Not at all. Could any such actions be undertaken? Sure -- by revoking all his own acts, which served only to monopolize power and make the state dependent on the life of a single man. Of course, had the darling of Venus done that, future monarchs -- from the Caesars of ancient Rome to the last Czars and Kaisars of the 19th and 20th centuries -- wouldn't have been named after that tyrant.

Lots of Vulcan action in the new Trek. I guess Vulcans were the Greeks to the Roman Romulans.

WW-- How did the critical reception of Volume 1 differ from later volumes? Could the change in narrative be explained by its critical reception instead of current events?

I tend to agree. Had Caesar "seen it coming", why would he have sent Octavian to Greece while still disbanding his own Spanish bodyguard? It seems more likely that Octavian's tour of Greece was similar to the 'grand tour' of most young, wealthy, ambitious nobiles (including Brutus and Cato Uticensis). Indeed, Caesar doesn't seem to have undertaken any precautions for the state in the event of his death -- natural or otherwise. Had Caesar's bald pate been rent open by a turtle falling from the sky (a la Aeschylus), imperium would have still been up for grabs -- with Brutus in Cisalpine Gaul, Octavian with a fortune to buy a private army, and Antony spoiling for the power to get drunk as often as he wished. Speaking of which, can anyone name a dictator that died in office prior to Caesar?

And if you do "America" and "Rome": 45,100,000

Sure, I guess we could see it as a move against Pompey in an attempt to give Caesar a pretext to invade Rome, but this strikes me as giving Caesar clairvoyance on top of perspicacity. No need to gild the lily, is there?

I'd recommend Lily Ross Taylor's "Party Politics in the Age of Caesar".

Hmmmm... in 53, how shrewd would this really have been? Brutus would have been an inveterate opponent of Caesar's ally Pompey (who had killed Brutus' father), so wouldn't it have also served to split his own faction too? Maybe Caesar just wanted Brutus to take love notes to Servilia.

Yes, but still around 300 until Sula's day (we have the worde of Livy regarding Buteo's censorial dictatura in 216) . Many T.P., A.C. or A.P had to wait for some old senator to die in order to enter the senate . Unless the ratio of dead senators every year was exactly 2 (A.C.) or 4 (A.C. and A.P.) or 14 (A.C. + A.P. + T.P.) . We don't need to assume that the ratio of dead (or expelled) senators every year was exactly 14 if we additionally drop the assumption that the number in the senate was a neat 300.

That's an interesting question. Certainly Caesar knew he was hated by some: "Can I have any doubt that I am deeply loathed, when Marcus Tullius has to sit and wait and cannot simply come to see me as he wishes. If ever there were an easy-mannered man, then it is he. Yet I have no doubt that he hates me." Moreover, until early 44, Caesar was constantly attended by a bodyguard of Spanish auxiliaries. Moreover, there were rumors of conspiracy constantly swirling, including one involving Antony. Despite this, Caesar also believed greatly in his own importance in keeping the state from falling into another civil war. According to Suetonius et al, Caesar supposedly claimed that even Brutus was sensible enough not to be impatient for his death. This attitude of Apr

Primary sources aren't the best place to begin for this topic because they're too fragmentary and indirect. Lintott's Constitution of the Roman Republic is a better starting point, and he provides copious references to the primary material.

They don't have it.

Right. Even if some comparisons are fairly superficial and only go so deep, modern governments often consciously model themselves on ancient exemplars. And neo-classicism isn't just for the architects of capital cities either. Neo-classicism can be found in religion, philosophy, political theory, and all the arts.