M. Porcius Cato

Mary Beard, the unfailingly charming professor of classics at Cambridge, recently wrote in the Times to upbraid some modern pagans for their heretical lack of animal sacrifice (NB, 'heretical' not her words--for those too lazy to follow the link). In the many comments that followed (which predictably devolved into "my faith is better than yours--or so my faith tells me"), one poster brought up an interesting gem from Ovid: "The same God who is propitiated by the blood of a hundred bulls is also propiated by the smallest offering of incense." I'm wondering: (1) Where did Ovid say this?, and (2) How widespread was the belief among Romans that animal sacrifice wasn't really necessary to propitiate the gods? I used to joke that we would be better to call animal sacrifices "holy barbecues" because at least the ancient polytheists ate their victims, rather than prohibiting the pious from actually benefitting from the sacrifice, as we Kant-addled moderns proscribe. But if it's true that the ancients believed that the "smallest offering of incense" could propitiate the gods, then I'm even more inclined to think that the animal sacrifices were really just a good excuse for a Luau.

Not colder--wetter. The ruins of Roman farms can now be found in areas too dry for cultivation, and there is additional evidence of considerable Roman floodwater farming in the Libyan pre-desert. This issue was studied by UNESCO for several years in an effort by modern Libya to revive the farming productivity enjoyed by the Romans. For a good paper on the topic, see Graeme Barker, "A Tale of Two Deserts: Contrasting Desertification Histories on Rome's Desert Frontiers", World Archaeology, Vol. 33, No. 3, Ancient Ecodisasters. (Feb., 2002), pp. 488-50.

Wow, that's cool. Just to indicate how much work was involved in producing this, I tried something like it as a grad student; after about a week of work, I doubt I had 1/100th of the links on this site. Like I said--wow.

Isn't that a contradiction in terms, MPC ? Isn't what a contradiction in terms? Age and Caesar? Party and Politics? Roman and history?

The Natural History of Latin was released in hardcover some time ago. It's an interesting book about Latin, though it's hard for me to imagine the right audience for it. Best I can tell, it's the sort of thing that Latin students might want to read before that first lesson on declining "insula", or possibly it's meant for Latin teachers who want to spice up their courses with more background information on the language. It's definitely not going to teach anyone to read Latin, and I don't think it's meant to do so.

I love NY, but it's difficult to imagine a more expensive choice for a meet. The Roman Days option still seems viable--there's nothing unsafe about Prince George's County.

The Second Philippic was a written response to Antony's written charges that Cicero had been behind the deaths of Caesar and Clodius. Some of the subsequent Philippics were delivered directly to the people in a contio, such as when the tribunes summoned Cicero to produce reports on the situation in Mutina.

This episode was a real disappointment in an otherwise fabulous series. In terms of dramatic potential, the face-off between Decimus Brutus and Octavian could have been High Television. Our sources tell us that, having been liberated by "young Caesar", Caesar's assassin exited the town walls to give a very chilly thanks to Octavian--from across a large rampart (or was it a moat?). For his part, Octavian acknowledges the thanks, but makes it clear that his irae is undiminished. This could have been a fantastic tie-in to later episodes, and even a great cliff-hanger. But no...we get the reunion of Vorenus and his kids, just as we feared. Ugh! I'm also no great fan of this Timon sub-plot, which fails to indicate the nature of Jewish residence in Rome. With Caesar's patronage of the Jews in Rome, one would think that the writers might attempt some tie-in between the anger of Timon and Octavian, but there's not even a hint of it. Indeed, the both of them seem totally non-plussed that their benefactor has been killed. Double ugh! Anyway, I'm hoping that Rome hasn't jumped the shark.

Party Politics in the Age of Caesar, by Lily Ross Taylor. More than any other book, it turned me on to Roman history.

Spot on. In the last episode, I couldn't find a single historical event of any consequence whatever.

From the recipes for garum that I've seen, it's nice to know that at least some of it was ritually pure.

As a Bears' fan, I thought the game was all downhill after the first play of the game. I was happy to tune to HBO Rome before the game was even finished.

I grew up on the Humphreys translation, but there has been high praise for the version by Michael Simpson. At Amazon, you can use the "Search inside" feature to compare several different translations of the same passage and judge for yourself.

And some people hate the US all the time for any "reason" that they can latch onto. I know some will protest that there are legitimate grounds for criticizing the US. I agree; no nation is perfect. But European anti-Americanism has gone well beyond legitimate criticism into a territory where America is damned no matter what we do, where we are criticized for everything and its opposite! American *or* ("Americans too prurient"), the Lewinsky scandal ("Americans too puritanical"), skyboxes in sport stadiums ("Americans too elitist"), political correctness ("Americans too egalitarian"), the Wild West ("Americans too chaotic"), the 50-hour work week ("Americans too rigid"), the American Christmas holiday ("Americans too secular"), the American voter ("Americans too religious"), and on and on and on. Isn't it clear? No matter which direction we go--we're hated. Now, I would ask my non-American friends: How many times have you encountered the phrase "creeping Americanization"? Like the anti-Semites of the 1930s, who feared that Jews were secretly behind every change in society (real or imagined), the anti-Americans react everywhere with horror and revulsion at "creeping Americanization". The Canadians change their salute? "Creeping Americanization". Halloween costumes in Switzerland? "Creeping Americanization". Coca-cola in Cairo? "Creeping Americanization". Abolishing those terraces where Sheffield football fans lost their lives? "Creeping Americanization". Automobiles in France? Why it must be "creeping Americanization"! Give me a break! All this talk of "creeping Americanization" gives me the creeps: it's stupid, nationalistic xenophobia. Don't like the death penalty? Fine--but what on earth does this have to do with salutes, Halloween, Coca-cola, and automobiles? In logic, nothing. But for the anti-American, the connection is as obvious as was the connection between banking and Matzah to the anti-Semites of Weimar Germany. Today, any hint of the unthinking rage of the anti-Semite, homophobe, and misogynist is scrupulously avoided among European intellectuals, yet a similarly unthinking contempt for anything even associated with America--hell, even our accents!--is paraded as a badge of refinement rather than hidden as the ordinary xenophobia and provincialism that it is. I perfectly understand that America is not utopia, and I'm as happy to criticize America for its missteps as any other nation. But when we're damned when we do, damned when we don't, and compared to creeping vermin, the conclusion is obvious: anti-Americans don't hate America for our missteps or even just what we stand for; they hate us for standing at all.

Is there any evidence for this? You'd think Vulcan would be made quite happy by machinery. An intriguing idea. What have you read on the topic that you would recommend?

For those interested in the late republic, I very highly recommend:

"Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends

Fantasy, historical accords same thing. So much is explained...

Strange to say, but there has never been an English biography of Cato the Younger. I'd like to see one. Also, I've always thought that Roman intellectual history has been sorely neglected. There are works on individual philosophers and schools, but not that nexus of ideas and history that has been so often studied for the renaissance and enlightenment.

You mean, Tiro, the hand-servant of Cicero?

I agree; this is a very good point.

You mean, Did Caesar attempt to cover himself with his toga as he was dying? Or--was Caesar's toga pulled to prevent his use of his arms?

You're very welcome. BTW, the translation on the Project Gutenberg page seems to be a bowdlerized Cicero. If you're looking for the real Ciceronian invective, you'll have to find another set of Philippics.

Far from being exulpatory, the autopsy must have been a political bombshell. Think about this from the perspective of a veteran, a man trained to deliver death as swiftly and efficiently as possible. As a veteran, you would know exactly where to strike your blow and how to avoid slashing your comrades. To a veteran, the Liberators must have looked like incompetent school-boys, or--worse--sadists. It's no wonder that Antony brought a waxen figure of the Caesar to display his wounds. What could be more dramatic evidence--not ony to a veteran, but even to a butcher or a kitchen slave--that the state had been seized, not by men fit for leading armies, but by bookish philosophes? In my opinion, this autopsy was a piece of high political theatre, designed perfectly to discredit the Liberators.

I think that's right. The First Philippic was delivered on 2 Sept 44; the Second Philippic (dramatized in HBO Rome) was published after 25 Oct 44; after the Fourth Legion declared allegiance to Octavian on 24 Nov 44, Antony sought to raise the veterans' morale by marching north to besiege the liberator Decimus Brutus in Mutina on 25 Nov 44; the Third and Fourth Philippics were delivered on 20 Dec 44. By late Feb 43, Cicero had delivered the Fifth-Eleventh Philippics, and the Caesarian consuls Hirtius and Pansa (with some support from Octavian) came to war with Antony. These events were announced by the newsreader in HBO Rome. BTW, I think what's left out of the series is awfully important in judging Cicero. What we're shown is Cicero fleeing town while having someone else deliver his second Philippic, and then (somehow) two supporters of Caesar are announced to be at open war with their comrade Antony. The juxtaposition is simply unintelligible. What's needed is to see how it was that the senate in Rome--which was overwhelmingly of the Caesarian party and had no sympathy for the Liberators--came to dispatch an army against Caesar's right-hand man and come to the aid of Decimus Brutus, a man whose blade was still wet with Caesar's blood. The missing ingredient is the political agility of Cicero, who had managed to apply Caesar's divide-and-conquer strategy on the Caesarians themselves. The 14 Philippics dramatize this course perfectly: in the first Philippic, Cicero is fairly pleading with Antony to live up to his ancestors; by the 14th Philippic, Cicero has condemned Antony, turned Caesarian opinion against him, brought the Caesarians into warfare with one another, managed to get the Caesarians to support Decimus Brutus, Marcus Brutus, and--after the gruesome murder of Trebonius, even argued for the support of Cassius Longinus, and finally celebrate the defeat of Antony and announce the return of liberty. What a stunning reversal of fortune! And, yet, the agent of this reversal--Cicero--is simply shown running away, and the manner by which this reversal is achieved--the justly famous Philippics--are reduced to a personal insult on Antony's sexual preferences. By the gods, this is fantastically unfair to Cicero, and it doesn't even make sense. Don't bid her farewell, just yet. Historically, Serivilia died of old age living in the company of Cicero's Epicurean friend Atticus.