M. Porcius Cato

My, you've gone a long time with no sleep!

If we're to take Cassius Dio's account seriously, the executed ringleaders got off easy--Caesar most mercilessly bored the others to death! Seriously, though, now that we've heard from Caesar, let's let Lucan speak for Caesar's wretched soldiers (Pharsalia, Book V): "Caesar, give us leave to quit your crimes. You seek the sword to slay us by land and sea; let the fields of Gaul and far Iberia, and the world proclaim how for your victories our comrades fell. For what booty is it that by an army's blood the Rhine and Rhone and all the northern lands you subdued? Civil war you give us for all these battles; such a prize! When the Senate fled trembling and when Rome was ours, what homes or temples did we spoil? Our hands reek with offence! Yes, but our poverty proclaims our innocence! What shall be the end of arms and armies? What shall be enough if Rome does not suffice? And what lies beyond? Behold these silvered locks, these nerveless hands and shrunken arms, once stalwart! In your wars is gone the strength of life, gone all its pride! Dismiss your aged soldiers to their deaths. How shameless is our prayer! Not on hard turf to stretch our dying limbs; nor seek in vain, when parts the soul, a hand to close our eyes; Not with the helmet strike the stony clod: Rather to feel the dear one's last embrace, and gain a humble but a separate tomb. Let nature end old age. And do you think we only know not what degree of crime will fetch the highest price? What you cannot dare these years have proved, or nothing; law divine nor human ordinance shall hold your hand. You were our leader on the banks of Rhine; henceforth our equal; for the stain of crime makes all men like to like. Add that we serve a thankless chief: as fortune's gift he takes the fruits of victory our arms have won. We are his fortunes, and his fates are ours to fashion as we will. Boast that the gods shall do your bidding! No, your soldiers' will shall close this war."

...murdered by disgruntled Gracchans.

On the premise that the "Republic's coffin" is short-hand for the ruinous civil wars of 49 - 31, I'd have to agree that Pompey contributed in no small part.

I'm not advocating carte blanche compromise with the Marians who were killing Romans in the streets; compromising with those who want your death is the height of stupidity (if not simple cowardice). I'm fine with that. But my criticism of Sulla is that his killings went far beyond what was necessary, and his reforms were not practical. Whatever Sulla's attitude toward the 'mere mechanics of the republic', the mechanics of the state really do matter--the lives, fortunes, and freedoms of citizens depend on 'mere mechanics', and the difference between a baffled rube (like Pompey) and a statesman (like Cicero) is that the latter masters the mechanism of statescraft. Sulla was certainly happy to mess around with that mechanism, but he didn't know what he was doing.

Indeed. It's too bad we didn't react to 9/11 with the same philosophy that guided Roosevelt's dealing with Japan. See, for example, this directive regarding the US occupation of Japan.

Actually, bacon is chemically modified (nitrates), along with Big Macs and McDonald's fries are fried in ... trans fats. And no, I don't think it's up to anybody to tell me what to do with MY health--it's my body, my choice.

Well, I'd like to think we--being humans instead of cartoon characters--all condemn the proscriptions, but we don't. Phil didn't condemn them; he praised them. If you look in this thread, you'll find praise for the Triumviral proscriptions too. It's astonishing, I know. I think the role of the tribune should have been better defined, especially after the Gracchi. The idea of a veto was a good one, I think, and it had an ancient precedent, but tribunes either should have been restricted from proposing laws and interjecting themselves in foreign affairs or the Senate should have been so restricted. Having literal overlap among branches of government is a constitutional recipe for disaster. (It's rather like the situation that follows when parents disagree on rules for their children to follow.) Sulla's reform of the tribunate (via the lex Cornelia tribunis plebis) was partly right and partly wrong. The good idea was to curb the power of the tribunes from proposing legislation directly in Assemblies. The bad idea was to prevent tribunes from ever holding higher office, requiring that only senators could serve as tribunes, and curbing their veto powers. It's not quite as simple as that. First, when Sulla's creature Pompey ham-handedly abolished the lex Cornelia tribunis plebis in the Lex Pompeia Licinia, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater, and a false alternative was perpetuated--oligarchy versus populism. Second, many of Sulla's bad reforms stayed in force for far too many years, and with permanently negative consequences. For example, Sulla packed the juries with senators, leading to the development of the situation that almost allowed Verres to go unchecked in his nasty business in Sicily. This is the sort of behavior that also turned popular sentiment against the Senate. Finally, just in case anyone wasn't already clear that Sulla was establishing the Senate as a sort of royal court, Sulla passed the lex Cornelia Pompeia, which imposed severe restrictions on the legislative and electoral activity of the Tribal Assembly. The Romans had a custom of placing garlands around the necks of their sacrificial beasts. What Sulla did "for" the Senate was quite similar--Sulla draped the Senate in garlands; Caesar and Octavian slashed their throats.

You're right--Octavian was very much in the Sullan mold: a blood-soaked autocrat who used the republic as a cover for monarchy. The problem is that for all their murders, those two couldn't make monarchy work either--as soon as Sulla and Augustus were out of the scene, the system was set at the mercy of their own lackeys. They never learned that the peaceful transfers of power that elections provide really is a good thing for the people--even if those elections don't turn out the way you and your veterans like them. (And let's be clear: your "half-wits"--Pompey, Catiline, and Crassus--were the ones that Sulla himself put in power, not the free competition that existed before him.)

Really? Libertarians like me used to make a reductio ad absurdum argument that if the state could ban smoking in public places, there was nothing logically stopping them from banning fatty foods too. Yesterday's headline from the New York Times: New York Bans Most Trans Fats in Restaurants No slippery slope, huh?

Yes! The very essence of fascism. State-sponsored propaganda against smokers is already a reality. The ghettoization of smokers has already begun. What next, re-education camps? Signs outside private homes warning neighbors that smokers are present? Prohibition and criminalization? The fact that otherwise liberal-minded and intelligent people can find so many excuses for the naked use of majority power demonstrates what little resistance our culture would provide to more far-reaching fascist reforms. Of course, no one thinks their minority (gays, atheists, "illegals") will be targeted until it actually happens to them--and then it's too late. The whole thing is just sickening.

On the whole, I am AGAINST Sulla--though not for the reasons Phil suspected and not because I don't see any good in his career. First off, far from condemning Sulla's march on Rome, I think Sulla was obligated to march on Rome--because it was in Rome where the Marians were in the midst of a coup d'etat and where they were slaughtering innocent Romans in the streets. I agree with Phil that the Marians had to be checked to save the republic. BUT, Sulla's behavior after this was inexcusable. His proscriptions were as bad as anything the Marians were doing. His constitutional reforms were reactionary expedients rather than constructive solutions: by giving it powers that went unchecked by any mechanism, he paradoxically undermined the legitimacy of the Senate. So far from being the 'last republican', he was an autocrat who set the stage for the destruction of the republic. I might add that I personally dislike Sulla -- he was one of those patricians who seemed to believe that he was so beloved by the gods that he could do no wrong (even when he was doing wrong), just like that darling of Venus.

I understand that if you accept this criteria, it's relevant to include that criteria, but there was nothing in your response that even mentioned clientela. Moreover, there are some important distinctions being blurred in the criteria that you propose (e.g., the union of solider and client is probably a much smaller set than either of its two parent sets), and--most importantly--no ancient sources make the claim that Octavian simply inherited the chits owed to Caesar by his troops. On the contrary, Octavian had to compete vigorously with Antony for the loyalty of the Caesarian faction. There's simply no precedent for this sort of competition in an ordinary client-patron relationship--but there is in ordinary politics. This is why I make the claim that the system of clientele is not the key to understanding the legal and practical basis of the principate.

I see--we may be arguing at cross-purposes. That's not the definition of 'clientela' I would provide. On the one hand, your definition is too broad. Factions had leaders (like Caesar, Pompey, and Cato), but the non-leading citizens in the faction were not necessarily the clients of those leaders (e.g., Bibulus followed Cato, but Cato was not the patron of Bibulus). Further, leadership of a faction did not require a private army. For example, the factions of Cato/Ahenobarbus/Scipo had no army, nor did the vast majority of patrons have an army -- even in the late republic. On the other hand, your definition is too narrow. The patron-client relationship extended far beyond politics. Its genesis in the early republic was as a mechanism for providing legal protection to plebs who lacked the civil rights enjoyed by patricians, and as civil rights for plebs in Rome expanded and as Rome expanded into foreign territories, patronage was increasingly an Italian and later foreign affair.

And how are these lengthy quotations at all relevant to clientela, which is the topic of this thread?

Isn't this mostly about the Imperial period? What light does Braund shed on the relation between Roman clientela and the rise of monarchy?

So what's your criticism of Fergus Millar's paper?

From Smith's Dictionary: HORATIA GENS, was an ancient patrician family at Rome (Lydus, de Mensur. iv. 1), belong ing to the third tribe, the Luceres, and one of the lesser houses. (Dionys. v. 23.) It traced its origin to the hero Horatus, to whom an oak wood was dedicated (Id. v. 14) ; and from its affinity with the Curiatii of Alba, seems to have been of Latin race. Some writers indeed described the Horatii as Albans, and as the champions of Alba in the combat with the Curiatii. (Liv. i. 24.) But the story of the triple combat generally assigned the Horatii to Rome. (Liv. I.e.; Dionys. iii. 12; Plut. Parall. Gr. et Rom. 16 ; Flor. i. 3; Aurel. Vict. de Vir. III. 4 ; Zonar. vii. 6.) There are some indications of rivalry between the Valeria gens and the Horatia (Dionys. v. 35 ; Liv. ii. 8); and since the Valerii were of Sabellian extraction (Plut. Num. 5; Dionys. ii. 46, v. 12), the feud may have been national as well as political. In the division of the Roman people (populus and plebs) by Servius Tullius into Agrarian tribes, one of the tribes was the Horatia. Monuments of the Horatia gens were the "sacer campus Horatiorum" (Mart. Epigr. iii. 47) ; the " Horatii Pila," or trophy of the victory over the Alban brethren (Dionys. iii. 21; Liv. i. 26; Schol. Bob. in Cic. Milonian. p. 277, Orelli) ; the tomb of Horatia, built near the Porta Capena of squared stone (Liv. i. 26) ; the graves of the two Horatii near Alba, extant in the 6th century of Rome (Liv. L c.; Nre- buhr, ft. H. vol. i. note 870) ; and the " Sororium Tigillum," or Sister's Gibbet. (Fest. s. v. Soror. TigilL ; Dionys. iii. 22; Liv. I. c.) The Horatia Gens had the surnames barbatus, cocles, pul- villus. A few members of the gens are men tioned without a cognomen.

P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, for the conquest of Spain and the defeat of Hasdrubal and Hannibal M. Curius Dentatus, for defeating Pyrrhus as well as the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians L. Quintus Sertorius, for defeating every Roman who faced him (including the vaunted Pompey) on a mere shoestring

Regarding the second explananda, I'd also suggest an interesting article by Fergus Millar (who also doesn't buy the clientela theory of late Roman politics): Millar, F. (1973). Triumvirate and principate. JRS, 50-67. Millar provides a very close reading of the primary source materials (letters to officials, inscriptions, etc) that reveal which powers Octavian had during the establishment of the monarchy. The basic thesis is that the traditional powers of the republic provided guidance for Octavian when he was in the uncharted legal waters of the triumvirate. Thus, it was the basic republican institutions rather than clientela which provided Octavian with the bridge to the principate.

Isn't there a simple reconciliation of the two figures? The smaller figure of 300,000 refers to the inhabitants of Rome who were eligible for the corn dole, whereas the larger number (1.5 million) counts the total number of Roman citizens. That's how Brunt describes the situation.

I've been a Bond fan as long as I've been watching movies, but even I thought the franchise was getting stale--until Casino Royale. It's definitely the best Bond film in a long, long time. It even has a wonderful series of scenes at picturesque Lake Como (isn't Ginevra from there?).

People ask for paper help all the time (which is fine as far as I'm concerned). But if you want to make UNRV history (or is that UNRV History history?), be the first to let us know what you find! I'd love to know much more about the piracy situation that existed prior to the lex Gabinia, and I'm sure that if you do a project on this, you'll find more than I could from spending 20 minutes on the topic.

Three from Pompeii:

The white toga was like a three-piece business suit--not something you wear every day (recall Cincinnatus donning the toga to receive envoys from Rome?). Daily wear included many vibrant colors, including even green. Roman paintings (see below), murals, mosaics, and even sculptures testify to the broad color palette of the Romans.