M. Porcius Cato

Yes, I was terribly upset I wasn't able to catch Conversations in Tusculum. Your detailed review (and Playbill!), Nephele, was as lovely a consolation as I'd dare hope for. And, yes, I'm buttering you up so that if you see 23 Knives, you'll share your impressions! Here's the question I'd go in asking: Do they really think that 23 knife wounds implies 23 knives??

NYC-area theatre-goers have a chance to see not one, but two, plays on the man who destroyed the last pagan republic. The first, "Caesar and Cleopatra," is the seldom-produced play written by the Caesar-worshipping George Bernard Shaw (also author of "The Thinking Woman's Guide to Socialism"). If the play is as awful as the movie with Vivien Leigh, I'm sure New Yorkers will do the right thing: stab Caesar, so they can go home. On the other hand, if the play is great, I hope it tours Detroit, where the effect will be the same: Caesar (and the rest of the cast) likely stab victims. Speaking of stabbing, the second play, "23 Knives", looks much more fun, a mystery about the "glorious banquet" on the Ideas. It's a whodunnit, which I thought was already known, but with classical education down, maybe not. Full story in The Gray Lady.

I'm reading it, but I haven't finished it. So far, it's exactly what I was looking for -- a complete, scholarly treatment of Pompey -- but nothing that I could have hoped for -- a new perspective that would have caused me to rethink Pompey in some significant way.

I love Steve Pinker. Here he explains how a "thick-witted analogy to Latin" caused our Chief Strict Constructionist to become a judicial activist on behalf of an unconstitutional construction.

OK, take it as an example. What was the "price of gold" (where? Alexandria? Athens? in what units? in silver?) before Alexander found the treasury and what was the price afterwards?

That doesn't follow. If metals were the only commodity to rise and fall while all other commodities and goods were stable, then I'd take your point. But that just isn't the case. Over the periods that we're talking about (i.e., in making historical comparisons, not week-to-week comparisons) precious metals tend to be valued relative to other goods with more stability than any other good.

So what?

I agree completely about the basic problem, but I think there's a better solution than translating prices into "kilos of say pork or how many sandals you could buy for one hours decently skilled labor." This is the right approach -- i.e., to translate prices into a real commodity that is sensitive to historical differences in efficiency but not relative value -- but pork and sandals can differ in quality over time. The simplest solution is to translate prices into the value of the precious metal. For example, in the 1st century AD, a loaf of bread was 2 As, which would be 24 oz. of copper. Today 24 oz of copper would fetch $2.25, which is (behold) about the price of a loaf of bread today. Thus, translating prices to precious metals preserves the relative value of goods over time and thus reflects a better standard for making not only historical comparisons but also cross-national comparisons as well.

I saw a copy of the CAH IX on Amazon for around $ 50. If you can get $ 200, though, kudos!

Integrating the account of the New Testament with the New Testament is highly problematic too! Didn't we already have a very lengthy thread on this very topic somewhere?

Personally, I think stemmata are awfully useful in clarifying who exactly was a contemporary of whom. Since magistracies were age-linked, knowing who fell within a given generation provides a clue about who were potential rivals and who were potential mentors. That said, the stemmata aren't substitutes for knowing in depth information about the individuals within a given family. Within Cato's stemmata, for example, one can find populist partisans of Pompey as well as optimate opponents of the rising dictator (er, sole consul).

I agree that the characters of Caesar and Antony were sufficiently at odds to suspect that Caesar may have disliked Antony. There are also a couple of incidents (neither definitive of course) that could add weight to that suspicion. First, there was the strange business at the Lupercalia. Maybe Antony was only testing the waters on Caesar's behalf, but Caesar certainly gave the outward appearance of being annoyed, and it's possible that he really was annoyed with Antony. Much more gravely, though, there is the apparent fact that Antony was in the company of Trebonius mere moments before Caesar got a groin full of Brutus' steel. Again, it's not definitive evidence that Antony was in on the conspiracy, but it is odd that he was dallying with the Liberators just when he was needed and that he seemed equally eager to reconcile with them too (for a time). As I say, neither of these events proves anything, but one wonders how far Caesar--who had divorced a wife for much less than Antony's antics--trusted this drunken lieutenant who paraded naked through Rome and who cavorted with Caesar's mortal enemies.

This is a really cool discovery. One can almost hear that battle commander say, "At my word, unleash Hell."

Do we have any primary sources indicating whether Caesar liked Antony or not? I don't recall any. My guess would be that Caesar would have been fine with Antony's pedigree but considered him an embarrassing sot nonetheless.

Much of this thread is based on the premise that PTSD is caused by the discomfort that arises from killing other people. While I'm sure it's not fun to kill other people (well, most of them anyway), this doesn't seem like it would cause PTSD. Rather, the general cause of PTSD seems to be the duration and intensity of random threats. Thus, when mortar shells and automatic weapon spray can seemingly come out of the blue and kill your buddies and nearly kill you, you lose the ability to see what is and is not safe behavior. Drop a rat in a similar situation, with (say) random electric shocks, and you'll get a rat with the same symptoms of PTSD observed in "shell shocked" soldiers. Viewed from this perspective, it's possible to ask whether similar sorts of situations were faced by ancient warriors. As far as I can tell, there weren't many of them, but under the right conditions, maybe archers and artillery could do the trick.

Thanks for reviving this old thread. I was surprised to see that I'd listed Syme and Scullard three years ago. Now I'd replace them both with Gruen and Brunt.

I agree that this is pretty suspicious, and normally I'm pretty sensitive to Caesarian propaganda too. But I wonder if there's another explanation for Caesar's shadow falling back into the 2nd century-- viz., Livy's general habit of filling in the gaps to fit the 1st century historical pattern. Certainly, his treatment of early Roman history has that flavor, where it seems like some nefarious Catiline is constantly waiting in the wings to upend the republic by grandstanding to the mob.

Thanks, Nephele, for giving our Caecilia Metella a funny name. Now if only it *were* her real name, we could disentangle the fame she enjoys from her good name from the fame she enjoys as daughter of JFK. In fairness, I should also link to THIS LIST of other, equally unqualified, candidates to the senate. Again, note the number of senators with nothing but name recognition as a credential (e.g., Bill Bradley of the Knicks).

A word of protest from Nicholas Kristof. The comments are fascinating: some New Yorkers want a Caecilia Metella because she has "star power". Wow, almost a perfect translation of nobile.

Apparently the daughter of John F. Kennedy wants to be a senator. Having held no previous political office, which seems to have been both a necessary and a sufficient condition to be a senator in the Roman republic, her ambition is remarkable for a number of reasons. But what is says about political culture in the US and Rome is what has me fascinated. One of the trickier Latin political terms is nobile. The root of our word, "noble," it connotes royalty and aristocracy. But the Latin term was initially much more humble than that. It simply meant "known". And in a city the size of Rome, where all magistrates were chosen by the people, name recognition was (then as now) an invaluable political asset. Just the name Cornelius or Metellus was a political asset, a sign that the candidate was no fly-by-night-nobody, but would have something to live up to -- viz., centuries of other Cornelii or Metelli that had used their own name recognition for the good of the republic. It's all terribly unfair, of course. Cato the Elder, a New Man, used to upbraid the people for getting bamboozled by well-known names and for failing to recognize well-administered offices. Nobility--in the sense of an aristocracy--was what he warned would happen if the people continued to be dazzled by nobilitas, in the sense of name recognition. (Indeed, another New Man later used the old name of Julius for his own benefit, and the rest is history.) I always wondered if this dumb reliance on name recognition came from the fact that politics in Rome was face-to-face. With no mass media, one had precious little to go on when voting for a dozen or so lower magistrates, except the names: X. Caecilius Metellus versus X. Nomen Nescius, etc. Adding to this impression is the fact that dynastic political families have been the exception, rather than the norm, in the American republic. Our own nobiles -- Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Taft, Bush, and so on -- are vastly outnumbered by New Men with no family legacy: Polk, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Obama, and so on. But now I'm not so sure. With (caroline) KENNEDY running against (andrew) CUOMO, it certainly feels like Metellus versus Cornelius all over again. Personally, I'm hoping for more candidates with funny-sounding names.

I'd second Ludovicus' recommendation of the Oxford guide. I took it with me on my first trip to Rome, and it was simply invaluable in sussing out what's what.

Another nice addition, Nephele! To add a bit to your discussion of Imperiosus Torquatus: the double-meaning of Imperiosus is nicely illustrated by Livy's morality tale about just one T. Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus. When he is first introduced, he is portrayed as threatening a tribune at knife-point to induce the tribune to drop charges against his father, who had over-stayed his welcome in the office of dictator. Here the son is clearly illustrating the negative side of "Imperiosus," by haughtily placing family over the republic. Of course, when we next meet T. Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus, he illustrates the flip side of "Imperiosus" by justly condemning his own son (with the chilling words, "Lictor, tie him to a post") for his son's disobedient heroics on the battlefield. Now, as a man, T. Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus is meant (by Livy anyway) to illustrate the positive side of "Imperiosus", by placing the republic over family. I'll never forget my Roman history professor's comment on this morality tale, "The Romans were not ... a cuddly people."

Varro's description of bacteria was certainly prescient. But how did he know it?

A friend asked me how to translate "Talk nerdy to me" to Latin. My first guess was Nerditas dicte mihi. But I'm wondering if dice would be a better choice. Does dice connote 'tell' more than 'talk'. Thoughts?

Simply stunning. Thanks for this explanation Ruthe! I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but right now I'm just awestruck.