M. Porcius Cato

If you really think that there is an election-driven price plunge (by what magic I'd love to know), then the fall in prices should reverse after the elections. I think you two are all wet, and I'll bet you gasoline prices (currently averaging $2.84/gallon nationwide) do not climb after Election Day--you ready to make that wager? Say, a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com if the average nationwide gasoline prices aren't higher by Thanksgiving? Come on, guys--put your money where your mouth is.

The republic could have been improved in many ways that I've previously listed. I do think that Crassus and Pompey were also harmful in their support for Caesar, but both of them had served the republic in important ways as well. Marius and Cinna were a major threat to the republic, as were Sulla and his lackeys, but their reforms were ultimately accommodated by the state without the need for succcessive monarchies. More to the point--my argument was that none of them were both necessary and sufficient for the fall of the republic, whereas Caesar was. Indeed it should have--had the previous civil wars not deprived the republic of the men who knew how that system worked. Moreover, don't forget that Caesar's actions continued to be destabilizing even after his death--his will, for example, was like a time bomb for the republic, blowing apart the uneasy peace and return to normalcy that had been taking form.

I agree. There is a tendency to posit more causes than are necessary, while there is a necessary and nearly sufficient condition for the fall of the republic--the behavior of Gaius Julius Caesar--that obviates the need to posit any additional factors. On the basis of Occam's razor, I favor simple explanations over needlessly complex ones.

I agree that 5 million is a bit high, but let's recall that the number killed on the battlefield is typically only a fraction of the number killed in war. The spread of disease is the real killer. If the ancient Celts hadn't an immunity to the stew of illnesses to which the urban Romans had developed an immunity, the total number killed by Caesar's troops and their entourage was most likely vastly larger than the number Caesar reported. Further, Sertorius raises a number of fresh and important points of illegality that no one has addressed, including the unlawful imprisonment of diplomatic envoys, the destruction of a Roman ally, and threatening the life of a consular colleague.

I'm rather fond of Jon Stewart's take on the 'Byzantine logic' of the ensuing bruhaha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sduc1HQpNoI.

Elections occurring in one month have nothing to do with gas prices. There is a seasonal fall in demand. If you don't believe in the seasonal theory, let's try an experiment. You buy a gallon of gas on November 15 (after elections), and I'll buy it back from you in July (before elections, but during the summer) at the November 15 price. See you in the poor house, mate!

I was also referring to purchasing power--that's why I denominated the values in terms of silver content. The buying power of silver then is similar to the buying power of silver now. Consider the lex Julia Papiria De Mulctarum Aestimatione (BC 43) which fixed a money value according to which fines were paid, which formerly were paid in sheep (10 asses = 1 sheep). From this we have a very good source on how to convert silver to sheep, and then we can look at how many dollars are required to buy sheep today, and thus look at the purchasing power of Pompey's spoils. The result will not even come close to your estimate that Pompey brought back the equivalent of "trillions of American dollars"--you're off by several orders of magnitude. If you have a better method for calculating purchasing power, let's hear it--I'd really love to see the mathematical steps by which you reached "trillions of American dollars".

Wow! You are so far off it's not even funny--how did you arrive at "trillions of American dollars"? Even with the most optimistic figures given, Pompey plundered the equivalent of 216 million denarii, which is equivalent to 21.6 million troy ounces of silver. At $10/troy ounce (which is a pretty high price to pay for silver), that's only US$ 216 million--a VERY VERY VERY far distance from "trillions of American dollars". In fact, even if someone were to find the ACTUAL denarii distributed by Pompey, the current price of a denarius on ebay would not yield the equivalent of "trillions of American dollars". Think about it--do you know how few nations today have a GNP worth a "trillions of American dollars"? In fact, I don't think a fleet of ships could even CARRY the 100,000,000,000 troy ounces of silver that would equal one trillion let alone "trillions of American dollars". (And, yes, I was pretty surprised to see that the silver value of a denarius is currently worth about a dollar. If the average wage in Rome was $20/day back then, Romans were earning about the same as most people in the world today, given an annual rate of $7000/year. In terms of purchasing power, I'd bet you can probably buy a sheep today for about the same price (in silver) as you could then.)

Welcome, M. Tullius Cicero! If only your namesake had had a Cicero like yourself to defend him... Please post often--with commentary, questions, arguments and theses.

Having reviewed a good portion of episode 1, I could find no dormice--real, simulated, or metaphorical. I did note, however, that the writers use the term 'plebeian' rather loosely. Ther term had a very precise legal meaning with important political consequences: if your family was plebeian there were special offices to which you might aspire that patricians could not (e.g., the plebeian consulship, the tribune of the plebs, and so forth). By the legal standard, the Brutii were very definitely plebs--having both tribunes (M. Junius Brutus) and plebeian consuls (L. Junius Brutus) in their gens--with one L. Junius Brutus having led the "secession" of the plebs in 494. Therefore, the scene in which Brutus scorns the plebeian sense of loyalty to Pompey is doubly (perhaps triply) odd. First, that he--a member of a plebeian gens--should say anything against plebeians. Second, that he should have a private and genial conversation with his father's killer. And third that he would dare make loyalty the subject of coversation with him. Perhaps we're to infer that Brutus picked up his patrician haughtiness from his mother? The Servilia Caepiones were certainly blue-blooded patricians (albeit cursed by Gallic gold, according to popular belief).

According to Mary Beard (writing for the Guardian), the dormouse scene occurs roughly 30 minutes into episode one. I'm pretty sure we wrote about the dormouse in a previous thread.

Where do you think symbols get their meaning except by associations? Since associations change over time, the meaning of the symbols change as well. What makes the meaning of the Hindu swastika ('good luck') its TRUE meaning any more than the meaning given to the swastika by the Nazis? The Hindi associations aren't any more important or real than the ones who suffered under Hitler. Again, the same point holds regarding the 'Roman' salute, which is why I think Roosevelt was right to choose another gesture as part of the pledge.

It's a horse. An ordinary horse with ordinary hoofs. Suetonius was talking about a five-toed horse, which in the era we're talking about is as biologically plausible as Barnum's Fiji Mermaid. No one doubts that Caesar rode a horse, and there were plenty of statues of horses in Rome--all of them quite normally hoofed.

OK, let's not rehash it. I'm just trying to nail down whether it was Cato or Ahenobarbus who threatened to prosecute Caesar for crossing out of his province with an army. If you want to maintain that that's like having too silverware on the table, so be it.

Also, wasn't there some dispute about the dormice?

A couple more quibbles: The relative ages of the principal characters were sometimes off by quite a bit. For example, in the show, Cato looks older than Caesar who looks older than Cicero; in reality, Cicero was older than Caesar who was older than Cato. In the show, Vercingetorix was throttled publicly, though by actual tradition, he would have been strangled in a private ritual in the the Tullianum after being displayed publicly. Horrifying though it is, the pity of the crowd for Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe and the infant son of Juba were said to have spared them from the fate of Vercingetorix. Obviously, Titus Pullo did not really bring down the republic.

Perhaps 'Quintus' was meant as a composite of Quartus and Sextus? Oh, heck, forget Phillipus, where is my Porcia? I hope she shows up next season.

Yes, but I noticed that it's one of the most viewed pages in the Republic subforum. Do you know of any further sources to answer the long-gone-but-not-forgotten question?

The series will also depict Ti. Gracchus. Wonder if they'll mention his oft-forgotten political adversary, the great Scipio Aemilianus, who not only beat the Macedonians at Pydna, sacked Carthage, and subdued Spain, but also won the Corona Muralis and Corona Graminea--before being murdered by assassins?

Did you look in the History Channel Store?

I think I recall them doing the Cynoscephalae.

For the sake of argument, I'll say Yes--in 1856, people had the same ideas regarding how complicated the language of a bill needed to be, what a normal life and career consisted of, and so on. What evidence leads you to think otherwise? Laws have always been complex. Look at Roman laws!

FC apparently believes that "great men" should be above the law, whereas I would say that anyone who places himself above the law has acted in a petty way, whether Scipio Africanus or Caesar. He also fails to mention the other fate of great men, the ones who lost popular favor for opposing giveaways to the mob, including the early Fabii (exiled), Scipio Aemilianus (murdered) and Livius Drusus (also murdered). But by far the most common route was neither of these--of all the people who won a triumph, few to none were successfully prosecuted thereafter. In any case, does anyone have a source regarding who threatened Caesar with prosecution, when they made the threat, and what crimes were to be prosecuted?

According to both Suetonius and Plutarch, it was L. Domitius Ahenobarbus who threatened to prosecute Caesar for leading his army outside his proconsular imperium without authority. According to Suetonius, Lucius Antistius, a tribune of the people, thereafter arraigned Caesar. According to Plutarch, M. Porcius Cato threatened, not to prosecute Caesar, but to turn him over to the Germans for breaking the truce with them, specifically by seizing their ambassadors and attacking them by surprise. (A precedent for this might be said to have occurred in 137 in the case of Caius Hostilius Mancinus.) Caesar replied to Cato's suggestion by a letter to the senate, "and when it was read, with its abundant insults and denunciations of Cato, Cato rose to his feet and showed, not in anger or contentiousness, but as if from calculation and due preparation, that the accusations against him bore the marks of abuse and scoffing, and were childishness and vulgarity on Caesar's part" (Plut., Cat Min, 51.2). The whole exchange--the near absurdity of turning Caesar over to the Germans and the vulgar denunciations of Cato--doesn't look like more than bickering to me. Suetonius claims that Cato often threatened to prosecute Caesar, but Suetonius implies that that's just an inference he was making from Caesar's comments after Pharsalus, and Suetonius does not say what Cato would actually have prosecuted Caesar for. (But then Suetonius also claims that Caesar rode a five-toed horse, so who knows whether he's trustworthy in any case.) I'm wondering if there are other sources that attest to Cato's threat of prosecution, and whether it's possible that Cato is simply getting the credit due to Ahenobarbus.

Adebayor! Hahahahahhahaaha.