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Halloween Jack posted:Varro encouraged childbearing among his slaves, whereas Suetonius says that Cato prostituted his female slaves to the males as a means of controlling them (Cato was a dick). Well now we know where that shithead grandson of his got it. Actually, Cato (the intermediate?) was an rear end in a top hat as well. The Entire Universe posted:A whole family of assholes. As for Spartacus, Crassus deserved Carrhae for that poo poo. E: Crassus. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Jul 31, 2013 |
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Jul 31, 2013 04:03
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karl fungus posted:How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian? And the entire political system was set up to prevent that from happening. The fact that there were always two consuls meant you always had to share authority with someone. Even if a consul died early in his term, I think they always elected a new one. And then after your rather short 1 year term was up, you were out, and legally not allowed to try again for 10 years. And there were tons of guys behind you who were all qualified to take over and would be more than ready to stab you in the back if it made them more popular. The problems really sort to begin when you have these very powerful guys shipped out to be Proconsuls governing overseas provinces, leading armies for extended periods.
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Jul 31, 2013 04:15
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Bibulus figured he could use the 2 Consul system to completely blunt Julius Caesar's ambitions, refusing to allow any of Caesar's proposals through and staying in his house and refusing to govern. Julius Caesar got around this rather tricky little problem by just completely ignoring it and doing what he wanted anyway!
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Jul 31, 2013 04:30
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The joke at the time was that it was the year of the consuls Julius and Caesar.
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Jul 31, 2013 04:40
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cheerfullydrab posted:So I'm currently reading "Count Belisarius" by Robert Graves. I think it would make an amazing miniseries, just like "I, Claudius", and I hope I get to see this happen in my life. I've previously read "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God" and own copies of both those books. Has anyone who reads this thread or post in it read "Count Belisarius"? If so, what is your opinion of that book? So far it seems extremely dry but enjoyable and very much in the style of the other two. Its been probably ten years since I read it, but the mention of Justinian's name still rubs me the wrong way! Wikipedia suggests the history is off (especially bits towards the end of his life) but still a good read. I thought it was a good teaser for a period of history many people aren't really aware of.
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Jul 31, 2013 12:00
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karl fungus posted:How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian? Hope, basically. Even Octavian and many after him had their powers 'granted' to them by the Senate. People had a lot of faith in a system that was hopelessly broken yet held together by the stoicism of Roman society or some crazy poo poo that made people believe baked-in class warfare (hey thanks Sulla) and repeated good-intent-awful-precedent (thanks Marius) legislation were somehow part of a system still able to work in their favor. Figleafs on top of figleafs hiding the awful truth that the "PQ" of SPQR really didn't matter and hadn't mattered since like 120 years before Actium. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Jul 31, 2013 |
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Jul 31, 2013 12:30
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I'm not so convinced that the people of Rome would have had many illusions about how the government had changed. The fiction of the Princeps being appointed by the Senate and being merely the first among equals would have gone a long way toward keeping people mollified by making the emperors look semi-humble about their role, but I doubt that people failed to understand that they were now living in a dictatorship. The thing is, would people really care? Augustus' rule signified the end of a tumultuous period of civil war, and I doubt life changed much under the new totally-not-a-king for the average Primus in the streets anyway. Meanwhile, all the aristocrats who would have seriously opposed the new system were dead or divested of their influence. Then Augustus goes on to rule for over forty very successful and prosperous years, so that by the time he dies everyone under forty knows no government but the Principate, and only the very elderly would have memories of the real Republic as anything other than a mess of war and internal strife. I seem to recall that Tiberius tried to hand back some of his power to the Senate (or at least to delegate some decision making to them to reduce his own workload), and they basically refused. edit: It's worth noting that when Julius Caesar was assassinated, the conspirators went out into the streets to proclaim that the tyrant was dead and the Republic had been restored or whatever, and the response from the populace was to rush home and lock themselves indoors, because holy poo poo thanks for starting another civil war you assholes. Medenmath fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jul 31, 2013 |
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Jul 31, 2013 12:56
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Third Murderer posted:I'm not so convinced that the people of Rome would have had many illusions about how the government had changed. The fiction of the Princeps being appointed by the Senate and being merely the first among equals would have gone a long way toward keeping people mollified by making the emperors look semi-humble about their role, but I doubt that people failed to understand that they were now living in a dictatorship. I didn't mean to say they thought they would just up and elect the next Consul once Augustus or Claudius or whoever stepped down, just that they didn't necessarily feel oppressed, or at least no more oppressed than before. That was, as you said, because of the attempts to seem humble, as though the Princeps was the result of the Republican process, knew his power was granted at the leisure of the Senate/People of Rome, etc. Basically, people knew it wasn't the pair of consuls they had in the past/heard grandpater mumble about but this new guy wasn't hacking everyone's head off and sending half the Republic's military into war against the other half so they went along with it. Sure, some (at first) knew how completely broken beyond repair or recognition the system was but a) its name was Rome and b) there was a sense of stability. And outside of the few that were invested in the existence of the consulship it really didn't matter to anyone because by the time 'Princeps' became a hereditary title (again as you said) most people who knew anything else were either dead or had made peace with the new paradigm and trusted Augustus to pass power to someone who would keep things running smoothly. As for the system "working for them" I meant it working for any given Roman personally. They could take their pouch of Denarii/Asses/Sestertii and buy food and clothes and whores at roughly stable prices and that was good enough, the wheat and cloth wasn't all hosed up in price due to some rear end in a top hat loving around with trade routes from Egypt, and the whores were fresh since they weren't being passed around the legion barracks as spoils for taking the city. Life didn't change much unless you pissed off someone in power and the best way to keep from doing that was not to ask any questions. I should have said apathy instead of hope, in retrospect.
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Jul 31, 2013 14:50
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karl fungus posted:How did the Roman Republic last for so many centuries without someone making himself sole ruler? How were the circumstances special for Octavian? Before Octavian you had JC, Marius and Sulla, don't forget. edit Ooops I missed a page. I also agree with the class interpretation that basically people got loving fed up with the senate and supported emperors because they at least tried - sometimes - to make a better state. This falls apart later.
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Jul 31, 2013 14:52
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By the by, what was the stance of the aristocratic faction during the late Republic? I know I should avoid the temptation to compare Rome to the current US government, but it seems like they were all "Those dirty plebs need to pull themselves up by their Also, reading some Cicero, I now realize what a douchebag he is by modern standards. His legal theory was half reason, a quarter wit, and a quarter taking merciless cheap shots at people for things they couldn't help. Did you know that Marcus Antonius was adopted?
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Jul 31, 2013 15:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Also, reading some Cicero, I now realize what a douchebag he is by modern standards. His legal theory was half reason, a quarter wit, and a quarter taking merciless cheap shots at people for things they couldn't help. Did you know that Marcus Antonius was adopted? Take in mind that in his time law suits were closely tied to politics, and the most important skill for a lawyer was being a great orator. It was eloquence the sign of a great lawyer, Cicero himself said that only those who fail to make a grade as an orator resort to the study of law. Basically, having a silver tongue paid far more dividends than focusing your attention to the little details of laws and regulations. Also, taking some injuriating shots to your political rivals was fair game, and a man with the reputation of Mark Anthony was an easy target for these.
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Jul 31, 2013 15:29
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Halloween Jack posted:By the by, what was the stance of the aristocratic faction during the late Republic? I know I should avoid the temptation to compare Rome to the current US government, but it seems like they were all "Those dirty plebs need to pull themselves up by their More like "who cares about the plebs?" Seriously. So long as they weren't rioting, the aristocratic patricians were more occupied with advancing themselves and worrying about what the next great general would do than worry about the plebs.
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Jul 31, 2013 15:46
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Thwomp posted:More like "who cares about the plebs?" Seriously. So long as they weren't rioting, the aristocratic patricians were more occupied with advancing themselves and worrying about what the next great general would do than worry about the plebs. That is completely untrue. Basic policy was "make sure the plebs are happy" so they don't riot and gently caress things up. Bread and Circus was a real thing as where major public works projects to make everyone's lives better so the plebs wouldn't riot. It was even illegal to create branches from the aqueducts to go to your private house. The Roman's where not really libertarian assholes.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:30
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There is a big difference between minimum welfare like a food dole and games to distract and actually creating a functioning state where a nice lifestyle is possible for a large % of people - and also there aren't constant civil wars. Small independent farms were being destroyed by the large estates - that's why everyone was in Rome.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:35
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euphronius posted:There is a big difference between minimum welfare like a food dole and games to distract and actually creating a functioning state where a nice lifestyle is possible for a large % of people - and also there aren't constant civil wars. quote:Small independent farms were being destroyed by the large estates - that's why everyone was in Rome. By the by, for all Cato was an incredible dick, De Agri Cultura is a joy to read.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:51
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Halloween Jack posted:One thing I learned from this thread is that really wealthy Romans valued civic virtue, to the point where they considered public works an excellent way to make their mark, moreso than just making as much money as humanly possible. We still have this, but that money tends to go to "sexy" things like universities and art galleries, rather than meeting people's basic human needs. Sounds like a lot of propaganda from aristocratic sources (which are the largest amount of sources we have.) In Rome public works were advertising for future office. Modern donation is driven by tax avoidance.
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Jul 31, 2013 16:56
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euphronius posted:Sounds like a lot of propaganda from aristocratic sources (which are the largest amount of sources we have.) Indeed, the rich often sponsored public buildings, but the idea was to show how important they were, rather than because they thought that's how a good society works.
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Jul 31, 2013 19:09
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that stuff will also be around long after you and even anyone identifiable as your relation is dead. Pretty good investment.
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Jul 31, 2013 19:24
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euphronius posted:Before Octavian you had JC, Marius and Sulla, don't forget. This was (very broadly) how Julius Caesar gained a good deal of his power. In addition to being a drat genius in the realm of military strategy he was one hell of a politician. Leveraged highly populist policy against his political enemies and dropped the sickest of burns on Cato.
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Jul 31, 2013 21:22
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I wonder if the idea of "spend the money on the public good"/"spend the money on things that make me look good" came about due to the lack of modern financial systems. I mean you can amass some wealth. gently caress it, you can amass huge piles of gold but what are you actually going to do with it? You can't put it in a bank. Sure you can store some in temples as was the style at the time for the wealthy but you can only store so much. You've already got huge estates and a massive house, more slaves than you can count and you've got a good political job. Unless the next step in your life plan is to raise a personal army and either take over Rome or go invade somewhere there really isn't much else to do with it once you get past a certain point. There isn't much else you can buy and you can't really store it. Might as well give it to people (client system) in return for favours, which are much easier to store and build massive gently caress off "I'm so god drat awesome" buildings and stuff to increase your political influence and have a status symbol. Thinking about it, you can't even keep buying estates, you buy too much land and your rivals start pointing to it all and asking "so look at all that land? Not thinking of declaring yourself King are you?".
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Jul 31, 2013 22:32
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Xguard86 posted:that stuff will also be around long after you and even anyone identifiable as your relation is dead. Pretty good investment. A lot of the stuff is gone, either from burning down, falling down, or being quarried.
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Jul 31, 2013 22:53
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Actually that does remind me of something I've been curious about, what WAS the banking system like in Rome? As in, how did people store their cash money since I'm sure they didn't like to keep it all sitting in a room in their house somewhere, and what protections were there to ensure that the bank didn't go bust or get robbed? I know that probably most rich Romans had most of their cash tied up in land, art, building projects etc but they had to have physical cash on hand too, so how did that whole thing work? Was there a physical bank with vaults/lock boxes where your accounts were kept on file by clerks? If so did they keep back-ups of their account books in case of fire or destruction or robbery etc or just to avoid somebody saying,"Half the money in my account is gone!"?
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Jul 31, 2013 23:04
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:I wonder if the idea of "spend the money on the public good"/"spend the money on things that make me look good" came about due to the lack of modern financial systems. You can even see this to some extent with modern financial systems. There's a point where you can hit a wealth threshold where you just can't really spend that money fast enough in any meaningful way so you end up with people The stark difference being yeah, like you said, in ancient times flaunt your wealth enough and your peers start to wonder how easy it'd be to kill you and take all your great things. J.P. Morgan never had to worry about Andrew Carnegie bullshitting up a proscription list with his name on it to justify killing him and his family for his banks to help him round up support in the Senate to get appointed President of the United States.
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Jul 31, 2013 23:17
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At least for upper class citizens, a lot of the time you could store your wealth in temples since robbing them was really taboo. Your goodies are safe until invaders rampage through your town.
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Jul 31, 2013 23:23
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The Entire Universe posted:This was (very broadly) how Julius Caesar gained a good deal of his power. In addition to being a drat genius in the realm of military strategy he was one hell of a politician. Leveraged highly populist policy against his political enemies and dropped the sickest of burns on Cato. Was he really that good of a politician though? I mean forgiving all your enemies and letting them keep their positions isn't the smartest of moves and Caesar was stabbed to death even though because of it.
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Aug 1, 2013 00:48
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I guess he wanted to try something that wasn't another round of vicious proscriptions? Pardoning your former enemies really can be a powerful move.
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Aug 1, 2013 01:26
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canuckanese posted:At least for upper class citizens, a lot of the time you could store your wealth in temples since robbing them was really taboo. Your goodies are safe until invaders rampage through your town. This and goods were most of it. Remember that cash is kind of a new thing, wealth before the modern age was mostly in property. There was a lot more cash around in the Roman Empire than like medieval Europe, but still a lot of a person's wealth would be land/slaves/ships/etc.
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Aug 1, 2013 01:32
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PittTheElder posted:I guess he wanted to try something that wasn't another round of vicious proscriptions? Pardoning your former enemies really can be a powerful move. Fromage can probably answer better on the exact details of the events leading up to Caesar's assassination, but barring just wiping out a good portion of the Senate would it have made a difference? He appeared to have a lot of enemies. Also Caesar's political career is fairly long and shouldn't just be boiled down to "didn't pardon (some of) his enemies, got knives in return".
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Aug 1, 2013 01:36
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Lord Tywin posted:Was he really that good of a politician though? I mean forgiving all your enemies and letting them keep their positions isn't the smartest of moves and Caesar was stabbed to death even though because of it. Caesar was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. His enemies made a huge deal out of how he was a tyrant with a mad lust for power, and if he'd killed them all it would have justified those claims in a lot of people's minds and turned a great deal of public perception against him. Even worse, it would have made those in power justifiably fear him, and with the Roman hatred of the concept of King being so strong it would have given enemies a rallying point - we must kill Caesar for the good of the Republic! Of course, that's what happened anyway, but it probably would have happened far sooner otherwise and been universally applauded instead of Cicero being the only guy in the audience clapping. Caesar learned pretty quickly that even great power couldn't protect him from disapproval, there was a case of a Roman Senator (I want to say Lucullus?) who was so frightened by Caesar making an authoritative demand of him while Consul that he dropped to his knees and grovelled in front of him, which outraged the rest of the Senate so much (including Caesar's supporters) that they all got up and marched out as one, leaving Caesar unable to do anything. He was always careful about being seen to be magnanimous, forgiving, friendly and embracing because it was the politically smart thing to do - people could accuse him of wanting to be King all they wanted, but if he refused to act like the haughty, entitled tyrant they made him out to be, then it made his enemies look pretty foolish to the moderates, undecideds, merchants, knights and of course the common people. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 01:41
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canuckanese posted:At least for upper class citizens, a lot of the time you could store your wealth in temples since robbing them was really taboo. Your goodies are safe until invaders rampage through your town. And if you weren't gently caress off wealthy you'd probably bury it somewhere and hope no one found it, hope you remembered where the hell you left it, and hope you lived long enough to go back and dig it up. Coin hoards are still being dug up in in what used to be Roman territory so there's a whole lot of people who never came back to get their money.
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Aug 1, 2013 02:34
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How long were coins out in circulation? Were there constant efforts to replace them? Like, let's say that in the reign of Augustus, Maximus Maximian Maximianus buries ten gold coins. Four hundred years later, while the western empire is on its death throes and Majorian is the emperor, Flavius Flavian Flavianus discovers these ten gold coins with Augustus on them. Does anyone look at him weirdly if he tries to buy things with them? Does anyone around him recognize this as an archaeological find?
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Aug 1, 2013 03:14
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Apparently Roman coin collecting become popular in Renaissance Europe so there has at been some recognition of archeological value for at least 500 years, they even started drawing up lists of who ruled when. Hordes of Islamic silver in Viking age Scandinavia suggest to me merchants probably didn't worry much about who or what was printed on gold and silver, they probably just checked for purity and weight.
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Aug 1, 2013 04:24
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Berke Negri posted:Fromage can probably answer better on the exact details of the events leading up to Caesar's assassination, but barring just wiping out a good portion of the Senate would it have made a difference? He appeared to have a lot of enemies. Also Caesar's political career is fairly long and shouldn't just be boiled down to "didn't pardon (some of) his enemies, got knives in return". Well I don't think it would have made a difference. Jerusalem put it pretty well; in becoming top dog, he had painted a massive target on his back, since the Senatorial class either hated the mere existence of a guy with that much power, or alternatively wanted to be the guy with that much power.
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Aug 1, 2013 04:57
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Squalid posted:Apparently Roman coin collecting become popular in Renaissance Europe so there has at been some recognition of archeological value for at least 500 years, they even started drawing up lists of who ruled when. Hordes of Islamic silver in Viking age Scandinavia suggest to me merchants probably didn't worry much about who or what was printed on gold and silver, they probably just checked for purity and weight. Rome knew it was debasing its currency with copper over time, so it would seem there was some kind of accounting for the metal value of at least some of the coins. It also seems there's evidence people (as in people other than the emperor whose face was on the coins) cared about whose face was on the coins, so perhaps there was a system set up to melt coins down and re-mint them with, say, Claudius, so that someone didn't have to have some rear end in a top hat like Caligula looking at them every time they paid for something. Probably couldnt go and get your coins reminted with Claudius under the rule of Nero, though. The currency was a split system, with small denominations (copper/bronze for example) under local authority and the larger (silver/gold) minted in Rome only. That also indicates some kind of destructive circulation process, since the debasement over time meant more and more copper got into the 'silver' coins. Obviously coins got lost or thrown into lakes/wells/seas but long story short I imagine there was some circulatory system by which coins were taken out of circulation, melted down, separated/combined if needed, and minted again. Rome had problems but they loved their standardization and systems.
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Aug 1, 2013 13:00
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Class relations were grounded in the tradition of plebian/patrician relations, which got kind of complex. Wherever the original patricians came from, we can reasonably speculate that they didn't have the power and/or inclination to completely subdue the presumably pre-existing plebians. By the early Republic we see the plebs exercising a remarkable degree of power, including going on strike and moving out of the city for awhile whenever their "overlords" got too annoying. This sort of sets the tone for the future: they didn't really like each other, but they needed each other. A patrician wasn't going to shoe his own horses or repair his own roof, and a pleb didn't much give a poo poo what the patrician was doing as long as the granary was filling up. Over time, social choices (like, limiting the senatorial ability to make money) combined with the natural course of economics led to increasing pleb power and the emergence of the equites and then the plebian senatorial class. By the end of the Republic, we see superheavyweight plebs like Marius, Pompey, Cicero and Antony, more powerful by far than most any true blood patrician. Bread and circuses was class warfare, it had been going on since the merging of the two groups, and became a cultural thing. Symbiotic. Patricians donating entire lifetimes/fortunes to public works just so the rabble will behave (or not leave) creates a definite argument that the Roman upper class were the captives of the plebs, not the other way around. You could argue that the class war was lost at the end of the monarchial period. I realize this flies in the face of what in many respects appears to be an extremely classist society, but underneath the surface, there was an almost egalitarian biology to them. Like I said, complex. Roman oration does connect into this. Remember that there was no real police force and only token bodyguards for the highest elected officials. If you couldn't control a crowd with your voice, you couldn't control the crowd, period. Oratory was a survival skill.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:39
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physeter posted:Class relations were grounded in the tradition of plebian/patrician relations, which got kind of complex. Wherever the original patricians came from, we can reasonably speculate that they didn't have the power and/or inclination to completely subdue the presumably pre-existing plebians. By the early Republic we see the plebs exercising a remarkable degree of power, including going on strike and moving out of the city for awhile whenever their "overlords" got too annoying. This sort of sets the tone for the future: they didn't really like each other, but they needed each other. A patrician wasn't going to shoe his own horses or repair his own roof, and a pleb didn't much give a poo poo what the patrician was doing as long as the granary was filling up. Over time, social choices (like, limiting the senatorial ability to make money) combined with the natural course of economics led to increasing pleb power and the emergence of the equites and then the plebian senatorial class. By the end of the Republic, we see superheavyweight plebs like Marius, Pompey, Cicero and Antony, more powerful by far than most any true blood patrician. Then again, Sulla.
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Aug 1, 2013 16:20
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Elissimpark posted:Its been probably ten years since I read it, but the mention of Justinian's name still rubs me the wrong way! Wikipedia suggests the history is off (especially bits towards the end of his life) but still a good read. I thought it was a good teaser for a period of history many people aren't really aware of.
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Aug 1, 2013 17:14
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physeter posted:Class relations... Oratory was a survival skill. This is also evident in the Client system. As soon as you figured out that if you could gather up 100 guys and get them to shout down one of your rivals and you effectively win, it starts to make sense to cultivate these massive pyramidal mob-like relationships. The number of people you could get to come out and riot for you, or cheer someone was directly related to how well you were going to do in politics.
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Aug 1, 2013 20:07
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The Entire Universe posted:Then again, Sulla. True. But in fairness, you can say that about many late Republic generalizations. Sulla 
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Aug 1, 2013 20:22
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Can anybody recommend a good source on the Olympic sport Pankration/Pancrase? Would love to read more about gladiators too.
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Aug 1, 2013 21:27
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