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Squalid posted:Also worth mentioning that he might not have planned to die when he did, and may have been caught unprepared. This is all of us, really, isn't it. Another issue with knocking one of your twin sons of the head at birth is that it's twice as easy to end up with no heirs at all, which is even less desirable, and that's just from the realpolitik angle.
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Dec 3, 2019 05:43
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Safety Biscuits posted:This is all of us, really, isn't it. yeah that's a good point. it's also a real trade off -- the better you prepare younger siblings to rule, the greater the threat they will pose to the firstborn.
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Dec 3, 2019 06:02
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As always the solution is "have bastards" so you have heirs in reserve when you need em. Bastards never cause problems, isn't that right, Lord Monmouth?
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Dec 3, 2019 06:12
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CommonShore posted:As always the solution is "have bastards" so you have heirs in reserve when you need em. The Plague also helped a lot. Family tracts throughout most of Europe had been subdivided into increasingly minuscule and decreasingly valuable plots to keep all the heirs satisfied. The Plague survivors ended up inheriting enormous estates and went on a spending spree, helping to kickstart the economy afterwards.
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Dec 3, 2019 06:16
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Grand Fromage posted:Unfortunately it's just a passing mention of a set of Etruscan wizards offering to use their pagan godly powers to attack the Gothic army with lightning. But it's a super valuable passing mention since A) we get that Etruscans are still a thing in 410 CE and B) this is well into the era of Christian Rome and pagan wizardry is still enough of a thing for them to show up and it isn't remarkable. Also they aren't burned at the stake or anything, they just get a no thanks and leave. It's just an unqualified feeling I have, but it seems like christian (and before them, jewish) rulers were extremely chill with magic until the late middle ages. King Salomon sought the advice of a wise woman, and that's even in the bible! I would have loved to get a peek at those wizards memoirs 
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Dec 3, 2019 14:15
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Squalid posted:However before him, had there ever even been an emperor with two sons? I can't think of any off-hand. Vespasian. In which case the younger son was widely rumored to have plotted against the elder and eventually poisoned him, but the sources are extremely biased and may well be smearing Domitian baselessly.
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Dec 3, 2019 14:20
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:now wait until you hear about Sky Dad
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Dec 3, 2019 14:52
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DACK FAYDEN posted:excuse me his name is Zeus Pater please be polite That's a weird way of saying Jupiter, you aren't from around here are you?
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Dec 3, 2019 14:54
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Deteriorata posted:The Plague also helped a lot. Family tracts throughout most of Europe had been subdivided into increasingly minuscule and decreasingly valuable plots to keep all the heirs satisfied. The Plague survivors ended up inheriting enormous estates and went on a spending spree, helping to kickstart the economy afterwards. I'm listening to a lecture class on the Plague and the whole inheritance part is bananas. I'm not even talking about royals, but tenant farmers who were pledges to various lords. If the head of household died the family had to give their best cow to compensate the lord. By the time the Great Mortality was in full swing some feudal lords were refusing to take their livestock payment because they had no more room (also maybe they were dead too). If a tenant died without a son to take over their plot then another male family member was compelled to take over but the one brother out of 12 who survived the Plague was like, "no, I'm good with my other 7 brothers' plots thanks. Also I have a fever".
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Dec 3, 2019 14:59
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DACK FAYDEN posted:This is totally unrelated but I just found out from the "tell me about references in older media that are lost on modern viewers" thread here in A/T I couldn't find the thread, where is it?
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Dec 3, 2019 16:32
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Fish of hemp posted:I couldn't find the thread, where is it?
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Dec 3, 2019 16:45
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Krispy Wafer posted:I'm listening to a lecture class on the Plague and the whole inheritance part is bananas. I'm not even talking about royals, but tenant farmers who were pledges to various lords. If the head of household died the family had to give their best cow to compensate the lord. By the time the Great Mortality was in full swing some feudal lords were refusing to take their livestock payment because they had no more room (also maybe they were dead too). This is kind of burying the lede. The really astonishing thing is that peasants had to pay compensation to the lord for the inconvenience caused by the peasant dying.
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Dec 3, 2019 18:57
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What bugs me isn't the fact that the fathers were dumb about loving their sons, it's the fact that they should know that monarchy* is a barbaric system that necessitates the demolition of all potential rivals. Septimius Severus for example only took the throne after the year of five emperors where he did some of that stuff himself. It shouldn't be a surprise that the sons would be like the father. Diocletian actually had a real neat idea with decentralizing power, but it'd probably work better with like 13 or 25 rather than 4, since it's too easy for one of a small number of people to try to take the whole potato. Make a council of emperors, maybe with something where they elect a prime emperor. Or maybe that kind of decentralization would cause Rome to dissolve even faster, which isn't entirely negative in my book. Anything to drift away from straight monarchy. Arglebargle III posted:This is kind of burying the lede. The really astonishing thing is that peasants had to pay compensation to the lord for the inconvenience caused by the peasant dying. Estate tax  *Monarchy here meaning the sort of single-head-honcho-with-ultimate-power and an implicit hereditary entitlement, despite I'm sure the multitude of differences between the particulars of medieval and ancient European succession rules and procedures
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Dec 3, 2019 19:22
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I said this the last time it came up in the thread, but “decentralizing power” and replacing monarchy or diarchy or tetrarchy or whatever with rule by like 10-20 guys is literally exactly what happened to the western empire. None of the 10-20 guys liked how many of them there were. then various groups of them kept waging war on each other for centuries trying to whittle themselves back down to only a few guys only for more guys to pop up whenever a particularly hardcore one died. Also monarchy isn’t what dictates violence towards one’s rivals and removing, or territorially breaking up, monarchies can’t prevent it. Some of the most aggressive and warlike nations in history have been republics.
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Dec 3, 2019 19:32
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Arglebargle III posted:This is kind of burying the lede. The really astonishing thing is that peasants had to pay compensation to the lord for the inconvenience caused by the peasant dying. It's pretty typical feudal stuff. You don't actually own the land so you have to pay an upfront payment in order for the local lord to confirm your rights to it. They did similar stuff with religious appointments as well, you'd have to pay a certain amount in order to be appointed and that amount was usually a certain percentage of the annual income of the position.
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Dec 3, 2019 20:42
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SlothfulCobra posted:Diocletian actually had a real neat idea with decentralizing power, but it'd probably work better with like 13 or 25 rather than 4, since it's too easy for one of a small number of people to try to take the whole potato. Make a council of emperors, maybe with something where they elect a prime emperor. 
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Dec 3, 2019 20:48
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Well remember that the Princeps is really just the first among equals anyway so that's what the Emperor is already. Alternatively they could make like a counsil by which administrators get promoted to regional governorships, and then to like... arch provincial governorships or something, and then out of all of those governors the current Emperor picks a handful of the most important and influential ones and when the Emperor dies they all get together in Rome and choose the successor. OR they could have a system in which all of the military leaders have some kind of contest to see who is the best suited.
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Dec 4, 2019 00:08
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I wonder if any election systems have emerged out of having soldiers (or military-aged men) vote as a mock "civil war". The idea being that the candidate who attracts the most soldiers would have won the war so why not skip the bloody business The Roman assembly of the centuries assigned votes to military units (well, tax brackets, but the origin of that was military) but the most plausible origin story I'm aware of was populist kings getting their choice of officers ratified by the rank and file, rather than a mock civil war
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Dec 4, 2019 00:26
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skasion posted:I said this the last time it came up in the thread, but “decentralizing power” and replacing monarchy or diarchy or tetrarchy or whatever with rule by like 10-20 guys is literally exactly what happened to the western empire. None of the 10-20 guys liked how many of them there were. then various groups of them kept waging war on each other for centuries trying to whittle themselves back down to only a few guys only for more guys to pop up whenever a particularly hardcore one died. I mean maybe if the dissolution of the old empire had been done in an orderly faction, there'd be less strife with all the assholes vying for power still being bound by some common rules between them, and rising stars would be fighting to get into the emperor club rather than trying to take the whole empire at once. You can't eliminate people's backstabbing, but you can try to cordon them off into a little zone where it will minimize the damage. Maybe if the overall order held well enough, they could still respond to outside threats, and then western Europe wouldn't be taken over by Germans and Goths. In fact, even further out in the possibility space, what if kings of outer states started to petition for emperorship. I also think it's a really interesting idea what would happen with Carausius if Diocletian had some kind of real measure to acknowledge him as just another emperor in the group and somehow for diplomacy to win the day rather than having to throw Maximian at the channel again and again.
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Dec 4, 2019 01:24
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SlothfulCobra posted:. I dunno, I think you're taking this too far. Monarchy was the primary system of government for states all over the world up until the modern era. The most likely explanation for this tendency is that it was basically a good and effective way to organize a political system. I feel like there are two big problems in government that tend to lead to chaos and civil war. The first is uncertainty. When two leaders are unsure who has authority or power in a situation, they will both tend to claim it. If there's no mechanism for resolving the dispute peacefully it is likely the confrontation will escalate to force. The obvious illustration of this problem is the Imperial succession crisis. The second problem arises when the distribution of power becomes unbalanced. By unbalanced I mean when paper authority becomes divorced from realities on the ground. If the Senate is ordering a general to disband his armies and come home to face trial and possibly be stripped of his property or worse, they need to actually be able to make him. If authorities are giving orders they can't enforce, the result is going to be chaos and uncertainty. Good political systems reflect the real distribution of power, and have mechanisms to adapt itself as that distribution shifts over time.
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Dec 4, 2019 01:53
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The best way to translate the Principate into modern America would be like hey you're a politician, you become a council member, then a mayor, then a senator for your state, then you get elected President, but it's all done under the aegis of some guy who is somehow Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury, and the richest dude in the entire country, and he gets to choose the Governor of every state that borders Mexico or Canada.
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Dec 4, 2019 04:08
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Dec 4, 2019 04:39
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:The best way to translate the Principate into modern America would be like hey you're a politician, you become a council member, then a mayor, then a senator for your state, then you get elected President, but it's all done under the aegis of some guy who is somehow Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury, and the richest dude in the entire country, and he gets to choose the Governor of every state that borders Mexico or Canada. Don't forget the part where you spend time farming taxes out of idk Detroit
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Dec 4, 2019 04:43
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Squalid posted:I dunno, I think you're taking this too far. Monarchy was the primary system of government for states all over the world up until the modern era. The most likely explanation for this tendency is that it was basically a good and effective way to organize a political system. The problem is that monarchies aren't fully immune to either uncertainty or the seat of power drifting, and there's a bit of backwards thinking required to cast them as being like a fully meritocratic solution to the problems of running society. Dictatorship tends to be the most reliable way of running an army, and from that monarchy became established as the standard for most of the medieval period from military conquests, but in peacetime all sorts of non-dictatorial, non-hereditary institutions kept leaking in, and sometimes cities just went rogue from their lords. And if you go to before the Roman and German conquest that standardized European governments, there was a milieu governments that often featured more voting and popular support. In fact, Caesar's rise to power was part of a larger trend of people drawing power from a more democratic body, the Assembly, until Caesar pragmatically found an entirely separate source of power by conquering Gaul and sapping away most of the legions of Rome to his control, making an enforced dictatorship feasible. I would say all that expresses a tendency for people to try wriggling free of governments that they have no say in, and in more recent centuries, in the wake of the cost-effectiveness of conquest by force going down, people seem to be unlearning their dedication to traditional monarchies as prominant non-monarchical systems show them another way. Although to some degree, that's just a new tradition and I may just have an anti-monarchy brainworm that conveniently aligns with the facts as I see them. 
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Dec 4, 2019 05:37
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I mean I'm not a booster for Monarchism. I think the basis of authority in most dictatorial political systems is the personal relationship between subjects and the dictator. That may be why they were so common historically, because it's so simple and intuitive. If the legions have a complaint about low pay or bad conditions, they petition the Emperor. If you're part of some new fangled cult getting persecuted by the local bailiff and want relief, you can petition the emperor directly for freedom to practice your faith. You don't have to wrap your head around confusing abstractions like the Crown or the People. It's just you and that guy. You want a promotion, you try to impress him, you want to make money on government contracts you cut deals with his freedman accountants. It's not necessarily the best system but it's clear and simple and works well enough most of the time. You owe him and he owes you. The downside is that if legitimacy is based on the leaders personal relationships with nobles, generals, governors, and soldiers and their mutual trust, succession creates the potential to totally scramble everything. That creates bad incentives to replace people you are on bad terms with. One of the problems with the Roman Republic was that as the Empire expanded outside of Italy, the Republican institutions gradually began to be superseded by patron-client relationships between provinces and pro-consuls and generals and their soldiers. Rando Spaniards didn't give a gently caress about being loyal to the "People of Rome." The people of Rome were the assholes sending tax farmers to bleed them dry. They did care however about Pompey and his sons, because they were people who they knew personally, who promised to represent their interests in the capital, and who would hear their complaints if other Roman officials were exploiting them. Republics have had all the same problems with not actually representing the people under their authority. the obvious modern example is the European colonial projects. When the American colonists petitioned the British parliament for representation, parliament claimed that they had "virtual" representation because lawmakers from Britain would of course look out for their interests for them. I think history goes to show just how convincing that argument proved. The other issue governments really want to avoid is high stakes prisoners dilemmas. If generals or leaders are looking at getting killed if they resign their commissions, they will be very hesitant to do so. Keeping the stakes of political competitions low is I think one reason the Roman Republic was so stable for so long. If you lose an election you can just try again in a few years. It's not like you're going to die or anything. Overtime however the stakes kept going up. After the deaths of the Gracchi brothers politics becomes much more violent. When losing now means you might lose your head as well as office, there's much more incentive to run roughshod over the constitution and oligarch buddies. I suspect elections also became much more expensive over time, which would have added yet more incentive to try and win at all cost. I don't know of any evidence that supports that but it seems very likely given the growth of Rome and the ridiculous levels of spending necessary in Caesar's lifetime.
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Dec 4, 2019 07:17
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Squalid posted:I dunno, I think you're taking this too far. Monarchy was the primary system of government for states all over the world up until the modern era. The most likely explanation for this tendency is that it was basically a good and effective way to organize a political system.
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Dec 4, 2019 08:07
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SlothfulCobra posted:What bugs me isn't the fact that the fathers were dumb about loving their sons, it's the fact that they should know that monarchy* is a barbaric system that necessitates the demolition of all potential rivals. Septimius Severus for example only took the throne after the year of five emperors where he did some of that stuff himself. It shouldn't be a surprise that the sons would be like the father. You mean like a senate of emperors? Call the head emperor the consular emperor lol
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Dec 4, 2019 08:28
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Squalid posted:I dunno, I think you're taking this too far. Monarchy was the primary system of government for states all over the world up until the modern era. The most likely explanation for this tendency is that it was basically a good and effective way to organize a political system. i disagree. monarchy is so common just because it's basically the default: whoever has the most power is in charge. the limits of their power basically form the borders of their country. any new monarchy is nothing more than a dictatorship, and it becomes a monarchy by the monarch being powerful enough to pass down his power without a coup or the like. hereditary monarchy is preferred by the king because it offers the best chance of keeping his power throughout his life and because he likes being in charge and being able to pass down his kingdom to his kid. it's basically the most common because it requires the least amount of work to maintain, it will tend to occur out of anarchy or out of the collapse of other types of governments. SlothfulCobra posted:In fact, Caesar's rise to power was part of a larger trend of people drawing power from a more democratic body, the Assembly, until Caesar pragmatically found an entirely separate source of power by conquering Gaul and sapping away most of the legions of Rome to his control, making an enforced dictatorship feasible. Caesar was not exactly the first to have this idea, that was more Marius, and then Sulla after him. Caesar is mostly remembered because Augustus won (and ended) the civil wars and drew his legitimacy from Caesar and therefore Caesar was recharacterized from yet another military dictator to the first in a long line of effective monarchs (even though he had little to do with actually establishing that monarchy). evilweasel fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 4, 2019 |
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Dec 4, 2019 18:05
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evilweasel posted:i disagree. monarchy is so common just because it's basically the default: whoever has the most power is in charge. the limits of their power basically form the borders of their country. That's not necessarily true. Look at Medieval France, for instance. Hugh Capet was king, he was "in charge", but almost all of his vassals were more powerful than he was. That's a large part of why he was made king. Or look at early modern Poland. Most of the kings, even the ones who were powerful elsewhere, couldnt exercise a lot of power in Poland. As for the last sentence, plenty of kings ruled stuff outside of their kingdom. William the Conquerer was king of England and also Duke of Normandy, but Normandy wasn't part of England. It had its own laws and rights. Frederick II was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily and King of Jerusalem, as another example.
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Dec 4, 2019 18:31
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evilweasel posted:Caesar was not exactly the first to have this idea, that was more Marius, and then Sulla after him. Caesar is mostly remembered because Augustus won (and ended) the civil wars and drew his legitimacy from Caesar and therefore Caesar was recharacterized from yet another military dictator to the first in a long line of effective monarchs (even though he had little to do with actually establishing that monarchy). Marius only did it after Sulla did. Sulla gets the credit for being the first to march on Rome with his army and force the Senate to change their minds on something. Marius only really got into the dictatorial (in the modern sense) shenanigans after Sulla left to fight Mithradates, and he died shortly after his round of bloody purges, leaving it to Cinna.
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Dec 4, 2019 18:35
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You're still left with that sort of abstraction, since there is a physical bottleneck to how many people the Emperor can deal with, and if you aren't already part of the establishment and don't have an in, it's anyone's guess who of a multitude of people you have to schmooze to start getting some real imperial attention. You basically have to get very lucky and maybe the emperor's interests randomly align with yours. Most of that institutional stability just came from the establishment around the emperor, which only once and a while had to deal with emperors who were fully able to maneuver the whole thing to make real changes. It was more convenient for the people who already had power and status, and not much else. I don't think it would've been physically impossible for republican structures to eventually have been extended to the further provinces, although it would've required the Romans to become more interested in the worth of provincial peoples as free individuals rather than periodically exterminating any rebels or potential rebels. Of course, that didn't really change after imperial rule took over. What happened in Judea might've been worse than what Caesar did in Gaul from the greater population density. You still had people becoming threats from gaining too much power like Germanicus and Belisarius, you still had wealthy people quietly building up their own assets to the detriment of the overall state, and you still had the occasional civil war that would lead to the losing side's supporters getting slaughtered. underage at the vape shop posted:You mean like a senate of emperors? Call the head emperor the consular emperor lol I think it'd be more advantageous to have the extra skill points of a sentinel emperor, although circumstances might make the combat ability of a guardian emperor more necessary. The infection spreads.
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Dec 4, 2019 18:45
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[Influence Gained: St Ambrose]
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Dec 4, 2019 18:55
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1. I'm convinced- for the good of the Republic I must present myself to the Senate. 2. The die is cast. 3. Heheheh, you sound a little bit pompous there, Pompey. 4. Tell me more about what will happen if I cross the Rubicon. 5. [Persuade] Gnaeus... shut up and kiss me! Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Dec 4, 2019 |
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Dec 4, 2019 19:06
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Terrible Opinions posted:I think this is making the same error as assuming that common evolutionary adaptations are somehow good and efficient. Wouldn't the conclusion rather be that monarchies are the easiest way for centralized states to form outside of any pre-existing state system? I see what you mean and yeah, probably. However in the real world being "easy" is actually a major asset, and "good enough not to fail instantly" is a surprisingly high bar for complex systems to pass. Also to quibble, evolution via natural selection IS an effective optimization process. It tends to suffer from path dependence as illustrated by the Giraffe's laryngeal nerve but in many circumstances it is very effective. evilweasel posted:i disagree. monarchy is so common just because it's basically the default: whoever has the most power is in charge. the limits of their power basically form the borders of their country. any new monarchy is nothing more than a dictatorship, and it becomes a monarchy by the monarch being powerful enough to pass down his power without a coup or the like. hereditary monarchy is preferred by the king because it offers the best chance of keeping his power throughout his life and because he likes being in charge and being able to pass down his kingdom to his kid. not requiring "work" is a major asset though. Especially if "work" in this context means an insanely bloody civil war or murderous political scheming. Not that dictatorial systems are free of civil war of course. And the Roman Republic worked REALLY well for a very long time. It's stability in comparison to the clownshows in charge of the Hellenistic kingdoms is remarkable. However when I say monarchy was "good" I'm really contrasting it with political systems that obviously did not work. In particular, Greek Republics and Oligarchies spent hundreds of years trying and failing to build a lasting large scale alliance or empire or some kind of unified polity. None of the city states ever succeeded though, almost no city was even able to keep it's colonies as part of a single state. Certainly you can't say this failure was due to lack of trying.
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Dec 4, 2019 22:21
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evilweasel posted:i disagree. monarchy is so common just because it's basically the default: whoever has the most power is in charge. the limits of their power basically form the borders of their country. any new monarchy is nothing more than a dictatorship, and it becomes a monarchy by the monarch being powerful enough to pass down his power without a coup or the like. hereditary monarchy is preferred by the king because it offers the best chance of keeping his power throughout his life and because he likes being in charge and being able to pass down his kingdom to his kid. Lol at the monarch with enough personal power to enstate his son after his death.
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Dec 4, 2019 23:12
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SlothfulCobra posted:Most of that institutional stability just came from the establishment around the emperor, which only once and a while had to deal with emperors who were fully able to maneuver the whole thing to make real changes. It was more convenient for the people who already had power and status, and not much else. one more thing i wanted to say on this: It might sound cynical to say that a good government is the one that gives voice and legal authority to the people who already have all the power, but it's true. Consider the opposite, a government that gives no voice to the most powerful and dangerous, that doesn't represent their interests, that is based entirely on the support of the powerless and helpless? It's an impossibility, it couldn't exist. Being convenient for the powerful is exactly what a government should be. If the powerful have no avenue to pursue their ambitions inside the system they will tear it apart. For example during the mid-20th century decolonization movement a new generation of nationalists in Asia and Africa rose up, often educated in Europe, and often with powerful networks of organized labor, civil servants, and religious communities at their backs. The colonial system however denied them positions of leadership and authority which instead went to Europeans. So if you were an African gendarme officer who wanted to be a Colonel who wanted to be a general, you couldn't fulfill that ambition in the colonial system. Instead, these kinds of people were pushed into the independence movement, which could promise them advancement and representation in a way the colonial government couldn't. totally unrelated, but I found this channel on Iron age and Roman crafts today and it's videos are great. Here's one on Roman cosmetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qltFSRG3Vg
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Dec 5, 2019 03:50
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Squalid posted:I mean I'm not a booster for Monarchism. I think the basis of authority in most dictatorial political systems is the personal relationship between subjects and the dictator. That may be why they were so common historically, because it's so simple and intuitive. If the legions have a complaint about low pay or bad conditions, they petition the Emperor. If you're part of some new fangled cult getting persecuted by the local bailiff and want relief, you can petition the emperor directly for freedom to practice your faith. You don't have to wrap your head around confusing abstractions like the Crown or the People. It's just you and that guy. You want a promotion, you try to impress him, you want to make money on government contracts you cut deals with his freedman accountants. It's not necessarily the best system but it's clear and simple and works well enough most of the time. You owe him and he owes you. I quote your post not because I necessarily disagree, but because I think you call out a point that is important to understanding larger state building. For example, you said "You want a promotion, you try to impress [the leader]". I'd argue that a natural evolution of this is that as an area of control becomes larger a single person cannot fulfill all of those same demands of that populace. So people begin to be elected/appointed/etc to fulfill that role regionally, probably initially at the behest of whatever leader exists. That need leads to a bureaucracy. I'd argue as soon as that happens division of power begins, and that is the beginning of fragmentation of power. Depending on how that is done, seems to me, would suggest that some form of either cohesive government or totalitarian system is almost inevitable. Maybe this is self evident, but that fracturing of regional power would be important to understanding the evolution of power systems in a region.
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Dec 5, 2019 05:51
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cheetah7071 posted:I think in at least some of the societies with partible inheritance, it worked because kingship was a series of personal holdings, privileges, and feudal relationships, rather than rulership over a state. Charlemagne had the loyalty of a bunch of counts and personally owned a bunch of royal land that he drew income from. That's partible in a way that isn't possible with other societies. So I guess my answer is that monarchs who assumed their children would inherit in tandem thought it was okay because the "state" wasn't their concern, because the state didn't necessarily even exist. They just wanted to do right by (all of) their sons. Constantine VIII he did actually fight early on in their reign against Bardas Phokas. While I can't really say from sources which are pretty sparse on him, but I think he did a little more than just exist in the Capitol. Its pretty telling Basil was able to spend pretty much his entire reign on campaign and relatively little of it at home compared to guys before and after. I think while Constantine didn't directly run the show, I think he did a lot of work behind the scenes keeping the city and Imperial elites mollified. Maybe it was mostly ceremonial, and his moves after Basil died don't make him look like a secret mastermind, but I think he and his brother worked together a bit more closely to keep the Empire running than is recorded although he absolutely was the junior partner. I think that ultimately is the kicker for successful monarch is someone just has to be content being #2 in the system. Augustus needed an Agrippa and when he died I guess Tiberius. So much of at least Roman history is determined by no one really being that content as #2 guy. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 5, 2019 06:27
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Jack2142 posted:I think that ultimately is the kicker for successful monarch is someone just has to be content being #2 in the system. Augustus needed an Agrippa and when he died I guess Tiberius. So much of at least Roman history is determined by no one really being that content as #2 guy. Tiberius had Sejanus. You can see how well that worked out.
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Dec 5, 2019 06:45
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I think I'm kind of confused as to what you're arguing by this point? Are you arguing against the establishment of the Republic in the first place? Are you in favor of indefinite suppression of potential subversive types by any and all means? And there's sort of a tautological aspect to a lot of things, like what is the definition of stability when there are some emperors who had a bad habit of purges. I think the power drift you mention as a negative really describes the dying days of the empire more than the beginning. Rich estates having grown in power and secreting away their workforce so they can't be used as legions, various Germans having control over the bulk of the military, and a big-hatted priest constantly asserting his own form of authority. Alternatively, a succession crisis leading to one of the pretenders to the throne opening the doors to some of the wrong kind of christians who need to pay off their debts. Much of Caesar's power came from legitimate sources, and while in some respects it was foolish for Rome to let him handle so many of the legions, he wasn't the first, or second, or third guy to go take the legions out for campaign, that was just one of the ways Rome did its fighting. Although there was an illegitimacy to the way that Caesar played up a border skirmish needing more and more reinforcement over 8 years rather than letting the senate declare war and choose people to send forth. I just feel like from the quality of life perspective, the vaunted stability of the empire didn't do much for the average citizen, and the bigness and longness of the empire that looks impressive on a map or in a textbook, but nobody's trying to stick the empire into a vagina. What does that mean for the byzantine empire with its reduced bigness, or for the pope with being I think the longest existing sovereign (?) institution of Europe.
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Dec 5, 2019 07:15
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