From jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu Sun Apr 4 11:17:10 1999 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id LAA17720 for ; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:17:09 -0700 Received: from sp02.bgsu.edu ([129.1.7.2]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with SMTP id LAA17500 for ; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 11:17:08 -0700 Received: from [129.1.190.39] ([129.1.190.39]) by sp02.bgsu.edu (Lotus SMTP MTA v4.6.3 (778.2 1-4-1999)) with SMTP id 85256749.00643CEB; Sun, 4 Apr 1999 14:14:52 -0400 X-Sender: jmpfund@popj.bgsu.edu (Unverified) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <1AEF037FE54A230285256748005B31E4.005B4FD685256748@bgnet.bgsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1999 13:20:59 -0400 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: "James M. Pfundstein" Subject: Merces Gloriosa? (Was: Academia Kosovoque) At 11:37 AM -0500 4/3/1999, KOPFF E CHRISTIAN wrote: >Students of the ancient world might be able to comment usefully on the >long-term results of the move from citizen army to mercenary army in Rome >at the end of the Second Century, B.C. and in the US in the early 1970's. >The short-term results were positive in both cases, but in the long run >we find that mercenary armies are no longer the citizens' "boys." They are >loyal to their commander in chief. He, not the citizens, decides to bomb >Baghdad and Belgrave or remove Serbs from Krajina or Helvetians from Gaul. >Serbs were our allies in World War II, just as Ariovistus was _amicus >populi Romani_. Such factors become subordinate to the political >interests of the commander in chief. >Of course, there are differences. The US Senate has no Cato. I second virtually everything Patrick Rourke wrote in response to Christian Kopff's remarks, but there are a couple of more things that seem to me worth saying. The Roman army after Marius' reforms was still a body of citizen-soldiers. He dropped the property requirement for enlisting and instituted better pay, terms of service etc. But receiving pay does not ipso facto make one a mercenary. The pre-Marius soldier received wages, n.b. (Polybius, 6.37f). And it is not clear to me, at any rate, that the soldiers who marched with Sulla or Caesar into Rome were motivated solely or primarily by mercenary motives. Christian Kopff's dichotomy does not work even in Roman terms and it is, of course, laughable in modern ones. Civilian wages far outstrip military ones, and anyone who serves a career term in the US military would be paid more for doing equivalent work elsewhere. Many do leave, of course, but a significant number stay. If Christian Kopff is worried about the political future of the USA he might want to have a conversation with some of these modern centurions. Should he figure out what makes them tick he may find himself reassured. They are, in fact, citizens not mercenaries. If Christian Kopff means to imply that the extension of the executive's authority to engage in acts of war without the consent of the US Senate is unconstitutional and potentially dangerous to the central government, I quite agree. But this extension is really a product of the Cold War, and considerably pre-dates the "volunteer army," which is a product of the Cold War's decline. In closing, it's worth pointing out that a Roman soldier might be quite legitimately confused about who was his ultimate commander in chief, since a number of terms (imperator, consul, proconsul) seem to carry this meaning. One of the most astute things the writers of the US Constitution did, probably with the Roman counter-example in mind, was to obviate such potential confusion with a specific contitutional provision (Article 2, Section 2). When Christian Kopff suggests an identity between Caesar in Gaul and Clinton in Washington, he is, in fact, comparing two very different entities (and I am not just referring to the fact that Caesar was a genius and Clinton is not). JM("Marcellinus")P .