[HN Gopher] How to Roman Republic 101, Part IIIa: Starting Down ...
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How to Roman Republic 101, Part IIIa: Starting Down the Path of
Honors
Author : Tomte
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-08-11 05:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| So sounds like same problem as we have in USA today - complex
| system that only works if people follow established conventions
| in addition to codified laws. Like us, Romans probably thought it
| was not necessary to call out the obvious and then centuries
| later their successors disregarded the norms and tore the empire
| apart.
| golergka wrote:
| I paint Rome as if it was politically stable, but it was always
| very far from it. People have been killing each other
| throughout the republic, and the mere establishment of empire
| was exactly a blatant disregard for the norms -- they
| essentially got the KING, the one thing that the republic was
| built to prevent, even if he was called something else. Even
| two centuries of "Pax romana" were filled with constant bloody
| struggle for power between nobles, only five good emperors
| giving some semblance of stability. And after that, crisis of
| the third century and switch from principate to dominate was
| even more severe change in these unwritten rules.
|
| US, on the other hand, now has 158 years without internal
| military conflict, so it's doing extremely, unfathomably well
| by roman standards.
| Kamq wrote:
| My understanding is that political violence was really only
| an issue that crept up after the killing of Tiberius
| Gracchus, so you're really only looking at the last century
| or so of the roman republic.
| thom wrote:
| This isn't really true, given the Conflict of the Orders
| etc. Even in the Gracchi's case, they were essentially
| trying to pass land reforms, and Rome had a history of
| responding to that with violence since at least 486BC.
| Nobody in Rome's history had a particularly good solution
| to the central problem that they wanted a massive and
| expensive army, but didn't want it dominating politics.
| Kamq wrote:
| I assume you're referring to Vicellinus.
|
| There's a big difference here, that he was given a trial
| and executed within the bounds of the system, as corrupt
| as that system may have been.
|
| The extra-legal violence with Gracchus was quite new, and
| much more likely to spiral out of control.
| asdff wrote:
| Now imagine if Ft. Sumter happened today. It would be over in
| a flash but the other way: positions firing onto the fort
| would be lit up in minutes by ordinance coming out of orbit.
| asdff wrote:
| I feel as though nuclear weapons have purchased an everlasting
| hedgemony. If the US really started to crumble and I mean
| actually crumble, we'd just go back to the form of government
| we had developed during WWII: a centrally planned militarized
| state where non-useful sections of the economy are rationed or
| outlawed, useful sections of the economy are simply told to
| follow the directive of military command, labor is either
| conscripted or otherwise has no choice but to work in a job
| environment dominated by government openings, communications
| are monitored, press and media are tightly controlled, and any
| political opposition within government structures is
| systematically rooted out and silenced. I believe we'd sooner
| revert to this and bomb the world into submission "for the good
| of the nation" than relinquish this hegemony.
| [deleted]
| 221qqwe wrote:
| It's interesting that options for Patricians were so severely
| restricted. After Questorship 2 out 4 Aedile spots were reserved
| for Plebians and of course they were also barred from being
| elected as Peoples's Tribunes (10 other spots).
|
| Seems like a form of ancient "affirmative action". I guess it's
| more likely that were able to just skip a step and jump straight
| to Praetor and the weren't that many Patricians left by the late
| republic. Then again it's interesting that these laws were
| instituted in the first place (IIRC one the Consuls had to be a
| Plebian as well).
| whakim wrote:
| These restrictions originated during the Struggle of the
| Orders, when the patrician/plebeian distinction was extremely
| important (at least as far as we can tell - most of our sources
| for this period were writing much later). By the middle and
| late Republic (the period which TFA mostly covers), many of the
| old patrician families seem to have declined making the
| restrictions much less relevant.
| diego_moita wrote:
| I've seen some interest on HN for the Roman Kingdom, Republic and
| Empire.
|
| For a very interesting history of Rome, from the 2 foundation
| myths (Romulus vs Aeneas) until the end of the "Pax Romana", I
| strongly suggest the book "SPQR", by Mary Beard.
|
| She is a very respected scholar on Ancient Rome and she has a lot
| of documentaries on Youtube.
|
| I just started the famous "Decline and fall of the Roman Empire",
| by Edward Gibbons, covering the period after the SPQR book. Still
| in the beginning, to early for conclusions.
| User23 wrote:
| Is this the same Mary Beard peddling the nonsensical folly that
| there was a considerable subsaharan population in Roman Briton?
| I think I'll pass and read real scholars rather than a racist
| revisionist.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Dropping my own favorite review of the contributing factors
| that led to the downfall of the republic and rise of empire:
|
| "Storm before the storm".
| diego_moita wrote:
| According to Ms Beard the most basic cause for the Roman
| republic downfall was the establishment of private armies.
|
| Julius Caesar amassed an enormous military power with his
| private army on his military campaigns on Gaul and used it to
| just grab the power in Rome.
|
| Truth, it was his nephew Octavian/Augustus that finished and
| buried the Republic, but he wouldn't be able to do so unless
| Caesar hadn't given the mortal blow before.
|
| No wonder Putin tried to put a leash on Prigozhyn before it
| would be too late.
|
| Also, Imran Khan must understand very well what happens when
| the military isn't under the government control.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| You're replying to a comment about a book that details the
| events prior to Julius Caesar, who was at the very end of
| the republic, not its cause.
| philipov wrote:
| The cause of what? We don't know much about the cause of
| the republic because any records of that were lost in the
| first sack of Rome. As for the cause of _the fall_ of the
| republic, Julius Caesar did not cause those factors to
| exist, but in him we see the culmination of a hundred
| years of learning how to abuse the flaws in their civic
| constitution. He wasn 't the first, but he put _all_ the
| pieces together.
|
| In fact, I think he's quite similar to Philip II, who put
| all the pieces together in Macedon. Alexander the Great
| was able to reach such heights because he had the way
| paved for him, the same way Julius Caesar paved the way
| for Octavian.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| How were Caesars' legions "private"? Are you sure you're
| not confusing with the fall of the Roman _Empire_ , with
| autonomous military leadership in the provinces (but even
| then, calling them "private armies" would still sound
| anachronistic)
| thom wrote:
| I don't disagree with the central thesis, and you can argue
| all sorts of moments for the fall of the Republic, but the
| establishment of client armies started with Marius, not
| Caesar. Even then, it was in response to political,
| economic and military issues which predated even Tiberius
| Gracchus whose tribunate many use to mark the beginning of
| the end. Rome's constitution was a marvel, as noted by
| Polybius, and it granted stability for a long time. But by
| the time of Sulla (who marched an army into Rome decades
| before Caesar), all pretence of a government that intended
| to give equal voice to all factions had disappeared. The
| idea that Ceasar or Octavian dismantled a functioning or
| even salvageable republic seems fanciful to me.
| philipov wrote:
| That's the book that Mike Duncan wrote following up his work
| on the History of Rome podcast. The first of the two books he
| wrote while running the Revolutions podcast, with the second
| being a biography of Lafayette.
| placesalt wrote:
| The basic premise I got from Mike Duncan's podcast was
| that: when Rome ran out of dangerous external enemies to
| fight (ie Carthage), people in Rome found internal enemies
| to fight.
|
| That was fine for a few centuries, until external enemies
| re-emerged, and then it really fell apart.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Eh, kinda. It was more that they overextended themselves
| and could no longer defend their borders with their
| citizen-soldiery that expected to be home in time for
| harvest. Multiyear campaigns and distant conquest
| required a professional army. Because of that, Marius
| reformed the army to allow the proletarii in, pay them
| from the treasury and outfit them from state arsenals and
| armories. Prior to the reforms, soldiers were patricians
| and wealthy plebeians who could afford to outfit
| themselves with equipment and supplies.
|
| The wealthy of Rome were not willing to pay for all of
| this, so the practice was for generals to pay their
| soldiers out of taxes and loot. Thus the legions became
| loyal to their generals instead of to the Republic, which
| essentially made them warlords. There were plenty of
| places left to conquer - Augustus would somewhat famously
| and disastrously try to conquer Germania east of the
| Rhine, Egypt was assimilated after Pompey's defeat, etc.
| philipov wrote:
| Check out the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan if you
| haven't already.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast)
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I've got total respect for the scholarship of Mary Beard.
|
| She got into a recent online argument with one of my other
| intellectual heroes Nassim Taleb about the genetic makeup of
| Roman Britain.
| cdcarter wrote:
| I have to shout out the "Masters of Rome" series by Colleen
| Mccullough. It starts with "The First Man in Rome" covering
| Gaius Marius' rise to power, and proceeds through the fall of
| the Republic and the establishing of the Empire.
|
| These books are incredibly well researched and informative, but
| also have SUCH a compelling narrative style and
| characterizations. It's very immersive.
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