[Legionnaires in China?]

Came across this several times, though I have never found any textual data on it.

 

The Lost Legion

 

I thought this would be the best place to discuss the issue...

 

...so onto the debate.

 

I've got no opinion on it in terms of debating it. It's come up on this board before and it would be quite a story if true but I remember reading that there's not a lot of support for this theory by other archeologists. Unfortunately I can't remember where on the net I read it.

[Suggestion]

They're quite serious.

 

In fact, their claims to being an autonomous government and nation may technically constitute secession. I'd really like to see what the Department of Justice and FBI have to think about it.

 

After reading this I reviewed the site again in a different light. 'Whacky' is the technical term I believe.

 

Definitely stay away from that sort of thing.

[Extremely Bad Weather]

Really? What city do you live in? I'm from Alexandria. I'm in Charlottesville because I'm attending UVA.

 

UVA's a great school although I'm partial to UNC since I'm an alumni. I live in Arlington. Moved up from Chapel Hill where I went to grad school after many years of active duty at Ft Bragg.

[Suggestion]

Personally, I like the current setup and think that it is the most practical. The people who contribute do so of their free will without requiring sanction, and are duly rewarded with opportunities to recieve new material or to potentially moderate.

 

It's there for the taking, and the people who have done so already are my heros

 

I like the current setup as well. I think keeping the site from developing a too special a class is important and more inclusive. I appreciate the little extras that the contributors to book reviews get, with real life, job, family, etc, it does take a bit more work to develop those but I like the idea of the current site.

 

I'm glad Primus thinks we shouldn't be moving towards a Nova Roma and will keep the focus on Roman history. By the way, can someone clue me in on Nova Roma, do people there really take that stuff seriously or is it just for fun?

[Extremely Bad Weather]

That's really tragic about the little boy.

I am currently in Charlottesville, Virginia. We've gotten some sleet and snow, and expect some more, though it's not too bad. Virginia fortunately is not known for really vicious winters.

 

I'm in Northern Virginia in the DC metro area. Tomorrow (today really) they're calling for a "wintry mix".

[Who Was Responsible For Fall Of Republic]

don't think the case is nearly as compelling as you seem to judge it. Caesar, being the nephew of Marius and also older than Cato, would have been suspected by the paranoid Sulla under any circumstances. Cato, being a mere boy and without any means of extra-family support, would have been an absurd target for Sulla's proscriptions, even if Cato had screamed his desire for tyrannicide at the top of his lungs.

 

You're right, I should have not used "compelling" but maybe just a bit odd. Be that as it may, Sulla's general political stance was up Cato's ally even if his methods weren't always.

 

In your charge of hypocricy, two facts are conspicuous for their absence. The first is that Cato was notoriously even-handed in upbraiding populares and optimates alike for their corruption and abuse of power. This fact simply doesn't square with your polemical charge that Cato's vision of the republic was as a feeding-trough for the nobiles. I doubt even Catiline would have made such a charge. The second is that you consistently fail to distinguish between what Cato did and what his fellow-travellers did. Cato himself was impervious to bribes of any sort, and he did not offer them himself. If Cato were such a hypocrite, he could have easily bribed his way to the consulship, yet when he ran for the post, the course he took was clean and ran straight to his defeat.

 

His reactionary defense of the status-quo which entailed enhanced rights for the optimates certainly show him as their defender. Enhanced rights that gave them claims over public-lands over populares qualifies as a public feeding-trough in my mind and Cato certainly defended that. The same land, benefiting his class, that he opposed land-reforms for and to be distributed to veterans.

 

He did notoriously upbraid those who practiced corruption--not the same as defending the status quo by the way--but it's his own failure to be consistent in upbraiding his own son-in-law and fellow-travelers, actually supporting their actions that paint him as a hypocrite.

 

If this is your position, I'd like to welcome you to the party of Cato! The whole debate between Caesar and Cato was over the method of punishment--with Caesar advocating exile (without a trial) and Cato advocating death (without a trial). No one advocated a trial for the simple fact that the conspirators had already admitted their guilt before the whole Senate, and so a trial would have been merely for form. Maybe it would have been in "nice" form, but that's as far as the matter went.

 

While exile was the common punishment at the time (though believe execution still technically legal), the harshness and finality of the death penalty as punishment would lend one to believe a trial more important than in the former penalty. The ramifications of not doing so had reprucussions on Cato and Cicero. No question the whole thing could have been handled better.

 

Yes, I agree it is odd. But, again your sense of proportion is lacking. While you criticize Cato merely for sponsoring a bill that would require a tribune have some property, neither you nor anyone bothers to criticize Caesar for placing himself above the veto-power of the tribunes. While Cato put up obstacles to Caesar and his partisans, Caesar--like Sulla before him--disenfranchised EVERYONE.

 

The fact is that Cato and his party played the major role in the polarizing of Roman politics that led to the Civil War by their refusals to compromise. They were wrong period, and they paid the price.

 

JC was a dictator like Sulla in name but most of the similarities end there. While dictator his partisans were the Tribal Assembly, representing the vast majority of the Roman populace, with whom he dealt with on state affairs--instead of the Senate. And in spite of ignoring the Senate he promoted 300 into their ranks, many of them from the populares including centurions, scribes and a few sons of liberated slaves. Perhaps outside the old constitutional structure the optimates liked but certainly an open move to a more democratic form of representative power ironically in spite of the dictatorship.

 

JC, much to the disgust of the Athenian aristocracy, mandated a democratic constitution for the citizens there. In addition to the above entry of populares into the senatorial class, he also extended the franchise to some Gallic tribes and--shockingly--introduced Gauls into the senate.

 

Yes he was still a dictator, ambitious and overstepped his bounds. The irony is that many egalitarian political gains took place. It wasn't an overthrow of the old order but in an inclusion into politics of a larger community of citizens. The reforms, mild by our standards, show how intransigent the old order was and what it took to move towards that inclusion.

 

Cato was rich, and he didn't need to rent his wife. Again, you're simply repeating an historical slander, the source of which (Plutarch) you've already impugned twice (with regard to boy Cato asking for a sword to kill Sulla and with regard to the body count in Gaul, which is btw corroborated by Caesar and Appian). I generally respect your scholarship, Virgil, but in this case you seem to want to have your sources and eat them too!

 

To be fair I only disputed his and other ancient sources on numbers, a stance most historians take I believe. I stated there was evidence that something more may have took place vis-a-vis Sulla and Cato, but I really didn't disparage Plutarch and that was probably my weakest argument in hindsight.

 

Anyway, I'm gettin' a bit Cato'd out.

[Otho]

Seutonius very briefly discusses the fact that his father was on Otho's staff after the battle with Vitellius' legions and how he abhored civil war between Romans choosing death over continued resistance.

[Building Rome Currently On The History Channel]

...

Right now there's a really good History Channel documentary,Rome: Engineering an Empire, on Tv on building the Roman Empire. RIght now, its just finished featuring Trajan's forum and now onto Hadrian's wall. Just wanted to inform you guys. Buy the way, what do you think of the documentary.

Not to mention, there will also be a documentary on Roman Vice following Rome: Engineering an Empire.

...

 

It's pretty good. How about one of the experts interviewed; Peter Weller. Besides having played Robocop, he's got an MA in Roman and Renaissance Art, teaches part-time at Syracuse and is working on a Phd as well. Shame he didn't get a role in HBO's Rome.

[Who Was Responsible For Fall Of Republic]

You're kidding, right? I think every secondary source I've ever read contains an anti-Cato argument. I'm only astonished to hear him called the destroyer of the Republic, on par with Sulla and Octavian.

 

When you stated

[Who Was Responsible For Fall Of Republic]

I agree with Primus too, and I don't doubt for a moment that Cato contributed to the civil war: he contributed to it in exactly the same way that the intransigence of a policeman contributes to a shoot-out with a criminal who is resisting arrest. Obviously the policeman could let the criminal go if he weren't so 'obstinant', but the rule of law demands obstinancy.

 

Whatever mistakes Cato made (e.g., he should have condemned Milo), his lifelong love of the Republic and hatred of dictatorship (which btw predate his grudge against Caesar) was of *some* value in preserving the first and preventing the second. With the possible exception of the Gracchi, I don't think the same could be said of anyone else on this list, which is why none of them were controversial choices and almost all have received votes.

 

If by policeman you mean a Southern county-sheriff in a small Georgia town circa 1933, then yeah, you're right. Like that "law-n-order" sheriff upholdin' da' law for the benefit of the "gentlemen" and betters of the county at the expense of poor whites and all blacks, Cato's role as "noble" Roman Republican was as a defender of the state-feeding trough for influential families at the expense of the citizenry.

 

Not being aware of the existence of an anti-Cato argument in Roman studies you might be interested in a few more morsels of Cato-ology.

 

Plutarch's "Life of Cato", where he claims a young Cato asked to slay Sulla and was overheard, is suspect. Sulla proscribed men for far less and went after JC for much less than threatened murder as well and there's no doubt he would have killed Cato as well. The truth is that Cato's family were close to Sulla and like most his friends, probably thrived under his dictatorship.

 

He was honest, but in his usual hypocritical fashion when his bumble-headed son-in-law Bibulus lavishly--even according to the standards of the day-- bribed voters to get his way into the the consulship of 60 BC, he approved of it saying it was good for the Republic. He voted against a public thanksgiving for Cicero's time in Cilicia but but voted for one for the same son-in-law who did nothing special. But as usual, he could always bend the rules when it suited him.

 

Cato, that defender of the Republic, also liked to twist the rules in his buddies favor even when it meant going against the old traditions such as when he tried to make tribunes be required to deposit a large sum of money to hold their offices, not exactly constitutional, but a fine way to limit the power of the populares.

 

Of course he hated JC, so true to form, he again violated the constitutional tradition he's so enamored of defending, when he recommended Pompey as sole consul in 52 BC. Even then the stubborn old-mule or "dogmatic fool" as Mommsen called him, wouldn't let slaves be granted freedom if they took up arms because it wasn't right to deprive owners of their "property".

 

Who can forget his murder of the Catiline conspirators in all contrivance to his dear Roman custom and his own defense of Milo's murder of a tribune of the people. That was Cato, when tribunes not in the pay of the optimates tried to impliment on behalf of the populares he was a stickler for legal formalities, but when optimates need to bend or suspend in order to protect their political and economic interests he treated the Roman constitutional formalities with the flexibilty of an olympic gymnast.

 

Always the upholder of Roman morals, he trafficked his wife to an old rich man while she was pregnant with his child, remarrying her when he died afterwards. Publicy drunk on more than one occasion, he upbraided others for their drinking habits.

 

Such is the "hero" of the Republic and we haven't even gotten to his rigid stupidity relative to the crisis with JC. His duplicity and reactionary policies were masked with the "love of the Republic" and became one of the great frauds of history. A fraud whose mythology when matched against his actions collapes and a hero to the "gentlemen" of the 18/19th century who despised and distrusted the common man as much as Cato did. By any stretch of the imagination he was certainly no better than JC.

[Who Was Responsible For Fall Of Republic]

All right guys, take your shot. How was Cato, who had no armies and never served as consul, MORE responsible for the fall of the Republic than the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Catiline, Clodius, Caesar, and Octavian? This I've got to hear.

 

What Primus said...

 

Cato may not have responsibity outshining the combined total of those you've listed, but in the immediate months and weeks before the crossing of the Rubicon Cato, by convincing a large number of the Senate to refuse a compromise with JC, partially out of pure spite and a love of the Republi-- as in a feeding trough for optimates--holds a large portion of the blame.

 

I'm not sure why you're shocked, Cato's intrasigence and contribution to the civil war has been commented in much of the literature about the end of the Republic.

[Roman History Of My Family's Hometown]

I haven't yet found a lot on the history but I have found a site about the archaeology, which is http://www.comune.santamarinella.rm.it/mus...ese/a3126.html#

 

As to the votes thing. The Social War was a war of independence fought after the Italian tribes had given up hope of ever getting the roman citizenship given to them. However, although they lost the war they did get the vote, funny how things turn out!

 

I shall find out the ins and outs of that for you too. I'll be back when I have more

 

Thanks for the effort sullafelix but I don't think this is the one. I'd found this myself and discounted it because the Via Aurelia, which it's on, runs up the Tyrrhenian Sea coast to Gaul while Castrum Novum (now Giulianova) is on the Adriatic coast on the other side of the Appenine mountains from Rome.

 

Part of the problem might be that Castrum Novum/Novum Castrum (New Fortress) is such a generic name it might have been used more than once.

[The Gallic Wars]

...

But what about the other side of the story? According to Appian, Caesar subjugated 400 tribes, 800 towns, enslaved one million people, and killed at least as many. Was this war justified? Did it even help Rome? Or were the Gallic Wars--like the Commentaries--no more than stepping stones on the path to Caesar's dictatorship?

 

Whether it was justified to the extent of the total conquest is an open question to me. I'm not convinced of the casaulty figures as ancient sources are notoriously exagerrated, be that as it may they were probably quite heavy.

 

In the background of the Roman mind the Gauls sacking of Rome was never forgotten. There are countless clashes between the two throughout early Roman history and even with the pacification of those tribes in northern Italy and southern Gaul it's probably no stretch to be aware of the power of the Gallic boogeyman on the Roman mind.

 

As I've stated before there were rational motives at the start to become involved in the conflict, the movement of the Helvetii and the attacks by the Sequani and Suebi, all on the Roman allied tribe of the Haedui; defense of allies being a point of Roman pride. And more importantly, the seizure of large parts of Gaul prevented the German tribes from migrating into the region as the Suebi were beginning to do. Whatever the Roman view of Gauls, they understood the Germans were generally a superior foe and this denial of territory to them is in hindsight a very good move.

 

And I'd repeat that once in control of that territory moves by the Belgian tribes agitating against them and uprisings by the Gauls would have been addressed by any sound commander.

 

At the early stage at least involvement would've been justified by any governer--imagine a young Pompey in that position reacting just as aggressively--and it was also sanctioned at that point by the Senate. Even Cicero, always weary of JC, gave a speech in his praise that included the following: "...For as long as our empire has existed, everyone who reflected wisely on our commonwealth has believed that no country posed such a danger to our rule as Gaul...Now at last we can say that our rule extends over all these territories".

 

From a strategic standpoint the conquest of Gaul was probably justified as a sound move that certainly helped Rome in pacifying a longtime enemy and denying territory to German tribes. In the end I think the answer is a justified intervention at the beginning coupled with an opportunistic and aggressive general in JC stretching it into a larger war of conquest. These were a series of campaigns and where the justification ends and opportunistic conquest used as a stepping-stone starts is a bit of a tangled web.

[The Principate]

The principate:

 

The good:...

 

The bad:...

 

The ugly:...

 

I might quibble with the Arts or mysticism as being under 'the Ugly', but for the most part our opinions converge on this.

[Roman History Of My Family's Hometown]

I am currently reading up on Roman colonies at this time as part of my research I will see what else I can find out for you if you like.

 

If you find anything please let me know. There seems to be rather limited info on it because it was such an early colony and so close to Rome in the first place. I did find out it was rebuilt a little ways away from the original site in the Middle Ages.

 

It seems to have been a minor colony who's purpose was to protect Roman interests on the Adriatic--hence Castrum-- but it's importance seems to have waned once the majority of the central Adriatic coast and surrounding Italian tribes were absorbed into the Republic.

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

The lex agraria (or any measure promoting tenant farming over the use of chattel slavery) would have helped to increase the supply the grain, but the Gracchan lex frumentaria--which set the price of grain at below-market rates--would have been crippling to the remaining private Italian farmers who depended on Roman sales for their livelihood. After the Gracchi, the lex frumentaria would subsequently provide a dole and a political bribe, as I originally maintained.

 

Lex frumentaria is the price for grain paid by populares to the state not the farmer. The lex agrarian also limited the use of public lands to a specific amount of land per person to keep large concentrations of land from going to the optimates, which is what finally happened anyway. Be that as it may, the adjustment of agricultural prices to reflect market realities and the subsidy of prices is a damn better set of problems to face than the raping of public lands by the optimates marginalizing of hundreds of thousands of the populace into landlessness.

 

Moreover, the blame for the failure of the lex agraria falls as much to the political incompetence of the Gracchi as to conservatism on the part of the Senate. The wisdom of the lex agraria was a debatable issue, and Tiberius Gracchus should have brought it before a deliberative body like the Senate rather than to the Popular Assembly. Even his friend and fellow-tribune M. Octavius agreed that the bill belonged in the Senate, which is why he unexpectedly vetoed the bill in the Conicilium Plebis. Tiberius' stubborn insistence on forcing the bill down the throats of the nobiles was a fatal mistake that undercut any sympathy Senators may have had for the bill.

 

Whatever the validity of criticism of how he went about it, it wasn

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

As the data indicate, this early welfare state brought parasites scurrying from all over the Mediterranean to the banks of the Tiber. In Rome, the poor--having been fed Egyptian grain--were then fed themselves to the military beast fathered by Marius to then be buried by Caesar--buried in Gaul, in Pharsalus, and in Utica. And buried with them was a fortune that could have been used by the equites to invest in modernising Rome, in securing new trade, and in generating employment for the poor and middle-class.

 

Part of the reform laws included forcing a percentage of the workforce be free labor rather than all slave. The "welfare state" was a large part a creation of the optimates who drove people from public lands in the great consolidations into slave estates of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, consolidations that wouldn't have happened and handouts that wouldn't have been needed had laws pushed through by tribunes like the lex agraria been upheld.

 

Populares like Catiline, Clodius, and Caesar were happy to SPEAK for the poor, but their economic agenda--cancellation of debts, seizure and redistribution of land, massive public works--are the kinds of programs that we today associate with thugs like Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Stalin in Soviet Russia. Note that these modern-day Caesars, too, CLAIM to speak on behalf of the poor, all the while leaving the poor in conditions more wretched than they had ever experienced previously.

 

False comparisons, they are the products of revolution and upheavals of the old order. My period of specialization is the Stalinist purges of the '30s, the linkages are tenous at best. Before the murder of the Gracchi, the move for reforms was a political struggle that often led to bloodshed but not outright revolution. Further a majority of the land in question was public land-- not private-- leased in huge lots by the Senate to their own rather than distributed among the citizenry. Public leases that over time became the personal property of the leasee then owner.

 

As I've stated in other posts, the struggle for reform was, until the murder of the Gracchi, a study of compromise between the Senate and the populares.

 

I don't know where others derive their admiration for Cato, but mine certainly doesn't come from Addison's play (which I've never read) nor the Cato Institute's moniker (which comes from the pseudonym of the early American anti-federalists not my name-sake), but from the plain fact that Cato stood against the two forces pulling the Republic apart--first, corruption and second, hypocritical aristocrats such as Caesar who, like a pimp advertising his whores, truck out the misery of the poor for their own power-lust. Frankly, there seems to be something telling about the fact that Washington admired Cato, whereas Napoleon and Bismarck loved Caesar.

 

No one reads the play today, the point was the admiration for him was an artifical construct devoid of contact with reality that enjoyed propagaton for years. Of course Washington admired Cato, the point was he and the Federalist authors were the sort of audience it was directed towards and the play was popular among them, hence same Cato that the Federalist authors named themselves for.

 

Cato was the Church-Lady of the Republic who was more interested in preserving the status quo for his public which consisted of the optimates, who denied returned legions land for their service, who let personal animus overcome any need for compromise and a hypocrite for whom the Roman laws were "flexible" when he needed to execute Roman citizens or justify the murder of a tribune of the people. He wasn't above some questionable practices in his own personal life, divorcing his wife out to Hortensius, a rich old man, waiting for him to die and then remarrying her with his fortune.

 

But yes, he was fiscally honest.

 

Whatever Caesar's feelings about the poor, however, no enemy of the republic is a true friend of anyone outside the aristocracy. By commencing an illegal war, slaughtering senators, hand-picking their replacements, and assuming life-long dictatorial powers, Caesar chose power. In the end, Caesar wasn't busy planning for public works as in the HBO series, or engaging scholarly symposia on constitutional reform, but was instead scrounging up capital for his next military adventure. What could be clearer? Caesar chose to wrest control from the senate and people of Rome merely for the sake of his own power and fame.

 

I explained the strategic and political issues that influenced the Gallic War, issues that any governor would have had to respond to and you made no mention the fact that Cato was gunning for him through personal spite. I'm not sure what your sources are, but there was no slaughter of Senators outside the battlefields that Cato and Co. were equally culpable for in the conflict.

 

Your statement is also incorrect concerning public works; the Curia Julia, the Campus Martius, a new Senate House, draining the Pontine marshes and constructing a canal through the ismus of Corinth were just some of several projects JC pushed forth.

 

For a lifetime of sacrificing the interest of Rome to his own vanity and power-lust, Caesar deserves the blame for setting Rome on the road of collapse. In my opinion, Caesar couldn't be stabbed enough.

 

As opposed laying part of the blame at sacrificing the interest of the Roman citizenry by maintaining the political and economic power of a few families, concentrating public lands in their own hands, driving landowners off other lands, murdering representatives of the populares and limiting the voting franchise?

 

The road to collapse began two generations before with the murder of the Gracchi, the struggle between Marius and Sulla, Sulla's dictatorship and end of the great compromises between populares and optimates that occured with the Struggle of the Orders.

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

I did not say that there were not struggles between the classes nor did I say that the populares were being treated as well as they should have been. I said that their republican system appeared good on paper but was incapable of dealing with these problems and that was not the fault of the optimates. Furthermore I was speaking more specifically of the optimates in power just prior to the fall. It is impossible to change a government already in effect without violence or the threat there of. I must ask you though, if you believed the goals of the Catilline conspiracists to be logical solutions for easing the burden on the populares.

 

The system was shown capable of dealing with problems in the past , the fault lies primarily with the optimates that the system fell apart. I briefly outlined the historical struggle so you could understand that the system was a constantly changing process rather than a static one, it wasn

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

Blaming the oligarchy for the fall of the republic must be something they teach you guys in college. I myself have no formal training on the subject, so I draw my conclusions for myself.

 

 

[Spyware]

Do you use Mozzilla Firefox ?its a lot better at stopping the spyware and popups than IE.

 

Good catch. I'm spoiled by Firefox, I've got it configured to with my own extensions. I still use IE for some pages and XP updates and I've seen IE 7, which has tabs like FF does.

[Spyware]

G'day All

Yes it's the old story; My computer has been invaded by Spyware. Now my Windows Security Centre won't leave me alone, and i can barely access UNRV. I wonder if anyone can help me in any way; with links to anti spyware downloads etc. I'd appreciate it greatly, as this is a brand new computer, and it's already almost unusuable

 

You shouldn't have to pay for an anti-spyware program. There are two excellent free ones out there you should download now--

Spybot and AdAware. Once you download them run the updates and then scan your system. Have both on your system as they each tend to catch things the other doesn't. Also download WinPatrol and install it. It's a great program that alerts you when something is trying to install itself in your system. Do you have a firewall? If not then you need to get one now, try Sygate, it's free for personal use.

 

Let me know how it goes.

[Claudius - Underestimated And Overlooked]

I don' think Claudius was stupid, remember he wrote histories of Carthage and the Estruscans although they're lost to us. Reading Seutonius he does seem to have some odd idiosyncrasies and could be very arbitrary.

 

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned his cruelty; among other things he'd had thirty Senators and a couple of hundred equestrians put to death and during games would condemn men on the spot, throwing them in.

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

I appreciate your time however.

 

Just a quick clarification I should have been more specific, defend wasn't the right word to use; In Plutarch's Life of Caesar my copy says Cicero was castigated for not implicating JC, Seutonius says that Cicero was "invoked as a witness" by JC and Sallust says Cicero could not be prevailed into supporting the manufacture of an accusation against JC. Plutarch seems to hint at more sinister motives for JC in his Life of Cicero, but even then says he found no evidence implicating him, though some thought he was afraid of JC's friends.

[Christianity and the Fall of Rome]

... such a culture based on self promotion, violence and "peace through victory" could possibly transition into such a strict and entirely opposite religion..."Did Christianity hasten the fall of the empire?"

 

There seems to have been a number of Romans who'd always been attracted to cults and foreign religions-- much to the consternation of traditionalists-- so their adoption of an outside religion doesn't strike me as all that strange. I do think that the troubles of the third and fourth century-- civil war, incursions from barbarians, roving brigands in some areas, high agricultural taxation, plague, etc. probably led much of the population to find consolation in Christianity which can have a somewhat apocalyptic feel as well as that "meek shall inherit the earth" thing which must have been attractive to many.

 

I should add here in the edit that Christianity also made itself more attractive by adopting many pagan and Roman trappings. When you strip away the medieval layer of Catholicism you can still see some of that Roman influence.

 

I've never put much stock in Christianity leading to Rome's downfall because I see it as a symptom not a cause of the decline of Rome.

[Did Caesar Ultimately]

Caesar wasted no time in putting himself up for priesthood shortly after the disagreement with Sulla in an effort I would assume to begin his political war against Sulla. I think he merely underestimated Sulla and overestimated himself. Had he believed, right away, he was damaging his career he would not have so quickly put himself forth for an office which appeared to be so far out of his league given his age. After losing the election he heard news of Sulla's rage and fled shortly thereafter. What you speak of is naivity of a young boy not a blind pursuit of liberty for the masses. The political alliances he shared with fellow senators along the way leaves much to be desired not to mention his highly suspected involvement in the Catiline conspiracy which also centered around gaining plebian support for the gain of only a few.

 

I don't see the linkage between the run for the priesthood, which I suspect he would have done Sulla or no Sulla. It may have been a last-ditch attempt to protect himself but by the time he'd attempted the run-- if the timeline is correct-- his career was already damaged; he'd refused to divorce his wife, had his wife's dowry and property stripped from him and Rome was in a state of terror over Sulla's proscriptions. JC was an ambitious opportunist but I don't think he was a fool even at that age. He also had the added burden of being Marius' nephew for whom Sulla's hatred probably didn't escape him.

 

His "highly suspected" involvement in the Catiline conspiracy boiled down to accusations and promises of proof that never materialized. It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination that there were many optimates who disliked JC even then and wished to rid themselves of an irritant-- one of the accusers had lost to him for the position of pontifus maximus. Plutarch, Seutonius and Sallust (biased of course) agree that Cicero, who was no ally of JC and a target for the conspirators, came to his defence.

 

Don't think I believe JC was a choir-boy, he was as opportunist as they come up to a point and could be guilty of certain shenanigans. I do believe that, warts and all, he did commit himself to the populares cause. I think he was almost as consistent at that as he was ambitious. For all his faults the optimates were generally a much worse bunch. I suppose we'll agree to disagree on this one.