M. Porcius Cato

I don't think the Romans were always quite so cavalier about conquest as has been suggested. Recall that Roman religious law (the ius fetiale) forbade Romans from embarking on wars of aggression solely to gain new territory. This religious law may not have had anything to do with concern for the victims of the war, as there were already plenty of reasons to fear the wrath of the gods for venal conquest. More practically, wars of aggression had enormous costs for Rome--alienating potential allies, rousing suspicion among current ones, reducing available man-power for defensive wars, creating inveterate enemies among the conquered territory, draining the treasury of capital needed for more worthwhile projects, and so forth. In evaluating whether the Gallic War (or any war) is good for Rome, Romans certainly raised these issues. Much of Rome's early conquest (to 264 bce) occurred due to its alliances with friends in Italy. On behalf of an ally, Romans were willing to hit hard, and they felt fully justified in doing so. In some cases, particularly later in Roman history, the Roman willingness to defend her friends became a tool for provoking war with her (e.g., Hannibal in Spain), as well--of course--as a pretext for expansionism. But if Rome had NO compunction about committing wars of aggression, there would be no reason for the pretext; but they did, and so they created them. So let's not debate whether the Romans thought they were bad for slaughtering innocent Gaulish tribes (that's improbable), but instead address the matter of whether the war was good for Rome over the long term. Was this the cost-free adventure that Caesar depicted it, or did Caesar lead Rome down the path of creating her own worst enemies, a path that ended with the Goths, Vandals, and Huns?

An engineer constructing baths, aqueducts, mines, and even siege works sounds like great fun. Helping to create the infrastructure for a new colony would be the best. Virgil said that arms were the art of the Romans, but I think Rome's true greatness was to be found in what she buillt not what she destroyed.

Based on the metrics of added-value and strength of the opponent, I'd go with Scipio Africanus any day--he took a military organization that blundered its way into getting slaughtered at Cannae and he turned it into the finely-tuned machine that could defeat Hannibal at Zama. (If there were a poll for Rome's greatest adversary, I'd probably vote for Hannibal too.) Why not Caesar? While Caesar won decisive victories in Gaul, even under Vercingetorix the Gallic armies--while awesome in number--were inferior to Caesar's army in technology, in tactics, and in training. These competitive advantages were not developed by Caesar in Gaul but in Spain under Scipio et al. (Most obvious example: the Mainz gladius carried by Caesar's troops was but a slight modification of the gladius hispanicus.) Still, the decisive competitive advantage in the Gallic Wars came from military engineering, and I can't think of a Roman general before Caesar who completed anything as audacious and successful as the circumvallation of the Alesian plateau. For that (more than Pharsalus), Caesar squeaks by Pompey as my #2 pick. I'd add that Pompey should have been added to the list. I'm reminded of Shakespeare's line: "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! Oh you hard hearts! You cruel men of Rome! Knew you not Pompey?"

Mirabile dictu! While we're tossing surprises around, I think most of the optimates were short-sighted fools (but still better than Clodius, Catiline, and you-know-who). ...while setting himself up to be worshipped as a god and (unbelievably) the savior of the Republic. So, +1 pt to Caesar's heir for discouraging *foreign* irrationality but -2 pts for encouraging *domestic* irrationality.

For their clear style, Julius Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic Wars are a modern staple of Latin literature, and today even the Latinless know that "All Gaul is divided into three parts." 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?

OK--you got me. Against the men, women, and children of Gaul, Caesar was merely guilty of stealing, enslaving, beheading, crucifying, torturing, or plain slaughtering thousands upon thousands of innocents, people who posed no threat to Rome whatever, who paid taxes, who engaged in trade, and who were very often baited into opposing her. Caesar's decision that the Gallic tribes could never govern themselves peacably certainly sounds like the opinion of a racist, but technically Caesar was not guilty of genocide. I should also mention that among the conquering nations of the ancient world, Roman conquest (even under Caesar) brought more benefits than brought by other conquerors. Still...Caesar was a very bad man.

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. 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. 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. The Catilinarian program made no distinction between purchased land and property that had passed from public ownership to private property. Thus, the comparison of Catiline, Clodius and Caesar--post-Gracchan revolutionaries, and I was quite clear that I was talking about the post-Gracchan program--to Mugabe et al was perfect. The program of Catiline and his poor aristocratic friends--like the agrarian programs of Mugabe, Stalin, and Pol Pot--were simply land-grabs for political spoils. The aims, like the means, were also identical--to starve the opposition (white farmers, kulaks, intellectuals, respectively) and to reward political and military allies. You're missing the early American political scene entirely. Hamilton, the Federalist, signed his letters "Caesar" (supposedly tongue-in-cheek). ANTI-federalists, such as Yates and Clinton, signed their letters "Brutus" and "Cato" (without any sense of irony). Washington was a Federalist, and so he would have been dismayed to see his hero's name attached to the anti-Federalist cause. My point is that Addison's play may help to explain why some libertarians admired Cato, but how do you explain why statists like Hamilton, Napoleon, and Bismarck admired Caesar? If adultery, power-lust, corruption, political murder, and genocide are not sufficient to justify "personal spite", I don't know what would! We clearly disagree about the propriety of Caesar's governorship in Gaul, and I'd suggest we start a new thread to discuss the matter, as I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise. I'm also happy to admit that Caesar used public works as well as military campaigns to reward his cronies (again like Bismarck), but my original point stands--these works would do nothing in the long-run to alleviate the suffering of the poor. After private capital had been diverted from more worthwhile projects and the Curia Julia was constructed, what benefit could possibly accrue to the landless poor? The draining of the Pontine marshes and the Corinthian canal may have been worthwhile ventures, but the resulting decrease in available capital would have sent already sky-high interest rates soaring--how could that benefit the debt-addled poor? There is, of course, no way of knowing whether these were actually sound proposals or not because there is no record of their ever having been debated. There was no debate on the proposals because the men of ability who might have raised any intelligent questions about them had been killed by Caesar so he needn't be bothered with such 'obstinancy', 'delay', and, um, thinking. On this point, I agree entirely.

The principate: The good: * Return to the consolidation of military power (also enjoyed through most of the Republic) The bad: * Secret police and omnipotent palace guard * Executions and exiles without trial * No deliberative mechanism for accession * Public financing via the privy-purse rather than senatorial planning * Members of the imperial household could commit rape, incest, and murder with impugnity * Massively inflationary monetary policies * Establishment of serfdom The ugly: * Arts and history monopolized by court apologists * Decline of satire and comedy (but see below) * Risible propaganda-architecture * Stagnation in secular moral and political philosophy * Epidemics of mysticism and fanatical devotion to foreign cults So, yes, Augustus brought an end to one civil war and many of the blessings of peace returned to Rome, but he also wiped out much of what made the Pax Romana worthwhile in the first place, and still didn't manage to solve the problem of civil war much beyond his own dynasty. The Republic needed many reforms badly; Augustus initiated many bad reforms and laid the groundwork for the horrors of the Dark Ages.

Exactly right. The system of patronage that Caesar mastered--like any common ward heeler--was not based on delivering good government, providing for the common defence of Rome and her allies, and on rooting out corruption, but based instead on delivering free bread and circuses to potential voters. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

n fact the conquest of Gaul provided income, troops, senators and citizens for hundreds of years of Empire following conquest. The republic was already dead, the Senate just didn't know it. Italy itself was not threatened again by Gallic (they were now citizens) or Germanic (they were faced by Legions in Gaul or Pannonia) tribespeople again for at least 200 years after the Gallic wars - thankyou Caesar ! Leaving aside the state of the republic for another discussion, Caesar deserves absolutely no thanks for his genocidal policies in Gaul. During the 100 years BEFORE Caesar's adventures, the Gauls were not only no threat to Rome, they provided Rome with excellent trade, taxes, auxiliaries, and were being rapidly Italicized northward of Narbonensis. For this we may thank noble Ahenobarbus and Fabius Maximus. Caesar, far from deserving thanks, simply made a desert and called it peace. Caesar continued to have peaceful and lawful options (albeit diminishing) before, during, and after his Gallic escapades. Compromises were presented to Caesar in envoy after envoy, and his only rationale for civil war was the protection of his dignitas (what there was of it). I do agree, however, that these compromises were irrational--all should have seen that Caesar intended on marching on Rome, but the blame for this blindness rests with Pompey not with Cato. Had Pompey been ruled by Cato rather than by his wife Julia, Caesar would have been met on the banks of the Rubicon and crushed immediately. Sadly, it took too many years (though not so many daggers) to finish that job.

The longevity of Roman rule depended on its being a republic, and so Caesar's actions in destroying the republic did contribute very greatly to Rome's later weaknesses and vulnerability. There is no question whether the republic was the best form of government for Rome (if there is, let's take it to another thread...), only whether the features of a republic provided greater wealth, security, and long-term stability than the series of hereditary dictatorships Caesar inititiated. For all the faults of the Republic, does anyone believe that investing absolute power in the hands of a single person is a good idea? Absolute power is what turns a mere fool like Varro or Bibulus into a fanatical murderer like Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Elegabalus, etc, etc, etc. For all the faults of the Republic, does anyone believe that differences in political opinion should be resolved by the sword rather than by persuasion? That men like Cicero are the inferiors of jackals like young Pompey (Sulla's 'teenage butcher'), Antony, Sejanus, and the thousands of thugs and secret police set upon the throats (and hands and tongues) of thinking Romans? For all the faults of the Republic, does anyone believe that hereditary succession is more stable than the ballot box? Count up all the years of civil war prior to Caesar and all the years of civil war after him, and I think you'll find that once the Senate lost its power to the dynastic rule of political generals, civil war became a routine scourge on the Roman people, slowly withering its power to the point where a mere band of brigands could topple it. For all the faults of the Republic, does anyone believe that it was MORE corrupt and rapine than the empire? During the Republic, corruption was a prosecutable offense and was the obsession of the giants of the Senate (like my namesake). During the Empire, corruption was such the norm that there was virtually no distinction between the public finances and the Emperor's privy purse. By what standards is the privy purse to be spent? Obviously, by the whim of the Emperor and not by the good of the state. If Julius Caesar (inter alia) caused the downfall of the republic, he struck a blow to Rome from which it never recovered. QED. Why should this be controversial at all? Are the long-term consequences of political events so difficult to believe? History is a long series of very many incremental changes set in motion by a vastly smaller number of innovations. Bringing slavery to the American colonies set off hundreds of years of factional strife that culminated in a civil war and in unprecedented Presidential powers. Bringing the monarch of England to trial and execution set off hundreds of years of conflict that ultimately culminated in the permanent crippling of the monarchy and the spread of European republicanism. Closing China off to international trade set off the long decline of an innovative and dynamic society. Etc Etc. There is a very good reason that Caesar's crossing the Rubicon has become a metaphor for such events, and there is no reason for skepticism about the point.

lol...Ave Pertinax! Ave Pantagathus! We who are about to post this message salute you!

I think there might be a couple of errors here. First, I don't think factors like "greed on an epic scale" explains anything--it's vague, it's unfalsifiable, it's probably a part of human nature that's unchanging (so why would it only have an effect at time X?), and so on. Second, teams of slaves working vast estates are economically sub-optimal for many reasons, most importantly because their use inhibits the widespread adoption of labor-saving devices with non-agrarian benefits. Leasing one's holdings to tenant farmers is generally more lucrative in the long-run because tenant farmers offer both a source of wealth and a market for higher-margin livestock and manufactured goods (e.g., iron goods). I think it's important to note that Romans did not justify slavery by its supposed economic benefits--slavery was a luxury and something to impress one's friends. Third, I don't think that tax farmers ever formed much of a political base in comparison to other economic groups, so it's unlikely that the expansion of tax farmers led to the expansion of slavery. It's interesting to note that the bad economics of slavery were pretty well understood during Rome's rule, leading many to free their slaves as an investment, and it took public laws (sponsored I think by Augustus) to slow down the decline of the peculiar institution. So much for Augustus--or Julius Caesar for that matter--being a friend of the poor!

Including the fact that Servilia was Cato's half-sister provides an additional dramatic benefit--it helps to explain how well Brutus knew Cato, why Brutus might have married Cato's daughter, and why he assassinated Cato's scourge. As it is, "Rome" portrays the opponents of Caesar as motivated entirely by mindless traditionalism, hatred of the poor, personal enmity, or fear of one's mother! I know it's supposed to be a soap-operatic, and I really do love the show, but I don't like how it portrays the optimates. Isn't there some way to dramatize their political convictions more sympathetically?

I think Caesar did contribute very mightily to the downfall of Rome. The security of Rome amidst its possessions--whether vast or small--required Rome to extend the foreign policy it used with her Italian allies, who were largely loyal to Rome. Caesar's Gallic escapades ruined any chance of this happening in most of Europe, where the enemies of Rome were merely held at bay at great cost to the state. Had Caesar furthered the Italicization of Gaul--rather than having run up a huge body-count for the sake of a triumph--Rome would have enjoyed a transalpine buffer and an enormous source of wealth. Instead, she had to waste vast resources for the subjugation of neighbors who were afraid of being the next victim of some ambitious plutocrat. Caesar was also a crook--and he had to be in order to buy off the loyalty of his troops who were engaged in an illegal war. Caesar's grand larceny was imitated by an untold number of petty magistrates. While corruption did not begin with Caesar, he demonstrated just how much crime pays. Moreover, Caesar's lesson led to the utterly backwards privy-purse model of government finance (employed especially by Augustus) and the disastrously infationary monetary policies employed by future Roman leaders. While Caesar did not lead Rome over the cliff, he did turn her onto the path leading to the cliff. IMHO, Caesar's governorial tenure in Gaul was an unmitigated disaster for the long-term security of the Republic and was legitimate grounds for his prosecution and recall by the Senate.

True enough, but if you grew up with these sorts of things around the house, you'd understand how to read a sheep-skin map once you were old enough to be a legionary--that would be a strategic advantage.

I have a question for the authors on the forum. There is a truly juicy bit of information--full of dramatic potential--that's never been mentioned in "Rome", viz. that the half-sister of Cato was Servilia. Her motivations thus far have been entirely derived from her being scorned by Caesar, which makes her seem merely vindictive. Why not reveal how overdetermined her hatred for Caesar must have been. She lost her family's love by sleeping with a man who supported the family's worst enemies (pure thugs like Clodius and Antony) and who tried to have Cato arrested (this long before Cato's opposition to Caesar's genocide in Gaul). Her son was twice estranged from her due to Caesar's putsch--first when Brutus opposed him, then when Brutus was forced to honor him. Many in her family were killed by Caesar's troops, many more by their own hands lest they suffer his tyranny. Caesar jilted many lovers, but none suffered so much in so many ways as Servilia. Why pass up such a fabulous plot hook? Why make her hatred so much about Atia??? The only reason I can guess is that they are attempting to whitewash Caesar's crimes.