M. Porcius Cato

I'm with Doc on this one -- the key to making a new map of Rome distinctive, interesting, and valuable would be to show how Rome evolved over time. Of course, that's a lot trickier than just showing the 3-D model of Rome in 119 CE (or whatever date you choose), but if you can come up with a good solution, it would be really cool. Heck, just showing the evolution of the Forum vicinity would be cool.

At long last, Google's project of digitally scanning the books of the world has been finished, polished, cross-checked, validated, and all the rest. The result is a tool of immense value to scholars -- a database of every term (or Ngram) to appear in about 4% of all book EVER published, spanning a range of hundreds of years. You can use the tool yourself at http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/, and see how words like "neurons" suddenly pop up and overtake terms like "humours", how "dude" suddenly arose to prominence in recent years, and so on. It's really cool. Of course, if you like Romans, then you'll want to see how the literature paid attention to your own favorites. Here I've mapped out how literary sources paid attention to folks like Cicero, Cato, and Caesar. As you could see (if this stupid forum software weren't so backwards), Caesar-worship is apparently of very recent vintage, with far more mentions of Cicero and Cato throughout the Enlightenment. Anyway, try it for yourself!

There's no objective way to answer this question from our sources, but it seems like we could mark some milestones (such as the Licinian laws of 367 BCE) that achieved some advances in justice.

Io, Saturnalia!

I agree there's a parallel here between the Late Republic and US history, but I don't think the numbers tell a story of two republics being taken over by prominent political families. During the late republic (Sulla and beyond), the number of New Men in the senate seemed to have risen dramatically, while the number of nobiles (literally, the "known"--but let's define as someone who had a consul or praetor in the familiy) was falling. That's what Gruen's appendix shows rather nicely, doesn't it? According to his appendix, between 78-49 BCE, 7 non-nobiles held the consulship (11.5%), 91 non-nobiles held the praetorship (51% of known praetors), 27 non-nobiles held the aedileship (56.25% of known aediles), 80 non-nobiles held the tribuneship (71% of known tribunes), and 154 non-nobiles were ordinary senators (77% of known pedarii). Thus, after Sulla, the majority of magistracies were held by non-nobiles, which I don't think had been true of earlier eras. Same basic story can be seen in the history of the US congress. Here's a chart that was prepared shortly after "Cennedi"'s death -- in response to claims like the one above. What this means is good news for our own New Men, guys like Nixon and Obama.

I think Kosmo has raised an interesting issue -- it really isn't certain that Marius couldn't raise enough troops through regular means. I mean, we have testimony to that effect, but testimony doesn't close the book on a topic. This is something worth considering more carefully. (If only we had a better sense of the demographics of Italy at this time!) I think Marius uncovered a good solution in dropping the property qualification, whether it was strictly necessary or not. Just to be clear, I don't think these aspects of the Marian reform were necessarily destabilizing. After all, the Athenians had the same policy with respect to the landless men who rowed the triremes that defeated Athens' enemies, and it didn't lead to private navies, etc. What Marius did do -- and the Athenians didn't -- was to promise land (that Marius didn't have) to his landless recruits. As I've pointed to previously, that particular Marian policy wasn't very well thought out, and it led to a number of unavoidable conflicts in later years (esp. with Pompey's troops).

You're just repeating your claims without offering new evidence or answering my counter-arguments. Vale!

Shouldn't this question be moved out of the Res Publica folder?

That's a highly misleading comparison for several reasons. First, Rome had an overwhelmingly agrarian economy, so it's unlikely that soldiers returned home and couldn't find a job. Most likely, they went back to their family farm, where their father and younger siblings were happy to have the help with the harvest. Second, most early wars were not fought year-round, but only during the "war season", to allow sowing and harvesting. Later, when wars were fought year-round, the demands would have increased, but--for reasons below--this wouldn't have been a big hardship. Most importantly, however, you're not considering the relation between the structure of a legion and the lifecycle of a typical Roman, which differs from that of modern Americans. Specifically, what you're envisioning is an army composed entirely of triarii--i.e., men of marriageable age with a family to support. But the structure of the pre-Marian legion avoided calling on such primary bread-winners in large numbers: the largest portion of a pre-Marian legion (1200 velites, 1200 hastati, and 1200 principes) comprised men in their late teens to mid-20s, with only 600 triarii per legion (or 14% of an entire legion). Thus, the genius of the pre-Marian system was that it minimized the contribution of men who were at the point in their lives when they were likely to own their own farm, to marry and to take on the responsibility of raising a family. Taken together, these three factors imply that the pre-Marian system normally allowed Rome to call on huge numbers of men without disrupting the agrarian base of the society -- something the Romans were able to do with tremendous success for almost all of its history. I should add that there was one prominent exception here--the war with Hannibal, which obviously did disrupt the economy--but the Marian reforms wouldn't have protected the Roman economy from Hannibal any better than did the pre-Marian regime .

To put it mildly, huh? But what about the feud with Sulla put those heads on poles? Don't you think it was more the fault of Cinna (Caesar's father in law, not the poet)?

I agree that colonies of Roman soldiers outside Italy might not have been such a great problem -- but it wasn't a great solution either. Farming takes skill and knowledge, and it's unrealistic to suppose that urban proles would have necessarily made the most productive use of the land. It would have been far better for the veterans to have been given a cash pension by the Senate -- then, the vets could have assessed their own best options, and the land could have been leased to those who wanted to try to make a go of it. I also think it's true that the vets wanted their land in central Italy. And it's easy to see why Pompey, Lucullus, or anybody else wanted to give it to them. With your vets in central Italy, it's more likely they'll show up in the forum when you need them (e.g., when a vote is called). That's not a policy that ensures that the most rational options are likely to prevail in assembly.

What an active imagination you have, 9544bhana. The rich were taking everything! The poor veterans were left with nothing! Marius had to enact his reforms or the very sky itself would have fallen! Please, as a corrective to this cartoonish view of history, I'd recommend Rome at War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic by Nate Rosenstein. By surveying archaeological records from this period as well as demographic statistics regarding the balance of population to agricultural output, Rosenstein shows that the pre-Marian military structure did not impoverish small freeholders by sending them off to war and that small farms flourished beside the latifundia that grew up after the Punic Wars. Marius did face a shortage of soldiers -- but this was largely due to a string of military disasters and a large commitment of soldiers outside Italy. Against Hannibal, Pyrrhus, and a string of enemies far worse than the iron-age Cimbri, the pre-Marian structure was more than sufficient. With property-owning Italians and Roman leadership, the republican army was strong enough to defend Italy and secure her friends and allies. What it couldn't do is stretch as far as Marius' ambitions -- and, if you ask me, the whole human race couldn't have stretched that far. That's the problem -- and, yes, Marius' ambition is completely Marius' fault (no matter how much he wept for the poor before he sent them to die).

Rather than agreeing that the Marian reforms doomed the republic, I think it's more accurate to say that *one* Marian reform was destabilizing--and it was actively opposed by the defenders of the republic. What were Marius' reforms anyway? First, he dropped the property requirement for enlistment in the infantry. Second, he had the state provide for the equipment of the infantry. Third, enlistment in the military was rewarded with citizenship and land. Of these reforms, I only see one as intrinsically destabilizing -- namely, rewarding vets with land. This reform has several destabilizing elements. The fundamental problem is that there is no such thing as free land; it varies greatly in value; and the land already held by the state was in continuous use (by lessees) as a means of raising revenue without direct taxation. Thus, finding land for vets--especially land in Italy--was politically difficult and far more expensive than other forms of compensation (e.g., a cash pension controlled by the Senate). In consequence, infantry had an interest in securing the political success of their generals to ensure that their land promises were made good. That's the heart of the problem. It's true that Marius' reforms had the effect of creating private armies that could -- and in Caesar's case did -- topple the republic. But Caesar would never have had that army in the first place were it not for his success in securing land for Pompey's vets. Had that land-for-service regime been brought to an end (as Cato endorsed), Pompey's vets would not have been politicized, would not have been brought as thugs to the forum, and would not have propped up that 'three-headed monster' of Pompey/Caesar/Crassus. In contrast with the land-for-service regime, Marius' other reforms strike me as being quite positive, and they didn't need the land-for-service regime to support them.

Are you writing about Sertorius?

"Ancient Greece was a culture where names were assumed to mean something," writes James Davidson in THIS book review in the LRB. Oh, yeah? Tell it to Aristopsolos.

Personally, I'm forever indebted to Wikipedia for giving me my favorite complaint about almost everything I read-- citation needed.

Personally, I prefer the Bailey because his notes provide better and more complete context. What I like about the Shuckburgh edition, though, is that the correspondence is chronologically arranged.

Totally wild guess: maybe they laid out the stones before assembling, and they numbered them so they could be put back together? See any other numbers?

That's a good point.

I agree with Ingsoc. I'd also add that marching on Rome wouldn't have fit with Hannibal's overall strategy, which was to peel off Rome's allies in Italy and thereby deprive Rome of her chief military asset -- Italian manpower.

After seeing the first few episodes online, I wasn't too impressed either, and I didn't really go out of my way to watch the rest until my non-Romanophile friends raved about it and wanted to know more about the historical background. I'm glad I watched the rest -- it was really fun. That said, I can't wait for Crassus to show up!

Funny story in today's NYT about a veritable renaissance of ancient footwear. Follow HERE to see a parade of caligae, cork soles, and other classical world 'strappies' on the feet of America's BCBG. At the Bata Shoe Museum, THERE are some close relatives from ancient sculpture depicted, and they pull up the real thing at Vindolanda all the time. I'd love to know how this trend got started, but it occurred to me that people have been following Cato's preferred sandal on beaches for ages -- and that's a look that will last.

Maybe Troy... Again, this is all just speculation, and I do take Maty's point that many (maybe most) cities of the ancient world were colonies of some other city rather than evolving from their surroundings as happened in Athens (and in modern US and English cities). I guess what I like about the Wiseman-type story isn't just that it fits with our modern experience and Athens; rather, it also explains the origins of the senate, the origins of the very strange patrician/plebeian divide (which isn't the same as Marxist classes, as Ursus' review seems to imply), the placement of the temples of Ceres and Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and so on. In short, it's a simple explanation for many explananda -- which (of course) isn't the same as saying the explanation is necessarily true.

Yes, Nero was all bad. Everything good that happened during his reign happened in spite of Nero rather than because of Nero. BTW, I think it's utterly naive to think that pro-Nero graffiti came from "the people" rather than Nero's paid henchmen. If he had the power to scapegoat Christians for the conflaggration of 64, I'll bet he also had the power to have his praises scrawled on walls.

If you're fishing for informed speculation, I'll bite. My sense is that the founding of the Rome known to earliest historians -- like the unification of Roman Italy itself -- was the unintended outcome of competition among groups that never foresaw the benefits of any sort of unification at all. These groups were initially largely independent and definable by their settlements among the seven hills of Rome. Among these were three principal groups: (1) the salt traders and drovers centered on the Aventine, (2) the outlaws and bandits centered on the Palatine and Caelian hills, and (3) the relatives of the Sabines on the Quirinal, Esquiline, and Viminal hills. The legend of Romulus and Remus was based on some truths. Probably some prostitute ('she-wolf') on the Palatine had one or two boys who grew up to lead other Palatine bandits to construct a fortification of the Palatine against enraged victims from the surrounding hills. This walled hill offered a superlative site of defense, as well as a perfect base for their criminal attacks. To reduce these attacks, the Sabines in the northern hills accepted some kind of treaty with the dregs of Romulus ('the rape of the Sabine women'), leaving the poor traders of the Aventine to face the brunt of the Palatine gang's attacks on their own until they had been terrorized into submission. In this is the probable origin of the divide between patricians -- the families of the elders ('senate') who supported the Palatine leader ('Romulus') -- and the plebs, the larger group on the Aventine (and other hills) whose position was like that of the merchants who pay protection-money to mob bosses. Against this uneasy alliance of "Roman" patricians and plebeians were arrayed all the forces of Italy, some much older and more civilized (such as the Etruscans) and others less civilized (such as the Samnites). Thus, after the deaths of the earliest leaders ("kings") of these patrician gang-lords ("senators"), foreign intervention came often and with unsuccessful resistance, until finally the non-Palatine "kings" of the Tarquinii were ejected once and for all by local patricians, who founded their own thing (the "res publica"). From here, there were a series of accommodations made with the plebs of the surrounding hills (detailed in Livy inter alia), which resulted in a recognizably republican system of laws and government. This is all speculation, but you asked for it. I'd be happy to follow up with the archaeological and textual support for my reconstruction, but I can't promise that it will be totally convincing.