Rome

Ive recently said some derogatory things about Rome; that they didn’t produce philosophers or science, and I quoted Gibbon on ‘that puny breed’ that populated the Roman world -
But I love Rome, and I consider it my duty as a European to work to the restoration of its glory, and have been doing this. Though I would like to intensify this effort I will need allies, and these allies cant be messianic Christians, as the glory of Rome is manifestly pagan.

It is true that Rome did not produce philosophers in the sense that Greece and Germany produced them. There is only Seneca. In the same sense it is true that they didn’t produce any science; they developed no physics. They didn’t develop any theory. But of course they are foremost of all human people in their development of praxis. And this can perhaps be seen to amount to a modest form of philosophy and science.

They had no theoretical thinkers worth of much - or perhaps the theoretical thinkers that grew up in that dominion simply found no audience. But the design of Roman Law, the intricate power balance of the Republic, is the most beautiful apparatus of state that has ever existed. The American Constitution is a reflection of it but one very severely compromised by the use of political parties, which are an absolute guarantee of the dilution of the will - as the idea that the Ideas of Power can be universalized so as to be carried by a whole mass of people is simply false. The Romans relied on the will and passions of individuals, not on Social Ideas - and here we see that the absence of philosophers was actually an advantage. There was no sense in theorizing about morals, there was just looking out for manifest interests. I hope that our modern world will find a way back to Roman politics, with Consuls and Tribunes. It was a magnificent system, very dignified and very much efficient in maintaining the Majesty of a people.

In the end days of the Republic, the vast quantities of lands and peoples that had been subjected began to pose a significant problem, namely the very unequal distribution of wealth; some men possessed as much as what today are whole countries, many lived off mice and the crumbs they beat those mice to - this was not a tenable situation and the attempts to amend this situation predictably led to the internal strife among the elites that led to Caesars reign.

If they had a better way of dealing with conquest to begin with, the Republic would probably have survived.

After it fell, Rome became a disaster, albeit a very beautiful one - the fact that one could set foot nowhere in Europe without being subject to the arbitrary whims of extraordinarily decadent tyrants was simply not cool. There was little good about that, and in the meantime the fact of Rome’s lack of poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, the fact that it still relied mostly on the Greeks for its culture, became a much more dreadful condition when this poverty subjected the larger part of Europe. The cultures of the subjected peoples, such as that of the Celts, were often richer than Rome’s own culture at that time.

Then, when Rome’s poverty of culture became unbearable, it yielded to Christianity, and what was perhaps the last standing virtue of Roman politics - its respect of religious freedom - disappeared. What was left was simply a barbaric machine of oppression extortion and humiliation.

Yet Rome still excelled, from the oldest to the most recent days of its empire, in the invention and application and perfection of method as such. The legal structure off the Republic is the finest method of handling power that has been known to man, their aqueducts represent a sublime method, their warfare was obviously deeply and soundly methodical -
in the end though the methods, the means, found no ends except their own exertion. The story of bureaucracy.

Let this serve as an introduction.

Whatever has been done, Rome is the patron of. This includes philosophy and science.

The reason this is possible is that res publica doesn’t mean country.

So you want a one party republic and no democracy? :confused:

Isn’t that a bit authoritarian? Even Israel doesn’t do that.

Im not talking about the Caesars, but about something which came before, the Roman Republic. In fact it was quite a big deal when Caesar (the first one was actually called by that name) turned it into a monarchy. Its called the Civil War. It is my honor to unveil that part of our history for you.

There were no political parties then. There was a Senate and various other institutions held by individuals who were accountable only to the Constitution, to themselves and whomever they made agreements with or owed favors to. Like in real life. Every man stood for himself and whatever constituency agreed with his plans. Would you not say that this is the only rational way to have a representative government?

Or do you sincerely believe that political parties can represent the will of anyone except the party insiders?
I dont.

By the way, Trump operated much like a Roman; he ran officially tied to the GOP but as we know their establishment all hated him, and he only brought them around when he turned out to be beloved by more people than could be silenced, that is to say, when he proved inevitable. That is how honest politics are made; no hypocritical a priori so called agreements on ethics.

This is true about Trump.

This is also true about the Senate. But that period is only called the Republic in retrospect. In Roman terms, the res publica doesn’t depend on any specific government or style of government. In this way, the Cesarian mission was to provide Rome with more power than a Senate alone could provide her, and by its virtue expand the res publica. Expansion was its only guarantee of permanence, as history has proven. The res publica was not a tribe or a nation, or a state, or a government. There were no separate states, only Romans and Indians. This may also help you understand the missionary perspective stripped of its religious pretense. Or at least stripped of its Christian pretense. It is also a fact with Rome, as with any people, that religion is not separate from any part of its activity.

It is true that the Senate resisted Cesar, and it is true that it did this with the idea of protecting Roman liberty. The disagreement was not on this preservation, but on whether altering the style of government truly threatened it. It is not irrelevant to note that many of the Senators’ personal bases of power were threatened by such a change. Cesar bore them no ill will, he simply did not believe their combined power was enough to sustain Rome, as his experiences in politics and war had impressed on him. Socially, they were and he did consider them his equals. Nor is it irrelevant to compare this same situation with the situation of President Trump. That is where the comparison ends, however, as Trump’s goal was in fact to reverse to pre-Cesarian Roman Senate style government. Cesar himself never had to contend with such a thing as the party politics you describe. They did have houses, but not parties, as it was a given that all politicians had the same goal.

The remark about Israel is curious considering the state of its neighbours. But antisemitism is more of a disease than a perspective.

There were no parties in Rome as we know them, but nevertheless there were two camps that could be called just “Roman parties”, and these two camps were first the patriciate and the plebs (plebeians), then the optimates and populars, before the whole thing became purely private, but nevertheless again two camps emerged (while the senate was already quite paralyzed): Marians and Sullans, Caesarians and Pompeians, and even Augustus, at the time when he was still called Octavian, faced another camp, that of Antony. Only Augustus ended this old political dichotomy and with it the republic.

Since Marius’ military reform the soldiers had become followers of their leaders (the most important: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Octavian, Antony), had got their pay directly from them. The army had been quasi private since this reform.

Praise Jupiter for sending me two learned men.

Vittorio -

It came into being as a refutation of the old monarchy. Hence, when Caesar declared himself king, the Senators felt that the tradition of some five hundred years had been brought to an end.
There was a very definite style of government during the centuries the republic, as the government was indeed an apparatus of sublime genius. The various passions of mankind were all accounted for, and thus the balance of power between the nobles as well as between the nobles and the piles as well as between different tribes of the plebs was well guaranteed.

Augustus finally did away with this balance of power, as Otto remarks, by dissolving not only the dichotomies and reducing the senate, what was left of it after Caesar had had his way with it, to a body of compliant cowards, as the historians tell us.

Not that Caesar was simply ‘to blame’ for this, as indeed the Senate has been paralyzed for a good time during the civil strife which was caused by what I mentioned in the OP, the expansiveness of the empire and the fact that the old laws weren’t of much use in determining how to regulate these spoils. Rome had simply become too mighty for its own constitution, on which this might rested.

I disagree - Caesars mission was, like all Roman missions, of a personal nature; that is the sublime nature of the ancients which we have lost in the modern age, or in fact have lost to christianity - the will to power was recognized as a valid motivational and as the only true motivation, and Rome was simply a vast prize. Hence, it was at one time even sold to the highest bidder by the Praetorian Guards who had assassinated the stern successor to the disastrous decadent Commodus, son of the Buddhistic Marcus.
The old aristocracies lamented the down-going of the Republic and ever since, there have been attempts to revive it, but none were successful. The Republic continued in name but not in political genius; what came after rested mostly on military and despotic genius; politics as it has been understood in terms of the Consulate and the various offices surrounding it and leveraging and balancing it, complementing and contrasting it, the most refined form of rulership ever known to man, had perished.

That seems to hold much truth, though it was with the expansion that the problems arose that allowed Caesar in the end to establish a monarchy.
So expansion was necessary, yet also disastrous.

It was in fact a very strictly defined collection of tribes. And yes, it was certainly a specific form of government, and a state. I have to disagree.

Rome gave the prerogative and capacity to conquer, and the spoils of conquest were given to the legions, they were allowed to plunder the conquered peoples. This very simple arrangement worked very well to sustain the momentum of conquest. The mission of Rome was, as I see it, quite simply the exertion of its strength, and thus method was sacred.

Romans did certainly recognize many different kinds of peoples, they speak in great detail and with deep interest about the various characters of various peoples they subjected or wished to subject to their dominion.

The term “barbarian” is a greek one, meaning not as is commonly believed ‘bearded person’, the Greeks were very bearded themselves, but blatherer. It is an onomatopoeia. It simply means a person whose languages a Greek can not understand, a foreigner.
The Romans didn’t use the term as readily, they discerned sharply between the different peoples they were subjecting - I suppose that their power is not unrelated to the way they were observant about the strange.

In any case they had no choice in the matter - as Otto remarks they had been rendered impotent a while earlier due to the increasing dominance of generals and their conflicts.
To many of the ancient tribes that populated the Senate, the Republic was something as sacred as the Gods.

Yes. This ended with the triumph of Octavian, who most certainly did not consider anyone in Rome to be his equal.

Yes. I deliberately neglected to complicate my statement at the outset with this notion. It is important though, too important to brush past so quickly. Because if our western, Roman world is to have a glorious future it will only be given by a return to early Roman politics.

Namely: power and majesty. They were more honest than our time is capable of.

Indeed.

Otto -

Indeed, the distinction between more and less powerful, between privileged and less privileged, has run through Roman history until the vast spoils of conquest had driven the distinction to extremes, at which point it became possible for politicians to exploit this distinction. I believe that to be the crux of the matter; though the differences are significant, there is a comparison to be made with the rise of socialism and the downfall of aristocratic civilization in early modernity and the rise of hypocritical despotism; the idea of playing to passions of the plebs has been the most dangerous idea in Roman politics. Before Sulla, I believe the Patricians were rather restrained in employing this means as they knew such methods could turn against them as easily as the wind may turn at any given moment. Populism was not, to be short, the sort of Roman method that led them to their glory. It was simply used when this glory had already been established.

Yes.

Yes, thank you - I believe this is especially relevant. We might say that Marius’ reforms really were the downfall of the structural integrity of Roman Law.

It seems I missed a short post.

Rome is indeed the patron of philosophy and science, as it is of the arts, and of serious politics and naturally of warfare, and also of road-building, agricultural development, all sorts of methods for the enrichment of life.

It does mean state, though. And the province (which might as well mean: country) from which a particular man emerged was decisive of his rights as a citizen. The province of Latium would be the “native country” of the true Romans.

“until the vast spoils of conquest had driven the distinction to extremes, at which point it became possible for politicians to exploit this distinction”

One popular theory among historians claims the exact opposite happened:

"by around 300 AD the Roman Empire was dealing with a considerable “cash flow” problem. This is because they were literally running out of goods and resources to use from their conquered lands and as a result had less money to invest in conquering new places.

The Romans also heavily relied on slave labor, but with expansion grinding to a relative halt, they were unable to acquire new slaves and suffered a major slave labor shortage.

To cope with these declines, taxes were increased. However, this simply further divided the rich and poor and many wealthy Romans moved into hiding or set up separate compounds to avoid paying such high taxes.

With such a decrease in readily available cash, it rapidly became more and more difficult for the Romans to sustain such a vast and costly empire."

Now this paints quite a different picture than anything you might get from the barbarium’s analysis… what with the great roman empire building its power base by conquering cities, enslaving the people and putting them to work producing the resources needed to raid and plunder the next city.

In fact it may have been the lack of (and failure to acquire) ‘spoils’ that triggered the breakdown, as suggested in the text.

Which is over three centuries after the events Im discussing.

Such plebs.

You have no notion of what it means to study. Lack of time isn’t an excuse, there are plenty of proletarians who have done night schooling to escape the degrading condition of ignorance.

Flee now to your tents and dreams, carpenter.

Oh no my bad I meant to tell u I didn’t read ur whole post (never do) so my comment to your comment is prolly out of context. This:

“at which point it became possible for politicians to exploit this distinction”

…Is what I’m contesting. The class divisions bringing conflict were fundamental to the structure of the state, and nothing that ‘came later’ as a contingency to some event. This class conflict has little to do with the amount of spoils and wealth the state has.

But a politician’s job is to exploit such conflict. Any two or more party state will involve this unnecessary nonsense and a populist is no more necessarily honest than a oligarch is.

“plenty of proletarians who have done night schooling to escape the degrading condition of ignorance.”

No they do that to escape being broke. U can escape the degrading condition of ignorance just surfing the web while on the toilet. U don’t need night school 4 that.

Oh snap which one of u guys said they want a return to the greatness of Rome?

U realize that one fifth of the roman citizenry had no legal personhood, right? U wanna return to that kind of state?

Me

.

Lol I remember that movie. How many Romans that had to witness ceremonial crap like that, do u reckon thought it wuz corny as fuck but were too scared to say anything?

Only if your night school is in a city of tiny lites. youtube.com/watch?v=8ZRNPUmwAOY

Slaves were not citizens.

You know that was a comedy ??

If you want a televisual view of what the late republic was light you can’t go far wrong with ROME.(2015, 2017)
imdb.com/title/tt0384766/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

youtube.com/watch?v=K9ahNR19myM

In the strictest sense they were ‘citizens’ because they would be protected and defended from foreign enemies. Slaves were a hot commodity and u wanted to make sure your enemies didn’t take em away from ya, see.