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Quote of the Day: Sulla’s March on Rome
“Certainly, with the march on Rome of a Roman army, a watershed had been reached. Something like innocence had gone. Competition for honors had always been the lifeblood of the Republic, but now something deadly had been introduced into it, and its presence there, a lurking toxin, could not easily be forgotten. Defeat in elections, or in a lawsuit or in a debate in the Senate—these had previously been the worse that a citizen might have had to dread. But Sulla, in his pursuit of Marius, was pushing rivalry and personal hatred to new extremes. From that moment on, the memory of it would haunt every ambitious citizen –both as a temptation and as a fear.” — Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
LBJ used the CIA to spy on the Goldwater campaign in 1964. Watergate is well known. But Obama’s use of the intelligence agencies to spy on the Trump campaign was unprecedented in its scope. Unless it is exposed and its perpetrators are punished, free elections may become a feature of the past. Now that the Mueller diversion is ended, it is imperative for the Republicans to arrive at the truth. Trump can declassify the FISA applications, but the Senate must have hearings and hold accountable Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al.
Published in Law
For some reason, the escapades of Brennan, Clapper, Comey, etc., remind me of Alec Guinness in The Bridge over the River Kwai:
It’s too bad they can’t come to the same realization and relative fate.
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Without Sulla, there is no Caesar.
The precedents go deeper. Without the Gracchi and their breaking of precedents, followed by their assassinations and that breaking of precedents (Tribunes were supposed to be immune), Rome might have been able to avoid the civil war over Roman citizenship, which was brought Marius himself to power, who led to Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, and so on.
In short, the Roman Republic was in poor shape already when the Gracchi brothers rose to prominence, and nothing that followed really ever set it back to rights – each new revolution, each new crack in the old order, each new refusal of the defenders of the old order to recognize a need for reform and repair, served to damage the Republic still further.
Sulla and Marius each thought they were trying to restore that old order, but instead only broke it still further by way of purges and retribution, which were followed by counter purges when their side lost out.
I agree with all of that.
Mine is a lot more pithy, though. :)
Sulla was trying to breath life into a corpse. The Republic was already dead.
I like how no matter how far back you go it still sounds like a Mafia reference.
Yeah, and I think that “Gracchi” is Latin for “Blues.”
Given how the various clans acted, that’s not a bad analogy.
As @SkipSul pointed out, some think the Republic was dead even a decade before the Gracchi brothers. St. Augustine from The City of God:
I can’t say for sure Rome’s death was inevitable. If we want to draw comparisons with the US, I’d like to think it’s wasn’t. There do seem to be similarities and lessons to be learned though.
Didn’t Chuck Schumer, supposedly a leader of Democrats, clearly warn President Trump of the dangers he would face from the intelligence agencies (they can get back at him six ways from Sunday) if he challenged them? If Schumer sees this so clearly, why is he ok with it? One must assume that whatever capability Schumer has observed in the past that he approves of it since he has made no moves to eliminate it. This really is the Republican last chance to confront Democrat corruption head-on.
I remember Charles Krauthammer warning Trump not to mess with the intelligence agencies dozens of times. All I hope for is Comey, McCabe, Brennan and a few others are prosecuted.
This may help explain a lot of why the budget goes up every year, not much materially changes in how the gov’t operates, and how screamingly hard it seems to be to cut back any part of the gov’t, at all.
They defend their own. A small sample below.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/12/top-10-wasteful-government-expenses/
Federal spending, deficits, and debt, are all by-products of preserving the power of the federal government. The fact that we know our intelligence agencies are powerful enough to impact elections, and our politicians know that, means they adjust their actions accordingly.
Which means, essentially, that all politicians are compromised by the power and reach of the federal government.
The trends below only go in one direction.
LXXXIX. Scarcely any of those who were accessory to his murder, survived him more than three years, or died a natural death 102. They were all condemned by the senate: some were taken off by one accident, some by another. Part of them perished at sea, others fell in battle; and some slew themselves with the same poniard with which they had stabbed Caesar 103. (56)
104 The termination of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey forms a new epoch in the Roman History, at which a Republic, which had subsisted with unrivalled glory during a period of about four hundred and sixty years, relapsed into a state of despotism, whence it never more could emerge. So sudden a transition from prosperity to the ruin of public freedom, without the intervention of any foreign enemy, excites a reasonable conjecture, that the constitution in which it could take place, however vigorous in appearance, must have lost that soundness of political health which had enabled it to endure through so many ages. A short view of its preceding state, and of that in which it was at the time of the revolution now mentioned, will best ascertain the foundation of such a conjecture.
Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars (Annotated) (p. 34). Unknown. Kindle Edition.
I just listened to The Pacific Century podcast with Niall Ferguson. At about 25:30-30:30, he touches exactly on one of the lessons I had in mind when I commented above when thinking Rome/Carthage, US/USSR and then fast-forwarding to today. I’m not so sure a “Cold War” with China is a bad thing.
We have seen that Trump rarely, if ever, allows anyone to come after him without striking back. Trump has offered a reasonable explanation as to why he rescinded his earlier directive on declassifying material related to the use of the Steele Dossier to obtain FISA warrants to surveil Carter Page. He has now said that these earlier redacted or withheld classified documents will be declassified and released for public publication. Let’s hope so.
I want everything released about how this investigation started during the campaign. It seems pretty certain that Obama and Clinton folks tried to prevent his election. And once Trump was elected everything kept going thanks to Brennan, Comey, McCabe, Ohr and many others. I have confidence in Barr so I expect the back story to come out.
I have confidence that the right people will get the back story out, so long as we keep a fire lit under them.
I’ve always thought one way of translating res publica could be our thing.
No one currently with political or legal power is going to do anything, to anyone Not one of those sunzabitches is ever gonna suffer for the crimes we suspect they committed. Won’t even be tried.
‘No one is coming to save us.’
So what are YOU going to do, Richard? I don’t know what I can do about. Any one have any real ideas?
All I can do is bitch to my Congresscritter and Senators. I do this regularly. In 2006, I decided to start writing about the origins of GPS and correct some of the egregious errors. I’ve have some success there but the stakes here are much bigger.
Next month we’ll be spending several days as tourists in Rome. It has been a while (decades) since I’ve read any of the history of the Roman Republic and of the subsequent empire, so don’t have it my head very well. Any suggestions as to a single book I should read now to refresh my memory, with an eye to making our sightseeing in Rome more meaningful?
Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before the Storm came out fairly recently. Mike ran The History of Rome podcast for a number of years (it has concluded and he’s on to a new podcast now), and his book is an expansion on what he ran through in that series. I’ve not yet read the book, but friend have and rate it highly.
https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Before-Beginning-Roman-Republic/dp/1610397215/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=storm+before+the+storm&qid=1554138871&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast also covered the end of the Republic in amazing detail (the series is called Death Throes of the Republic). The episodes are no longer downloadable for free, but you can buy them. Both these and Duncan’s original podcast episodes I highly endorse. Give the amount of time you spend biking, if you like listening audiobooks while you ride, then these would be terrific to run through.
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-throes-of-the-republic-series/
Thanks. I’ve put the Storm Before the Storm on my Kindle and will check out the Dan Carlin series, too.
Thanks. I’ve put the Storm Before the Storm on my Kindle and will check out the Dan Carlin series, too.
Response to request of suggested reading re a trip to Rome from etcarter
@thereticulator, yes,indeed.
For a short read (~20 mins):
The first three Chapters of Merrill Tenny revised New Testament Survey, IVP, Eerdmans.
The wonderful 10 (the first few episodes concentrate on Rome) , 30 min , episodes of How Then Shall We Live
by Francis Shaeffer and the book wt expended material on audible.
Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra (p. x). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
Boorstin, Daniel J.. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.(see Chapter 7 below for pertinent reasons why this would suit your holiday nicely)
Chapter 7. The Innovative God of Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine of Hippo remains one of the most versatile and challenging thinkers in Western history. The best introduction to his thought is Jaroslav Pelikan, The Mystery of Continuity: Time and History, Memory and Eternity in … Saint Augustine (1986) and The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church (1987). For biography, see Peter Brown’s readable Augustine of Hippo (1967) and Homes F. Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (2 vols., 1935). For the wider background, see: Charles N. Cochrane’s brilliant Christianity and Classical Culture (1944); Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (1967); Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (1980). Saint Augustine’s Confessions are in popular English translations by E. B. Pusey (1930) and F. J. Sheed (1943). The City of God is in the Everyman Library (2 vols., 1945–47) and in the Modern Library, trans. Marcus Dods, with an introduction by Thomas Merton. Both with a selection of theological writings are in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 18 (1952).
Graves, Robert. I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius . RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.
(add the sequel: Claudius the God for a wonderful read…et carter)
LIFE AND TIMES OF JESUS THE MESSIAH, VOLUME ONE Alfred Edersheim – 1883 Table Of Contents
1. INTRODUCTORY. THE PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL: THE ,WORLD IN THE DAYS OF CHRIST
Edersheim, Alfred. Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah . Packard Technologies. Kindle Edition.
As a lifetime historian of Jewish and Christian History , this mostly overlooked work is one of the most valuable sources of reliable, sourced and footnoted books in my library (and in the areas of the Maccabean era leading up to the life and ministry of Christ, I value its evidentiary rigor easily above Josephus, either Pliny,and Plutarch. On the Roman world (warts and all) Rabbinical teaching and source references, it is rarely exceeded by even the most modern scholarship)
I hope this is a helpful reading list,however,if you were looking for something a bit more holiday-minded, I’m sure Zagats will suffice.
Best wishes on your trip.
et carter 2019
I wonder if I had the earlier edition of this as a college text back in the late 60s. I no longer have my copy. It has been a while. A professor Karl Rutz taught the class — fascinating stuff but his presentation was such that I struggled mightily to stay awake. I sometimes still have that problem with material that is so interesting that it takes a lot of energy to digest, though now I get more sleep at the proper time than I did back then.
Thanks for that list. I was looking more for the history of Rome, and not so much theology or just Christianity in Rome. I think I have the Francis Shaeffer book and saw the film series; I went on a Shaeffer reading binge around 1978. I’ve heard of the Edersheim book and may want to read it even if it may not be quite what I’m looking for in the way of preparation for being a tourist. I’ve read Augustine’s Confessions in an old-fashioned translation back around 1979, and found it fascinating, and have re-read some of it in excerpts since then. Never really got going on The City of God. I’ve seen the Nisbet book referenced many times; I probably should read it. I’ve read a lot of Boorstin, including his three books on American history, but I’m not sure I ever got around to reading The Creators. There are some other interesting items in your list that I’ve not heard of. Thanks again.
Are we having fun yet?
The MSM’s having a meltdown. The new AG may be the solution. On the other hand, the Republicans have amply earned the title of the stupid party.
Are Democrats not melting down as well?
Is there a difference between them. j/k You know that the AG is doing well since he has the right enemies. Now the question is whether he can impose his will on the DOJ and get the investigation rolling.
The Republican Party looks better at the state and local level. I wonder why? Could it be that no party could appear other than stupid, or worse, when taking on the range of unconstitutional responsibilities in which congressional lawmakers indulge.