TheStormBeforeTheStorm

The Storm Before the Storm (Mike Duncan)

  • Very entertaining!
  • No period in history has been more thoroughly studied than the fall of the Roman Republic. Suprisingly, there has been much less written about how the Roman Republic came to the brink of disaster in the first place.
  • If the US is anywhere on the Roman timeline, it must be somewhere between the great wars of conquest and the rise of the Ceasars.
  • The final victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars led to rising economic inequality, dislocation of tradional ways of life, increasing political polarization, the breakdown of unspoken rules of political conduct, the privatization of the military, rampant corruption, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, battles over access to citizenshop and voting rights, ongoing military quagmires, the introduction of violence as a political tool, and a set of elites so obsessed with their own privileges that they refused to reform the system in time to save it.
  • By simultaneously destroying Cathage and Corinth in 146 the Roman Republic took a final decisive step toward its imperial destiny. This was also the beginning of the end for the Roman Republic.
  • The Plebeian Assembly would elect tribunes who acted as gurardians against patrician abuse. By sacred oath the tribunes where declared sacrosanct- within the city limits of Rome not even a consul could lay a hand on them. They became sentinels against the tyranny of the senatorial aristocracy.
  • The client-patron bonds meant Roman politics was more a clash of rival clans than a class war.
  • What truly bound all Romans together were unspoken rules of social and political conduct. The Romans never had a written constitution or extensive body of written law – they needed neither. When the Republic began to break down in the 2nd century it was not the letter of the Roman law that eroded, but the respect for the mutually accepted bonds of mos maiorum ("the way of the elders")
  • Rome was nearly defeated in 218 when the great Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy.
  • Thought the Senate eschewed direct rule over the "civilized" Carthaginians and Greeks, they annexed "uncivilized" Spain, attacted by the lucrative silver mines.
  • B/c of the Roman aversion to Kings, the Republic did not have a single executive and instead elected a pair of consuls who would share supreme military, political, and religious authority. The each had the ability the veto the other, and the terms where just a single year. For nearly 500 years Roman dictators never failed to lay down their power.
  • By the end of the Punic wars the consuls, tribunes, and Assemblies no longer acted as a check on the Senate, but as an extension of it.
  • In 152 , Cato the Elder was appalled at how wealthy Carthage had become since the end of the Punic Wars. He advocated immediate war to prevent the Carthaginians from threatening Rome. In every speach he delivered – regaurdless of topic – he concluded by "furthermore Carthage must be destroyed"
  • Thieves of private property pass their lives in chains; thieves of public property in riches and luxury.
  • Slaves => the demand for labor plummeted just as poor Roman familes were being pushed off their land. (Is AI functioning the new slaves ?)
  • The main cause of the crisis in 133 was a dangerous game of mutual brinkmanshop. Tiberius bypassed the Senate, so Octavius vetoed the bill, so Tiberius shut down all public bussiness. When Octavius remined intractable, Tiberius deposed him from office, so the Senate denied the land commission the money to operate, so Tiberius sized the bequeathe from Pergamum, adn then ran for reelection. All of this culminated with Nasica leading an armed mod to kill 300 people. In just a few short months, a simple land redistribution bill had escalated to a massacre.
  • The definitive triumph of naked force was a lesson no one could unlearn.
  • Aemilianus created a template for future generations of Romans to emulate. He embraced Greek philosophy and was comfortable in luxurious surroundings. He figured out how to use the Assembly to bypass inconvenient hurdles, the peoples unified voice could override everything. Marius, Sulla, Caesar all followed Aemilianus's basic principles of operations: raise a personal army and then use the Assembly to legislate your opponents into oblivion.
  • Marius proved time and again he was a man to be counted on. He had neither wealth nor eloquence, but the very intensity of assurance, his plain and simple way of living, won him a certain popularity among his fellow citizens.
  • To fill his legions Marius to a fateful step in the long history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic – he requested exemption from the property qualification. To anyone who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, he has no regard for his own property and considers anything honorable for which he recieves pay. What makes this moment so important is that it marked a permanant transition from temporary armies conscripted form among the free citizens to professional armies – whose loyalties would be to their generals rather than to the Senate and the People of Rome.
  • Sulla was attached to the command of Marius. The contrast between the two men was striking.
  • Sulla: "We already have more than enough subjects, while neither we nor anyone else ever had friends enough"
  • Concluding that endless baggage trains that followed any Roman army hindered the mobility, Marius decreed that his men would now carry their own gear: Marius's Mules.
  • Marius used populare rhetoric to fuel his rise, he also burned to be accepted by the nobility. Saturninus, on the other hand, was a bomb-thrower. In many popular revolutions, the men who unlook the door are not always the same men who come bursting through.
  • As excellent a general he was, he was an evil influence in time of peace, a man of unbounded ambition, insatiable without self-control, and always an element of unrest. Marius craving for more glory lead to his ruin.
  • Marius was never considered as a brilliant general in the mold of Alexander, Hannibal, or Scipio Africanus, but he was so careful in his preparations and so steady in executing his plans that he won wars no one else could win.
  • Mithridates VI was not just Mithridates VI - he was Mithridates the Great.
  • Mithridates massacre of Italians was an act of calculated genocide to bind the eastern cities against Rome. Each was now individually complicit in the murder of Romans. It was now either fight and win with Mithridates or face the vengeance of Rome alone.
  • Marius died just seventeen days into his seventh consulship in one of the all-time anti-climatic deaths in history. As much as he saved the state as a soldier, he damaged it as a citizen.
  • Cinna's regime represented the triumph of the Italians in the Social War.
  • "Cease quoting laws to us that have swords"
  • It is the Dictatorship of Sulla, not the Republic of Sulla, that is his lasting legacy.
  • The solution to the problem of the small farmer in Italy was only solved when they were all dead.

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