Was Rome a Republican Utopia?

[Stinky The Clown]

The History Channel's been doing this week long series on Rome.

A few snippets that sorta make ya wonder ......

They conquered everything around them ......

They were the world's first (and at the time, only) superpower ......

They started as a democracy ... became a republic .... and then a dictatorship ....... Emperor For Life was the actual title of the head of state. .......

3/5 of the popualtion were slaves .........

The favored entertainment was bloodsport ...... death in public .....

The upper classes lived conspicuously better than the lower classes ......

Wealth, while of some benefit to the lower classes, was hugely concentrated in the top 1% (or less) of society ........

Women had no rights ........

Minorities weer enslaved ... as were the lowest of the lower classes .......

...... and so on .....

Makes ya wonder, huh?

[flakey_foont]

1. Rome was never a democracy

had a king first, then was a republic, then an Empire...

but, yes, there are many parallels between Rome and the World According to GWB

[Teaser]

2. Emperor simply means

Commander. Rome had a bad experience with kings early on, and wanted to maintain the veneer of a Republic. So they appointed Caesar (then Augustus Caesar) Imperator (or Commander) during some times of domestic upheaval...and just let them keep the title.

Interestingly enough Caesar simply means "cutter" and has to do with the fact that Julius Caesar was born "cut out" of his mother (caesarian section, in his honour). Or so the legend goes.

[JohnLocke]

17. Wrong.

It orginally means "hairy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_%28title%29

[ZombieNixon]

3. Random orgies of hot man-on-woman-on-man polyamory...

hardly a tenet of Republicanism, no?

But, you're right, in many ways, Bushland is the new Rome.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

14. Hey don't forget man on man!

[DanCa]

4. Didn't the romans also twist the names of the Greek Gods into thier own

Zeus into Jupiter?Hera into Juno? Aphrodite into Venus? Hermes into Mercury? The republicans are doing that with christianity today.

[Teaser]

6. To be fair...

the mapping is clear in some case:
Jupiter = Deus Pater (literally "God Father")
Zeus is likely cognate with this (both related to the sanskrit "Dyaus Pitar").

The lesser gods are not so well mapped onto the Greek Deities.

[DanCa]

12. interesting is thier a roman only text you can recommend (nt)

[Teaser]

13. You want it in Latin?

Is that what you mean?

Or are you more interested in the comparative mythology? I can help you with either.

[DanCa]

16. Lol no I meant a book that covers roman mythology exclusively.

[Teaser]

20. I can get you that.

I'll email you some titles this weekend.

One thing I can recommend that is *priceless* is "A Pagan History of Europe" by Nigel Pennick. The chapter on Roman mythology chronicles how Roman Myth was transformed from a vague "spiritism" to a carbon copy of greek mythology (but really it was still quite different. The deities people actually gave a damn about, the Lares and Penates, had no Greek equivalent)

[tom_paine]

5. Unquestionably true...which is why the Busheviks are moving so quickly

to recreate, in a Kinder and Gentler (and Focus-Group tested) way.

Of course, we probably won't see the level of bloddsport and most of the other details will be different enough to provide "plausible deniability".

But we are an Empire, pure and simple. We became so on 12-12-2000, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, as it were.

And on that day, Amerika (which used to be called America back when it was free) began it's long slow (or maybe fast, who knows?) fall.

[Greeby]

7. Christians got sent to the lions back then

*gazes in Pat Robertson's direction* :evilgrin:

[CTyankee]

8. A better analogy is Greece

Athens DID have a democracy, unlike Rome. It was the world's first democracy, flawed tho it was (no women or slaves had a public role or vote in the Athenian Assembly).

Athens lost both its empire and its democracy in the 5th century BCC, which was the golden age for Greece in terms of literature and philosophy. It was in a war with Sparta, a very un-democratic state, called the Peloponnesian War. This war is chronicled unsparingly by Thucydides in "The History of the Peloponnesian War." He recounts the slow decline of Athens' democracy from the time of the great Athenian leader Pericles to its ultimate failure after Pericles' untimely death due to plague. One part you should read is Pericles Funeral Oration, which you find on Google.

The parallels with our empire and democracy are startling. Most glaring is Athens' use of offensive war, one of the most undemocratic means that could be used, in order to spread democracy to other areas. I found some great essays about these parallels by googling.

This is a fascinating subject. Good Luck!

[AX10]

9. Rome was never free.

Greece once was.

[Teaser]

10. What do you mean by free?

Rome was a functioning Republic for a long time. Now many of the plebeians could not participate in government for a long time, but eventually they received the office of "tribune", capable of vetoing any legislation that may not have been in the plebeians' interests.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. An interesting article in The Guardian touches lightly on Greek use of war

The article is occasioned by an exhibition of Persian artifacts at the British Museum.

An exceptional empire

The US could learn from the Achaemenid dynasty's policy of tolerance

...

For the Persians the Greek city-states were just pinpricks, occasional irritants on their north-western frontier. But the histories of Herodotus and the speeches of Athenian politicians turned the fifth-century BC conflict into what it really was for the Greeks: a question of life and death, of brave democracy against imperial cruelty, of civilisation against barbarism.

But when it spread beyond the original Hellenic patch, Greek-style democracy - like that of the Americans today - was based on imposed regimes and intolerance of dissent. At the heart of the Persian empire was the theory of a hierarchical power centred on the majesty of the king. But that power was diffused through a reality of tolerance, both political and religious, of the regional centres as governed by the satraps. The central government knew it had to be laissez-faire to survive. Which is why, for example, there was no attempt at linguistic conformity. Elamite was the language of the Persian centre, but in the west Aramaic was the tool of communication. Egypt was ruled through its own language and the satraps used Greek to communicate with the Greek cities.
...
The cylinder that records the details of Cyrus's tolerance may not glitter in its case, but is still this exhibition's most important object. Yet more fabricated history claims it as a proto-UN charter of human rights. But the truth is poignant enough to stand on its own: a policy that encouraged regime variety was native to the Middle East and rebukes all subsequent forms of overlordship in that playpen of the great powers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1566914,00.html

[Cleita]

11. It was for the aristocratic Patricians, who owned everything and.

lived in luxury while pretending to be stoics. But even they had to worry if they crossed the wrong Patrician in power. It could mean execution and torture and death for their family, so they played a watch your back game with a lot of politicking involved.

If they lost the political chess game, they often preferred to fall on their swords before they were tortured and humiliated before execution. Hence this is why Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide when they lost their power struggle with Octavian.

[Pepperbelly]

15. They were ... harsh.

The blood sport.

And in one of the programs I saw, they told of Nero who actually didn't feed that many Christians to the lions, nonetheless perpetrated an atrocity that offended even Romans' blood-sport sensibilities. He took some Christians, lashed them to post and burned them for illumination during outdoor debaucheries.

[roguevalley]

18. they were an aristocratic dictatorship. people got patronage from

the patrons and the patrons got their votes in elections. Worse than now but close.

[toddaa]

19. Comparing GW to JC

Julius Caesar was a military and political genius. GW, on the other hand, is a moron. End of comparison.

[ComerPerro]

22. Wait 25 years

I assure you, Bush will go down in recorded history as a genius and a great leader.

Not that its true. Its just that the Republicans will be able to write history.