4 ms·

Sure all of those things contributed but the main problem seems to always be bad leadership. I wouldn't be surprised if they ever had people trying to convince

Sure all of those things contributed but the main problem seems to always be bad leadership. I wouldn't be surprised if they ever had people trying to convince the proletariat that all those barbarian invasions, pandemics and catastrophes were hoaxes promoted by the rich land owning Romans.

mathlover2 4y ago
Interesting, though it would be extremely hard to find records of this outside of maybe graffiti, and Roman historians if anything loved to record salacious things like this about prominent people, especially ones the individual historians themselves detested. My impression is that it was less common to outright deny reality and more common to blame at least the disasters and pandemics on those one found troublesome supposedly offending the gods.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
> problem seems to always be bad leadership The root-cause then must have been lack of democracy. Rome once had a democracy sort of right? But when the authoritarian emperors took over, you could say sayonara to "civil society". Bad leadership is caused by people's inability to hold leaders accountable. In other words by lack of democracy.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >But when the authoritarian emperors took over, you could say sayonara to "civil society". Rome had Emperors for either 400 or 1500 years, depending on what you call Rome, while the Roman Republic lasted about 400 years at most, with a tiny percentage of the population having voting rights for most of it. So blaming a lack of democracy is a huge stretch.
  - thom 4y ago
    While it's true that Rome never really came close to being a democracy, that's not to say that representation and accountability weren't relevant. The questions of who represented the interests of the plebs and the military were central to the crises at the end of the Republic (the Gracchi, the Marian reforms, Clodius, Caesar etc), and again in the late empire (all the barracks emperors).
- hither_shores 4y ago
  > Rome once had a democracy sort of right? Not really. The Roman Republic had legislative assemblies and elected magistrates, but the deck was firmly stacked in favor of the aristocracy. Votes in the Centuriate assembly, which elected all senior magistrates, were heavily weighted by wealth. Originally the highest two classes, comprising those with at least 10,000 denarii in assets, controlled an outright majority of the votes. (1 denarius is on the order of 1 day's income for an unskilled laborer). The weighting was somewhat reduced in the mid 3rd century, but Sulla's reforms around 80 BC reverted the change, and additionally stripped the more democratic plebeian and tribal assemblies of most of their powers. The senate (ostensibly an advisory body, but by the middle republic actually a legislature) was never elected. During the early republic, senators were appointed by the consuls. Later, they were appointed either by the censors, or automatically upon election to a senior magistracy. In either case, appointment to the senate was for life.
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for the info
thom 4y ago
But why did Rome have a system that yielded bad leaders? Part of it is just the nature of autocracy, part is a lack of effective succession planning in the Empire, part is a return in the late empire to powerful generals with effectively private armies, part is a similar return to what amounted to proscription so entire generations of potential leaders were killed after each civil war. I don’t think you can point at one proximate cause over any others without asking why Rome was vulnerable to that thing particularly.

mathlover2 4y ago

Interesting, though it would be extremely hard to find records of this outside of maybe graffiti, and Roman historians if anything loved to record salacious things like this about prominent people, especially ones the individual historians themselves detested. My impression is that it was less common to outright deny reality and more common to blame at least the disasters and pandemics on those one found troublesome supposedly offending the gods.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

> problem seems to always be bad leadership The root-cause then must have been lack of democracy. Rome once had a democracy sort of right? But when the authoritarian emperors took over, you could say sayonara to "civil society". Bad leadership is caused by people's inability to hold leaders accountable. In other words by lack of democracy.

boomboomsubban 4y ago
>But when the authoritarian emperors took over, you could say sayonara to "civil society". Rome had Emperors for either 400 or 1500 years, depending on what you call Rome, while the Roman Republic lasted about 400 years at most, with a tiny percentage of the population having voting rights for most of it. So blaming a lack of democracy is a huge stretch.
- thom 4y ago
  While it's true that Rome never really came close to being a democracy, that's not to say that representation and accountability weren't relevant. The questions of who represented the interests of the plebs and the military were central to the crises at the end of the Republic (the Gracchi, the Marian reforms, Clodius, Caesar etc), and again in the late empire (all the barracks emperors).
hither_shores 4y ago
> Rome once had a democracy sort of right? Not really. The Roman Republic had legislative assemblies and elected magistrates, but the deck was firmly stacked in favor of the aristocracy. Votes in the Centuriate assembly, which elected all senior magistrates, were heavily weighted by wealth. Originally the highest two classes, comprising those with at least 10,000 denarii in assets, controlled an outright majority of the votes. (1 denarius is on the order of 1 day's income for an unskilled laborer). The weighting was somewhat reduced in the mid 3rd century, but Sulla's reforms around 80 BC reverted the change, and additionally stripped the more democratic plebeian and tribal assemblies of most of their powers. The senate (ostensibly an advisory body, but by the middle republic actually a legislature) was never elected. During the early republic, senators were appointed by the consuls. Later, they were appointed either by the censors, or automatically upon election to a senior magistracy. In either case, appointment to the senate was for life.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for the info

thom 4y ago

But why did Rome have a system that yielded bad leaders? Part of it is just the nature of autocracy, part is a lack of effective succession planning in the Empire, part is a return in the late empire to powerful generals with effectively private armies, part is a similar return to what amounted to proscription so entire generations of potential leaders were killed after each civil war. I don’t think you can point at one proximate cause over any others without asking why Rome was vulnerable to that thing particularly.