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The sad story of the Gracchi brothers is often considered a turning point in the republic because it "normalized" violence as a political tool. What followed we

The sad story of the Gracchi brothers is often considered a turning point in the republic because it "normalized" violence as a political tool. What followed were proscriptions, the Catilinarian conspiracy, civil wars. I don't think we're there yet, but the last several years have made me a little more nervous. Are we close to groups of people resorting to political assassinations and if so, will it become normalized? I actually think more about what Donald Kagan said about tyrannies (a tyrant is just someone who seizes power extra-constitutionally): they generally don't last more than three generations. That led me to compare with democracies, and I can't think of many much older than a couple centuries (though I'm claiming no erudition here).

namaria 4y ago
I'm wary of 'turning points' analysis in history. Roman society was exceedingly violent by modern standards. For a long while that violence could be channeled towards conquest. The power military leaders derived from this process and the diminishing returns after most prosperous neighboring polities had been absorbed contributed to erode the internal social order of the Republic. But those are centuries long processes, and it didn't 'turn' on this or that remarkable event we have records of. We shouldn't prognosticate American politics based on the History of Ancient Rome, that is folly. One thing is to observe parallels and patterns in behavior. But entirely different systems and contexts cannot be used to analyze one another by cherry picking.
- nescioquid 4y ago
  My main purpose was to point out that even with a facile comparison, we are missing a very salient element (normalization of violence as a political tool). For the rest, I really should have just said "signal event". I wasn't suggesting anything along the lines of "but for that event things would have gone the other way". Here, I merely meant a threshold was passed. Personally, I'm more interested in cultural comparisons, mainly because they were so different from us in many ways. And, if I may add to your concern about cherry-picking, we should also have a great deal of humility about how much we really know. What's the metaphor? The ancient world is Versailles, and everything we know about it is what we can see through the keyhole on the front door.

namaria 4y ago

I'm wary of 'turning points' analysis in history. Roman society was exceedingly violent by modern standards. For a long while that violence could be channeled towards conquest. The power military leaders derived from this process and the diminishing returns after most prosperous neighboring polities had been absorbed contributed to erode the internal social order of the Republic. But those are centuries long processes, and it didn't 'turn' on this or that remarkable event we have records of. We shouldn't prognosticate American politics based on the History of Ancient Rome, that is folly. One thing is to observe parallels and patterns in behavior. But entirely different systems and contexts cannot be used to analyze one another by cherry picking.

nescioquid 4y ago
My main purpose was to point out that even with a facile comparison, we are missing a very salient element (normalization of violence as a political tool). For the rest, I really should have just said "signal event". I wasn't suggesting anything along the lines of "but for that event things would have gone the other way". Here, I merely meant a threshold was passed. Personally, I'm more interested in cultural comparisons, mainly because they were so different from us in many ways. And, if I may add to your concern about cherry-picking, we should also have a great deal of humility about how much we really know. What's the metaphor? The ancient world is Versailles, and everything we know about it is what we can see through the keyhole on the front door.