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I paint Rome as if it was politically stable, but it was always very far from it. People have been killing each other throughout the republic, and the mere esta
by golergka 3y ago
I paint Rome as if it was politically stable, but it was always very far from it. People have been killing each other throughout the republic, and the mere establishment of empire was exactly a blatant disregard for the norms — they essentially got the KING, the one thing that the republic was built to prevent, even if he was called something else. Even two centuries of "Pax romana" were filled with constant bloody struggle for power between nobles, only five good emperors giving some semblance of stability. And after that, crisis of the third century and switch from principate to dominate was even more severe change in these unwritten rules.
US, on the other hand, now has 158 years without internal military conflict, so it's doing extremely, unfathomably well by roman standards.
- asdff 3y agoNow imagine if Ft. Sumter happened today. It would be over in a flash but the other way: positions firing onto the fort would be lit up in minutes by ordinance coming out of orbit.
- Kamq 3y agoMy understanding is that political violence was really only an issue that crept up after the killing of Tiberius Gracchus, so you're really only looking at the last century or so of the roman republic.
- thom 3y agoThis isn't really true, given the Conflict of the Orders etc. Even in the Gracchi's case, they were essentially trying to pass land reforms, and Rome had a history of responding to that with violence since at least 486BC. Nobody in Rome's history had a particularly good solution to the central problem that they wanted a massive and expensive army, but didn't want it dominating politics.
- Kamq 3y agoI assume you're referring to Vicellinus. There's a big difference here, that he was given a trial and executed within the bounds of the system, as corrupt as that system may have been. The extra-legal violence with Gracchus was quite new, and much more likely to spiral out of control.
- thom 3y agoScipio Nascia wasn’t punished for Tiberius’ murder. Spurius Maelius didn’t get a trial but people celebrate Cincinnatus as a hero. Seems to me that the same undercurrents were always there, they never got resolved, and sure, eventually things blew up. But they would have done so without the Gracchi. I don’t know what the right solution was - obviously agrarian reform led to increased tensions with the socii who were experiencing the same disenfranchisement. But what we ultimately got were the Marian reforms, and that’s what really caused violence to dominate politics for the rest of Rome’s history.
- Kamq 3y ago> But they would have done so without the Gracchi. I agree. I don't think the Gracchi brothers were essential to what happened. But they were in the middle of it when it did. Once it did, it basically guaranteed the later split into Optimates and Populares, and the rise of Sulla/Caesar
- qwytw 3y agoWe don't know much about the Conflict of the Orders and whether it even happened. e.g. we have records of people from plebeian families holding the consulship and other important offices before they were supposedly allowed to (of course it was no inconceivable that they might have been barred from it later as Patricians were trying to monopolize power which incited the conflict). Also the first historian to write about Rome and whose history because just a couple of decades after the last plebeian secession doesen't even mention it.
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoAh interesting, I assumed that Roman empire had to have been stable in some ways to last so long. I certainly wouldn't bet on US remaining a single country for even another century, although there are also less scary aftermaths scenarios like states increasingly ignoring federal government and running their own internal affairs, but still retaining common defense and free or easy travel and trade. Something close to Poland vs Netherlands in European Union.