7 ms·

This is wild. I don't know about "great man" theory in general, but that does sound extraordinary.

by jdwyah 3y ago

bogtog 3y ago
The Roman Republic was steadily dying up to Caesar's reign. He really was just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of its death, which was surely inevitable in the coming decades. However, without Caeser, the conquest of Gual may have been pushed back drastically?
- michaelt 3y ago
  Didn't Caesar die in 44 BC, while the Roman empire peaked in size in around 98 AD? i.e. it continued growing for 140 years after his death?
  - usrusr 3y ago
    GP was talking specifically about the republic, not about the empire that came after.
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    The Republic ≠ The Empire
    - achenet 3y ago
      <insert Star Wars joke here>
  - throw_pm23 3y ago
    I think they meant that the "Republic" as a form of organization was dying, end being replaced by the "Empire", a different form of organization which flourished afterwards.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vivekd 3y ago
    I think he means the Republic (Roman democracy). The non democratic Roman Empire would continue to on for some time after that
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > democratic Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch though (both according to modern and ancient definitions). It was a weird (from a modern perspective) form of a flawed direct democracy (the people's assembly had absolute power in theory but passing any laws was very difficult due to a dozen or so public officials being able to effectively/directly veto any legislation). Mixed with an unambiguously oligarchical executive branch (all the top public official who controlled the army and the treasury were elected by a tiny proportion of the population). It certainly wasn't democratic in the same sense as Athens and some other Greek cities were (and afterall Greek authors considered it to be a mixed system).
  - iav 3y ago
    OP was referring to the Roman Republic, the system of government. The Roman Empire didn't begin until 27 BC, shortly after Caesar.
- lettergram 3y ago
  That conquest was brutal btw, estimates are that Rome killed 1.5m combatants and 1m+ civilians enslaved / executed. There’s also that part where they just cut off the hands of any fighting age males they came across for a while. Really was closer to a genocide.
  - bogtog 3y ago
    I recently discovered that Dan Carlin has a series on this topic, "Hardcore History 60 - The Celtic Holocaust". I just listened through, and it's pretty solid. Based on the number of deaths and attitude, I think "genocide" is pretty fine, but he makes it clear that the Gauls actually had a fighting chance in their fights. In some timelines, the Romans get sent home with a bloody nose and no intention to return for a while.
  - gentleman11 3y ago
    A recent term for it is the Celtic genocide
    - decentomyous 3y ago
      As we've seen, genocide has become a recent term for almost any kind of warfare. It used to have a much more narrowly defined usage that was accordingly more meaningful. Caesar's goal in Gaul was certainly not the extermination of its people or its culture. He wanted to pacify Gaul and Germany, for his own glory, but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons. And the Romans, as a rule, were famously tolerant of other people's national pride, customs, and religions. And of course, the Gaul and German tribes were at least as brutal to each other as Caesar was to them. The entire region was filled with constantly warring tribes that would often commit something much closer to actual genocide. Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow.
      - qwytw 3y ago
        > He wanted to pacify I'm not sure pacify is the right word. > but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons Not really. By that point the Celts weren't as much of a threat as they were 50-100+ years ago. If his goals were primarily 'pacification' and 'self-defense' a much more limited and cheaper campaign would've been more than sufficient. In any case the Roman senate didn't really consider the war to be necessary in that sense. > Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. > commit something much closer to actual genocide That's a massive a stretch. Even the Romans themselves understood that e.g. the "They Make a Desert and Call it Peace" quote Tacitus put into into the mouth leaders of one of the tribes subjugated by the Romans. The Roman empire was almost entirely built on slave labor and exhortation of the territories they subjugated. It might have turned into something else in the later periods (by the 1st and 1nd centuries AD). But the Romans certainly did not really improve the lives of the people the conquered during the Republican period. > The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow. Well however you put it it was still an extremely violate imperialist war of conquest. Of course yes, technically it wasn't a genocide in the direct sense subjugating, enslaving and stealing their stuff rather than extermination were their primary goals.
- 1980phipsi 3y ago
  Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    The US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess (as is whether they should survive).
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the Industrial Revolution to make the “war a lot more destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare) while at the same time massively raising returns to capital investment in things like infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by force” [1]. Instead, “states no longer ask if they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if they’d spend less managing the disaster that a local failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the problem via aid or controlling refugee flows.” To the extent we engage in foreign wars, it’s in that failed-state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.) > lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it’s surprisingly balanced—the U.S. growing at 3% and China at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative economies. And since Xi, China’s relative economic growth has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c51a2 https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c5...
- rand1239 3y ago
  So you are saying, Roman empire declining didn't require any particular man but reviving it did require one??
  - jychang 3y ago
    That’s not what he said. He said the Roman Republic declining, not the Roman Empire. You’re off by 500 years or so.
User23 3y ago
I find the denialism around the great man theory somewhat baffling. Does anyone really believe, just for one example, that Apple computer would be what it is today without Steve Jobs?
- cykros 3y ago
  No, only someone so narcissistic and divorced from reality could have come up with the Fisher-Price computers they make.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  No, but I bet we would still have personal computers and smart phones without Steve Jobs. That's the argument against the "great man" idea. Sure, specific events would not have happened without that person, but the overall state of the world would not be drastically different.
  - mongol 3y ago
    I think it can depend a lot. Political figures can have long lasting impact. Consider Jesus. Or Napoleon, without him Europe may have looked entirely different today. But for general scientific progress I agree. Scientific breakthroughs are bound to happen if enough people work on them.
    - mFixman 3y ago
      The introduction of the potato and the invention of the steam engine changed Europe several orders of magnitude more than Napoleon or any other great man.
      - mongol 3y ago
        Yes sure, but that is not a counter argument. If James Watt et al did not invent the steam engine, someone else would
        3y ago
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Great man theory describes a real phenomena, it just gets the causality backwards. With lots of people doing lots of things, some are bound to do exceptional things. People who believe they need strong leaders gravitate towards the noteworthy ones, making it more likely that someone who has done exceptional things end up with more power. The more power someone has the more noteworthy acts they are likely to engage in. Then let history forget all but the most noteworthy details, and you have a history defined by great men.

This is wild. I don't know about "great man" theory in general, but that does sound extraordinary.

by jdwyah 3y ago

This is wild. I don't know about "great man" theory in general, but that does sound extraordinary.

The Roman Republic was steadily dying up to Caesar's reign. He really was just the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of its death, which was surely inevitable in the coming decades. However, without Caeser, the conquest of Gual may have been pushed back drastically?

michaelt 3y ago
Didn't Caesar die in 44 BC, while the Roman empire peaked in size in around 98 AD? i.e. it continued growing for 140 years after his death?
- usrusr 3y ago
  GP was talking specifically about the republic, not about the empire that came after.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  The Republic ≠ The Empire
  - achenet 3y ago
    <insert Star Wars joke here>
- throw_pm23 3y ago
  I think they meant that the "Republic" as a form of organization was dying, end being replaced by the "Empire", a different form of organization which flourished afterwards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vivekd 3y ago
  I think he means the Republic (Roman democracy). The non democratic Roman Empire would continue to on for some time after that
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > democratic Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch though (both according to modern and ancient definitions). It was a weird (from a modern perspective) form of a flawed direct democracy (the people's assembly had absolute power in theory but passing any laws was very difficult due to a dozen or so public officials being able to effectively/directly veto any legislation). Mixed with an unambiguously oligarchical executive branch (all the top public official who controlled the army and the treasury were elected by a tiny proportion of the population). It certainly wasn't democratic in the same sense as Athens and some other Greek cities were (and afterall Greek authors considered it to be a mixed system).
- iav 3y ago
  OP was referring to the Roman Republic, the system of government. The Roman Empire didn't begin until 27 BC, shortly after Caesar.
lettergram 3y ago
That conquest was brutal btw, estimates are that Rome killed 1.5m combatants and 1m+ civilians enslaved / executed. There’s also that part where they just cut off the hands of any fighting age males they came across for a while. Really was closer to a genocide.
- bogtog 3y ago
  I recently discovered that Dan Carlin has a series on this topic, "Hardcore History 60 - The Celtic Holocaust". I just listened through, and it's pretty solid. Based on the number of deaths and attitude, I think "genocide" is pretty fine, but he makes it clear that the Gauls actually had a fighting chance in their fights. In some timelines, the Romans get sent home with a bloody nose and no intention to return for a while.
- gentleman11 3y ago
  A recent term for it is the Celtic genocide
  - decentomyous 3y ago
    As we've seen, genocide has become a recent term for almost any kind of warfare. It used to have a much more narrowly defined usage that was accordingly more meaningful. Caesar's goal in Gaul was certainly not the extermination of its people or its culture. He wanted to pacify Gaul and Germany, for his own glory, but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons. And the Romans, as a rule, were famously tolerant of other people's national pride, customs, and religions. And of course, the Gaul and German tribes were at least as brutal to each other as Caesar was to them. The entire region was filled with constantly warring tribes that would often commit something much closer to actual genocide. Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      > He wanted to pacify I'm not sure pacify is the right word. > but also for very legitimate self-defense reasons Not really. By that point the Celts weren't as much of a threat as they were 50-100+ years ago. If his goals were primarily 'pacification' and 'self-defense' a much more limited and cheaper campaign would've been more than sufficient. In any case the Roman senate didn't really consider the war to be necessary in that sense. > Caesar, and the later Romans, did a lot to reduce this internecine warfare. > commit something much closer to actual genocide That's a massive a stretch. Even the Romans themselves understood that e.g. the "They Make a Desert and Call it Peace" quote Tacitus put into into the mouth leaders of one of the tribes subjugated by the Romans. The Roman empire was almost entirely built on slave labor and exhortation of the territories they subjugated. It might have turned into something else in the later periods (by the 1st and 1nd centuries AD). But the Romans certainly did not really improve the lives of the people the conquered during the Republican period. > The reality of these kinds of events is a lot more nuanced than a simple label like "genocide" will allow. Well however you put it it was still an extremely violate imperialist war of conquest. Of course yes, technically it wasn't a genocide in the direct sense subjugating, enslaving and stealing their stuff rather than extermination were their primary goals.
1980phipsi 3y ago
Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.
- roenxi 3y ago
  The US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess (as is whether they should survive).
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the Industrial Revolution to make the “war a lot more destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare) while at the same time massively raising returns to capital investment in things like infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by force” [1]. Instead, “states no longer ask if they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if they’d spend less managing the disaster that a local failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the problem via aid or controlling refugee flows.” To the extent we engage in foreign wars, it’s in that failed-state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.) > lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it’s surprisingly balanced—the U.S. growing at 3% and China at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative economies. And since Xi, China’s relative economic growth has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c51a2 https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c5...
rand1239 3y ago
So you are saying, Roman empire declining didn't require any particular man but reviving it did require one??
- jychang 3y ago
  That’s not what he said. He said the Roman Republic declining, not the Roman Empire. You’re off by 500 years or so.

User23 3y ago

I find the denialism around the great man theory somewhat baffling. Does anyone really believe, just for one example, that Apple computer would be what it is today without Steve Jobs?

cykros 3y ago
No, only someone so narcissistic and divorced from reality could have come up with the Fisher-Price computers they make.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
No, but I bet we would still have personal computers and smart phones without Steve Jobs. That's the argument against the "great man" idea. Sure, specific events would not have happened without that person, but the overall state of the world would not be drastically different.
- mongol 3y ago
  I think it can depend a lot. Political figures can have long lasting impact. Consider Jesus. Or Napoleon, without him Europe may have looked entirely different today. But for general scientific progress I agree. Scientific breakthroughs are bound to happen if enough people work on them.
  - mFixman 3y ago
    The introduction of the potato and the invention of the steam engine changed Europe several orders of magnitude more than Napoleon or any other great man.
    - mongol 3y ago
      Yes sure, but that is not a counter argument. If James Watt et al did not invent the steam engine, someone else would
      - 3y ago

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

Great man theory describes a real phenomena, it just gets the causality backwards. With lots of people doing lots of things, some are bound to do exceptional things. People who believe they need strong leaders gravitate towards the noteworthy ones, making it more likely that someone who has done exceptional things end up with more power. The more power someone has the more noteworthy acts they are likely to engage in. Then let history forget all but the most noteworthy details, and you have a history defined by great men.