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Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

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Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#81

Post by Balgair »

hannasanarion wrote: post #78
dv_dt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reunification after the American Civil War? Though I suppose some might argue that we are still suffering from that divide.

But the norms of democracy were never challenged during the civil war. Nobody ever denounced the press or said that votes shouldn't count, or that the courts are illegitimate, or that the constitution was somehow wrong. It was a formal rebellion seeking independence under a different democracy.

> Nobody ever denounced the press or said that votes shouldn't count, or that the courts are illegitimate, or that the constitution was somehow wrong. It was a formal rebellion seeking independence under a different democracy.

Umm...:

Press Denunciations:

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/21/us/sherman-letters-show-c...

Voting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_New_York_state_election

Courts:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/the-first-court-packing-pl...

Denunciation of the Constitution:

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

The 'different' democracy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_(slave)

The problems of our ancestors remain just as alive today. Learning from history means to learn about the holes in ourselves.

Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#82

Post by microtherion »

hannasanarion wrote: post #75
microtherion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the centuriate assembly, senators + equites, a few thousand men among several million citizens, represented a majority of the votes (98 of the 193 tribes). This is pretty much a textbook oligarchy.

The Centuriate assembly was only used to elect three offices: consuls, praetors, and censors. The plebian assembly, where all votes are equal and senators and equites aren't allowed, elected Tribunes who had an absolute veto over all government activity, including the senate and the consuls, and controlled the treasury. This is like saying that US senators are with equal state representation, some senators representi…

> The plebian assembly, where all votes are equal

No, the voting was by tribe, with the vast majority of voters crammed into the 4 urban tribes and the wealthy were enrolled in 31 much smaller rural tribes.

> and senators and equites aren't allowed.

Sure they were, as long as they were not patrician. By the first century BC, the vast majority of senators were plebeian.

> This is like saying that US senators are with equal state representation, some senators representing hundreds of thousands and others representing tens of millions, therefore the US is an oligarchy.

The US indeed has oligarchic tendencies already. Now imagine if the constitution guaranteed that citizens with $1M+ in property had 50+% of the vote, and that your "state" was not determined primarily by residence, but anybody without substantial property was automatically registered in California, Texas, or New York...

Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#83

Post by pesmhey »

ebertx wrote: post #77

My theory is that every book written about the fall of the Roman Empire is more about the political climate of the time it was written and the political perspective of the author writing it. In the mid- to late-00s when sentiment against the Iraq was its peak, I remember seeing the claim that Rome fell because of military overreach and being in a constant state of war. On the more right-leaning side, I remember seein…

Yes, it’s quite the correct sentiment!

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-climate-change-and-disease-helped-...

Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#86

Post by pesmhey »

wisdomoftheages wrote: post #55
hannasanarion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't call them "democratic norms" or "progressives and reactionaries", sure, but that's what they were. These are descriptive terms, not proper nouns. "democratic norms" are behaviors in the public sphere that are expected under the assumption that politicians are interested in the good of everyone and that the popular will has political meaning. "progressives" are politicians who want to improve society throu…

Leaving aside the historiographical issue of how projecting modern descriptive terms onto the past fundamentally distorts our understanding of how people back then conceived of their society, I'm afraid you're laboring under some extreme misapprehensions about the nature of the late Republican government. That Republican Rome was governed by an aristocratic land-owning oligarchy for pretty much its entire existence i…

Would you agree that more often than not, most ‘revolutions’ throughout history have been members of the ruling elite wielding wealth redistribution as a political tool? I ask this seriously, and if you can point me towards some related literature I’d greatly appreciate it.

Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#87

Post by hannasanarion »

Balgair wrote: post #80
hannasanarion wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to un-break democratic norms, but there is no theoretical reason it can't be done. It'll just take a lot of work and some major changes. Here's a little game that pop historian Mike Duncan released a little while ago. See if you can figure out the political moves you have to make to pull the Roman Republic back from the brink: https://www.riddle.com/showcase/165065/narrative

Haha, that's a good one from Duncan. All you have to do it put the republic above yourself each time (also the order is citizenship > war > land reform, and watch out for loops in the decision tree)

I've only found one "loop" in the decision tree that wasn't really a loop, because no matter what "next choice" you make, the people get tired of your wishy washyness and you get cast into exile.

Re: Review of Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny

#88

Post by Zardoz84 »

hannasanarion wrote: post #26
jdpedrie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rome at the end of the Republic may have technically been republican (if oligarchic republicanism counts), but it was neither democratic nor liberal. Liberalism didn’t exist in name or form for another 1800 years. One must be extremely careful and judicious drawing straight line comparisons from Ancient Rome to today. And as usual, the correct answer when confronted by a discussion along these lines, the correct answ…

It was definitely democratic. Every office except senator was decided by majority vote with universal male suffrage. And even Senators were de-facto elected, since elevation to the Senate was automatic upon the completion of a term in an elected office. Sure, Rome began as an Oligarchic Republic, but after the secession of the plebs in 494 BC 12 years later, it was solidly Democratic. Think about it, if Rome wasn't a…

Roman elections was complex... I wouldn't call it a democratic republic. https://youtu.be/trrqslUpfdw
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