Plutocratization, Deindustrialization, Demilitarization: From Rome to US.

The proximal cause of the fall of the Roman state was military: in August 379, by complete surprise, a rogue army of Goth who had been admitted as refugees inside the empire, destroyed the Oriental Roman field army. The fault was emperor Valens’ vainglory: he rejected the advice of the Frankish chief of staff of the Occidental field army to wait for it, it was only a couple of days away. 27 years later, on Christmass day, German nations galloped through the frozen Rhine and a curtain of surprised Franks… In a matter of months, Western Roman plutocracy would lose much of its tax base. 

Now the Roman imperial state in the Fourth Century had little in common with the “Restituted Republic” of Augustus… Which itself was a parody of the Roman Republic that existed when Caesar was Consul in 59 BCE (Caesar passed his land redistribution law, by going directly to the National Assembly and its tribunes, ignoring the Senate… Augustus would terminate the Tribunate, hence the Assembly… At that point the tyrannical worm was in the Roman fruit…) 

Ancient Rome lived through, and died from, the same process of deindustrialization and de-energizing as part of plutocratization that the West has been experiencing today. That’s the basic cause of the Fall of Rome. The decay of the Republic started immediately after the Second Punic war. One difficulty was that the Republic had become imperial, but it had no fast communication means…that was solvable: in 1791, the Frenchman Claude Chappe developed the optical telegraph, a succession of towers with mechanical arms, and a message would go at 1380 kmh (supersonic). France had a network of 556 stations stretching a total distance of 4,800 kilometers (3,000 mi). Le système Chappe was used for military and national communications until the 1850s.. Now of course, the French had telescopes… But Rome had exquisite glass making and could have developed glasses and then telescopes. The European Middle Ages developed glasses because the precision work of older artisans was appreciated.. 

And actually the Ancient Greek had developed a very complex optical-hydraulic optical telegraph which depended upon torches…. It’s shown on Trajan’s column…

The truth is, the ravenous, rapacious elite had no interest in saving the Republic, so blocked the development of any science and tech which would have enabled it to do so. 

How did we get there? 

The morally correct elite, infused with the old Roman Republican traditions had been killed in battle, fighting Carthage and its allies. Just at the battle of Cannae, Among the Roman dead were 28 of 40 tribunes, up to 80 Romans of Senatorial or high magistrate rank, and at least 200 knights (Romans of equestrian rank). It was estimated that 20 percent of Roman fighting men between the ages of 18 and 50 died at Cannae… And Cannae was just one of three tremendous defeats…

… While the greedy landlords of fortified Roman cities thrived and small peasants’ farms got ravaged….

Being a Republic, Rome could draft armies, whereas Carthage, at the time much more of an oligarchic plutocracy, depended upon mercenaries. This, plus the genius of Scipio Africanus, enabled Scipio to land in Africa and defeat Hannibal there… 

HOWEVER, after that hard won victory, 17 years of total war, small farms got bought by the exploiters of war, the rich and giant slave driven latifundia, technically illegal, covered the land. (Interestingly this did not happen in Gaul, which kept its small farms; so Gaul ultimately didn’t collapse demographically or economically… differently from Italy; that made Gaul the natural new power center, as became clear in the 6th century…)

The fundamental reason for this socio-economic devastation of the core of Rome is that plutocrats want to evade the laws of the republic, and make deals with distant dictators which they enable in turn. Thus the plebs are rendered powerless, and in turn made unable to resist the elite of rapacious exploiters.

The exact same mechanism of emptying the core is at work today. It’s crucially helped by an ideology of “free trade”… which only Europe respects, thus explaining that the relative socio-economic collapse is greatest there... 

When the “Optimates” (the “Best”) tried to take power in Rome they disingenuously pretended that their opponents from the “Populares”, the “Populists” wanted to make themselves “kings”. The epithet was hurled at Gracchi, Marius and his nephew Caesar… Nowadays, it is hinted that Trump wants to become a king… But, more directly, “Populist” itself has become an insult… Whereas the assassins of Caesar disingenuously claimed that they acted in the name of the People, something they found the same day, and thereafter, to be completely false… In the present time, “People” has become an insult outright… 

After a very timid start under Obama helping out SpaceX and Tesla (for reasons of sheer greed as politicians invested in these…), reindustrialization got in high gear under Trump… Biden then extended Trump’s work.In Europe, France, which has been most affected by deindustrialization, talks the loudest about reindustrializing… But the road will be harder in Europe… Although Putin should be helping… After all, he is succeeding in his weaponization….

After winning the Cold War against the Soviets, the West relaxed and phased out its Defense Industrial Base (US President Ike’s MIC, the Military Industrial Complex), Professors with as little knowledge of wisdom, history and human nature proclaimed the “End of History”.,, As they considered we had achieved a perfect democratization to go along with our perfect civilization. This was obviously erroneous: the CO2 crisis was real and had no solution, as civilization depended crucially on fossil fuels and the fossil fuelists had paid the ecologists to focus on destroying nuclear energy, that is, the only alternative significant fuel source.

An analogy in Rome was the mining crisis. Rome depended crucially upon metals, for coinage, weapons and architecture. At the peak, Roman annual production of metals was close to 200,000 metric tons. Also total Roman silver was ten times that of the Caliphate in 800 CE… Silver was important for coinage: the Franks got theirs in Eastern Europe. China finally got enough silver for making coins from Potosi, Bolivia, thanks to the Conquistadores (beats carrying around bulky copper.) In the Seventh Century, the metal crisis got so acute that the metallic roofs of Rome were stripped to make weapons against the Arabs.    

But Rome had other ecological crises and pandemics: the Roman climate optimum finished just as smallpox appeared…There was also a demographic crisis, perhaps caused by the diminution of democracy. The Barbarians may have been barbaric, but they may have enjoyed more of a perverse form of democracy conducive to a higher birth rate, and certainly better living conditions out there in tents, rather than dense insalubrious conurbations…

After the destruction of the Occidental Roman army in 394 CE at the hand of Theodosius and his Goths, the West was thereafter defenseless. Perceiving weakness, the Barbarians charged in over the frozen Rhine.

The Barbarian tribes were small in numbers: a draft could have created armies of millions of Romans (they would have had to be armed!)… But the will of the Roman plutocrats was to stay in power, and thus make deals with the invaders whenever possible…. Better to associate the Barbarians as warriors… didn’t Augustus have German bodyguards?

There was a great replacement of population, synchronously with the rise of the fascist empire. Nowadays, the same is occurring: in most European countries, onerous taxes and decreased services make it difficult for the natives to have children: the money is redistributed to give immigrants, poor and somewhat illegal at some point a very good time, proportional to the number of children they have….

When you see the world’s wealthiest man, a Frenchman, at the presidential palace, with his family, one of the many top potentates going there, you know where such ideas come from: the European higher class fear a revolution… which would be instigated easily by looking at the tax code… critically… It advantages the wealthiest…

The same situation holds in the USA… But it’s somehow not as degenerated as yet. Reconstituting the Defense Industrial Base is proving difficult: a flood of money can’t replace competence. And competence comes from education, that takes time. In some European countries, and France there again is the poster girl, a society of consumers has been created: all they want is panem et circenses… All they can want is that: they have no other competence. 

And the plutocrats know just one thing: competent Westerners may mean their denial. No wonder they were so fond of Putin… But then Putin proved to be his own man… And broke the spell…

In the demise of Rome, the slow rise of crises was a factor: the Roman leaders could argue there was no crisis, just a plague, just some lucky Barbarians, until the system broke, for all to see, between emperor Philip The Arab (who ruled 5 years) and Aurelianus, a generation later….

Now we are facing at the very least, for all to see, nuclear Armageddon (from Putin, and if not him, others arming themselves to the nuclear teeth…), terminal ecological crisis (from half a dozen crises, and pieces of oceans are dying here and there…), and a democratic crisis: dictatorship are appearing all over… Potentially nuclear armed, it’s not a matter of sending a gunship to put in place more amenable types…

Rome could have engaged in an industrial revolution by fostering innovation deliberately and intensely as a government policy. We have this encouragement to innovation now… At least in the USA. We saw it in 1960s, and now again under Trump, followed by Biden… Europe had state encouragement of innovation for centuries… That was launched by the Franks: a Merovingian queen like Brunehilde made a writer such as Fortunatus in Italy a proposal he couldn’t refuse, and he went to her court in Francia.

The European tech singularity was greatly caused by Bathilde’s outlawing of slavery and the sale of children… In the Seventh Century… It was well worth executing a few bishops (bishops loved armies of slaves).

The European pro-innovation, pro-progress tradition has now been considerably weakened by “woke”. “Woke” has been keen to accuse Europe to have invaded the world… although a closer examination shows that Europeans, with their more advanced tech, made to Natives proposal they couldn’t refuse: the conquest of the Aztecs by 1,500 Conquistadores and an army of 100,000 Natives is examplary that way… Amusingly the exception is the USA where a genocide happened. Indeed, the Neolithic occupants were outright destroyed by English speaking colonists… while the French were much more respectful of the Natives (and this ios why the French lost, and why the Spaniards outright stopped the Conquista in the 16 C for ethical reasons…)

The sort of poisonous thinking known under various names according to its various aspects: wokism, “French Theory”, “decolonization”… a current of thought which started to fester especially in France after the bitter victory of World War One, and which the Kremlin and Washington have found profitable to encourage…

The present situation is far from desperate: logically, Europeans should realize their civilization is facing imminent destruction. Differently from Rome in 406 CE, the situation is still recoverable…. But, just like Rome in Fourth Century, it’s a military situation… First and proximal. And just as Rome did not do in the Fourth Century, augmenting democracy would help considerably the military angle.

Good democracy, good military: the Greek city-states, and Republican Rome demonstrated this in ample fashion. Putin is the most militaristic plutocrat, and probably the most satanic… But he arose from his peers, or as plutocrat Lavrov, his foreign minister, says:”our colleagues“… We need to rearm in more than one way…

Patrice Ayme  

Superior generalship of Hannibal, and excellent Celtic mercenaries in his center, enabled Hannibal to envelop the Roman army at Cannae and compress it… Under a rain of ballistics (from slingers and archers). Roughly the same scenario happened at Hadrianopolis in 379 CE, six centuries later.

The losses at Cannae had been nearly double those at Adrianopolis… However by the time of Adrianopolis, Rome was a plutocracy and Theodosius would replace the Roman army elite by… the Goths… who had won at Adrianopolis… Whereas after Cannae, Trasimene, etc. even after giant losses, Rome was able to draft more Roman legions… Interstingly the Roman state of 379 CE had ten times more people, hence potentially could have drafted millions…

Rome Collapsed Technologically Starting In 100 CE (Fall of Rome part XI)

In the Fourth Century, Rome became farce and tragedy:

Early in the 4th century, emperor Constantine, inventor of “Orthodox Catholicism” killed all the priests of Egypt… because the existence of the guardians of a religion which was more than 2,000 years old “hurt his feelings“. Christianism was an excellent excuse for the tyranny which ruled Rome to become murderously insane.

The military collapse of Rome can be dated exactly to the invasion of Italy in Spring 395 CE. That was no surprise: in an act of divinely inspired criminal idiocy the Occidental Roman army led by the Frank Arbogastes, had been destroyed in September 394 CE, by fanatical Catholic Theodosius I and his Goths led by their king Alaric. So of course there was no one left to protect the West. On January 17, 395 CE, Theodosius, age 48, dies, and his ally Alaric declares he has no more treaty with the Romans and declares war on Rome and Constantinople, invading Thrace and Greece, including the Peloponnese. Stilicho is a half Vandal who had been nominated protector of the children of Theodosius, and head of the Roman military in Occident. Stilicho counterattacks from Milan, bottles down Alaric…. so Pretorian Prefect Rufinus in Constantinople makes Alaric (!) generallissimo of what he just ravaged and orders Stilicho out. To keep on with the absurdity, Rufinus is assassinated by other Goths, Stilicho executed from jealousy, and Alaric seizes the city of Rome in 410 CE. With the details the situation becomes even more delirious. Emperor Arcadius in 395, formally succeeds is father, but marries Aelia Eudoxa who becomes one of the more powerful empresses, Augusta and dominates her husband. She is the daughter of  Flavius Bauto, a Romanised Frank who served as magister militum in the Western Roman army during the 380s… Who had become Consul, but died, and was succeeded in his military office by Arbogastes… who was claimed by John of Antioch to be Bauto’s son… The late Roman empire was an incomparable mess which makes Game of Thrones look simplistic and much more realistic.

Meanwhile, in 406 CE, the Franks, put in charge of the northern frontier by their enemies the ruling bishops and founding fathers of Catholicism… after successfully raiding the Germans in Germania, got surprised by the suddenly frozen Rhine, and were unable to hold the barbarians who galloped across the Rhine, and flooded Gallia, Iberia and soon after… Africa. The invasion had become a tsunami of Germans and even Iranians (Alans).

***

Rome lost control of its destiny by 100 CE:

Indeed, the technical problems of Rome started at least three centuries earlier, when Rome’s metal usage collapsed. That drastic collapse has been known for a while, from lead pollution in Greenland ice. Romans used lead everywhere (in pipes limestone deposits would prevent contamination of the water supply). Now we have similar data, with a much stronger signal, from Mont Blanc ice. Moreover the signal has been extended to Antimony, a semi-metal which makes many metals, including lead and steel, much harder, and was also used by the Romans in glass manufacture (there were claims about unbreakable glass, etc.). The fact that Antimony production went up and down with the lead production shows that indeed Roman manufacture went up and down (other metals show a similar peaking behavior).

Romans used metals for tools, weapons, and construction (ships, roofs and inner structural elements). Metals are no anecdote. By the height of the Roman Empire, metals in use included: silver, zinc, iron, mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead, gold, copper, tin. Subtle alloys were ubiquitous and had very different properties from the pure metals (which the Romans knew how to refine). After a disastrous defeat at Carrhae (53 BCE), the Romans progressively adopted an armored cavalry similar to what the Parthians had… But that meant at lot of metal. At Carrhae, Parthian arrows pierced both Roman shields and the arms holding them. The fabrication of massive quantities of steel required to heat an iron mixture for hours at the temperature of lava… One needed an intense approach to metal works which was starting in Gallic areas (like Noricum/Austria)… But which did not interest the Romans… At least Romans from the Mediterranean…

One of the reason of the ascent of the Franks while the Roman state was sputtering, was the introduction by the Franks of very heavy steel or cast iron ploughs which could work at the depth required the heavy rich soils of the northern European plain, and feed a population explosion… in northern Europe. Thus the Roman tech collapse was both absolute and relative (the north collapsed much less).

Any successful civilization ravages its environment: that’s what success means. To persist, the civilization must develop new technology to change from the old, unsustained and unsustainable environment to a better one in which the new tech will allow it to thrive. 

Emperor Vespasian, who succeeded Nero, is on the record saying that new machines should not be deployed, lest they augment unemployment. Europe and others, in 2024, have been saying the same about AI. Vespasian was followed by his two sons. That Flavian dynasty lasted nearly thirty years, plenty of time to install an anti-tech mood.

To become an industrial, machine based civilization, Rome needed metal, lots of metal… Instead, Rome stayed mostly a slavery based state. However in Gaul, Gallia, the slave employing giant Latifundia were nearly unknown… And this is precisely where the tech driven society arose.

***

To make machines Rome needed metals:

The Gauls started to use metals crucially in agriculture with heavy ploughs and mechanical harvesters pushed by domesticated donkeys or oxes. The resulting demographic explosion explains why Gallia/Francia became the successor state of Rome in the West in the Sixth Century…. And one can see it in the lead and antimony production graph. Plutocratically owned immense latifundias with armies of slaves in Italy could not use such technology.

Moreover, Rome ran out of metal, precluding a switch to a more industrial state … to give some perspective, Europe and China got into massive pig iron production by the 12th century (and may have communicated about this through the Silk Roads). Rome metal usage peaked under Trajan and then quickly collapsed. One reason was the invasion of Rio Tinto under Marcus Aurelius. But the collapse started earlier and may have been caused by a lack of interest in metal usage. That theory is indicated by the loss of control of Rio Tinto. Had Rio Tinto been perceived as crucial, control would have been kept… the fact it was not is an indication of a deeper rot… 

By the 7th Century, the dearth of metal was so great that it prevented the fabrication of weapons such as Grecian Fire flame throwers: the roofs of Rome had to be stripped of metal. The emperor came especially from Constantinople to insure that metal procurement from Rome. Then the Muslims surprised and sank the metal carrying fleet….

If the tech does not follow, civilization will collapse so the wisdom has to adapt to a collapsed, nihilistic state of mind: consider Plotin (died 300 CE)… Plotin’s philosophy is all about surrender to anything material, the wish to evanescence…

***

EMPIRE Started to COLLAPSE AROUND 100 CE! The graph is from Mont Blanc ice. The results are the same as from the many similar measurements in Greenland. TRA is for Trajan, peak of lead extraction under the Roman fascist empire. The collapse of metal production started at the time of the beginning of the Roman Civil War, when the Gracchi were opposed ferociously by the plutocrats.

Simplicius: Isn’t it true that according to Patrice’s own theory, Rome collapsed first in its democracy, under the madness of the Optimates fighting the Gracchi’s judicious reforms, and then politically, thus intellectually, bringing up then a succession of tyrants, starting with Augustus? What does tech have to do with it?

PA: Right. But remember that Rome beat Carthage by imitating and then overtaking its Punic rival once superior naval tech. Similarly in Gaul with the invention of the “corvus”, which enabled to disable Gallic ocean going ships. However, the situation became hard to reverse when the mental fascism got so great that technological innovation was not sufficient to keep the barbarians out of the gates… As had already happened under Marcus Aurelius. 

So it’s a cascade in authoritative regimes: the mental fascism gets so great that innovation collapses, even in defense.

Simplicius: What about Putin’s Russia?

PA: In 2023, Putin’s Russia grew more economically (GDP) than any G7 nation (with more than 7% of defense GDP according to The Economist Intelligence Unit). So Putin successfully switched to a militarization of society developing new weapons that were highly successful, such as old steel heavy bombs with navigational and gliding kits. It may well be that Putin is aware of the problem described here.

Simplicius: I am confused by you. Doesn’t that contradict your theory that political fascism brings mental fascism which leads to a lack of innovation?

PA: In general, but not always. If the dictator is really smart, like Caesar or Peter the Great, Or Ivan the Terrible, or the various Kremlin tyrants who fought the Mongols by serving them, a dictator can be civilizationally progressive. Emperor Meiji is an example. Or Queen Bathilde and her outlawing of slavery. Peter the Great for example went to work in Dutch naval shipyards to find out how one made ocean going ships, because he wanted to make Russia into a sea power.

Rome could have survived by maintaining a tech superiority, it din’t. The fascist emperors feared tech change because it brings mental change, hence philosphical change, thus political change, as politics is practical philosophy…

Simplicius: The Franks you are obsessed with do not seem to have such a superiority.

PA: They did. They developed new tech. They kept weapon superiority. The francisque, the two blade throwing ax was a symbol of that. The heavy ploughs were much more important. The Franks were fundamentally peasants (by 600 CE everybody was a Frank). The Franks’ metal usage by 800 CE was equal to Rome’s peak under the Roman Republic. Sure enough, shortly after the metal production in Francia started to exponentiate, Queen Bathilde outlawed slavery, a major break from antiquity.

Simplicius: So you are saying that philosophical, political, economic and technological progress are all related?

PA: Yes, they form a chain: break a link and the chain breaks. One of the failure of Athenian democracy was the horrendous way it could treat adversaries, neutrals (Mellos), allies and even its own heroes (all great Athenian heroes had their names written on ostracizing shards of clay, and most were indeed ostracized or even executed, even the greatest statemen, even the victorious generals and admirals, such as Pericles’ son… for very dubious reasons…)

This Athenian philosophico-ethical failure facilitated military defeat.… And then the collapse of everything. By contrast, Rome was much more careful that way. Caesar was accused of atrocities in Gaul, of all places, and that forced him to cross the Rubicon with a legion… But that unfortunate episode is indicative that ethical treatment of adversaries was a notion in Rome (although it had been violated against Numantia, Carthage, etc.). By the way, Rome used ostracism lightly. Caesar was assassinated by a bunch of ungrateful idiotic plutocratic traitors… Caesar was not ostracized: the people of Rome was all for him. In contrast Athenian democracy ostricized most of its greatest architects… Even Solon left for a decade before he became undesirable (that was two generations before the formal invention of ostracism)…

It’s not just the Romans and Athenians. The Maya, and much of what happened to the Middle Earth, long the forefront of civilization until ecological devastation set in are equally enlightening: tech could have rescued the civilizations but was short of that… The Maya tried to rebound, after a seven centuries hiatus, and then recollapsed, just before the Spaniards showed up… Another drought and no tech to handle it…

Differently from others which, plainly, could not have developed the tech Rome could have made it, transforming itself into an industrial power, if there had been a VERY forceful technological policy in place.

Many of the technologies which were developed massively under the Franks were already available on a small scale, especially in Gaul. However the scale stayed small under Roma enslaving plutocracy. The massive usage of heavy ploughs shifted food production, hence military power, to the north. Neither Rome nor Constantinople were ready to facilitate that with unbounded enthusiasm. And then the outlawing of slavery forced the usage of animals and machines… A fascinating subject to study further is the relationship between the Franks and Constantinople… which lasted more than seven centuries… In the Tenth Century, a military alliance between Constantinople and the Franks extirpated the Muslim piracy state in southern France which was raiding all over Europe….

Simplicius: Lessons for today?

PA: The civilization we have with the present tech, especially of primary energy production, is completely unsustainable. Solar panels can help considerable… But ultimately nuclear technologies have to be developed to the point they can be fully safe and clean. Physics show that it can be done; the rest is technological detail. We need to get really smart. But when a plutocracy start to dominate, its greatest tool is general stupidification. No smarts, no future. An example of this is Europe, which is pushing for extremely stupid policies of “degrowth” and “deindustrialization”… The Roman case study shows that the exact opposite should be done.

Simplicius: And if not? If we are not smart?

PA: Seven billion violently killed. To start with. And, absent easy access to minerals, civilization may well never reappear… Fermi paradox solved…

Simplicius: So what’s the grand conclusion?

PA: That mentalities matter. Mentalities drive civilizations and thus history. With right mentality, the Romans would have pulled hard towards better, and that’s often simply, especially in those times, more powerful tech. Caesar understood this: he even wanted not just to drain the proverbial swamps and the attending malaria, and this he did… Caesar also wanted to divert the Tiber itself…. The port of Rome had to be displaced, so Romans could move mountains… But the Romans had to understand, we all have to understand that the most important mountains are mountains of thoughts….

Patrice Ayme

Pertinax, Pompeianus, Marcus Aurelius And His Generals: A Different Rome That Nearly Happened

Under Marcus Aurelius, patron saint of Stoicism, the Roman empire went from bad to worse. And much of that originates with Marcus all too stoic character: Marcus let his wife, the plutocrats, and events lead him by the nose, instead of taking manly command. History could have been different.

Some have reproached Julius Caeasar for not being revolutionary enough, but he, the head of the “Populares” Party, was revolutionary enough to die from it. The fundamental cause of Caesar’s treacherous assassination, while wearing the sacred clothes of Pontifex Maximus, was Caesar’s land redistribution law of 59 BCE: a law that Caesar had the Centuriate assembly passed(the national assembly of citizens) and which Consul Caesar immediately implemented… Something the Gracchi had failed to do…. And which the “Optimates” (the best) in the Senate never forgave.

Friend Ian Miller wrote in reply to Marcus was an ass: “The worst aspect of Marcus Aurelius was he was almost always out in the field as a commander of the army, and he wasn’t very good at it. He would have done a lot better to appoint a capable General as commander, and go back and sort out Rome. If the General was any good, he would be next in line and no Commodus.”

[For comparison, Augustus had outlawed Senators marrying ex-slaves (and also actresses). Marcus’ other top field marshall was NOT from the Senatorial class. By the way all these generals started their careers under Antoninus Pius, Marcus’ predecessor, whom emperor Hadrian and the Senate had judged most worthy to become emperor, which he was for even longer than Marcus; Nobody probably would have judged the 18 year old Commodus worthy of succession… except for Marcus. ]

My answer to Ian: Absolutely correct. But Marcus didn’t want to sort out Rome. Instead of taxing the extravagantly wealthy Senatorial plutocracy, Marcus made a show of financing wars by selling palace’s cuttlery… Professional philosopher and chief stoicist Massimo Pigliucci, author of How to Be a Stoic, retorted to me that, had he tried that, he would have been assassinated… Well, no. Marcus’ two top generals were not from the plutocracy. [Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to handle life; he divorced soon after telling me Marcus did his best; actually Marcus didn’t divorce… and probably should have…)

While Marcus was fighting in south Germanic woods, the Mauri attacked and occupied Rio Tinto, which was a major catastrophe: Rome depended heavily upon all sorts of metals, even for defense. An emperor stripped the metal roofs of Rome to make weapons to fight the Muslims in the Seventh Century! Marcus didn’t behave as if he noticed. In general, Marcus was scared to disturb in any sense the ruling Roman plutocracy (not like say Caesar, who rolled and crushed it all over…)

Marcus had excellent generals. Some died in combat: Agricola? After the death of Agricola, filed marshall Fronto got a supercommand of Dacia. C0-emperor Verus had just died of the plague while he and Marcus went back to Rome. Fronto fought Germans, Samartians and Vandals. In the campaigning season of 170, Fronto’s luck ran out: “He fell, bravely fighting to the last for the Republic” (ad postremum pro re publica fortiter pugnans ceciderit). A field marshall (who had already served under Anoninnue Pius!) dying in combat!

The Senate approved a motion tabled by the emperor to erect in Trajan’s Forum (Rome) a statua armata of Fronto, an “armed statue”, a nude bronze sculpture of the hero, holding a spear…

In 175 general Cassius, a descendant of Seleucid kings, was proclaimed Roman emperor after the erroneous news of the death of Marcus Aurelius. Cassius had led two successful campaigns against the Parthians, even capturing their capital, Ctesiphon, in eastern Mesopotamia. The sources indicate he was encouraged by Marcus’s out-of-control wife Faustina, who was concerned about her husband’s ill health, believing him to be on the verge of death. She felt the need for Cassius to act as a protector in this event, since her son Commodus, aged 13, was still young. She also wanted someone who would act as a counterweight to the claims of Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, who was in a strong position to take the office of Princeps in the event of Marcus’s death… and who, married to Verus’ Augusta, Commodus’ experienced and elder sister, didn’t look favorably towards Commodus…

Born in Alba Pompeia in Italy, the son of a slave turned into freedman Helvius Successus, Pertinax became a grammaticus (teacher of grammar, literature, philosophy). He eventually decided to find a more rewarding line of work and through the help of patronage he was commissioned an officer in a cohort.

In the Parthian war he distinguished himself. That brought a string of promotions, and after postings in Britain (as military tribune of the Legio VI Victrix) and along the Danube, he served as a procurator in Dacia.[10] He suffered a setback as a victim of court intrigues during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, but shortly afterwards he was recalled to assist Claudius Pompeianus in the Marcomannic Wars. In 175 he received the honor of a suffect consulship… So Pertinax, one of the comites, compagnons of Marcus, was in perfect position to succeed him. … Until 185, Pertinax was governor of the provinces of Upper and Lower Moesia, Dacia, Syria and finally governor of Britain. He was elected emperor after the Commodus assassination.

Machiavelli in The Prince:”Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself — it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles — you have to submit to its humors and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.”

In ‘Romanitas’, a fictional alternate history novel by Sophia McDougall, Pertinax’s reign is the point of divergence. In the history as established by the novel, the plot against Pertinax was thwarted, and Pertinax introduced a series of reforms that would consolidate the Roman Empire to such a degree that it would still be a major power in the 21st century.

A native of Antioch in Syria, Pompeianus was not from the Senatorial class. His father, Tiberius Claudius Quintianus, was a member of the Equestrian Order, the merchant and banking class of Roman citizens… And strictly below Senators, since Augustus made it so. His family first received their Roman citizenship during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Pompeianus was a new man (“novus homo”) as he was the first member of his family to be appointed as a Senator. Much of Pompeianus’ early life has been lost to history. He participated in the Roman–Parthian War of 161–166 under the commander of Emperor Lucius Verus, likely as a Legionary Commander. Sometime prior to the Parthian campaign, he was elevated to the rank of a Senator. He served with distinction during the war, earning him appointment as Suffect Consul for the remainder of the year 162 AD.

Following the completion of the Parthian campaign, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius appointed Pompeianus military governor of Lower Pannonia on the Empire’s northern frontier along the Danube River. He likely served from 164 until 168. In late 166 or early 167, a force of 6,000 Lombards invaded Pannonia. Pompeianus defeated the invasion with relative ease, but it marked the beginning of a larger barbarian invasion.

Late in 167 the Marcomanni tribe invaded the Empire by crossing in Pannonia. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus planned to drive the barbarians back across the Danube River, but due to the effects of the Antonine Plague, that was postponed until early 168. Aided by Pompianius, the two Emperors were able to force the Marcomanni to retreat. Pompeianus’ military skills earned him the confidence of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and he quickly became one of the Emperor’s closest advisors. As the Emperors returned to their winter quarters in Aquileia, Lucius Verus fell ill and died in January 169. Following the death of Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius arranged for his daughter the Augusta Lucilla, Verus’ widow, to marry Pompeianus. As son-in-law to the Emperor, Pompeianus became a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. The Emperor even offered to name Pompeianus as Caesar and his heir, but Pompeianus refused to accept the title. Instead, Pompeianus was promoted and served as the Emperor’s chief general during the Marcomannic War. Under Pompeianus’ recommendation, the exiled Senator and fellow Parthian war veteran Pertinax was recalled and joined Pompeianus on his military staff.

Pompeianus’ successes during the Marcomannic War further distinguished him, with the Emperor awarding him a second Consulship in 173.

Marcus Aurelius died in 180 AD, and his 18-year-old son Commodus, Pompeianus’ brother-in-law, stayed Emperor. Pompeianus tried to persuade Commodus to remain on the Danubian frontier to complete the conquest of the Marcomanni, as planned by his father Marcus, but Commodus refused and returned to Rome in the autumn of 180. Commodus may well have been the son of one of these gladiators his mother was fascinated by… explaining in turn his fasciantion for the arena…

The relationship between the young emperor and the experienced general officer quickly deteriorated. In 182, Augusta Lucilla, Pompeianus’ wife and Commodus’ sister, organized an assassination attempt against the Emperor which failed when the assassin spent some time boasting of his incoming success to his victim, and who had commandited the elimination, which enabled Commodus’ bodyguards to eliminate him instead. Though Commodus executed Lucilla and other members of her family, she had engineered the (probable) myth of Pompeianus’s non-involvement, and thus made Commodus believe that her estranged husband had not participated in the conspiracy… Pompeianus was spared… While clearly Lucilla intended to make him emperor… (Who else? Pertinax?)

Pertinax, who was the Rome’s Urban Prefect at the time of the final elimination of Commodus, offered the throne to Pompeianus… who declined it, but resumed his Senatorial duties (prudently interrupted after Lucilla’s plot)

Russell Crowe’s character Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 movie Gladiator is very loosely based on a composite of Pompeinus and his fellow generals and Lucilla… the Lucilla plot succeeds… Novels have been written about Pertinax ruling Rome long enough to change its direction.

Could it have been done? Could Rome have been saved from itself? The key was to cancel slavery as queen Bathilde of the Franks did in 657 CE. She was not assassinated, but she manipulated from behind, and executed a lot, it is said, and it has got to be true…

Canceling slavery and forcing technology ahead in its stead. The Franks did it, but it took centuries to have a big impact. Or maybe not: after all, even while killing each other, the Franks were able to destroy the Goths, the Lombards and conquer and domesticate the Saxons push out Vikings (who were domesticated), Huns, Slavs, Magyars, and all sorts of god crazed Muslims. This had much to do with superior steel… And large specially bred battle horses… The Franks did at least three military things that Caesar had intended to do, and the Romans tried to do for centuries and failed: conquer, control and domesticate all Germans, in particular Saxons, Goths and Lombards… Destroy the Huns. Conquer and domesticate the Slavs, invade Eastern Europe, and exploit the mines there…

Peace is good, but victory is better!

Patrice Ayme

Marcus Aurelius Was An Ass

… Rome needed more than an ass to be pulled out of the ditch.

Stoicism is the most ubiquitous philosophy: wildebeest eaten alive by hyenas, practice it in the open plains of the Serengeti. We all die and suffer, so, at some point, we have to be stoics. But Stoicism as a daily regimen makes a civilization degenerate. Stoicism fostered by Roman emperors made their disgusting evisceration of the republic easier to swallow. As this pillarization of society was not enough (stoicism derives from stoa, a pillar), Roman emperors later fostered the slave religion which recommended turning the other cheek, whenever slapped..

Marcus Aurelius has been Stoic in chief for 18 centuries, a Taylor Swift for swifties singing in the praises of the  subjugation to plutocracy through appeasement. Marcus loved to write down notes expressing Greek Stoic pseudo-wisdom. The disingenuous opinion below that truth never hurts anyone is typical: those used to roll out really new truth know all too well that truth hurts. Genuinely new truth hurts those who proffer it and also those who receive it. So what Marcus Aurelius tells us by pretending that truth never hurts is that he never came across it. Nor should we. The truth about Marcus is that he was up to no good, and worse than his immediate predecessors. So Stoicism is just a gig leaf for gross incompetence. Let me elaborate.  

Writing notes to oneself regarding well-known wisdom was the fashion at the time: superior minds were supposed to jolt down these notes. Marcus Aurelius had top Stoic philosophers as teachers when he was extremely young, while he was the adopted son of emperor Antoninus Pius. Pius had a remarkably calm and long rule (138 CE to 161 CE, 23 years)… Pius didn’t harass Christians.

Stoicism was allowed to thrive during the Hellenistic dictatorships, because it was an innocuous philosophy which advocated to bear and grin through it all. Even Domitian, who hated philosophy for excellent personal reasons, tolerated Sotciscm, most of the time. 

In truth Marcus was an ass: he gave his 5 year old heir Commodus, the title and prerogatives of “Caesar”. I have long asked myself why he did this, when it blatantly contradicted the Stoicism that had been pounded into him. The usual explanation is that the throne was threatened (there were attempted coups). But to discourage this, Marcus had just to name full grown successors. This had been the case since Vespasian (with the exception of the anti-philosophical Domitian, who was assassinated). 

The explanation I found calls upon twisted psychology: Commodus was probably not Marcus’ biological son, or at least it could be thought that he was not… as it was notorious that Marcus’ wife Faustina the Younger slept around with gladiators and loved human blood flowing in the arena. Annia Galeria Faustina was the daughter of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius (so, formally the adoptive sister of Marcus).

Imagine: you are the master of the world, and your wife, who you can’t touch because of her pedigree, which is even more impressive than yours, is making fun of you and your stoicism. And you can’t do a thing about it… 

So what do you do as a good Stoic? You pretend that what is going on is not going on, and you punish all those who know about your humiliation by imposing the bastard son onto them. 

At 16, perhaps to keep the appearance that Commodus was really his biological son, Commodus gets full imperial powers as “Augustus”. This was a violation of a tradition established after the Flavian dynasty, a century earlier: the best was supposed to become emperor, not just the biological one. Marcus had a full contingent of generals to succeed him, including two who were superlative. One of the two, Pertinax, once a professor, would succeed Commodus. Also Commodus’ much older sister, long an Augusta, was left to try cleaning the mess Marcus had left, and lost her life in the attempt, thanks to Commodus. She was married to the other superlative general.

With so much superior choice at his fingertips, to replace him in the imperial function, that Marcus Aurelius chose the deranged Commodus as tyrant for Rome is truly baffling.   

Making a small child leader of the world was a complete violation of even the most outrageous Roman imperial traditions. It didn’t even happen under the most grotesque episodes of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (famous sons had to prove their worth and some died while in command of armies!)

Marcus’ unbalanced personality showed up in other ways: Marcus executed Christians for Christianism… whereas emperor Trajan, a general without pretension to elevated thinking had explicitly forbidden, 70 years earlier, to bother Christians for their Christianism. Under Trajan, Christians were able to exert their cult, as long as they didn’t break the law. 

Also it turns out that Marcus was an ass as a commander in chief: in 170 CE, the Rio Tinto mines, which were crucial for the entire empire, were overrun by the Mauri. This went on back and forth for a few years, and Rio Tinto didn’t recover until the modern era (the Franks, successors of Rome, conquered and found metal mines in Eastern Europe).  

Marcus courageously fought invading Germans… But he didn’t force the plutocrats to pay for the war. Marcus could have cracked down on the tax evaders: some of the top generals, and certainly Pertinax, an intellectual and son of a slave, were not too friendly to the hereditary plutocracy.

Marcus Aurelius is a celebrity, a poster boy of stoicism. Marcus’ stoicism helped him to not try hard to influence events which needed to be influenced. Trajan was not like that, but Hadrian and Antoninus Pius were. And Rome peaked under Trajan. Or at least the crucial metal production. 

What Marcus wrote was good, but Rome deserved better. And needed better to survive. Marcus, like today’s European Union, was basically a poser. He wanted himself to feel that he was a good person, probably because he knew he was not. Marcus, like contemporary Europe, struck philosophical positions advertizing goodness to hide the privilege, corruption and enfeeblement, which he empowered. 

Patrice Ayme

Is Europe Making The Same Civilizational Error As Rome? Not Advancing Technology Maximally While It Can, And Should?

Ecology never stands alone, it always rests on technology, since there is a genus Homo and it rules with its culture, tools and weapons [1]. Today’s Europe has, naively and in spite of history, opted for “degrowth“. So had Rome in its time… but unwittingly… It didn’t end up too well. Just as Putin invading Ukraine… The world’s largest metal mine, Rio Tinto, crucial to the Roman economy, evoked below, got attacked by the mysterious Tauri (under Marcus Aurelius) in 172 CE (and thereafter)… And didn’t recover. This caused among other things, a devastating devaluation of currency…

When tyranny got established in Rome, panem et circenses (bread and circus) were provided to the People. But what Rome needed was subsidized food coming from Egypt, and Taylor Swift, but hard core technology. Instead, it stayed stuck with slavery, and a semi welfare state, emptying the core (Italy) while enriching global plutocrats. 

Europe, having misinterpreted history under the influence of so-called “French Theory” is repeating that pattern. “French Theory”, a US term, was the original wokism, which infected US universities’ “humanity” departments decades ago… “French Theory” infected France, progressively and ever more, after the ruinous victory of WW1 stolen from France and Britain by the crafty and greedy US Deep State. “French Theory” is basically a general appeasement, fundamentally sensual defeatism, generalized to… all the way to… child molesters (those used to be esteemed in France up to very recently…) 

Europe, and the world, like Rome at its apex, have huge ecological problems. Rome depended upon a number of technologies which couldn’t be used anymore, because of their limitations. For example the extraction of metals… Although the subject has not been studied as it deserves by lazy academics, it’s clear that Rome came short in metals… and also probably wood (as Athens had, much earlier). Global trade depended upon thousands of cargo ships. That in turn caused military food and procurement problems. The world has the same situation now, fossil fuels and military advantage becoming increasingly problematic. 

The solution is to advance technologically. Even Obama understood that, by subsidizing SpaceX, for example. 

Europe has opted for panem et circenses at this point, whereas much of the advanced world has opted for advancing tech. Not just the USA, but also China, India, Japan, etc. At this point Europe can’t launch a satellite with its own means… Iran just launched three… with its own rocket…

As Rome collapsed under its own corruption, Gaul used the leverage of its more advanced and productive metallurgy to make heavy plows which overturned the rich soils of north-west Europe, enabling a well-fed and large population… By the Thirteenth Century France’s population was 20 million, at least a fourth of the maximal imaginable population of the Roman empire. The Franks outlawed slavery in the Seventh Century, fostering ulterior tech advances.

It goes without saying that the present European Union, with its institutionalized wokism, is refusing to develop, as much as it could, for reasons very similar to those of the Roman empire. Roman emperors, starting with Vespasian (circa 70 CE) refused to let engineer deployed machines under the pretext that machines would cause unemployment… We hear the same whining with AI now….

***

Sun Chainik chimed in responding to me in the Wall Street Journal: “Fighting climate will kill both the EU and the US. Delusional.“

***

Fighting the climate is silly, but adapting to it, smart.

If one burned all fossil fuels, there would be a runaway greenhouse. Not smart. 

The mistake Rome made was not to adapt to the changing ecology in such a way that it could keep on growing: Rome didn’t have the technology to extract metals once it had exhausted the old mines. It could have had it. But, under the fascist plutocratic emperors, choose not to develop tech. Rio Tinto, once massively exploited in Rome, saw no extraction for 17 centuries…. Until new tech arrived. The lack of metals made it impossible to resist even the Muslims (although all metal roofs of Rome were stripped in the effort!). Rio Tinto:

This is very much man-made, very beautiful pollution… 5,000 years old. Carthage exploited in for four centuries before Roman conquest… Traces of the man-made metal pollution from Rio Tinto have been found in the fossil clams and soil of the Gulf of Cadiz and all the way to Greenland… It was the Roman, and world’s, largest mine (region). The tunnels extended nearly 150 meters deep. Water was evacuated by giant water wheels, 6 or 7 meters acrodd… After a period of abandonment, starting in 180 CE, the mines were rediscovered in 1556 CE and the Spanish government began operating them a bit once again in 1724. As a result of the mining, Rio Tinto is notable for being very acidic (pH 2). Its deep reddish hue is due to sulfide-consuming bacteria and other extremophiles that amplify the acidification process. These organisms give the river its red hue in part from iron, copper, zinc and arsenic dissolved in the water…

Fortunately, right now, tech is adapting quickly in most places. And Europe could change policies.

Example: French Safran is providing US plane maker Electra with a hybrid turbojet that will load in flight batteries of a ten passenger plane that will be able to take off in 100 feet and fly 500 miles in two hours. Thousands of these planes, which will revolutionize transportation, have already been ordered.

So Europe has the capacity to advance. Right now, it’s killed by the advocates of degrowth. Degrowth is what happened to Rome after Trajan, under the Antonine emperors… And then it got worse. 

Perhaps Trump and Putin are Europe’s best friends, as they could well cause Europe to wake up technologically!

Patrice Ayme

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[1] So is man Homo Faber (Homo Tool, Homo the Fabricator…) or… HOMO ECOLOGICUS? The latter is more general: one of our tool weapon and effect is the ecology itself (see the savages using fire for ecological husbandry…).

Religiously Supernatural To Advance Thought, One Strife At A Time

Does infighting make us, survivors, more brainy?

People go around, deploring the religions, passions, ideologies, etc. which divide us… And if it was all a plan, by our creator, evolution, an evolutionary mechanism? A sort of natural peer review… where the loser don’t get to reproduce ideologically?

Was Europe made mentally stronger during the Middle Ages by the many conflictual ideologies? Christianism versus Predation by Eagle and Lion-Obsessed Nobles versus remembering the Roman Republic versus Feudalism, Lords versus Free Cities? Is Putin a good thing which will extirpate Europe, one massacre at a time, from its pseudo-socialist plutocratic torpor?

It’s in our nature to create further nature to make nature more supernatural…

The Religious instinct is here to help create tribes with healthy, if not deadly competition among themselves: strife is hardwire. Why? So that intellectual Darwinism between thought systems can be deployed as the bloody arena for the advancement of better and more truthful thought..

After killing God, Nietzsche was still religious in the Christian-Protestant sense of the term, learned from his dad, criticizing, but then finally espousing stoicism, with a hefty dose of Hinduism added: consider the “eternal return of the same” and the wheel in the Indian flag. 

More robust treatment of passions, rejecting entirely the concept of “sad passions” a la Spinoza (embraced by Nietzsche), is found in Montaigne (Livre I, chapter 40) and, of course… Sade. Now of course Montaigne was to a great extent repeating mainstream Roman Republican mentality… Showing most moralists, post Montaigne, were indeed contaminated by Judeo-Christianism…

“Religion”, re-ligare, is just any collective hallucination worth carrying some passion(s), shared by a tribe. It could be one for motorcycle maintenance, not just Zen. Religions are everywhere: see Nietzsche falling back into them… And, worst of all, of superstitious type… (Metaphysics, beyond-nature doesn’t pretend to contradict nature… as superstition does; metaphysics just completes nature… as the axioms of physics themselves do!) 

Monotheism originated by the Jews, that is Christo-Islamism, is of a superstitious nature: axioms standing (stare) above (super) nature are used, as related in “The Book”. But motorcycle maintenance, which can turn into a religion, just like soccer or Swiftism, is not based on superstition, nor on metaphysics: Taylor Swift really exists. And much scientific activity is experienced by its participants as a form of religion, tying them up again…

So why do humans need to re-ligare, tie each other (ligare) again (re)? Because humans are most effective as tribes… differently from say leopards. Humans are also very brainy, so they need to share stories, because thus they share brains which are neurologically similar enough to be cooperating… as needed. Religions offer common operating systems for neurologies… which are so strong, they rewire the brains.. 

Jussy, Suisse… For centuries, the area knew religious strife between Christian factions… Now the region is an abyss of wealth, calm, dedicated to internationalism, NGOs, finance, economics, technology, pharmaceuticals, etc… Precisely because there was so much strife about silly things…

Religious and ideological fights, and more generally tribal fights, make thinking more important… thus contributing to its advancement… especially if losers die from lack of intellectual performance…

Patrice Ayme

Imperial Theo-Fascist Trick: Roman Tyrant Constantine Created Catholicism

What fanatical Christians do not want you to know: a son and nephew killer, and wife boiler (alive!), mass murderer Constantine, a single tyrant of the Roman empire, having killed all other pretenders, some of them close relatives, founded Christianism as it came to be known. Fanatical Christians tend to get angry when confronted to this sordid reality.   

Then so-called ORTHODOX CATHOLICISM was created at a Council at Nicaea in 325 CE. The Nicene Creed, 325 CE, was written at the instigation and under supervision from self-declared 13th Apostle emperor Constantine:

One of the projects undertaken by the Council was the creation of a creed, a declaration and summary of the Christian faith. Several creeds were already in existence; many creeds were acceptable to the members of the Council, including Arius. From earliest times, various creeds served as a means of identification for Christians, as a means of inclusion and recognition, especially at baptism. In Rome, for example, the Apostles’ Creed was popular, especially for use in Lent and the Easter season. In the Council of Nicaea, one specific creed was used to define the Church’s faith clearly, to include those who professed it, and to exclude those who did not.

The original Nicene Creed of 325 CE, approved by emperor Constantine, read as follows:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty,

maker of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

begotten from the Father, only-begotten,

that is, from the substance of the Father,

God from God, light from light,

true God from true God, begotten not made,

of one substance with the Father,

through Whom all things came into being,

things in heaven and things on earth,

Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down,

and became incarnate and became man, and suffered,

and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the heavens,

and will come to judge the living and dead,

And in the Holy Spirit.

But as for those who say, There was when He was not,

and, Before being born He was not,

and that He came into existence out of nothing,

or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance,

or created, or is subject to alteration or change

– these the CATHOLIC and apostolic Church anathematizes.

***

Icons depict the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325) holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. The Council of Nicaea, with bishop Arius depicted as defeated by the council, lying under the feet of Emperor Constantine

Patrice Ayme

Barbarian Invasions and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Why did the Roman Empire end in the West during the Fifth Century? Let’s assume it did (in truth, it didn’t: zombies don’t die easily). According to The Eighteenth Century historian, Gibbon, “instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.”

A simple, directly observable reason for the fall was a domino effect causing a military-economic avalanche propelled by Germanic invasions.

The domino effect occurs when dominoes on their sides, one next to another, knock one after the other, starting with the first one in the line over into its neighboring domino. This creates a chain reaction and all of the dominoes fall down, one after another. For the fall of Rome, it was the Huns invading from the east who launched the domino effect; they invaded (pushed into) the Goths, who then invaded (pushed into) the Roman Empire. The Huns had composite bows with tiny supplements added at the extremities which augmented their power. The Huns learned to transform this apparently small advantage of weaponry into an entire industry of invasion of western central Asia. 

If one looks in more detail, as the professional Roman army had to be paid, and its equipment was expensive, the army depended heavily upon tax receipts. As those diminished, because territories were lost, domino style, the army was less paid and less equipped, had to be withdrawn, and became weaker. All the north-west (Britannia, the two Germania and Gallia) were evacuated by the legions, to save money.

Notice that the money problem occurs more in  a fascist empire organized around and from greed, which, in its most developed form, is called corruption. In a Republic, the problem would not have arisen: no corruption because of the law, and soldiers could volunteer, because they were patriots, and making money was secondary. Roman republican soldiers were paid, since 405 BCE, but, as the republic became a fascist empire, and military dictatorship, the pay became much more important was tripled by Augustus. Actually, the perverse revolution headed by Octavian/Augustus was mostly motivated by pay.

Vast Was The Empire. Actually, at full extent, the empire was even larger, as it owned or controlled the Black Sea shore, including Crimea. the Franks would reconquer the entire north west corner, plus Germany and Eastern Europe, creating a more defensible ensemble, which was indeed never invaded again in the following 16 centuries…

The fall of the Western Roman Empire is a great lesson of an exponentiating cause and effect chain. A cause leads to an effect, but the cause-effect relation can EXPONENTIATE, when the effect creates more of the same cause.

The Romans hired barbarian mercenaries to guard the borders… Not just this, but the Germans were motivated to serve in the Roman military than the Native Romans were. Just below the emperor Gratian, the main commanders in Occident were all Franks: Richomeres (who became Consul), and then Flavius Arbogast and the king of the Franks Mellobaudes (comes domesticorum).

Because, to save money, the Franks were put in charge of defending the Germano-Gallic frontiers (the local legions having been sent to Italy to defend against invasions there), and there were not enough Franks, or they were surprised by the weather, the German nations galloped across the frozen Rhine on December 31, in 406 CE. Because Roman legions evacuated Britannia in AD 410, the Anglo-Saxons moved into Britannia. You could also say the word “so” in between the cause and effect, like this: The Huns pushed other groups westward, so the Vandals invaded Spain, north Africa, set-up a maritime empire, cut off the grain supply to Rome, and sacked Rome in 455 CE.

Here is a brief (criticized) list of the generally admitted internal causes for the Fall of Rome:

Christianism was less tolerant of other cultures and religions, than had been the norm with religions under Republican and Principate Rome. Constantine imposed it, of course, precisely because it was less tolerant. Somebody who had his wife steamed and his son and nephew executed, for obscure reasons he was unwilling to describe, didn’t view tolerance has an asset. 

Starting with Gratian and Theodosius, state imposed Christianism made everybody stupid, under the penalty of death, if one didn’t join the exponentiating stupidity by “exerting choice” (heresy, Greek hairesis “a choosing for oneself).

This fanatical cult conducive to tyranny didn’t hesitate to cut into the muscle. Example: Emperor Theodosius ended the Olympic Games, a purely sportive event, 12 centuries old… officially because the olympiades honored Zeus. A petty reason hiding a much sinister truth: the Christian theoreticians hated the body… as the body is the source of common sense… and the essence of Christianism was to refute reason, thus, common sense! Thus, Christianism cut into not just the bone, but the brain. It was like a praying mantis eating the brain of a hummingbird: pretty clever at feeding itself.

As Gibbon put it:

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world [before Christianism] were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

(Hearing of such accusations about the fanaticism of their sect, the Christians generally whine disingenuously that they were persecuted by Pagans, and died in great numbers. Well, not really. There was deliberately no prosecution under Trajan whatsoever. Six (6) Christians died under Marcus Aurelius, in twenty years… And under the most terrible persecution organized (and then lifted) by Galerius in the early Fourth Century, maybe a grand total of 3,000 (and this only for those who refused to take an oath to the State).

Whereas, soon enough the Christians, directly or indirectly, would kill millions. They warmed up by hunting and killing intellectuals (something they would do again in the late middle ages and renaissance).  

The split of the empire into two parts and many emperors and an unelected miasma of powerful officials weakened the empire: it was all too often not clear who was in charge. Successful generals were often executed, lest they become a threat to those in power above them. The more honest, the greater the threat, the more executed valuable generals were.

Roman soldiers were loyal to their military leaders, who often paid them, or decided if they could sack a city, not necessarily the emperor, or whoever, or whatever was supposedly in command. This problem of dependency upon the local commander started with Marius, seven times Consul, under the Republic, and was itself a reaction to the fact that Roman farmer-soldiers were treated very poorly… Something Tiberius Gracchus condemned as early as 150 BCE.

From 211 CE through 284 CE, there were at least twenty-seven emperors (and even more “usurpers”). Only four of these emperors died of natural causes. One cause for his turnover being that drastic problems, such as pandemics, inflation shrinking the real economy, and invasions could not be solved, so there was great dissatisfaction. There was no calm way to remove an emperor, so most were murdered. Loyal soldiers picked emperors by murdering them and placing their prefered general on the throne. This weakened Rome, and signaled the decline of its Empire. Diocletian re-established the aura of the emperor by closing the gap between God (Sol Invictus) and monarch. Constantine went further, inventing Christianism as we know it (“Nicene Creed”), full of unreason, and reverence for “The Lord” (implicitly, the emperor himself).

Legend has it that Romans had become lazy and all too comfortable. There is some elements of truth in this, but this despondency was engineered by the Roman plutocracy, which wanted to achieve such a despondency. Actually, the failing economy of the middle class in Italy was greatly due to a Machiavellian maneuver, one which can be observed today: jobs were sent overseas, Italians were paid to do nothing.

The idea was that, this way, the 99% would not rebel against the 1%, at least where it mattered, in the richest part, Italy. It worked. After a few centuries of this feeding for nothing, to make sure that they really would never rebel, the Roman plutocracy, that is, the Senate, decided that Italians couldn’t serve in the army. So italians couldn’t even defend themselves. Once the richest part, Italy became poorer.

Peripheral zones of the empire, archeology has shown, stayed wealthy… as long as they were not invaded.

The Roman army in the Late Empire was paid from high taxes. There was little respect for the state, and there was little sense of patriotism (differently to what happened under the Roman Republic). All the more as local democratic councils were dependent upon local wealthy elected officials, the Curiae. As the hyper rich became wealthier, complete with a bishop in the family, the lower upper class disappeared, and nobody could, or was willing to serve in the Curiae.

Nowadays, everybody admits that the fall(s) of the city of Rome and the Western Empire did not put an end to the entire Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire survived for another thousand years. The Eastern Empire is sometimes called the Byzantine Empire, after the ancient capital city of Byzantium, a city-state crucial ally of Athens, guarding the entry to the Black Sea, where Athens got grain.

Greek was the main language in the Byzantine Empire, not Latin. Yet, those Greeks called themselves “Romans”. And they were. So were the Franks in the West, busy rebuilding, “renovating” the empire, just better. The Franks in the West were all speaking latin by 600 CE, and every citizen was a Frank. A generation later, slavery was outlawed. Slavery had caused enormous problems to the middle class in Republican Rome, as the usage of slaves had made the hyper wealthy even wealthier, thus ever more powerful and perverse. 

Right, the violent Muslim invasion of the Seventh Century nearly put an end to this beautiful adventure. Yet, the city of Constantinople on one side, and the empire of the Franks on the other, were able to resist the onslaught. Frankish armies and their proxies or allies were able to reconquer much of the West (but not North Africa), and domesticate Eastern and Northern Europe. In the Tenth Century the Saxons conquered by Charlemagne would become lead two-third of the empire, defending Europe against the Avars. Meanwhile, the Greco-Romans expanded their Christian Cesaro-Patriarchism into Russia.

One of the reasons suggested for the Fall of the West has been that it was impoverished relative to the Orient. This is false (in spite of vast transfer of art east by Constantine). Quite the opposite. Indeed, recent genetic studies have hinted the opposite: there was little immigration of Western Europe into Italy during fascist imperial Rome. But there was an ultra massive Oriental immigration, to the point that Rome became full of Orientals. Generally people migrate towards richer areas.

In truth, as we will see, the reasons for the Fall of the West are purely military: it was easier to invade, geographically… and, curiously scrupulously ignored by traditional historians, Occidental Rome had no more army. Why was that not noted? Because Christian fanaticism has everything to do with the disappearance of the Occidental army.  

Amazingly, and very tellingly, many comprehensive treatises on the history of Rome, or even the fall of Rome fail, to mention the battle of Frigidus, where the Occidental Roman army was annihilated. Although, the following campaign season, in 395 CE, the Barbarians  attacked the core of the empire massively and Stilicho, the half-Vandal, by then Regent of the entire Roman empire had to scramble against them with whatever (victorious) forces  were left after Frigidus (a battle Theodosius should have lost… But there was this Bora wind, Arbogast made several mistakes in commandment… and Theodosius had offered the empire to the Goths, so they were motivated…)

Christianism and Oligarchism are biases against reason profitable to the worst, which keep on going, once well launched… And this is why books, for millennia, keep on representing them to their best advantage: powers that be prefer books which make them look good. Dissecting the ideologies which support them do not please the powers. Hence the superficial explanations for the fall of Rome, when the simplest and the earliest is for all to see: a takeover by the wealthiest, those “Optimates”… Just like Tiberius Gracchus said.

Patrice Ayme

Why Didn’t Roman Emperors Reestablish The Republic In Full?

Augustus won the last Civil War. But then he didn’t bring back the Republic in full, but only partially, and not at the top. Why not? Because of a particular web of complex causalities. One doesn’t choose history, history chooses you.

The prominent Roman historian Suetonius (who died around 125 CE) said the following of Augustus on his book De Vita Caesarum:

“He twice thought of restoring the republic; first immediately after the overthrow of Antony, remembering that his rival had often made the charge that it was his fault that it was not restored; and again in the weariness of a lingering illness, when he went so far as to summon the magistrates and the senate to his house, and submit an account of the general condition of the empire. Reflecting, however, that as he himself would not be free from danger if he should retire, so too it would be hazardous to trust the State to the control of more than one, he continued to keep it in his hands; and it is not easy to say whether his intentions or their results were the better. His good intentions he not only expressed from time to time, but put them on record as well in an edict in the following words: “May it be my privilege to establish the State in a firm and secure position, and reap from that act the fruit that I desire; but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government, and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for the State will remain unshaken.” And he realized his hope by making every effort to prevent any dissatisfaction with the new régime.”

A first problem with internal constitutional reform was that the Roman empire was at war to secure a safety zone around itself after 29 BCE, when Augustus became “Senatus Princeps“. In other words, Augustus augmented (hence his title of Augustus) the empire, pursuing his great uncle and adoptive father’s work. Marius and Sulla had saved Rome from annihilation at the hands of a coalition determined, hell-bound Germanic tribes, not even a century earlier… by the skin of their teeth.

Extent and expansion of the Roman Empire under Augustus; the yellow legend represents the extent of the Empire in 31 BC, the shades of green represent gradually conquered territories under the reign of Augustus, and pink areas on the map represent client states. (High Resolution!)

Basically, if Augustus had given up power, to whom, or what would the power have gone? The Roman oligarchy, its global, international plutocracy, was immensely more influential, because of its wealth and patronage, than the Roman People. Augustus knew it would have gone back to them. This is basically what happened after Sulla.

To reestablish the Republic, Augustus would have had to weaken both the prerogatives of the military and of the plutocracy, simultaneously, and delicately, while restoring the powers of the Roman People… which, after a century of butchery, had become more interested in pax rather than libertas. All the more as Augustus profited from the aura of populism of Caesar. And, considering what had happened to Caesar, a good bodyguard was in order, everybody had to admit. Under Tiberius a new actor came on the scene, a powerful Praetorian guard, strong enough to rule the City of Rome all by itself (as the guard got used to kill and install emperors, or sell the throne, it got dissolved by emperor Septimius Severus, 200 years later…)

Indeed, there was a precedent for the restoration of the Republic: after a horrendous civil war, with more than 100,000 young men killed in combat, Sulla exerted his dictatorship. However, still middle aged, he retired from public life, without any protection, after reestablishing the powers of the Tribunate of the People. Sulla died, from natural causes, soon after getting to enjoy his country estate. He was given a national funeral (although so many had been his victims, in the end most celebrated him after his death!)

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So what of Augustus? Why didn’t Augustus, such a learned young man, with much philosophical inclination, reestablish the Respublica, as Sulla had done? It was a question of character and convenience, or maybe simply the flow of history, the sum of all histories, just as in Quantum Mechanics (Feynman way). Octavian/Augustus life was incredibly adventurous and bold… But Sulla’s life, which was quite comparable, was even more so. Appian said Sulla renounced power, because, after his astounding adventures, from Africa to Gallia, to Asia, and conducting a civil war in Italy he was sated with power.

Augustus may have thought that to renounce power, and reestablish the Respublica as Sulla had done would just relaunch the civil wars. Also Sulla renounced power, soon after having acquired absolute power. Sulla was middle aged. Augustus instead acquired absolute power when he was in his twenties. By the time Augustus was middle aged, he had been in absolute, not to say outrageous, power, for thirty years: he was used to it.

Another event happened. Once after Sulla became an ordinary citizen without any bodyguard a young man followed him all day, ostensibly bombarding him with insults, and provocations. However the once hyper violent special ops agent, general, imperator and dictator passively received the abuse all day long and then pointed out, “This bully will ensure that no-one else will ever relinquish supreme power.”

Also Octavian/Augustus was immensely shocked by the death of his adoptive father Gaius Caesar. It was not just that he loved and admired Caesar, who was launching his military career, and treated him as a son. After Caesar’s death, Octavian himself had to fight back, not just to save his inheritance, but his life. It’s likely that, if he had done nothing, and had never risen to the occasion, he would have lost his life.

Caesar had tried to pull a trick similar to Sulla… Dictating, but then acting normal (except Sulla didn’t mix both genres: when he ruled, he ruled, when he retired, he retired). Although dictator, Caesar was going about Rome and attending dinner parties as if he were an ordinary citizen. Caesar ostensibly trusted the Senate, entered it all alone, unarmed… And was stabbed in return… After what had happened to Caesar, all could only be understanding of the precautions taken by Augustus. Besides, nobody could seriously disagree, those who had agreed to assassinate Caesar were dead.

Augustus awarded himself with the tribunicia potestas, or tribunician power, which enabled him to: propose laws to the Senate whenever he wanted, veto any laws he wanted, grant amnesty to any citizen accused of crime… There were other tribunes, but because Augustus was Senatus Princeps (First in the Senate), had stuffed the Senate only with obedient Senators, and because Augustus was endowed with the most powerful imperium, other tribunes were of no consequence.

Overall, both the Roman elite and the Roman People were exhausted of the horrendous civil wars which had killed so many. The wars became a memory under Augustus, and economic prosperity came back, as never before, while local elections were held in the quasi confederacy which was the empire.

The fundamental reason for the civil wars had been the rise of a hyper powerful plutocracy. Although Augustus and his fellow triumvirs had killed thousands of their prominent opponents, the plutocratic system was still in place. Only some names had changed and some families had been eradicated. The Republic couldn’t come back, because the plutocracy was still in power.

Moreover, as the Civil Wars developed, because of the military reforms of Caesar’s uncle Marius, men without property to go back to, as in old times, became soldiers. Those soldiers made their careers as followers of their own generals. Their careers was their generals, it was not the farms they didn’t have. Starting with Caesar, the army realized its powers, and developed political acumen. What the army understood is that it had only one interlocutor: the plutocracy.

By the time of Diocletian, an Illyrian native, the army had deprived the Senate of much of its power, and reduced the non-military plutocracy to being its own instrument…

In any case, the empire became a dialogue between plutocrats and the military, and then god was added to the mix, to justify the rule of a “Dominus”, Diocletian’s practice of “Domination”.

Sulla’s restoration of the Republic failed soon after his death, because the Roman plutocracy was the enemy of the Roman Republic and its once all-powerful Plebs. Just re establishing the Republic was not enough. Plutocracy was a cancer. The patient, the Republic, had passed out because of its cancer. Reanimating the patient , without operating on the cancer, could only have an ephemeral effect. So Augustus would have had to reestablish the old Absolute Wealth Limit of the Republic and its “Sumptuary” laws, which prevented the top families to become too powerful, and too vile.

By the time of Augustus, nobody in the elite wanted to see such limits to their power and debauchery to be erected again. Everybody in the elite wanted a good time, et, as French king Louis XV put it:”Après moi, le déluge!” Besides there independent military powers a few hundred miles from Rome and her delicate trading communication networks…

When too few people, their families, descendants, followers, helpers and hanger-ons, in particular if military, have too much power, the only thing which can divest this power from them is foreign invasions. And this is exactly what happened to Rome.

Could it have been different? Those who understood the situation best were a handful of extremely well educated and intelligent courageous aristocrats, most prominent among them the Gracchi and the leader of the “Populares”, Caesar. They understood the need to redistribute wealth, at least to soldiers (they passed wealth redistribution laws; Caesar’s was in 59 BCE, when he was Consul; the Senate never forgave that). The plutocrats (who called themselves the “Optimates”) hated the Populares optimally, assassinating them as well as they could, but not enough (some of the progressive laws survived the assassinations of the reformers).

The Gracchi and Caesar were too isolated from the rest of the elite (although thousands of followers of the Gracchi were assassinated with them). What was missing in the Roman intelligentsia was an understanding of how debilitating the plutocracy would prove to the society in all ways. To achieve that understanding, the Greco-Roman society had to fail first. Now, two thousand years later, we have recovered in all ways… and we should be endowed with that understanding.

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: The causal system which made Augustus act as he did relative to the Republic is an example of a CAUSAL WEB… complete with nonlinear self-acting, exponential loops…

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P/P/S: Quora, in its latest harassment, informed me (6/20/2020) that they removed a version of the essay above for “plagiarism” (without telling me what was “plagiarized”… just the usual threat that I may be banned). There was no plagiarism, whatsoever, and the main anti-plutocratic drift is clearly mine. But somehow Quora has decided that I better be “banned” (as they threatened me of this for various reasons). All I see is one more entitled monopolistic corporation out of the SF Bay Area with secret black lists…

 

Computation Of Roman Republic Absolute Wealth Limit. Caesar A Revolutionary.

Greed, the power of a few, can’t grow to heavens, all over the solar system, then the galaxy, or we will end with evil so great, we can’t even imagine it.

The Roman Republic had the same problem, and succeeded to limit greed and power for around 5 centuries… This is why it lasted so long, until it was increasing replaced and displaced by the imperial plutocracy known as the Principate. 

By 150 BCE, Roma had a gigantic empire, taking weeks to cross. Plutocracy got out of control, thanks to globalization which, then as now, enabled the wealthiest to escape local laws. 

In -133, the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a very high level military official renounced his (topmost) Patrician status to be elected Tribune of the People. He attempted an agrarian reform in Rome (lex Sempronia) which stipulated that no citizen can personally occupy more than 500 jugeres of the ager publicus (public lands), with a maximum of 1000 (250 hectares) if he had two sons and forbids grazing on the public pasture more than one hundred head of cattle or five hundred of small. The land, taken over by the State from the large landowners (compensated), was to be distributed in inalienable lots of 30 jugeres to the poor citizens. Tibérius hoped to encourage the inactive plebs to return to the land and fight against depopulation of the countryside, and the increasing underclass..

Tiberius passed his law by relying on the tradition (the limitation to 500 jugeres was a return to the agrarian law of Caius Licinius Stolon) and on the liberal fraction of the Senate. The proposal is first supported by the consul P. Mucius Scaevola, the ex-consul Appius Claudius Pulcher, Pontifex Maximus  P. Licinius Crassus, Q. Metellus  and some others. The tribune M. Octavius, who opposes the reform, is deposed of his office unanimously by the comices summoned by Tibérius in violation of the constitution. The agrarian law passed in an aggravated form (no indemnity).

Now think of it. Say one acre is worth 4,000 dollars… 

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/land0818.pdf

The maximum wealth is then 2,000 x 4,000 ~ 10 x 10^6= 10 million dollars.

This gives an idea of the order of magnitude of what Roman Republicans thought was reasonable as wealth limit. Later, under the fascist Principate (the degraded republican oligarchy Augustus set up), individuals worth many billions (of today’s dollars) were many: they would build entire circuses or theaters, organized and financed extravagant, extremely costly “games”…

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Topmost general, top revolutionary… But too trusting in human nature’s rationality… Iulius Caesar…

Roman censors punished those culprit as what was viewed as extravagant living (and they were busy). When that became not enough, the Roman Republic enacted “sumptuary laws”, limiting extravagant private wealth exhibition: no woman could wear more than half an ounce of gold, for example (Lex Oppia, 213 BCE, passed during the Second Punic War). Lex Orchia, passed three years after the Censorship of Cato the Elder (181 BCE), limited the number of guests at parties, among other things.

SUMTUARIAE LEGES, was the name of various laws passed over the centuries to prevent inordinate expense (sumtus) in banquets, dress, &c. (Gellius, II.24,XX.1). In antiquity, and not just in the Roman Republic, it was considered the duty of government to put a check upon extravagance in the private expenses of persons. The censors, to whom was entrusted the disciplina or cura morum, punished by the nota censoria all persons guilty of luxurious mode of living: a great many instances of this kind are recorded [Censor, p264, a.] 

There were many such laws. An example: Lex Didia, passed 143 B.C.E, extended the Lex Fannia to the whole of Italy, and enacted that not only those who gave entertainments which exceeded in expense what the law had prescribed, but also all who were present at such entertainments, should be liable to the penalties of the law. (Macrob. Sat. III.17.6). But as the love of luxury greatly increased with the immense foreign conquests of the Republic and the luxurious moods of various potentates thereupon infected the Republic, the sumptuary laws went by the way side too.

Nowadays, we could start sumptuary laws by not having We The People subsidize private jets… Or having cruise ships pay tax on fuel, etc. The French put a tax on business and first class air travel…

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Julius Caesar, Redistributive Revolutionary:

Caesar was elected consul for 59 BC. The most controversial measure Caesar introduced was an agrarian bill to allot plots of land to the landless poor for farming, which clashed with the traditional conservative opposition. In historian Cassius Dio‘s opinion, Caesar tried to appear to promote the interests of the optimates as well as those of the people (POPULARES). Caesar read the draft of the bill to the senate, asked for the opinion of each senator and promised to amend or scrap any clause that had raised objections. 

The optimates were annoyed because the bill, to their embarrassment, could not be criticised. Moreover, passing the law would give Caesar popularity and power. Even though no optimate spoke against it, no one expressed approval. The law would distribute public and private land to all citizens instead of just Pompey’s veterans and would do so without any expense for the city or any loss for the optimates. It would be financed with the proceeds from Pompey’s war booty and the new tributes and taxes in the east Pompey established with his victories in the Third Mithridatic War. 

Private land was to be bought at the price assessed in the tax-lists to ensure fairness. The land commission in charge of the allocations would have twenty members so that it would not be dominated by a clique and so that many men could share the honour. Caesar added that it would be run by the most suitable men, an invitation to the optimates to apply for these posts. He ruled himself out of the commission to avoid suggestions that he proposed the measure out of self-interest and said that he was happy with being just the proposer of the law. 

The senators kept delaying the vote. Cato advocated the status quo. Caesar came to the point of having him dragged out of the senate house and arrested. Many senators followed suit and left. Caesar adjourned the session and decided that since the senate was not willing to pass a preliminary decree Caesar would get the plebeian council to vote. He did not convene the senate for the rest of his consulship and proposed motions directly to the plebeian council. 

Appian wrote that the law provided for distribution of public land that was leased to generate public revenues in Campania, especially around Capua, to citizens who had at least three children, and that this included 20,000 men. When many senators opposed the bill, Caesar pretended to be indignant and rushed out of the senate. Appian noted that Caesar did not convene it again for the rest of the year. Instead, he harangued the people and proposed his bills to the plebeian council. Suetonius also mentioned the 20,000 citizens with three children. He also wrote that the allocations concerned land in the plain of Stella that had been made public in by-gone days, and other public lands in Campania that had not been allotted but were under lease. Plutarch, who had a pro-aristocratic slant, thought that this law was not becoming of a consul, but for a most radical plebeian tribune. 

Land distribution, which was anathema to conservative aristocrats, was usually proposed by the plebeian tribunes who were often described by Roman writers (who were usually wealthy aristocrats) as base and vile. It was opposed by ‘men of the better sort’ (aristocrats) and this gave Caesar an excuse to rush to the plebeian council, claiming that he was driven to it by the obduracy of the senate. It was only the most arrogant plebeian tribunes who courted the favour of the multitude and now Caesar did this to support his consular power “in a disgraceful and humiliating manner”.

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The Gracchi were assassinated. By the wealthiest. Because of the land redistribution law. So was Caesar, leader of the POPULARES… Caesar was in a league of his own. He was not just a fantastic general and a dictator, or, as some have erroneous said, the first “emperor” (there had been many “imperators” before). Caesar was also a genuine revolutionary, just what Rome needed. Like the Gracchi, he took shortcuts (they all may have had to). Their biggest mistake was to have been assassinated.

A few months ago, I was reading a new misinforming book by a famous historian from one of the wealthiest universities (most of the book was good, but that made the misinformation within that much more lethal). The professor pontificated that there was not a shred of revolution in Caesar’s bones. But, actually, the Lex Iulia, Caesar’s agrarian reform, passed… 15 years later, the plutocrats killed Caesar…

The absurd, counterfactual position of this US university professor teaches us that, to this day, the quarrel of the Populares with the plutocrats is ongoing. His wealthy sponsors (through his wealthy university) instilled in that historian, a spirit of dismissal of Caesar, where it could really hurt plutocracy….

Now Elizabeth Warren 2% wealth tax above 50 million dollars is far from the ferocity of the Roman Republic laws against wealth, power, and luxury. But one has to start somewhere…

Patrice Ayme