The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago and what is happening in the U.S. today are getting really scary.
I don't necessarily think that they understood the extent to which the acquisition of land, power, and resources by corporations might mimic the destructive influence of the latifundia of the late Roman Republic, but still the end result will likely be the same: land reform by a populare (i.e. Peace, Land, Bread).
Under the Julian land reform program, Caesar proposed to:
* Distribute public lands to poor and landless citizens: Caesar proposed to distribute public lands to poor and landless citizens, who would be allowed to cultivate the land in exchange for paying a small rent to the state.
* Restrict the size of private estates: Caesar proposed to limit the amount of land that could be held by any one individual, in order to prevent the accumulation of vast estates by the wealthy elite. This would help to ensure that there was enough land available for small farmers and other citizens.
* Create colonies for veterans and landless citizens: Caesar proposed to create new colonies in Italy and other parts of the Roman world, where veterans and landless citizens could be settled and given land to cultivate.
Given the current crises in housing, climate, self-confidence, and employment amongst the proles, a similar platform is likely to emerge. Unfortunately, given the same stridency in those with wealth and status, similar obstacles are also likely to prevent the pressure valve of nihilistic desperation from being released, with likely destructive results.
And would he have given up his Spanish silver mines?
> This would help to ensure that there was enough land available for small farmers and other citizens.
It would also -- totally coincidentally -- ensure that the competing powerful families would not remain strong enough to threaten Caesar but I'm sure that wasn't his intention. Caesar was an honourable man, after all.
such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is claudius?
Edit: British humour. Started as car seat belt promotion videos, but now used to refer to someone being in prison.
We seem to be at the potential start of that process. The morals/ethics of the coastal elites from the rural population have diverged to the point where, with Social Justice (differing from social justice) they may not be compatible, but both sides are trying to enforce their morality on the other. (Although I think the push for change is essentially from the coasts and the rural morality is on an offensive-defense.) So you get the rise of populist Trump and the far right to oppose the push from the far left. Trump isn't equivalent to anyone in Rome, but the situation has a similar flavor. (Also, the situation described by Plato in the Republic, where he says democracy results in chaos, causing people to want a dictator to restore order, although we have not got there yet.)
I think the basic story of the late Republic is one of a political-economy which needed to change but which could not. Romes successes had rewritten the fundamental realities of its means and relations of production but the political system gave an effective veto power to people who refused to see this and instead wished to blame cultural changes and a decline in traditional virtue for the troubles.
This delusion was a borderline mental illness. These people loved Rome's martial history and wanted to keep armies in the field as much as anyone, yet opposed opening the cavalry to non-yeomen despite the deleterious impacts it had on the rural upper class and the decreasing ability of the Romans to field these kind of patriotic cavalry.
These people benefited in multitude ways from the influx of slave labor. But they resisted any effort to enfranchise now underemployed Romans, settling instead to doll them grain. Even as this destroyed the
These people leveraged their neighbor Italians to win profitable war after profitable war and resisted giving them the privileges of citizenship until forced at the point of a spear.
And all the while, any type of reform which had the aesthetic of appearing against traditional Roman virtue was resisted entirely by the traditional aristocrats. Until of course Marius, many of whose reforms were so practical that not even a nostalgia trip like Sulla could bring himself to turn them all back.
I think the moral of the fall of Rome is not about a lack of compromise but about what happens when your political system ceases to be able to address the fundamental issues that are undermining it. The end of the Poland-Lithuania is another such example.
But I broadly agree with your point - the tensions that brought the Republic down had been festering for hundreds of years.
That's true but not my specific point. My specific point is that the above comment is extolling a milk-toast "both sides" view of the breakdown of the Roman Republic that simply isn't supported by fact. The problems facing Rome were plainly due to changes in geo-poltical and economic circumstances. Many of these changes in circumstances were themselves created by action of the basic structures of Roman society and the successes they had achieved.
All resistance to addressing those changes in any manner, big or small, can be laid at the feet of an out of touch group of traditional aristocrats who would not abide Rome in any form besides the mythological form they believe it had in the early Republic. These people essentially held a veto to any "legitimate" challenge and used violence in successive circumstances where they feared an "illegitimate" challenge.
But you can read about Cicero’s two Catiline conspiracies, the first completely fabricated, the second embellished beyond all reason, see his second oration against Catiline, chapter 4, sections 7-8 for the juiciest accusations re: corrupting the nation’s youth.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
Early in his career he credited himself with bravely speaking out against allies of Sulla, but that was probably an embellishment:
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/11875418/THE_PUBLICATION_...
He’s a very entertaining figure, and you can’t help but read his letters and identify a little with him (even as he swings from proclaiming himself the greatest human ever to live, to being wildly neurotic). He was a Demosthenes forever in search of a Philip but was ultimately too spineless and indecisive to affect events when it counted. In some ways I find him pitiable in the same way as Pompey - desperate to be accepted by the aristocracy and always insecure about it. But while his literary output was sparkling, his politics and egotism were contemptible.
From TFA: "The third impact was the realisation of a new reality. Caesar’s teenage adopted son took over where his father had left off. The power of a popular name to motivate soldiers and the poor left his killers amazed."
I would not be surprised to see an analogous sentence being written ten years from now, something like, "DeSantis took over where Trump had left off. The power of MAGA ideology to motivate a large portion of the public left the Democrats amazed (and permanently out of power)."
Either way, I find this comparison of ancient Rome to modern politics ridiculous. Just thought I'd slam in here with a jab.
my money is on hunter biden as the future augustus ))) has military experience? check. likes to party? check! feels like 44BC all over again.