Quotulatiousness

February 24, 2025

The Third Triumvirate?

Filed under: Europe, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, John Carter posted an amusing thread (unrolled here courtesy of the @threadreaderapp):

JD Vance as Julius Caesar
AI image by Grok

Trump, Musk, Vance: the new triumvirate, bringing a window of stability to the troubled Republic.

Trump: the old warhorse, beloved of the people, a part of the establishment but with an uneasy relationship to it. Trump is Pompey.

Musk: the richest man in the world. Musk is Crassus.

Vance: the charismatic young upstart. Vance is Caesar.

So how does this play out?

Musk’s ambition is to go to Mars, just as Crassus wanted to conquer Parthia. Musk harnesses his wealth, launches the expedition to great fanfare. Things go horribly wrong after their arrival. Contact with the colony is lost. Musk’s grave is never found.

At the head of a private military corporation equipped with letters of marque, Vance is sent into the badlands of South America to crush the cartels and secure the Panama Canal. The war takes longer than expected. By the end of it, Vance hasn’t merely crushed the cartels – he’s conquered the entirety of Central America.

At home, Vance is beset by his enemies in the Senate, who mistrust his ambitions and intentions. It is whispered that he wishes to make himself king.

Vance’s enemies whisper in Trump’s ears. Were you not the one who built the wall? If Vance brings the Central American republics into the Union, what then of immigration? Of your life’s work? Vance will destroy it all.

And do the people, after all, not love you first and most? Are you not their hero? Why then should you fear this upstart?

With Trump’s blessing, Vance is recalled by the Senate, to face charges of corruption.

But throughout this time Vance has been building auctoritas with the people, going directly to them with his poasts, showing them his victories and their fruits. The people have come to love him more than they love Trump — for he has sent great wealth back to them, and crushed their enemies abroad.

And so the fateful day comes in which Vance returns, as summoned … but he does not demobilize his mercenary army when it crosses the Rio Grande. His forces — which now include former cartel soldiers, some of whom he has won to his side — drive straight to Washington in a blitzkrieg attack.

Washington empties out in panic.

Trump and the Senate flee to New York City, where they rally their forces. There are still many who are loyal to Trump, particularly within the military … but it turns out that Trump’s base is much older than Vance’s … and there are many, more than expected, who declare for Vance.

And so the Union cracks apart into the Civil War that was deferred when the triumvirate first seized power, so many years ago.

But this is not first and foremost a war of ideology, as it would have been — a showdown between right and left.

It is a war of personalities and personal loyalty, a war to determine a single question: who is to be king?

Obviously none of this is going to happen. History never repeats itself so precisely.

But it’s fun to think about Vance rampaging around Central America at the head of a PMC.

February 19, 2025

HBO’s Rome – Ep 4 “Stealing from Saturn” – History and Story

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 28 Aug 2024

Vidcaps taken from the dvd collection and copyright belongs to the respective makers and channels.
Transcript

January 27, 2025

The Rise of Augustus – The Conquered And The Proud 12

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 4 Sept 2024

Continiung the series “The Conquered and the proud”, we come to the early days of the young Octavian, the man who would become Caesar Augustus and found the Principate, the rule of emperors — a system that would last for centuries and see the Roman empire reach the pinnacle of its prosperity and population.
Just eighteen years old when Julius Caesar was murdered, his great nephew was named as principal heir in his will. This mean that he took his name and the bulk of his property. However, this ambitious teenager took it to mean that he should also succeed to Caesar’s power. Incredibly, after fourteen years of bloody struggle, he did just that.

January 7, 2025

Caesar’s dictatorship and the Ides of March – The Conquered And The Proud 11

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 31 Jul 2024

Continuing “The conquered and the proud”, this time we look at Julius Caesar as dictator in Rome, about his activities and reforms and his murder on the 15th March — The Ides of March — in 44 BC. We talk about Brutus, Cassius and the other conspirators and what motivated them.

December 27, 2024

The First Triumvirate – The Conquered and the Proud 10

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jul 10, 2024

This time we take a look at the Fifties BC, the formation of the first triumvirate, Caesar’s consulship, Clodius and Milo’s organised violence, Caesar in Gaul, Crassus in Syria and Parthia. The context is conquest and Roman success abroad with spiralling chaos at home. A big theme is the build-up to the Civil War and Caesar crossing the Rubicon in January 49 BC. We end with a quick run through the campaigns of the Civil War.

Primary sources include Caesar’s War Commentaries, Cicero’s letters and speeches, Plutarch’s Lives, Appian’s Civil War.

December 26, 2024

Historian Reviews the Best and Worst Depictions of the Roman Empire in Film and TV

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Hit
Published 9 Sept 2024

Tristan Hughes, host of “The Ancients” podcast, reviews scenes from famous movies and TV shows set in the Roman period.

00:00 Intro
00:58 HBO Rome
12:54 The Last Legion
15:55 Monty Python’s Life of Brian
24:32 Centurion
31:40 Doctor Who
(more…)

December 8, 2024

The potential for retribution in a second Trump presidency

Francis Christian meditates on whether or how President-elect Donald Trump will indulge in eye-for-an-eye revenge against the individuals most clearly involved in the lawfare and other attempts to derail his re-election:

It was the English poet Alexander Pope who admonished us in the manner of the New Testament that “to err is human; to forgive, divine” — Errare humanum est, ignoscere divino.

The Old Testament in contrast, has the equally familiar and perhaps far more popular, “eye for an eye“, and in one of the most revolutionary statements ever uttered, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talked about us “having heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye’ — but I say unto you, love your enemies“.

To wish to take revenge upon one’s enemies is therefore human, but Jesus is asking mankind to rise above this basic instinct and instead, to forgive and love one’s enemies. This was all of course part of His Mission on earth — to change by His Life, His Cross and the Resurrection, the destiny of human beings from being bound to basic instincts and death — to being bound for eternal life, a different destiny and a new creation.

The mavens of Hollywood of course march to a different and more ancient tune (which has been handed down unchanged to them) and generations of movie goers and consumers of media have been brought up on the idea that revenge of the most explosively visceral kind is a good thing, even a noble thing.

My readers will undoubtedly have their own sincerely held beliefs about Jesus’ command to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us and once again, I do not wish this essay to turn out to be a sermon! What I wish to address instead, is to ask the question: what is the place for retribution, vengeance and revenge in the conduct of statecraft?

In other words, when President elect Trump said in a recently widely publicized interview that he was, “not looking for retribution, grandstanding or to destroy people who treated me very unfairly“, was he declaring a principle of statecraft that makes for a fulfilling and productive Presidency? And is this also a principle of statecraft that will “make American great again?

In typical, inimitable and endearing Trumpian fashion, the President-elect also added the tongue in cheek comment: “I am always looking to give a second and even third chance, but never willing to give a fourth chance — that is where I hold the line!

It could be argued from the life of no less a colossal figure than Julius Caesar that decisive and devastating revenge upon one’s enemies makes for a strong and respected ruler and nation. Whilst still a private citizen, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates on the way to the Greek island of Rhodes (to which he was travelling in order to learn oratory from the famous professor Molon). Caesar raised his own ransom — then raised a naval force, captured his pirate captors and had them all crucified.

The later assassination of Caesar and the subsequent civil wars that rocked and roiled Rome is the subject of Shakespeare’s magnificent, Tragedy of Julius Caesar. The subsequent rule of Augustus Caesar was marked by stability, expansion of the empire, the building of roads and bridges (via which the Gospel was to travel), the making of sea and land routes safe for travellers (again, to the advantage of the early Christians taking the Gospel to Asia and Europe) the consolidation of Roman power — and the rule of (Roman) law. It was also during the reign of this austere, learned emperor that Jesus was born in a manger, in the Roman province of Palestine.

H/T to Brian Peckford for the link.

November 22, 2024

QotD: Pre-modern armies on the move

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Armies generally had to move over longer distances via roads, for both logistical and pathfinding reasons. For logistics, while unencumbered humans can easily clamber over fences or small ridges or weave through forests, humans carrying heavy loads struggle to do this and pack animals absolutely cannot. Dense forests (especially old growth forests) are formidable obstacles for pack and draft animals, with a real risk of animals injuring themselves with unlucky footfalls. After all the donkey was originally a desert/savannah creature and horses evolved on the Eurasian Steppe; dense forest is a difficult, foreign terrain. But the rural terrain that would dominate most flat, arable land was little better: fields are often split by fences or hedgerows which need to be laboriously cleared (essentially making a path) to allow the work animals through. Adding wagons limits this further; pack mules can make use of narrow paths through forests or hills, but wagons pulled by draft animals require proper roads wide enough to accommodate them, flat enough that the heavy wagon doesn’t slide back and with a surface that will be at least somewhat kind on the wheels. That in turn in many cases restricts armies to significant roadways, ruling out things like farmer’s paths between fields or small informal roads between villages, though smaller screening, scouting or foraging forces could take these side roads.

(As an aside: one my enduring frustrations is the tendency of pre-modern strategy games to represent most flat areas as “plains” of grassland often with a separate “farmland” terrain type used only in areas of very dense settlement. But around most of the Mediterranean, most of the flat, cleared land at lower elevations would have been farmland, with all of the obstructions and complications that implies; rolling grasslands tend to be just that – uplands too hilly for farming.)

The other problem is pathfinding and geolocation. Figuring out where you off-road overland with just a (highly detailed) map and a compass is sufficiently difficult that it is a sport (Orienteering). Prior to 1300, armies in the broader Mediterranean world were likely to lack both; the compass (invented in China) arrives in the Mediterranean in the 1300s and detailed topographical maps of the sort that hikers today might rely on remained rare deep into the modern period, especially maps of large areas. Consequently it could be tricky to determine an army’s exact heading (sun position could give something approximate, of course) or position. Getting lost in unfamiliar territory was thus a very real hazard. Indeed, getting lost in familiar territory was a real hazard: Suetonius records that Julius Caesar, having encamped not far from the Rubicon got lost trying to find it, spent a whole night wandering trying to locate it (his goal being to make the politically decisive crossing with just a few close supporters in secrecy first before his army crossed). In the end he had to find a local guide to work his way back to it in the morning (Suet. Caes. 31.2). So to be clear: famed military genius Julius Caesar got lost trying to find a 50 mile long river only about 150 miles away from Rome when he tried to cut cross-country instead of over the roads.

Instead, armies relied on locals guides (be they friendly, bought or coerced) to help them find their way or figure out where they were on whatever maps they could get together. Locals in turn tend to navigate by landmarks and so are likely to guide the army along the paths and roads they themselves use to travel around the region. Which is all as well because the army needs to use the roads anyway and no one wants to get lost. The road and path network thus becomes a vital navigational aid: roads and paths both lead to settlements full of potential guides (to the next settlement) and because roads tend to connect large settlements and large settlements tend to be the objectives of military campaigns, the road system “points the way”. Consequently, armies rarely strayed off of the road network and were in most cases effectively confined to it. Small parties might be sent out off of the road network from the main body, but the main body was “stuck” on the roads.

That means the general does not have to cope with an infinitely wide range of maneuver possibilities but a spiderweb of possible pathways. Small, “flying columns” without heavy baggage could use minor roads and pathways, but the main body of the army was likely to be confined to well-traveled routes connecting large settlements.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the move”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-08-12.

November 18, 2024

HBO’s Rome Ep. 3 “The owl in a thorn bush” – History and Story

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jul 17, 2024

Episode Three: Now that Caesar has crossed the Rubicon, the Civil War has begun and the series gathers pace.

Vidcaps taken from the dvd collection and copyright belongs to the respective makers and channels.
Transcript

November 10, 2024

The Sixties, Cicero, Catiline, Cato and Caesar – The Conquered and the Proud Episode 9

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jul 3, 2024

Continuing our series on the the history of Rome from 200 BC to AD 200, this time we look at the turbulent decade following the consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70 BC. These years saw Pompey being given major commands against the pirates and Mithridates. Men like Cicero, Caesar and Cato were on the ascendant. Cicero’s letters can make the decade seem calm, but further consideration reveals the threat and reality of political violence, seen most of all in Catiline’s conspiracy which led to a brief civil war.

In this talk we explore the themes we have already considered and consider how imperial expansion continued to change the Roman Republic.

This talk will be released in July — and as this is the month named after Julius Caesar, it seemed only appropriate to have a Caesar theme to most of the talks.

Next time we will look at the Fifties BC and the start of the Civil War in 49 BC.

November 4, 2024

Cicero 101: Life, Death & Legacy

Filed under: Europe, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

MoAn Inc.
Published 31 Oct 2024

A Bit About MoAn Inc. — Trust me, the ancient world isn’t as boring as you may think. In this series, I’ll talk you through all things Cicero. I hope you guys enjoy this wonderful book as much as all us nerds do.
(more…)

October 10, 2024

HBO’s Rome – Ep. 2 “How Titus Pullo brought down the Republic” – History and Story

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jun 26, 2024

A look at episode 2 of the first series/season of HBO’s Rome drama. Once again we talk about the actual history and how the characters, events and institutions are presented in the series. This time this includes Antony becoming tribune of the plebs, as well as a meeting of the Senate and Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

Vidcaps taken from the dvd edition, so copyright belongs to HBO.

September 22, 2024

History and story in HBO’s Rome – S1E1 “The Lost Eagle”

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published Jun 12, 2024

Starting a series looking at the HBO/BBC co production drama series ROME. We will look at how they chose to tell the story, at what they changed and where they stuck closer to the history.

August 24, 2024

QotD: How did the Romans themselves view the change from Republic to Empire?

The Romans themselves had a lot of thoughts about the collapse of the republic. First, we should note that they were aware that something was going very wrong and we have a fair bit of evidence that at least some Romans were trying to figure out how to fix it. Sulla’s reforms (enforced at the point of a much-used sword) in 82-80 BC were an effort to fix what he saw as the progressive destabilization of the the republic going back to the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (133). Sulla’s solutions were hamfisted though – he assumed that if he annihilated the opposing faction, crippled the tribunate and strengthened the Senate that this would resolve all of the problems. Cicero likewise considered reforms during the 50s BCE which come out in his De re publica and De legibus. The 50s were a time of political tumult in Rome while at the same time the last years of the decade must have been loomed over by the knowledge of an impending crisis to come in 49. Cicero was never in a position to enact his idealized republic.

Overall the various Romans who contemplated reform were in a way hindered by the tendency of Roman elites to think in terms of the virtue of individuals rather than the tendency of systems. You can see this very clearly in the writings of Sallust – another Roman writing with considerable concern as the republic comes apart – who places the fault on the collapse of Roman morals rather than on any systemic problem.

We also get a sense of these feelings from the literature that emerges after Augustus takes power in 31, and here there is a lot of complexity. There is quite a lot of praise for Augustus of course – it would have been profoundly unwise to do otherwise – but also quite a lot of deep discomfort with the recent past, revealed in places like Livy’s deeply morally compromised legends of the founding of Rome or the sharp moral ambiguity in the final books of Vergil’s Aeneid. On the other hand, some of the praise for Augustus seems to have been genuine. There was clearly an awful lot of exhaustion after so many years of disruption and civil war and so a general openness to Augustus’ “restored republic”. Still, some Romans were clearly bothered by the collapse of the republic even much later; Lucan’s Pharsalia (65 AD) casts Pompey and Cato as heroes and views Caesar far more grimly.

We have less evidence for feeling in the provinces, but of course for many provincials, little would have changed. Few of Augustus’ changes would have done much to change much for people living in the provinces, whose taxes, laws and lives remained the same. They were clearly aware of what was going on and among the elite there was clearly a scramble to try to get on the right side of whoever was going to win; being on the wrong side of the eventual winner could be a very dangerous place to be. But for most regular provincials, the collapse of the Roman Republic only mattered if some rogue Roman general’s army happened to march through their part of the world.

Bret Devereaux, Referenda ad Senatum: August 6, 2021: Feelings at the Fall of the Republic, Ancient and Medieval Living Standards, and Zombies!”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-08-06.

August 17, 2024

Caesar Marches on Rome – Historia Civilis Reaction

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Vlogging Through History
Published Apr 23, 2024

See the original here –
Caesar Marches on Rome (49 B.C.E.)
See “Caesar Crosses the Rubicon” here –
Caesar Crosses the Rubicon – Historia…

#history #reaction

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