09-12-2007, 06:10 PM
Steven, first off I'd like to say that your research is highly interesting to me, being interested as I am in the Punic Wars (my favorite period too!), and the earlier political and military system also. Thanks for the research and please continue posting on it.
By the way, I think you've sort of reinvented the wheel with the tribunate 50/50 election vs. the centuriate 60/40. This was already known, since Livy's time at least, because he describes how the centuriate system was geared more to the classis, since being much less numerous they still received their own century vote; whereas the tribunate system was more democratic and the votes of the upper class were swamped by the poorer folk. Perhaps you could also make a note about the proletarii (the dirt-poor folk) and how they were scorned and excluded from the Roman political system, and the reasoning the Romans had for doing this. In short, this whole ground is highly fertile, and relevant for today and for all time.
I also want to express my appreciation for your stance on respecting the classics, and on frustration towards some who express skepticism thereof. Modern historians have much too far fallen to cynicism and skepticism, which, quite opposite to careful analysis, have served to estrange and alienate them from the very classics they purport to study and admire!
I am very interested in your point about the military reforms, that they were always done after victories instead of defeats, and that the manipular system was not somehow of Samnite origin as many people sometimes proclaim. Could you share with us even just a teaser of what your view and reasoning has been, and why the Ineditum Vaticanum is incorrect?
Finally, maybe my terminology is off, but could you explain what you mean in attributing the cohort system to the 5th century? Are you trying to refute the idea that cohorts only came into existence with Marius? If so, and if cohorts as a unit existed for centuries earlier, then how does this square with the maniples, which were a fundamentally different unit?
By the way, I think you've sort of reinvented the wheel with the tribunate 50/50 election vs. the centuriate 60/40. This was already known, since Livy's time at least, because he describes how the centuriate system was geared more to the classis, since being much less numerous they still received their own century vote; whereas the tribunate system was more democratic and the votes of the upper class were swamped by the poorer folk. Perhaps you could also make a note about the proletarii (the dirt-poor folk) and how they were scorned and excluded from the Roman political system, and the reasoning the Romans had for doing this. In short, this whole ground is highly fertile, and relevant for today and for all time.
I also want to express my appreciation for your stance on respecting the classics, and on frustration towards some who express skepticism thereof. Modern historians have much too far fallen to cynicism and skepticism, which, quite opposite to careful analysis, have served to estrange and alienate them from the very classics they purport to study and admire!
I am very interested in your point about the military reforms, that they were always done after victories instead of defeats, and that the manipular system was not somehow of Samnite origin as many people sometimes proclaim. Could you share with us even just a teaser of what your view and reasoning has been, and why the Ineditum Vaticanum is incorrect?
Finally, maybe my terminology is off, but could you explain what you mean in attributing the cohort system to the 5th century? Are you trying to refute the idea that cohorts only came into existence with Marius? If so, and if cohorts as a unit existed for centuries earlier, then how does this square with the maniples, which were a fundamentally different unit?
Multi viri et feminae philosophiam antiquam conservant.
James S.
James S.
