M. Porcius Cato

It's been said that Caesar was the first to depict himself on a coin. Can anyone provide an earlier example?

In today's NYT, there is a nice spread on the newly renovated Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met. It looks much better now that they've moved the cafeteria out of there.

The full dope at Wired Magazine.

Why don't you post it here?

Ave, Licinius Stolo! What is the most convincing recent interpretation of the lex Sempronia that you have read?

Researchers at Rockefeller University report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that 16 April 1178 BC is the most likely date of Odysseus' homecoming, given the data of a solar eclipse that appears to be referenced by Homer (who might have been a woman). From MSNBC: The possible solar eclipse comes up in the 20th book of the "Odyssey," as the suitors begin their final lunch. At this point, the goddess of war Athena "confounds their minds," making the suitors laugh uncontrollably and see their food spattered with blood. The seer Theoclymenus then foresees the death of the suitors, ending by saying, "The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world." The Greek historian Plutarch suggested the prophecy of Theoclymenus referred to a solar eclipse. More recently, astronomers Carl Schoch and Paul Neugebauer computed in the 1920s that a total solar eclipse occurred over the Ionian islands

LOL. Leave to Aaron Burr to look to Marius for inspiration!

It's a great concept for a book -- I'd eagerly purchase it. Did you already choose the paintings and get the rights to reproduce them?

Helen of Troy. One bio is enough.

Speaking for myself, I always loved wiping the Julii off the face of the earth.

I wouldn't consider Alaric to be a civil rights leader. There's a fundamental difference between fighting for the rights of your tribe and fighting for human rights per se. Alaric sought merely to transfer oppression from his group to another group. In this, he was much like Spartacus, who sought to liberate many slaves, but who did not fight (like the Abolitionists of the 19th C.) to end slavery everywhere. That's a crucial difference. Now, there was a hugely important civil rights movement in Roman history -- and that was the movement seeking civil rights for plebeians. The leaders of this movement, by the way, weren't merely seeking the right to stand for office for their particular families, but for all plebeians, and they didn't do it by trying to take away the rights of patricians to seek office too. So, if you're looking for a Roman civil rights hero, I'd nominate Publicola and M. Curius Dentatus over Alaric any day.

My favorite index is HERE

Give me a break -- I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in the cult of Jesus. After your Statue of Liberty bunk, however, I now believe in trolls.

The Temples of the Caesar Cult where the first to be replaced with the Jesus Cult, so Christian Church are thus built upon the Caesar Cult,. Now you're just making up "facts" to suit your argument, aren't you? Can you provide any corroborating evidence for this claim? When exactly did the Temple to the Divine Julius in Rome (or anywhere else) serve as a Christian church? If you've been to the Forum, you certainly are aware that it's not a church today. According to most sources on the history of the Jesus cult, the first churches were those in the homes of Christians. Indeed, Romans heaped scorn on early Christians for viewing their temples as houses of the dead -- which would make it bizarre for them to appropriate Caesar's temple as their very first church. Indeed, even the first churches in Rome itself don't appear until the fourth century CE, long after the original Temple to the Divine Julius had been destroyed.

Actually, I did discuss some of your points. Specifically, I pointed out that two of the coins that you reproduced to show a "pattern" linking Caesar to Christ were actually coins depicting Octavian and Lentulus. I'm waiting for a reply on that. While you're at it, maybe you can also provide some evidence that Romans ever saw Caesar as on par with Jupiter, rather than on par with, say, Robigus, the god of mildew. More importantly, however (and this is the source of my schizophrenia crack), is that your reasoning (like that of schizophrenics) is consistently specious, with arguments of the invalid form, "A is C; B is C; therefore, A is B". By this reasoning, you could argue for anything: "Julius Caesar is a featherless biped; Jesus Christ is a featherless biped; A plucked chicken is a featherless biped; therefore, Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ are plucked chickens." This isn't just a parody, here's an example of what I'm talking about: Yes, Invictus was an epithet for Caesar, as well as many others before and after him. You might as well argue that since Invictus was a title for Probus, that "Probus Invictus" is really "Julius Caesar as Probus". After all, they were both Romans, both vested with imperium, both featherless bipeds, ad nauseum. If this weren't bad enough, there's the totally biased comparisons: Again, this "pattern" is totally illusory. The number of rays depicted with Sol Invictus simply isn't fixed at seven. Sometimes, he's depicted with more, sometimes less. Why not suppose that when he's depicted with 11 rays, that it's a shout out to Caesar's bete noir Sulla, whose games were celebrated in the 11th month. Or when he's depicted with 6 rays, it's a shout out to Caesar's assassin, M. Junius Brutus. Rather than looking for "patterns" of symbols that support your argument, could you present some logically valid evidence that the source of the Jesus cult had any causal connection to the Caesar cult?

This is one of the strangest series of posts to occur in the Res Publica forum -- it's one image after another with absolutely no historical context provided to constrain its bizarre reasoning. A couple quick points. First, many of the coins supposedly depicting Caesar do not. Some are of Octavian, others are actually Caesar's political enemies (e.g., Lentulus Niger). Second, there's no attempt above to bother with chronology, which is actually a pretty useful framework for understanding history. When you pay attention to little things like chronology, the connection between Caesar's comet and the star of David (not mentioned until over 1000 years after Caesar's comet) becomes pretty tenuous. Finally, there is good medication for schizophrenia, but it requires regular use.

Neocicero's view--that the Senate of the Middle Republic was responsible for huge plantations popping up in the public lands, thereby driving small-holders out of agriculture and into the arms of poverty, politics, and populares--is a respectable one that was nicely argued by Brunt several decades ago. Why should we believe this view? The only empirical support for it comes from historians--like the Appian and Plutarch cited by Neocicero--who were urban Greeks with little knowledge of how Italian agriculture worked and who lived centuries after the alleged transformation of the Italian countryside. Insofar as we can check the authenticity of their claims, the archaeological record appears to flatly contradict them. That is, archaeologists find that during the middle Republic, the buildings and infrastructure of the latifundia continuously co-exist and grow together with the same buildings and infrastructure of the small-holdings. So, the question is--what is more convincing to you about the true conditions of the middle Republic? The dramatic narrative of Greek historians, or the physical record left by the actual subjects of those cloistered Greeks? For me, the archaeological record makes vastly more sense, even within the context of what the Greek historians otherwise wrote, and even more sense within the context of what was written by those with much better of knowledge of the Italian countryside, like (paleo) Cicero and Cato the Elder. These Roman sources certainly do not give out the view that the Italian countryside had been denuded of anything but chattel slavery and cash crops. Rather, we see the native sons of Italy prospering in trades and agriculture beside more prosperous farms, and when they travel to Rome, they do not join the popluares but resist them. Neocicero, if you want to understand Italian farms, I think you'd be better off looking to the writings of your namesake and his countrymen than to those of Greek city-boys!

Were you thinking of his defense of Sextus Roscius or his prosecution of Verres? In either case, you're right: Cicero had plenty of courage as a young man.

I'd raised this topic in an earlier post. An excellent article on the same topic can be found HERE. As with many topics in history, it's helpful to pay attention to the timeline. When Marcia was returning to Cato's household, Cato was leaving Italy for war. Rather than there being anything particularly salacious about the event, it's actually very boring. Cato's children with Marcia needed looking after while Cato was gone, and Marcia looked after them in his absence. Did Cato's enemies figure out how to spin this into fodder for scandal? Of course. In fact, the Romans were awfully good at spinning facts to make their political opponents look foolish and to make themselves look like... oh i don't know... maybe the descendent of Venus?

Is monotheism ethically superior to polytheism? Maybe just the reverse, says UCLA's Mark Kleiman, in THIS exchange.

Why does the law in Austria recognize any religious establishment?

Are you talking about how you should use it in exposition or in dramatization? In dramatization, it would be anachronistic to use CE (a PRC tag adopted in 1949) or AD (also hadn't been invented until 525). So, unless your characters are time travelers, it would be weird for them to use CE or AD. Same thing if the novel is told in the first person. But in standard (i.e., 3rd person) exposition, it's your voice that counts. How do you want to come across? Personally, I think AD sounds old-fashioned and parochial; others think CE sounds politically correct.

Somebody's been reading Fuller. Good catch--and it was a good read too.

You're not wrong. Moreover, some Gallic cities were formal allies of Rome, had been for generations, traded with Rome, and had been centers of Greek civilization. It took Caesar's blundering adventurism to turn these friends of Rome into enemies.

Certainly, there were negative stereotypes of Gauls (something even Cicero played to, though it was Gauls who saved his arse when Cataline was up to no good), as there were bigoted stereotypes of every other non-Roman group. But these stereotypes existed for centuries, and it was only Caesar who (controversially) betrayed the Gallic "friends of the Roman people". Think about it: if negative stereotypes of Gauls were seen as sufficient to justify the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of (Caesar boasts) two million human beings, then there would have also been justification for the wholesale slaughter and enslavement of Egyptians, Bithynians, Greeks, Spaniards, and so on. This begs the question, Why was Caesar willing to subdue the Gauls, yet be subdued by the queen of Egypt (and king of Bithynia)?