{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4029", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 4029, "subject": "Was Rome Worth the Trouble?", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2003-06-18T20:48:53+00:00", "last": "2003-06-19T03:50:48+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "the.wynns at usa.net" }, "date": "2003-06-18T20:48:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Was Rome Worth the Trouble?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Crush wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Rome was not even considered worth the trouble for Alexander the Great\nor his heirs to conquer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Mantis responded:\nNot to give you a hard time, and granted there is always argument between\nhistorians, but I just read a book, THE FATES OF NATIONS: A BIOLOGICAL\nTHEORY OF HISTORY (1980), where the author Paul Colinvaux wrote that\nAlexander avoided Rome as too tough (and possibly \"too poor\"?) for a\nproper victim of a war of aggression. According to Colinvaux, the war of\naggression requires that the aggressor have a technological edge over the\nvictim, and the victim must have a resource that the aggressor wants. The\nMacedonian phalanx famously carved up the Persians, showing the edge; the\nPersian empire had land and wealth.\n\nOh, I see I'm not really arguing with you after all! Since I put in the\n\"too poor\" part it falls under the rubric of \"not worth the trouble\" in\nyour message. I.e., it would have been trouble, since the technological\nedge favoring Macedonia over Rome was slight if it existed at all, and the\npotential rewards were much less than those offered by the pesky Persians." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Feel free to give me a hard time. My life is far to cushy as it is. :-)\n\nSince we've agreed to agree, I'm possibly putting too fine a hair on it to\nsay I'd put more weight on the words \"not worth\" while you would\nemphasize \"the trouble\". Perhaps Colinvaux has seen evidence I'm not\nfamiliar with (in which case, I'm really sticking my neck out), but I don't\ncurrently think the Italian interior would have seemed an imposing task to\nthe conquerors of Persia who toyed with conquering India.\n\n1. Checking \"The Chronicles of the Roman World\" by Timothy R. Roberts to\nrefamiliarize myself with the general chronology, Magna Graecia (the Greek\ncolonies of southern Italy which were directly adjacent to Latium) seems to\nhave felt secure enough behind their phalanxes not to formally recognize\nRome until late in the 4th century. Tarentum first established a peace\ntreaty with her \"as early as\" 303 B.C. (twenty years after the death of\nAlexander). I'm by no means certain but I *think* Magna Graecia fell under\nthe Macedonian empire during Philip II's reign (the father of Alexander the\nGreat). Carthage had diplomatically recognized Rome in 348 BC but only in a\ngeneral agreement to stop pirating off the Italian coast. But she made a\nmore formal treaty with Rome in 303 BC. So it seems that Rome's neighbors\nfirst viewed her as a *regional* power to be reckoned with at the very end\nof\nthe 4th century, but even then the Italian Greeks considered the Romans and\npresumably the rest of the Italian interior to be rustic and uncivilized.\n\n2. At the time of Alexander and until the very beginning of the 3rd century\nBC, the Italian interior was still divided between Romans, Etruscans,\nSamnites, Umbrians, and Gauls who were all anxious to exterminate one\nanother. During this time, Rome was engaged in a war against an alliance\nof some of these that it nearly lost.\n\n3. As for technology, it wasn't until after she beat Pyrrhus (275 BC) that\nthe Roman manipulus was seen as a genuine answer to the Greek phalanx.\nI don't know when the manipulus was first developed. Rome wouldn't have\nwarships or shipwrights until the middle of the 3rd century so Latro's\ninitial ignorance about them makes sense.\n\nSo Italy was conveniently proximate to the Macedonian Empire, strategically\ndivided, and technologically unrated. For Livy's patriotic opinion on\nwhether Alexander could have conquered Rome had he tried, see his Book 9:17.\n\nWhat set Rome apart from all its local adversaries IMO was astounding nerve\ncoupled with exceptional discipline, competence and strategic imagination.\nAll this exhibited itself in steely tenaciousness -- a willingness to lose\nand lose and see it only as an opportunity to adapt and adapt. But none of\nher neighbors seemed to appreciate these virtues until they were practically\nunder her boot -- certainly not the Italian Greeks. So who was telling\nAlexander that the Romans were \"too tough\".\n\nAs for being poor, that is surely true. It just seems obvious to me that the\nItalian interior avoided the avarice of the previous Empires by not having\nanything worth having in their eyes. No doubt the attitudes of the Magna\nGraecians encouraged this belief. Rome had no significant mines.\nThe first minted Roman coins appeared in 310 BC in conquered cities (not\nRome itself) cast from loot melted down to pay the soldiers. Rome had no\nmonuments, history, scholars, or literature. The land was mountainous and\nwild. What did Rome have to offer but slaves? Rome's civilization was\ninvisible to the eyes of the \"civilized\" world. The Etruscans were good\nsculptors and artisans but the Greeks were as good or better.\n\nAll this to say that the idea of a disciplined, tactically competent Roman\ncentury in 478 BC would surely be anachronistic -- of course, we don't know\nthat Latro's Romans were competent, but Latro certainly is. Perhaps Wolfe\nwill develop a rationalization for this in the next novel.\n\n-- Crush" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2003-06-19T02:45:37+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Was Rome Worth the Trouble?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Crush writes: [Some good stuff] ..\n\nFWIW, I've been quickly brushing up on Roman \"history\" from the period, such\nas it is. The main themes are struggles between the plebs and patricians\nover agrarian reform and debt forgiveness, and conflict with the Etruscan\netc neighbors.\n\nA context for Lucius & his comrades and what they would be doing so far\nafield should be in here somewhere. Maybe something to do with the aftermath\nof Coriolanus (about 490), who Livy thinks was exiled rather than executed\nby the disappointed Volscians he commanded (as Plutarch says). Coriolanus =\nGnaeus Marcius, so not quite the \"Marcus\" whose death Latro laments in Ch\n24, unfortunately. (The other name he mentions, \"Umeri\", doesn't look Roman\nat all.)\n\nLatro's vision of his home, with his aged father plowing the fields, doesn't\nsuggest a very patrician background, but on the other hand, he has a\npatrician kind of name in Lucius (Lucius Brutus = foiunder of the republic,\nin 509), so perhaps we are to think of an exiled patrician family in reduced\ncircumstances? And Latro & comrades taking up the mercenary profession\nbecause there's not much else to do? Dunno.\n\nAnyway, the picture painted in Livy is one of constant petty wars with\nneighbors, and a very martial society. It sounds like Pausanias' description\nof Greece in Mist - every little village sending its army out against its\nneighbor - and I guess we're supposed to draw parallels between Sparta and\nRome. Pausanias thinks Sparta is destined to gather these villages into a\nunited state & lead it, but this was Rome's destiny. Pausanias is in the\nprocess of being corrupted by looted Persian wealth, away from his Spartan\nsimplicity, in the same way the looted wealth of the east would corrupt\nRome. And so on." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2003-06-19T03:21:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Was Rome Worth the Trouble?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 19:45, Andrew Bollen wrote:\nLatro's vision of his home, with his aged father plowing the fields, doesn't\nsuggest a very patrician background, but on the other hand, he has a\npatrician kind of name in Lucius (Lucius Brutus = foiunder of the republic,\nin 509), so perhaps we are to think of an exiled patrician family in reduced\ncircumstances?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A Republican patrician family wasn't necessarily wealthy. Cincinnatus, \nthe famous dictator, owned an estate of three acres, where he worked in\nthe field personally. Later Romans used to go on about it.\n\n\n.\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "brunians at brunians.org" }, "date": "2003-06-19T03:50:48+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Was Rome Worth the Trouble?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 20:19, Andrew Bollen wrote:\nFrom: \"Josh Geller\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "A Republican patrician family wasn't necessarily wealthy. Cincinnatus,\nthe famous dictator, owned an estate of three acres, where he worked in\nthe field personally. Later Romans used to go on about it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This did occurr to me, but I always thought the story was probably BS." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Could be, might not be. These things happen sometimes. Who would have \nthought a US Grant or a Harry Truman could ever be President?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Anyway, C. was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, appointed dictator in 458, so\nmaybe our Latro? Probably not, given that Livy has him at 80+ years old when\nappointed dictator again in 439. But one of his first acts in 458 was to\nappoint as \"Master of the Horse, Lucius Tarquitius, a member of a patrician\nhouse, but owing to his poverty he had served in the infantry, where he was\nconsidered by far the finest of the Roman soldiers.\" That could be our man,\nmaybe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It could indeed.\n\n\n\n." } ] } ] }