34. On Republics + Old Navy

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Marius to Trump

I mentioned Marius the other day. Back around 1980, when I put together a history of the fall of the Roman Republic, I started with Marius. After saving Rome from the Teutonic hordes, he came to represent the people (proletarii) vs the patricians and wealthy plebeians who ruled the Republic. This was the culmination of a process that started during the 2nd Punic War when the small scale yeoman farmers were displaced by the capital and slave rich latifundia. It took a long time for the Republic to come apart, but by the time of Marius the common Roman had no role in the economy and little status in the state. This left them open to revolution and the era of bread and circuses. The Rome of Livy's earlier books was over and all that remained was the most powerful military establishment in the West. Does any of this sound familiar?

Either Sulla's marching on Rome or Marius's seventh consulship marked the point where the wheels finally came off the Roman Republic. From here on there was a series of violent swings between the popular and conservative factions being in control of the state. This would continue until the victory of the Second Triumvirate and the start of what we think of as the Empire.

Anyone who has made it through Livy and Polybius has to mourn the passing of the Rome of Camilus and even of the Scipios; but it also has to be admitted that the really juicy history starts with Sulla. Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and the rest, made spectacular lemonade out of the lemons of the Republic's bitter entrails.

Polybius wrote one of the greatest introductory passages ever for his history of Rome, and his words anticipated the factors that would eventually undermine the Roman Republic, and probably ours as well...

Alas, I mis-remembered the source of my quote, but I still want to include Polybius so here is Polybius's opening paragraph, which I think is one of the wonders of written history, and all the more remarkable for having been written before 117 BC (when he died):

1 1 Had previous chroniclers neglected to speak in praise of History in general, it might perhaps have been necessary for me to recommend everyone to choose for study and welcome such treatises as the present, since men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past. 2 But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. 3 Evidently therefore no one, and least of all myself, would think it his duty at this day to repeat what has been so well and so often said. 4 For the very element of unexpectedness in the events I have chosen as my theme will be sufficient to challenge and incite everyone, young and old alike, to peruse my systematic history. 5 For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in p5less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government — a thing unique in history? 6 Or who again is there so passionately devoted to other spectacles or studies as to regard anything as of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge?  -Source: Loeb Classical Library edition, 1922 thru 1927

The quote I had in mind is actually from Gibbon and it goes like this:

In the purer ages of the [Roman] commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain.  
-Somewhere in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I should have known it was Gibbon from the sentence structure. Since Gibbon's subject is the time when this was no longer the case, when the average Roman citizen was marginalized, the statement hints that this reduction in the status of the Roman yeoman farmer in the late Republic -- like the similar reduction in the status of the English peasantry during Gibbon's time and of the American working classes since the 2nd World War -- can only have negative effects on the smooth running of the state. 

The rise of the latifundia, or of industrial capitalism, or of the modern corporation, undermines the health of even the strongest state. The resulting instability, so evident in the dramatic political swings of the late Republic, can undermine the state and must change it to some extent. Trump is a puzzling choice to represent these people, but then so was Julius Caesar.

Labor Day weekend

Today is part of the Labor Day weekend so not all my usual hang-outs are open. I noticed that the Starbucks at the Chinatown Gate (opposite Cafe de la Presse) was open, so I am working there. Not surprisingly, and the reason I've never come in here before, it is swarming with tourists. The world's loudest woman finally left a few minutes ago -- in search of a taxi as the Wharf was too far to walk. (Why come here if you're just going to ride through Chinatown and North Beach in a taxi?) 

Tomorrow is (traditionally) the last day of the tourist season. I'm tempted to warn the people around me that they need to be out of the city by Wednesday morning. Just a friendly reminder. 

In fact, the tourists never really go away, but there are at least fewer Americans between Labor and Memorial days.

The navy of the old

At the gym today I noticed an elderly Chinese man walking toward me wearing a shirt or sweatshirt with lettering on the chest. I expected it to be his alma mater or possibly the school of his child or grandchild. Instead it said "Old Navy." 

Perhaps this is the demographic Old Navy should be seeking out -- the old are cheap and not particularly picky about their clothes. Or maybe it would be better to say that their taste in clothes is as questionable as the taste of teens and tweens. Altering their branding to push the "Navy of the Old" idea would be easy enough, and The Gap could still come up with a new brand to appeal to the young.

All this has reminded me that I do need to run down to the Navy of the Old before they discontinue light-weight cargo pants for the year. I may already be too late. 

Next - 35. Painting