When suddenly there before him, Ludmila lies

And turns to wastes the shrubberies!

Sad fancies, and he bows his head, In silent longing, filled with dread, Still as a stone; while woe and care Consume his mind, his heart on fire, Tormented by despair, desire.

The horse flew to him, magically,

The dwarf flies upward to the clouds, Vanishes there among mist-shrouds, Then plunges at the prince once more.

Protected by the magic hat,

Our knight now sleeps away the hours; His brow, his cheek, are all aflame, His lips half-parted, yield deep sighs, As if sweet kisses he would claim, While gazing into loving eyes. Low moans oft from his lips depart, And, as if in dream, he tightly Presses the covers to his heart, While the clear moon glitters brightly

The warrior rides beneath the wall: To the gate her singing brings him, Fair maidens greet him, blushing all.

Oh, evil, hunch-backed Chernomor, For all my woe you are to blame! Malformed, bearded, running sore, A blot upon the family name!

‘Hero, you’ve made me see the light’ –

Our knight replied, cold steel he flung, Transfixing that insolent tongue, With his quivering lance; then blood Ran from the frenzied mouth, the flow At once a river in full flood; And with the pain, surprise and woe, In a trice, its impudence spent, Gnawing the steel, and turning pale, It turned to him, its gaze intent. Just so, some actor’s voice will fail, Some lesser scion of the Muse, Who, deafened by the crowd’s abuse, No longer sees aught before him, Turns pale, forgets the part he read, Forsakes thus the role assigned him, Trembles and then bows his head, Stammers, cogent speech denied him, While the audience strikes him dead.

Until he comes to a broad valley, Beneath the sky, where dead men sleep. He trembles then, against his will, Scattered bones lie yellowing still. The ancient battlefield, stripped bare, Stretches to barren distance there. A sword clasped in a bony hand,

yet they leave a faint impression Of a quiet reproach to fate, That might some true heart agitate, That’s filled with secret compassion.

Palm trees, laurels moving gently, And a row of fragrant myrtle, Proud crowns of cedars, tall and fine, And golden orange trees in line, Reflected where the waters shine; The hills, the groves, the forest pine, Revivified by spring’s new wine. The winds of May blow cool and fresh, Across the bright enchanted vale, As in the branches’ trembling mesh, There sings a Chinese nightingale; And diamantine fountains play, With pleasing sounds amid the grass,   Rare statues glistening in the spray, As if they breathe; were Phidias, Graced by Pallas and Apollo, To gaze upon them it must follow His chisel would fall from his hand, Consumed with envy he would stand. Hemmed in by marble barriers, Pure waterfalls descend as planned, In pearly arcs, like crystal tears, While some sweet plashing stream appears, From forest shade, to soothe the land. Shelters of peace and coolness, fair, The brave pavilions flicker brightly, Through the green leaves, here and there, As blossoms fall on pathways lightly.

Wandered to a trellised window, Gazing down at the scene below, On empty fields, and clouds anew, Where all seemed dead, and snow lay deep, And softly carpeting the view, Clothing every mountain steep Above white silent plains, the sombre Land wrapped in eternal slumber. No smoke trail from a chimney there, No snow-bound traveller to be seen, None blew a sounding horn, to share Their joy with all that barren scene. Only, with a low dull whistling, A fierce blast of wind, went whirling, Making the cold bare forest sway, Etched, far, against the sky’s chill grey.

In vain the rooster sees them pass, He whom fear and sorrow freeze; The bird cries out to his mistress; Only a few feathers, weightless, Drift downwards, slowly, on the breeze.

Now Rogdai the Bold, in torment, Chilled by an ill presentiment, Who, into the wastes, had ridden, Far from the other three, intent On solitary thought, went, hidden Amid the woods, in discontent. The Evil Spirit gave him pain, Brought dark confusion to his soul, He muttered, ever and again: ‘To slay, despite all, is my goal!... Ruslan! Beware, for you shall die… Your bride will shed a bitter tear…’ Then, suddenly, he gave a cry, And back upon his tracks did steer.

YOU, rivals in destruction’s story, Among yourselves know naught of peace, Pay tribute to a sombre glory, And revel in your foe’s decease! Let all folk turn to ice before you, By gazing on your dreadful feast, For none will heave a sigh for you, Nor folk regret you in the least.

Because he resisted bravely and wouldn’t kneel, Alexander had the garrison commander at Gaza dragged to death by having his ankles pierced and tied to a chariot

Alexander has removed and mostly executed all but three of his non-Macedonian Eastern satraps.

Alexander was clearly an incredibly charismatic figure. He could be generous (often unwisely so), composed in extreme situations, gracious when it served him and had an easy wit that comes through in many of the anecdotes of his life. He was also, brave, fit, young and good-looking, which couldn’t have hurt. In short, Alexander clearly had a natural charisma to him that inspired loyalty and devotion.

One wonders if Harpalus’ assassination was the only thing that kept Alexander from pardoning his old friend and finding him a new job, presumably as treasurer, again.

Alexander’s violence was fundamentally good, motivated – as was the violence of any good British colonial officer – by a belief in (Tarn’s term) the “unity of mankind.”

by the time the Senate backed Gordian (and his son) they were both already dead, defeated by forces loyal to Maximinus, but by that point, the Senate’s course was chosen. So they elected two new emperors, Balbinus and the amazingly named Pupienus11 to try to resist Maximinus’ inevitable march into Italy. The populace of Rome, confused, rioted and when a relative of the two Gordians – who they were told, after all, had become emperor – was produced, they forced the Senate to name him emperor too; Gordian III (he’s 13 at the time). But, almost miraculously, Maximinus’ invasion of Italy fails as he ran out of supplies trying to take Aquileia by siege. Maximinus’ army mutinies against him and he’s killed, at which point Balbinus and Pupienus both successfully conspire to have parts of the praetorian guard assassinate the other, leaving just Gordian III as the last man standing. Hardly a virtuoso performance but the Senate had, for one last time, both made and broken an emperor (and also four other guys).

marks the twilight of the real influence of Rome’s republican institutions

The Senate was less successful after the death of Commodus in 193 (the “Year of the Five Emperors”): it selected Pertinax as emperor but another senator, Didius Julianus, bribed the praetorian guard to support him instead, murdered Pertniax and was then promptly run over by Septimius Severus, the legatus Augusti on Pannonia, who returned to Rome with his legions to seize power. The last really notable role of the Senate in making and breaking emperors as a corporate body is in 238, the “Year of the Six Emperors.” In 235, the army had mutinied and killed Severus Alexander, making Maximinus Thrax emperor.

adultery cases – a serious charge in Roman law – involving members of the elite.

the emperor needed 20-something praetorian senators to serve as legati Augusti propraetore, while the senate needed at least two consulars (for Africa and Asia) and roughly 8 ex-praetors to serve as promagistrates in the senatorial provinces, plus assigning quaestors to those governors.

freedmen but at some point prior to Hadrian turned into an equestrian office.

Augustus prunes these back to more manageable levels for the most part.

I wave my hands over the text, say a few academic buzzwords (deconstruction! structure! gender! problematic!) and the text just vanishes into a smoke-cloud of confusingly overwritten sentences and tendentious conclusions.

Far more than Tinkerbell, regimes and governments need us to believe in them or they die.

These masterworks do indeed seem to project a world of enjoyment and artistic pleasure in utter disconnect with Bentivoglio’s despair.  Can this be the same Renaissance?

Now, I didn’t lead with that because I wanted to attack this idea dispassionately, from a historical angle first – to present that case without first staining the idea by invoking Godwin’s Law. I wanted to show that this theory of history wasn’t sustainable, even on its own terms.

People began cracking down on non-licensed medical practitioners. If these people were actually skilled in terms of medicine then for real, why TF was everyone dying on the regular? Soon laws began to propagate stating that only licensed, i.e. university educated physicians could practice medicine.

“I need a healing ritual performed,” she said. “On me.”

“Even stupid ones,” she whispered.

it

Madero

the other did not

stilleto

he picked up a single large, blackfeather.

gallo

it

he found no unusual sum of money, and so, gave itback to her.

who was sitting next to his mother with a bag of popcorn leftover from a matineemovie

not only becauseshe was wearing snakeskin boots and a miniskirt at six in the afternoon on a Sunday, but also because shecarried a large, glossy-feathered black rooster seated between her knees.

behind by twenty strokes in crossing the river and back.

She seemed to have secretthreads of communication with the other people in town, especially those herage,

wearing a Sunday dress with blue flowers that she had puton in case the bishop came by to pay us a call, and she was singing the fado about invisiblelove

The only thing they knew for sure was that Angela Vicario'sbrothers were waiting for him to kill him.

No one even wondered whether Santiago Nasar had been warned, becauseit seemed impossible to all that he hadn't

brahim Nasar boughtit at a cheap price in order to set up an import store that he never did establish, and onlywhen he was going to be married did he convert it into a house to live in.

Victoria Guzman needed almost twenty years to understand that a man accustomedto killing defenceless animals could suddenly express such horror. "Good heavens," sheexplained with surprise. "All that was such a revelation."

"He was the man in my life."

If it hadn't been for the bishop's arrival, he would have dressed in his khaki outfitand the riding boots he wore on Mondays to go to The Divine Face, the cattle ranch he'dinherited from his father and which he administered with very goodjudgment but withoutmuch luck.

folks tend to assume that absent government structures, the little guy gets a fairer shake, but a big part of the development that we see in early civic governments (e.g. Solon’s reforms at Athens, or the Struggle of the Orders in Rome) is that the civic expression of the state tended to provide a mechanism by which the commons might demand better treatment than what came before.

civitas

colleague

task forc

thecouncil building

Go us.And thus... Eden is born.THE END

Ari

The

He snaps his fingers...BOOM

Looks like

like

slave

(Like Rent is Due)

bitch

attracted by a gravitational pull.

I assureyou,

An appetite satiated is amatter resolved.

figets with a tea biscuit.LAMIAPerhaps we take but a portion ofits power and slowly divide it...She begins using her talons to cut into the biscuit... tomake a point.LAMIA (CONT'D)Piece by piece to the lower lifeand then...(She eats the biscuit)

wreak havoc behind

hands

brought directly

for lack of a better word–

my liege.

I justwant to get this over with to getsome lunch.

Ari, calm down.

youdon’t break it

ellish looking dagger.

The Gardens of Machanon, thirdHeaven.

your namemeans ‘lion of God’

BEHOLD PURGATORY! A vast mystical metropolis stretching asfar as the eye can see. It is a neutral ground for the forcesof heaven and hell. There is a clash of architecture styles,with Heaven made buildings glistening and golden, whilst theHell-Made buildings look like the drawings you'd in a schoolshooters notebook.

He brews some tea and pours it into ato-go cup.

This room is the exact freaking opposite of Ari's. It isdark, drab, and a complete wreck. The aftermath of a delugeof demonic debauchery. Graffiti dots the walls, furniture isoverturned, naked imps lie around passed out, some poorschmuck is skewered to the wall.

This sparks a hilarious sequence in which Guicciardini starts sending Machiavelli letters with increasing frequency, and stuffing them with random papers to make the packages fat, to get the monks to think that some important political thing is going on.  At one point a letter arrives saying that Guicciardini instructed the messenger to jog the last quarter mile so he would be sweaty and out-of-breath when he arrives, and Machaivelli describes with glee the increasing hubbub and attention he receives in the monastery as people become convinced that something of European import must be stirring.  Unfortunately a later letter hints that Machiavelli thinks they are on to the prank, and the correspondence ends there.

Some presented pessimistic accounts (by theist authors) of the modern decay of morals as atheism proliferated, while others presented optimistic accounts (by guess who) of the progress of secularization.

the council emerges and Julius II has persuaded every crowned head of Europe to join into a Holy League and help him attack Venice and take all the former Borgia territories and turn them into his new papal Roman Empire.

This is not a good consequence erasing an evil act, it is the argument that the act itself is not evil because of its good consequence.

The systematiccolonization·of Andalusia was hardly begun until the time of Charles III. It was firstundertaken with German settlers

in the great eastern plains of the Balkans, inBulgaria, Rumelia, and Thrace, in the grain and rice producing regions,the Turkish regime of large estates and serf-villages took strong root,whereas it more or less failed in the mountains of the West.

In the Mediterranean rich and powerful landownershad an essential role to play, increasingly so as smaIl-scale improvementswere abandoned in favour of extensive, long-term schemes. The goalcould only be achieved by holding ranks under a discipline possible onlythrough a rigid social order.

The Spanish enquiry of 1547 256 on property in Lombardy indicates thatthe peasants possessed less than 3 per cent of the land in the fertile lowerregion, while the poor land on the hills was very largely in their hands.Nothing could indicate better than these figures the conditions of life inthe plain. Here the peasant lived off very little, in deplorable conditionsof health and hygiene. He had masters and what he produced went to them.Often a newcomer, a simple man from the mountains, he might be cheatedby the landowner or his steward. In many ways he was a kind of colonialslave, whatever his precise position in law.

Perhaps it was because at .this time man was running ahead of the enemy.

The plain will soon be reduced to itsoriginal marshy statc: it is an automatic counter-improvement.

There are — he said — three kinds of scholar.  There is the ant, who ranges the Earth and gathers crumbs of knowledge and piles them, raising his ant-mound, higher and higher, competing to have the greatest pile to sit and gloat upon–he is the encyclopedist, who gathers but adds nothing.  There is the spider, who spins elaborate webs of theory from the stuff of his own mind, spinning beautiful, intricate patterns in which it is so easy to become entwined — he is the theorist, the system-weaver.  And then there is the honeybee, who gathers from the fruits of nature and, processing them through the organ of his own being, produces something good and useful for the world.  Let us be honeybees, give to the world, learning and learning’s fruits.

God planned the Crucifixion and wanted His Son to be lawfully executed by all humanity, so the sin and guilt and salvation would be universal, so He created the Roman Empire in order to have there be one government large enough to rule and represent the whole world (remember Dante’s maps have nothing south of Egypt except the Mountain of Purgatory).

if the entire world is a temporary construct designed by an omnipotent, omniscient Creator God for the purpose of leading humans through their many trials toward eternal salvation or damnation, then it’s madness to look to Earth history for any cause-to-effect chains, there is one Cause of all effects.  Medieval thought is no more monolithic than modern, but many excellent examples discuss the material world as a sort of pageant play being performed for us by God to communicate his moral lessons, and if one stage of history flows into another — an empire rises, prospers, falls — that is because God had a moral message to relate through its progression.

In such a history whole eras can be dismissed as unworthy of study for failing to forward progress (The Middle Ages did great stuff, guys!) while other eras can be disproportionately celebrated for advancing it (The Renaissance did a lot of dumb stuff too!). And, of course, whole regions can be dismissed for “failing” to progress (Africa, Asia) as can sub-regions (Poland, Spain).

Now as I look back on this post, before hitting ‘publish,’ I see that it comes in essentially two parts: a quite long and rather technical discussion (with diagrams that I spent far too much time making!) of shield coverage and formation spacing, followed by some rather briefer conclusions at the end about how these formations actually worked. I’ll not cut the technical stuff – we are here for pedantry, after all – but if you want to skip through it, the ‘how to actually shieldwall’ part of the essay is at the end, under the section heading, “How to Actually Shieldwall.”

Siegfried needs to liberate knowledge (Alberich’s Hoard), imagination (Alberich’s Tarnhelm), and the gift of thought itself (Alberich’s Ring) from the fear (Fafner) which religious faith engenders, and also to liberate it from Alberich’s threat to use it to destroy every noble, idealistic impulse in man, in order to free art from its servitude to religion, so that secular art (especially Wagner’s art) can restore lost innocence.

Getting a wing that had broken through to turn on the enemy center rather than plunder their camp demanded discipline and command skill.

The general in campaign is thus not looking at an incomplete but secure picture of the war on a map, but rather trying to make sense of a cloud of verbal or written reports (delivered as words, with all of their shades of meaning and difficulties of interpretation) many of which are inaccurate and some of which are blatantly false.

Ptolemaic Egypt and Roman Italy had similar population sizes, but the best army Ptolemy XIII could muster at the Battle of the Nile (47), in Egypt, was probably just under 30,000 troops(and not very good ones at that) for a battle for his very crown.

this is a question which is highly technical, deeply uncertain and also not actually very interesting or impactful.

Greek farmland isn’t particularly good – the rivers aren’t large enough to do large scale Near Eastern style irrigation agriculture and the rainfall is fairly low, even compared to much of the rest of the Mediterranean.

And the Senate’s stubborn failure to address perceived economic problems and the boiling crisis over the status of the socii also seems to have degraded its auctoritas.

The Valhallan gods’ conditional immortality, Wotan’s debate with Fricka over free will, Wotan’s need for a savior-hero who will take on the burden of the gods’ guilt in order to redeem the gods by restoring lost innocence, Wotan’s nihilistic longing for the end of the world to eradicate the sin of existence itself, these are all Wagner’s idiosyncratic versions of Christian issues which he has painted in pagan colors.

Bruennhilde is his metaphysical mother, by virtue of the fact that Wotan inseminated Bruennhilde, Wotan’s wish-womb, with the seed of his unspoken secret,

proves that Wagner did not, after all (at least in 1879), regard the Jewish character as eternally fixed by blood inheritance, since he suggests here that the Germans, if allowed to develop, would have passed on the positive traits their culture acquired to the Jews.

Wotan’s abhorrence of his true nature and origin as a Nibelung

only an artist-hero capable of unconscious inspiration, and thus worthy to woo the muse of art, Bruennhilde

Siegfried, who is Wotan himself, minus consciousness of his true identity, history, and purpose.

However, Wotan is getting at something else. He’s suggesting that even the compassionate, self-sacrificial love for which Bruennhilde now says she lives, and which is the essence of the love which Siegmund and Sieglinde share, is itself self-delusion which ignores the egoistic basis underlying all human motivation

Was it so shameful what I did wrong that you punish that wrong in so shameful a way? [[ #96a: ]] Was it so base what I did unto you that you seek to debase me to fathomless depths? (#96a; #89 repeated 5 or 6 times in following passage:) Was what I did so lacking in honour my lapse must deprive me of honour (:#96a; :#89)?

for art provides the feeling that paradise is regained here and now, employing natural means to grant man the feeling of transcendence rather than making false practical promises of eternal life which can’t be satisfied.

which makes consciously accumulating Alberich’s hoard of objective knowledge of the world, of man and nature, a psychological impossibility, and prevents religious man from fully exploiting his mind (Ring) and imagination (Tarnhelm). Fafner sitting on the inert hoard, without using it for power’s sake, embodies the stranglehold of religious faith - and the ancient traditions created by man yet regarded as divinely sanctioned - on progress, which depends upon freedom of thought and uncensored acquisition of objective knowledge.

the seed of his unspoken secret, his poetic intent, and by virtue of being the womb of his wishes, figuratively gives birth to Siegfried and is in this sense co-mother with Sieglinde, Siegfried’s literal blood-mother.

a change of heart inspired by sheer compassion for Siegmund’s brave defiance of the gods for the sake of love, but even perhaps more by her intuition that the greatest of heroes, Siegmund’s son Siegfried, will be born of Sieglinde.

it proves that man’s very longing to break his bondage to egoism is ultimately inspired by egoism.

By imparting the knowledge to Bruennhilde which her mother Erda imparted to him, Wotan represses this knowledge and loses consciousness of it.

Siegfried, who, thanks to Bruennhilde’s protection, is freed from the knowledge which paralyzed Wotan into inaction, so that Siegfried can spontaneously, joyously create art without fear.

It appears that thanks to self-deception, the sort of self-blinding or madness called Wahn, the world-creator Brahma no longer foresaw the evil his creation of the world would bring about, and so he was able to freely, fearlessly create what previously, through his foresight of the terrible truth, he was too depressed to create.

What here I saw, was no longer the Figure of conventional history [say, Wotan], whose garment claims our interest more than does the actual shape inside; but the real naked Man [i.e., Siegfried]

Thus Alberich says that the possessor of his Ring (of consciousness) will be wracked with care, yet those who do not possess the Ring (i.e., who do not yet possess a high degree of consciousness) will be driven by insatiable greed for it. This is not only a description of Wagner’s theory of evolution, that it is the natural drive to move from unconsciousness to consciousness, but this could well be Wagner’s poetical metaphor for historical man’s quest for that knowledge which, once found, will retrospectively make null and void the very value of the quest for it.

It is important to understand early on that Alberich’s threat to doom anyone to death who wears his Ring does not mean literally that the Ring’s owner will die the moment he takes possession of or wears it. It means that he will be troubled by the thought of the inevitability of his eventual death, and/or by the thought of the inevitability of the destruction of those ideals, values, and beliefs which are predicated on the illusion that man has transcendent value, or a special relationship with supernatural beings.

the very property of the human mind which grants man seemingly limitless power to shape his world, the foresight which allows him to plan ahead and accumulate knowledge of the world, also grants man the troubling ability to foresee his inevitable death, and is therefore the basis for man’s existential fear.

Wagner says the Jews’ very nature condemns them to the world’s reality, so that they are in effect irredeemable:

for Nature is heartless and devoid of feeling, and every egoist, ay, every monster, can appeal to her example with more cause and warranty than the man of feeling.”

consoling, imaginary reality, in which, for instance, men can enjoy sorrowless youth eternal.

his greed for power can ultimately only be fully assuaged by objective contemplation of the natural and human worlds,

objective scientific inquiry is not emotionless or without motive. He felt scientific endeavor was an aspect of man’s will to power, the power to control his world, and that its consequences for any kind of higher, humane culture, founded on the ideals of the good and the beautiful, would be catastrophic.

Alberich has the courage of his convictions and willingly admits he is driven solely by loveless egoism (which is why he alone is truly worthy of the Ring’s full, objective power), whereas Wotan can only abide the Ring (loathsome egoism) in its sublimated form as the noble abode of the gods (and the foundation of man’s idealism), Valhalla.

Wotan has continually resisted Loge’s suggestion that Wotan return the Ring to the Rhinedaughters, Wotan makes a case for the Rhinedaughters, proclaiming them the rightful owners of the Ring (since Alberich stole the gold from them from which he forged it). Wotan is a hypocrite

Alberich protests that the Ring and its power are Alberich’s very essence, his identity.

Alberich is confident that ultimately the Ring’s full power can never be co-opted by anyone else, for only he has the courage to acknowledge the truth, to accept the world’s lovelessness and suffer existential “Noth,”

It is the Tarnhelm (the human imagination, a product of the power of the mind, or Ring) which makes this distortion of the truth possible.

first elements – for as soon as an art or science achieves a high state of development, it ceases to be religion – were originally the concern of religion and its representatives, the priests.

Religion arises solely in the night of ignorance, in times of misery, helplessness, and rudimentary culture, when for this very reason the imagination overshadows all man’s other powers, where man entertains the wildest and most extravagant ideas. Yet it also springs from man’s need of light, of culture … ; it is indeed the first, still crude and vulgar form of human culture

Alberich’s host of night who labor in the shadows of the dominant religious society to reveal the secrets of nature.

But if Alberich ever regained the ring, i.e., if objective thought ever gained control over mankind’s consciousness, as for instance if science supplants religion as an explanation of the world, Alberich would employ this knowledge to bring about a shameful end of the gods, in that Alberich would discredit faith by exposing the hypocrisy and self-deceit of religious man, and reveal the truths of nature which religious man had either ignored or censored.

accomplished by assigned senatorial commissioners (called legati)

It is frankly unclear how strong the legal basis for these assignments was and in any event it doesn’t matter: what matters is that the Senate advised the magistrates and the magistrates always acted accordingly.

the Senate felt it necessary to yield – if only slowly – on proposals where it faced widespread popular opposition. One may, of course, immediately contrast the Senate of the late-second and early-first century, which squanders its auctoritas trying to stop proposals of this sort.

the order was up to the magistrate who might thus frame proposals tactically to achieve a given outcome.

Cicero ends the Seventh Philippic with quibus de rebus refers, P. Servilio adsentior, “on the matters you refer [to the Senate], I agree with Publius Servilius.”

Once the convening magistrate was done introducing the issue, the opinions of each senator, in turn, were sought. The order was set by the censors, but it was based on offices held and seniority, so while the censors could shift (‘movere’) a senator down in the order, they were expected to have a good reason (typically conspicuous moral turpitude). The order began with the princeps senatus, traditionally the most senior ex-consul, though ‘most senior’ here often meant both in age and in influence, so while the princeps senatus was never young, it might not strictly be the oldest senator.

the gods approved of the proceedings and its results. Consequently, the Senate always met in a templum in the sense of a consecrated space, but also it tended to meet literally in temples, with meetings in the temples of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the temple of Fides, the temple of Concord, and so on. Notably, two locations, the temple of Bellona and the temple of Apollo were also used and these sat outside the pomerium, enabling the Senate to meet with magistrates who, because of their active command of an army, could not cross the pomerium

via inauguration (the taking of the auspices by the augurs)

where it is possible that quaestors were not automatically enrolled before Sulla, but were customarily chosen by the censors to ‘fill out’ the Senate.

we have 8 quaestors a year elected around age 30 each with roughly 30 years of life expectancy3 we get a much more reasonable 240, to which we might add some holders of senior priesthoods who didn’t go into politics and the ten sitting tribunes and perhaps a few reputable scions of important families selected by the censors to reach 300 without too much difficulty. The alternative is to assume the core membership of the Senate was aediles and up, which would provide only around 150 members, in which case the censors would have to supplement that number with important, reputable Romans.

tribunes

an institution so important that it is included alongside the people of Rome in the SPQR formulation that the Romans used to represent the republic, and yet also paradoxically it is an institution that lacks any kind of formal legal powers.

we understand our society through past societies and war through past wars, simply because we can record the past but cannot see the future. But that memory, so important for our own decision-making, is transmitted primarily through popular culture. Popular culture is not bad (nor would an elite culture of the sort preserved from the pre-modern period necessarily be better), but it does distort our vision. I would hazard that for most folks, fantasy fiction like the Lord of the Rings remains the primary lens through which they interact with the pre-modern past. That alone makes it worthwhile to ask how much ‘truth’ there is in these representations, and what that means.

It was not so large a force the Athenians could not have defeated it, but the Athenian soldiers thought it a fresh army (not realizing it was just part of the army they were already fighting) and panicked. The victorious Athenian right disintegrated into a rout almost instantly and Athens lost the battle on the very cusp of victory. Morale effects often outweigh physical ones.

Aragorn’s ships – when he reaches the Harlond – are not filled with the dead, but living men, most of them former captives of the Corsairs, along with tired fighting men from Lebennin and Lamedon. His first task is to stir their courage and motivation, because he needs them to row through the night (the wind only changes in his favor in the morning, RotK 168-9) to make it to the city.

but not so strong as to be able to casually toss armored men into the air.

While some riders with bold horses might be able to get close, most of the Riders of Rohan would find their mounts simply turning aside as the Mûmakil approached – or worse yet, panicking and throwing their riders.

The pounding of thousands upon thousands of hoofs from a cavalry charge is a deep, resonating noise (the pounding of the hoofs of just a couple dozen horses can be heard over a cheering crowd at a horse-race; consider the volume of 6,000).

I just want to acknowledge the courage and stamina of the Rohirrim Propmaster who ran all this way with the charge so he could hand Eomer his spear that, I assume, Eomer accidentally left back up on the hill.

But in the books, the Rohirrim arrive with surprise because Théoden is a canny leader who knows when to use local knowledge. The orcs did have a rear-guard blocking the road – they had ditches and obstructions in place to prevent the classic Rohirrim cavalry charge – but these were bypassed by way of the forest trails.

Viewing them side by side immediately puts the lie to Saruman’s vain and arrogant notion that he could manipulate Sauron by joining him.

where Jackson’s Siege of Gondor is about might, Tolkien’s Siege is about courage and despair – the question is not ‘can the men of Gondor resist’ but will they?

The ratio of the firing arm to the weight arm is off. Historical trebuchets have high ratios – from 1:3 to 1:5 – because the longer the firing arm and the shorter the counterweight arm, the more leverage the weapon can apply. Here, the firing arm seems quite short.

The evacuation of these people (along with their food stores) is witnessed by Pippin (Rotk 38). This is a smart move by Gondor – it limits the non-combatants in the city

The rearguard, one mile out is “a more ordered mass of men…marching not running, still holding together,” supported by Faramir’s cavalry (RotK, 102). Holding together a retreat like this is incredibly difficult – the inherent psychological urge in humans to run would be nearly overpowering – suggesting that Faramir really is the masterful captain he’s cracked up to be. The retreat, harried by enemy cavalry and ring-wraiths, finally breaks into a rout ‘scarcely two furlongs’ from the city (440 yards), when Faramir is injured.

Denethor is instead sending Faramir out with what reinforcements can be spared to Osgiliath.

Each theme was a combined military and civil administrative district, with its own small field army that could respond to local raids – however a theme’s army would be insufficient to respond to a major invasion. In the event of a large attack, the beacons rippling back to the capital would bring the tagmata, the main imperial field army

Friction (pedantry note: here in the sense used by Clausewitz) is simply the tendency for things to begin to go wrong with that system as it moves and fights. As Clausewitz says (drink!), “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is hard.”

he is rushing his offensive in an attempt to forestall Aragorn, who he suspects has taken the One Ring

one wonders if this column was intended as an exploitation force.  Once the orcs had taken Minas Tirith – or at least neutralized it via siege – the highly mobile Southron cavalry could scout and raid deeper into Gondor, exploiting the breach in the defenses at Osgiliath.

Without the norms – norms that Sulla himself undermined – the laws were merely words on the page. With the norms, the laws were largely unnecessary. Share this:

In the case of senators, since the censors kept the Senate’s rolls, they could strike senators off of the list, generally for what was considered flagrant immoral behavior.

The censors also as part of the process updated the rolls of the Senate, inducting new members – those who had held the quaestorship or other senior magistracies in the previous years – as well as establishing the precedent order, which determined the order in which senators spoke in debate. At the end of the census, the censors conducted an elaborate purification ritual which featured the sacrifice of a pig, a sheep and a bull to Mars

Citizens – or more correctly heads of households, meaning patres familias as well as (probably!) women who were sui iuris – were required to show up and register, making a declaration of the members of their household as well as their property. The censors were then responsible for assigning citizen households to census classes (as used in the assembly voting) and of course this was also the process that made an individual liable for conscription in the dilectus.

the core function of the censors was to take the census (lit, “census”), registering Roman citizens and their property.

Both groups would, of course, be well advised to avoid antagonizing the broader political order without a very good reason, the former because senatorial opposition could kill a political career and the later because they were always going to be a lot less powerful than the ex-consuls they might offend.

though the Romans only rarely punished generals legally for failures in the field.

a tribune of the plebs could block a magistrate’s action by physically interposing themselves in the way; since they could not be moved, the action failed and was blocked.

The longest run I can think of in this period is that of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus who is privati cum imperio pro consule (‘private citizen with pro-consular imperium’) from 210 to 206, mostly as a product of his father and uncle having been the local Roman commanders in Spain and Scipio having taken over when they were both killed, leading to an irregular, emergency command. He’s then consul in 205, before having his command prorogued from 204 to 201 to complete his invasion of Africa

Often the military problem from last year that was on-going would see its ex-consul prorogued to continue handling it

if you really wanted to prevent your colleague from doing something he really wanted to do, you best be prepared to follow him around in person every day to keep vetoing it.

The praetor urbanus was primarily concerned with legal disputes involved two citizen parties, while any issue involving foreigners came under the jurisdiction of the praetor peregrinus, though the latter was sometimes also deployed out of Rome on special duties, at which point the praetor urbanus, who almost always remained in Rome, would handle both.

This is a real difference from the polis, where the standard structure was to take the three components of royal power (religious, judicial and military) and split them up between different magistrates or boards in order to avoid any one figure being too powerful. For the Romans, the royal authority over judicial and military matters were unavoidably linked because they were the same thing, imperium, and so could not be separated.

And just a pronunciation note before we start that in English aedile is pronounced EEE-dial, even though in Latin aedilis (with a long-by-nature first i) would have been pronounced eye-DEE-lis.

received fines and guarantees for state debts, and auctioned property seized to satisfy unpaid debts or fines.

two quaestors are assigned the aerarium populi Romani (in Rome) as their provincia (read: ‘official assignment’ not ‘province’), while the other six were assigned the provincia of the supervision of Rome’s finances in the same places where a consul or a praetor was assigned the provincia of command.

attempting to codify and spell out what were traditional practices, like the generally understood minimum ages for the offices, or the interval between holding the same office twice.

Rather each magistrate is an independent actor, granted certain powers to oversee the public interest in a specific field. This is perhaps even more true of Roman magistrates, who rarely function as ‘boards’ the way Greek magistrates often do (none of the senior magistrates in Rome function as a board, they are all individual actors). Instead of having an chief executive (like a president or prime minister) to coordinate the different actions of government, the Romans in the Middle Republic instead rely on the Senate

‘province’ (meaning ‘job,’ it’s not a formal province yet)

Evidently the Romans could pull this sort of thing off at some scale and there is some reason to believe very large votes of the comitia tributa or the concilium plebis might be moved out into the campus Martius at least some of the time.5

with around 10,000 or so in each of the rural tribes and 12,500 in each of the urban tribes.

we have a lot of reasons to believe that turnout was low and perhaps intentionally kept low, in which case wealthier voters who could afford to take the day off to trek into Rome and spend a whole day casting his vote might still rule the day.

the comitia tributa does not deliberate. It can only consider business put before it by a consul or a praetor in an up or down vote, constraining the opportunities to use the assembly to voice popular discontent with the ruling elite.

If you were rich enough to own a townhouse in Rome, you’d instead still register in your tribe as a resident of your rural estate; the wealthy thus inhabited the rural tribes. Indeed, as L.R. Taylor notes, the urban tribes were viewed as less prestigious – a bit downmarket and shabby – from an early point.

After this point, new land was apportioned into the existing rural tribes rather than assigned to new tribes, with the result that fairly quickly most ‘tribes’ consisted of several disconnected districts.

pagi, ‘rural district’