Judge Bean
Senior Member
- Messages
- 1,257
Post-Political Life
?A century before the Roman Republic perished, two brothers, the Gracchi, emerged as popular leaders who were determined to check the corruption by wealth of the city?s institutions. They were both killed. The murderers, who were never punished, came from the senatorial class which had felt threatened by the brothers? reforms.
?The institutions of the city were preserved. Rome, however, was ceasing to be just a political city; it was becoming an empire for which civic institutions were ill-adapted. Its armies cut wider and wider swaths around the Mediterranean; their conquests impressed more and more men and resources into the armies, which became the real source of power. Eventually the generals (imperatores) became accustomed to occupying Rome as well as foreign cities.
?Even after the imperator Augustus took up permanent residence in Rome, the Senate continued to meet. Tribunes and consuls were elected. Historians wrote about decadence, and moralists vowed to revive the old family virtues. A class accustomed to participate in civic institutions continued to do just that and no more, for generations. People found it preferable to ignore the fact that real power had migrated out of these institutions, into an imperial regime, the armies and the courts of the army commanders. The self-respect of the senatorial classes depended on this denial.
?I do not wish to make too much of this cliched analogy, only to draw attention to the social function of denial in masking political change. We still talk of an America of constitutional government. But in crisis after crisis the real power centers turn out to be institutions like the CIA, or the National Security Council, which the Constitution never contemplated and arguably cannot survive.?
(Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 313; emphasis added)
Who was the mother of the Gracchi? Cornelia.
?A century before the Roman Republic perished, two brothers, the Gracchi, emerged as popular leaders who were determined to check the corruption by wealth of the city?s institutions. They were both killed. The murderers, who were never punished, came from the senatorial class which had felt threatened by the brothers? reforms.
?The institutions of the city were preserved. Rome, however, was ceasing to be just a political city; it was becoming an empire for which civic institutions were ill-adapted. Its armies cut wider and wider swaths around the Mediterranean; their conquests impressed more and more men and resources into the armies, which became the real source of power. Eventually the generals (imperatores) became accustomed to occupying Rome as well as foreign cities.
?Even after the imperator Augustus took up permanent residence in Rome, the Senate continued to meet. Tribunes and consuls were elected. Historians wrote about decadence, and moralists vowed to revive the old family virtues. A class accustomed to participate in civic institutions continued to do just that and no more, for generations. People found it preferable to ignore the fact that real power had migrated out of these institutions, into an imperial regime, the armies and the courts of the army commanders. The self-respect of the senatorial classes depended on this denial.
?I do not wish to make too much of this cliched analogy, only to draw attention to the social function of denial in masking political change. We still talk of an America of constitutional government. But in crisis after crisis the real power centers turn out to be institutions like the CIA, or the National Security Council, which the Constitution never contemplated and arguably cannot survive.?
(Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 313; emphasis added)
Who was the mother of the Gracchi? Cornelia.
