05-18-2022, 01:10 AM
The Seaeculum apparently operated in the Roman world.
Second Punic War
Servile War
Caesar Crisis
A good Crisis solves big problems. For Rome, the Second Punic War was the annihilation of what had been the greatest military and commercial rival of Rome, to wit Carthage. Rome could turn its attentions west to Gaul and Spain and east to Greece. One that resolves with no solution of an existing rot but simply destroys the rebels or reformers while preserving some dubious tradition solves nothing, but may entrench a social vice that eventually tears at the system. So was the Servile War. Had it gone in a way parallel to the American Civil War, then the slaves would have been emancipated and (Lincoln's dream) resettled in zones of recent Roman conquest. Maybe the Romans choose to deputize Spartacus as a general. (Maybe I put too much into the Fast/Kubrick treatment, but still...) The Caesar crisis was a mess, leaving Rome with a horrible political system vulnerable to a Nero, a Caligula, or a Commodus.
I look at the Second Punic War as Rome's equivalent of World War II. I see the Servile War as analogous to the American Civil War except for keeping slavery intact while gutting what remained of responsible politics.
We have huge institutional problems to resolve this time. Some of it is economic perversion; some of it is depravity in American mass culture, including religious fanaticism that denies science when science fails to fit the prophecies of the fanatics.
Second Punic War
Servile War
Caesar Crisis
A good Crisis solves big problems. For Rome, the Second Punic War was the annihilation of what had been the greatest military and commercial rival of Rome, to wit Carthage. Rome could turn its attentions west to Gaul and Spain and east to Greece. One that resolves with no solution of an existing rot but simply destroys the rebels or reformers while preserving some dubious tradition solves nothing, but may entrench a social vice that eventually tears at the system. So was the Servile War. Had it gone in a way parallel to the American Civil War, then the slaves would have been emancipated and (Lincoln's dream) resettled in zones of recent Roman conquest. Maybe the Romans choose to deputize Spartacus as a general. (Maybe I put too much into the Fast/Kubrick treatment, but still...) The Caesar crisis was a mess, leaving Rome with a horrible political system vulnerable to a Nero, a Caligula, or a Commodus.
I look at the Second Punic War as Rome's equivalent of World War II. I see the Servile War as analogous to the American Civil War except for keeping slavery intact while gutting what remained of responsible politics.
We have huge institutional problems to resolve this time. Some of it is economic perversion; some of it is depravity in American mass culture, including religious fanaticism that denies science when science fails to fit the prophecies of the fanatics.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.