Re: Anachronisms in LOTR

Hasdrubal Hamilcar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
> 
> Thanks for the summary.  It's interesting that you say that at the
> times when the Romans had the power to reverse the decline, they
> didn't--is this a crisis of something more intangible produced by
> Hannibals invasion?  The pre-Christian equivalent of 9/11?

Selfishness, blindness to the changed Roman society, contentment with 
their own lot.  As I've explained, Hannibal's invasion forced many 
small farmers off their land.  I can't remember why they weren't 
resettled in richer areas and larger plots up north; perhaps a first 
generation unwillingness to move from their ancestral lands?  Whatever 
the case, the rich were willing to take up these plots of newly 
available public land, farming them to generate taxes for the state.  
Scipio Africanus' friend, Gaius Laelius, made an abortive proposal to 
redistribute the land to the citizens.  His abandonment of the Bill in 
the face of fierce Senate opposition earned him the nickname Sapiens, 
'the wise'.

By the time Tiberius Gracchus presented his Lex Sempronia Agraria, the 
Ager Publicus had been in private hands for more than 70 years.  While 
the land in theory belonged to the state, and could be redistributed at 
the state's whim, the tenants had built on it and otherwise improved 
its value.  Should they be disinherited despite their families' 
investments?  In addition, the original tenants had, treating the land 
as their own, split the public and private land unevenly among their 
heirs, so that some people owned mostly private land while others 
counted their property mainly in public land.  Should the latter lose 
their wealth, simply because their ancestors had failed to distinguish 
between what was legally theirs and what wasn't?

The Bill, while generous in theory, had failed to deal with this 
problem to the landowners' satisfaction.  The disputes grew with the 
adoption of illegal measures on both sides, until the landowners 
provoked a dispute and took the opportunity to murder Tiberius and his 
supporters.

The citizen pool problem was not solved until Gaius Marius introduced 
reforms to allow landless citizens to enrol in the legions.  Perhaps it 
was his lowly background, or his awkward political style, or his 
somewhat unfriendly personality, but the Senate did not support Marius' 
proposals to provide land for his veterans.  Then Marius happened on a 
workable combination; a consul (himself) to provide political cover, a 
tribune to present plebiscites to the people, thus bypassing the 
Senate, and an army to back them up.  This widened the gap between the 
Senate and the ordinary people.  Unfortunately, this new political 
reality could not be monopolised, and the result was civil war between 
opposing generals no longer restrained by ideals of mos maiorum.

The land problem was only really solved when a dominant general, acting 
on behalf of 'the people', whatever that meant, rode over the 
opposition to turn his ideas into law.  Thus did Julius Caesar use his 
dictatorial powers.  That was why the dictator in perpetuity enjoyed 
such popular support.


> The Romans still got their empire, but they never rose to meet it 
> halfways, preferring to remain in the petty provincial mindset
> adopted while under 'siege' by Carthage.  'Cause it seems
> something changed because of Hannibal.  Land is the most
> fundamental piece of the economy in preindustrial societies.  (BTW
> in the business book 'the end of the american century' the author
> wrote that the secret to development as seen in East Asia lay in
> land reform and almost nothing else.) 

The Roman Empire was based on conquest and plunder.  From its earliest 
beginnings with the alliances between Romans and Latins, to the rabidly 
expansionist ambitions of Julius Caesar, the Empire existed so that 
they could combine to fight and loot their enemies.


>> Hannibal succeeded in his strategic goal of destroying Rome, in a
>> way.  The Roman republic that had behaved so treacherously
>> towards the Carthaginian republic was seriously undermined by his
>> actions.  Rome had her chance to recover, but her rulers'
>> continued shortsightedness spurned every opportunity to renew the
>> alliance between citizen and the state gained so painfully in
>> earlier centuries, until the republic came to its conclusion. 
>> The noble families who framed the policies that destroyed
>> Carthage were themselves destroyed by its aftermath. 
> 
> Or they were 'destroyed' by the invasion but they never gave up
> power, letting the empire rot beneath them?  I wish I could know.!

They prospered because of the invasion.  However, they did not tend 
to their powerbase, the mass of the citizenry that fought their wars 
for them (unlike their predecessors), and were eventually overthrown by 
the resulting unrest.  There was only one great reform conceded by the 
ruling class between the Hannibalic war and Caesar's dictatorship, 
citizenship for all Italians, and even that was only wrested from them 
by war.


-- 
Cheers, ymt.
Email to: jim dot laker one at btopenworld dot com