The good folks at Southern Appeal have found an amazing article on Catholicism in the Old South. Very interesting.

Sandefur backhands his compliments nicely. For the record, I am no defender of tyranny. I am, however, a preferer of Caesar to Cato, and Cicero to Cato, and Crassus to Cato. I think it inapposite to compare Caesar to Benedict Arnold, chiefly because Caesar succeeded and Arnold failed, and the people ratified his acts. That may be glib, but at least it's honest, and I'm sticking to it. I will concede that the legitimacy of Caesar's government was contested by other nation-states until shortly before his assassination.

Gaius Gracchus did indeed create the grain dole as a standing measure in Rome; it had been used in the past, but only as an emergency. The necessity of the dole became apparent as Rome's population grew; Sandefur may not like it, but the dole allowed Rome to become great, by allowing individual citizens who would otherwise have been farming concentrate their efforts in other fields. All of the farmland around Rome was well-tenanted or ager publicus, so subsistence farming was out of the question for residents of the City.

Now, like Sandefur, I detest the fall of the Republic. But suggesting that Cato's rigid adherence to Caesar hatred is anything other than personal animus by the most stubborn man in history is disingenuous, to say the least. Cato failed, not only because he was out of step with Rome, but because he was irrational and addicted to the idea that the unwritten constitution of Rome could not be changed. This is a peculiar solecism: in the early Republic, it was forbidden for freedmen and their descendants to marry into the Famous Families, whether plebeian or patrician. Had Cato the Censor not defied this portion of the mos maiorum, Cato the Younger would not have been deemed a legitimate grandson of the Censor.

Rome's constitution was not like America's constitution: immutable, save by amendment or judicial legislation. The Plebeian Assembly or the Centuriate Assembly or the Senate could and did make constitutional changes regularly. The office of dictator, a wholly constitutional office, was created by the Senate to permit an individual (Cincinnatus) to take supreme command of Rome, win a war and do whatever was necessary to win that war, without fear of retribution when he laid down that power.

I confess to a severe degree of hero worship for both Caesar and Cicero: together, they were pre-eminent lawyers, legislators, and provincial governors of their day. If only Cicero had not been Pompey's man, history may have been different. Caesar could very well have been elected consul again, and the Roman Empire would have been deferred. Certainly, Caesar and his heir are the pivot point of Roman history, and I think that without Caesar, Augustus would have remained Gaius Octavius.

I agree with Sandefur that it's a great pleasure to conduct an argument like this with one so knowledgeable. I'd provide quotations and sources too, but my time at work is limited for blogging. Until next time, the blogosphere is yours!

Sandefur conveniently ignores history by blaming the decline of the Republic on the populares. The decline of the Republic is properly laid on the shoulders of the conservative rump of the Senate, those who took over after Sulla, including Lucullus, Pompey, and Crassus. Despite popular mythmaking, Caesar was politically unimportant until his consulship, which came only after the Catilinarian conspiracy.

It is true that Caesar opposed the death penalty for the Catilinarian conspirators (along with many other Senators), but the only evidence for Caesar's complicity in any acts of Catiline come from Cicero and Sallust, who were hardly pro-Caesar, and who had much to gain from exalting the conspiracy beyond its actual importance. Once the attempt to assassinate the consuls was discovered, Catiline was gone for good.

Until Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he was no different than any other highly successful Roman general and governor, and certainly a great deal less offensive to Rome than Pompey or Crassus, both of whom illegally marched on Rome and were saved from prosecution and exile only because they both became consul the next year and legislated themselves immunity through the Popular Assembly. Crassus and Pompey were the two wealthiest Romans of the era (excluding Brutus, who inherited the Gold of Tolosa from his half-uncle, Quintus Servilius Caepio); Caesar was destitute when he left Rome to take up the governorship of Gaul.

Once Caesar crossed the Rubicon, all bets were off, and Sandefur is right: Caesar was not good. But Cato had hated him for years previous to his clearly unconstitutional crossing of the Rubicon, as had Bibulus. I don't see how Caesar suddenly acting unconstitutionally for the first time in his career ratifies Cato's opposition to him. Cato was far less of a defender of freedom than he was a man who opposed Caesar. Cato's initial claim to fame was that he prevented the removal of a structurally unnecessary pillar from the Basilica Porcia, where the ten tribunes of the plebs met, for no other reason than that his grandfather, the Censor, had built it that way, and thus it had become part of Rome's unwritten consitution. Let's not forget that Cato tried to kill Metellus Scipio and Aemilia Lepida after Aemilia Lepida refused to marry Cato, and that Cato sued Scipio for alienation of her affections, even though Aemilia Lepida had been engaged to marry Metellus Scipio for years.

Cato was a crackpot loon who hated Caesar. Caesar was a megalomaniac who had done nothing unconstitutional until he crossed the Rubicon. Cato does not get a free pass just because he opposed Caesar.

Now, Cicero is the man who should be highest in the firmament of those who defended the Republic.

EDIT: as for why Caesar's march was justified versus the Senate's decree, Sandefur forgets that 1) the people, not the Senate, were sovereign, and the Senate ignored Mark Antony's tribunician veto of the decree stripping Caesar of command; 2) the Plebeian Assembly later ratified Caesar's acts. The most recent decision governs, as we know.

Sandefur really hates Caesar. I'm surprised that Sandefur doesn't blame Caesar for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, given that it burned when Caesar was there. And comparing Caesar to Catiline is absolute rubbish: Caesar did not conspire with Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus (the mastermind behind Sulla's proscriptions) to kill members of his own family (as Catiline did) and Caesar did not plot to assassinate the consuls and prominent members of the Senate when he invaded Rome.

Comparing Caesar to Sulla is equally unsound. Caesar did not proscribe; Sulla judicially murdered over one thousand businessmen. Caesar was no saint, and his actions (which he believed sincerely would save the Republic) were obviously going to cause its downfall. Caesar's self-delusion was immense by the time he invaded Rome. But, unlike Sulla (who was never so power-mad as Caesar), Caesar did not judically murder anyone. Marcus Antonius, Octavius, and Lepidus took care of that after Caesar was assassinated.

To claim that Caesar destroyed the pretense of republicanism in Rome is a canard. Republicanism died, if not with the murder of the Gracchi, with the mad usurpation of Rome by Gaius Marius in his seventh consulship. The pretense of republicanism was well and truly gone with the dictatorship of Sulla, where Sulla dictated who would be elected to what magistracy. After that, the factions of the Senate conspired to limit elections severely, essentially reproducing an electoral state much like modern America.

Sandefur also claims that the difference between King and Dictator is purely semantic. It is not. Kings were not elected, dictators were. Sandefur may argue that the choice to be enslaved is no choice at all, but I believe that people must be free to be stupid.

And I'm not sure what Sandefur considers the most sacred of Roman laws, but I'm pretty sure that the Romans would have considered "There shall be no kings in Rome" the most sacred of laws.

Sandefur takes issues with my views of Caesar and my dislike for Cato the Younger. In particular, I stated that Caesar did not want to be King of Rome. Sandefur says that I am blind to the reality. But I say to Sandefur, hold!

The story of Caesar refusing the crown of Rome is generally held to be true. Why? Because Rome, which was a politically aware nation, remembered the Tarquins, and knew the fate of Saturninus, the last man to claim to be King of Rome. Rome abhorred a king; everyone knew this.

Did Caesar desire complete executive power? Of course, and he got it too; he was elected dictator for life. But never King; the Kingship was not constitutional, unlike the dictatorship. Kings were due only one thing in the Roman Republic: a violent death. Caesar got that anyway, but not before he declined the crown. Of course, Cato was already dead by then; but this does not change the fact that Caesar did nothing unconstitutional prior to crossing the Rubicon, and his election to the dictatorship, while irregular (lasting for life) was not unconstitutional or unprecedented, considering the acts of Lucuis Cornelius Sulla, who was elected dicatator for an indefinite term.

Fundamentally, Cato the Younger was no Cato the Censor, who was a far greater defender of the Republic, even if he did foment the Third Punic War. There was a substantial difference between monarchy and dictatorship in Roman eyes and in the reality of Caesar's existence. Sandefur, like Saruman, should know better.

Will Baude throws down an interesting gage. I'm going to examine it carefully, and kind of pick it up. But first, I must quote his entire post:

To go from place to place on a bicycle is "to bicycle." Similarly, one can "boat" across the pond, "ferry" across the channel, "helicopter" hurriedly to the hospital, and the "busing" controversy is well known to students of the law, though the controversy is over what should be done rather than what it should be called.

More obscurely, I can say "I planed into O'Hare last Saturday from Heathrow," (meaning not, "I boarded the plane," but rather "I flew in on a plane,") or that "I trained down to London to see Jumpers when I should have been studying."

But even lax dictionaries rarely permit the use of "car" as a verb-- one can't say "I carred my cargo close to the carriage to make it easier to carry," and many dictionaries are similarly skeptical of "automobile" as a verb. One can't say I "hang glidered down the mountain," one has to "hang glide" (bonus query: why then, can't we say "I helicopted into the war zone?")

Does any rule guide these usages? What makes some modes of transportation into verbs while others have to accept different forms?

Extra Credit: One generally says that you "surf" on a surfboard, (although Dictionary.com allows "surfboard" as a verb as well, the usage is surely much rarer). On the otherhand, the rider of a snowboard is always said "to snowboard" rather than "to snow". A skateboarder, however, can be said with equal comfort to be "a skateboarder" or "a skater". Discuss.


My intuition is that this phenomenon of English may be related to word origin: namely, did the word originate in English as a neologism of its time, or was it imported from another language? Another consideration may be the parallel development of UK English and American English. I must agree that it is the rare lexicographic aid that will let us car or automobile anywhere. I believe there is a poem by a rather famous Chicagoan that uses "automobiling" for purposes of scansion alone.

Will also neglects, in his extra credit question, to note that skate-, snow-, and surfboarders may all board, and a skateboarder may either skate or skateboard. It appears to me that board has taken on a verbal meaning unique to these three sports; namely, to ride atop a skate-, snow-, or surfboard (which I take to mean all sorts of water-related board-riding).

"There are some who call me" Tim Sandefur picks another winner with Milton's Areopagitica in his Libertarian Bookworm.

However, I would direct your attention to his reference to Cato the Younger as a republican. Now, Cato was an interesting character; his whole public life within Rome was based on a mindless opposition to Caesar, and a morbid fascination with his paternal grandfather, Cato the Censor. In his mind, Caesar was his generation's Scipio Africanus, a man who could have legitimately been King of Rome: elite of birth, militarily brilliant, and a politican without peer, who was stopped only by the intervention of Cato the Censor.

Caesar, however ambitious, had no desire to be King of Rome. Caesar was, after all, a Roman of the Romans, which according to Cato is what made him so dangerous. And so, by his opposition to Caesar, a man who was personally brave, a soldier of great physical courage, a man incorruptible, but otherwise unremarkable, has been enshrined by republicans as a great hero. I think it would be apropos to enshrine his grandfather, Cato the Censor (or Cato the Elder). That Cato, at least, had a sense of humor, and a sense of humanity, something lacking in the stern, sociopathic Cato the Younger.

Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato Censor), when he saw his eldest son of his first wife (Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus) leaving a house of ill repute, remarked, "At least the married women of Rome are safe." Cato the Younger was the grandson of Cato the Censor by his second marriage, to the daughter of one of his freed household slaves, Salonia, and thus was known as Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus; he was the child of the first Cato Salonianus, who married Livia Drusa after Caepio the Younger divorced her for infidelity.