Richard Baker wrote: > > I thought that Alberto was talking about the situation in the first > century BC before the Principate was formed (the conquest of the > Mediterranean being essentially complete by the time Octavian became > Augustus). > Yes and No.
I was _including_ that time period and the next. > Then, there was a perfectly clear set of formal rules for > deciding who should be the next consuls, praetors and so on, especially > after the cursus honorum had been formalised by the Sullan constitution. > (What the late Republic lacked was any way of adequately discharging > soldiers and providing for their later civilian lives. It's probably a > bad idea to make them dependent on their generals and not the state for > this!) > I think the core problem is the unipolar world that was shaped during that time. Lacking an external enemy, the romans started fighting each other. Even during the Punic Wars, when Rome was the single superpower [all other powers were magnitudes weaker than Rome - a situation similar to the current one] there was more inter-roman wars than wars against the third world countries. Alberto Monteiro _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
