Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

@holland_tom: This is probably the article on #Trump I have most enjoyed reading. Firm views, robustly stated. Excellent stuff. https://twitter.com/holland_tom/status/919548240042905600

@delong: ???? Do you see the origins of Trump in the luxury of Los Angeles, or the fall of Rome in the orgies of Baiae? If so, why, and how? ????

@holland_tom: @delong I think that the Roman republic provides a mirror into which the American republic cannot help but look.

@delong: The fall of the Roman Republic a mirror, yes. And I would replace "cannot help but look" with "ought to look".

But:

The focus on the orgies of Baiae? And the analogy to LA parties today? That strikes me as telling us much more about Niall Ferguson than about either the rise of Augustus or the election of Trump.

When I look at the U.S. today in the Roman mirror, I think of the slow breakdown of institutional norms:

• the repeated consulships of Gaius Marius under the military pressure of the Kimbri and Teutones,
• the revocation of the command of Sulla,
• Sulla's march on Rome & proscriptions,
• Pompey's consulship at 35,
• Cicero's execution of Roman citizens without trial under cover of the S.C.U.,
• Bibulus's attempt to block Caesar by declaring that all days were dies nefasti,
• Caesar's silencing him and legislating nonetheless.

That was the powder.

And then the match was lit by the fact that, in Lucan's phrase: "Caesar could brook no superior and Pompey could brook no rival..."

But the story of the repeated destruction of institutional norms that maintain the system for the sake of short-term partisan advantage is not the kind of thing Ferguson is interested in seeing in the mirror, is it?

And we see pure howlers—like the claim that nobody quite noticed that Augustus was turning himself into an emperor—that defy comprehension.

And the final opposition of togas to jackboots strikes me very oddly, for I still think the best single book on Augustus is still Ronald Syme's study of Augustus-as-Mussolini...

& apropos Polybius XXXI.25.: "Cato... said once in a public speech that 'it was the surest sign of deterioration in the republic when pretty boys fetch more than fields, and jars of caviar more than ploughmen'. "Caviar" cannot be right, can it? Is Paton translating "garum" as "caviar" here, or is it something else?

Okay, back from Twitter...

Maybe Holland does agree with Ferguson. There are those odd passages about Lucius Licinius Lucullus in Holland's Rubicon...

I have always seen Lucullus as one of those norm-breakers: as one of those who broke the pattern by which political clashes were "settled by mutual concessions, the nobles yielding from fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate..." Lucullus, after all, weaponized misogyny by divorcing his wife Claudia Luculli, accusing her of incest with her brother Clodius Pulcher in order to damage his standing—an accusation that Cicero then gleefully picked up and deployed against Claudia Luculli's older sister Clodia Metelli for the crime of being too uppity a woman.

And Lucullus was the only one of his subordinate officers to join Lucius Cornelius Sulla in what was the first military coup in the history of the Roman Republic.

Norm breaker...

But Holland seems to see Lucullus as a potential upholder of the moderate republic who then defaulted on his historical task:

Lucius Lucullus was the most able and impressive of all the great noblemen who had attached their stars to the dictator [Sulla] and his settlement.... Lucullus had inherited the blood feud, and first made a name for himself by taking to court the man who had convicted his father. Such implacability was to prove an enduring feature of his character. It could translate all too easily into stiffness, for Lucullus was not blessed with the common touch, and rather than attempt to buy popularity, he was grimly content to be regarded as aloof and stingy. But he was also a humane and highly cultivated man, a philosopher and historian steeped in Greek culture and possessing a genuine concern for the well-being of Rome’s subjects....

Lucullus had every reason to feel peeved. His enemies, not content with having had him dismissed from his command, continued to goad him on his return to Rome. Most vindictively of all, they blocked his triumph.... Catulus and his supporters, who had been relying on Lucullus to take his place as a leader of their cause, were to be disappointed. With humiliation following humiliation, something inside Lucullus appeared to have snapped.... He abandoned the political battlefield to others and surrendered himself instead, with all the ostentation he could muster, to pleasure....

In place of a triumph he instead flaunted his fabulous appetites. Sulla, to celebrate his victories, had feasted the whole of Rome, but Lucullus, with a greater expenditure of gold, positively reveled in private—even solitary—excess. Once, when he dined alone and his steward provided him with a simple meal, he cried out in indignation, “But Lucullus is feasting Lucullus today!” The phrase was widely repeated, amid much shaking of heads, for nothing was more scandalous to the Romans than a reputation for enjoying haute cuisine. Celebrity chefs had long been regarded as a particularly pernicious symptom of decadence....

The talents that had once been devoted to the service of the Republic could not have been more spectacularly, or provocatively, squandered. “Piscinarii,” Cicero called Lucullus and Hortensius—“fish fanciers.” It was a word coined half in contempt and half in despair. For Cicero... the mania for fishponds... spoke of a sickness in the Republic itself. Rome’s public life was founded on duty. Defeat was no excuse for retiring from the commitments that had made the Republic great. The cardinal virtue for a citizen was to hold one’s ground, even to the point of death, and in politics as in warfare one man’s flight threatened the entire line of battle.... It appalled him to see men he regarded as his natural allies sitting by their fishponds, feeding their bearded mullets by hand, leaving the Republic to twist in the wind...

But... but... but... Plutarch writes: "Gaius Memmius... turned his attack upon Lucullus.... [But] Lucullus strove mightily... and by much entreaty and exertion at last persuaded the people to allow him to celebrate a triumph.... He decorated the circus of Flaminius with the arms of the enemy, which were very numerous, and with the royal engines of war; and this was a great spectacle in itself, and far from contemptible. But in the procession, a few of the mail-clad horsemen and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots moved along, together with sixty of the king's friends and generals. A hundred and ten bronze-beaked ships of war were also carried along, a golden statue of Mithridates himself, six feet in height, a wonderful shield adorned with precious stones, twenty litters of silver vessels, and thirty-two litters of gold beakers, armour, and money. All this was carried by men. Then there were eight mules which bore golden couches, fifty-six bearing ingots of silver, and a hundred and seven more bearing something less than two million seven hundred thousand pieces of silver coin.g There were also tablets with records of the sums of money already paid by Lucius to Pompey for the war against the pirates, and to the keepers of the public treasury, as well as of the fact that each of his soldiers had received nine hundred and fifty drachmas...

And Plutarch writes: "Lucullus gave a magnificent feast to the city, and to the surrounding villages..."

So where is the eschewing of a triumph? Where is the contrast with Sulla?

And Sulla also really liked to party. Personal love of luxury and political ineffectiveness go together in the rhetoric of Cato the Elder, but not in general in reality. Sulla's love of partying does not seem to have made him less cruel or less effective.

From Steven Saylor Roman Blood: Sulla throws a party:

Tables piled high with delicacies—olives slitted and stuffed with fish eggs, bowls of semolina flecked with the first tender asparagus sprouts of the season, figs and pears suspended in a yellow syrup, the carcasses of tiny fowl. The mingled smells rose on the warm air. My stomach growled. Most of the guests were men; the few women among them stood out on account of their obvious voluptuousness—not wives or lovers, but courtesans. The younger men were uniformly slender and good-looking; the older men had that indolent, well-groomed look of the very rich at play....

I recognized at once the famous female impersonator Metrobius. I had seen him a few times before, never in public and never performing, only in glimpses on the street and once at the house of Hortensius when the great lawyer had deigned to let me past his door. Sulla had taken a fancy to Metrobius long ago in their youth, when Sulla was a poor nobody and Metrobius was (so they say) a beautiful and bewitching entertainer. Despite the ravages of time and all the vagaries of Fortune, Sulla had never abandoned him. Indeed, after five marriages, dozens of love affairs, and countless liaisons, it was Sulla’s relationship with Metrobius that had endured longer than any other. If Metrobius had once been slender and beautiful, I suppose at one time he must have been a fine singer, too. He was wise now to restrict his performances to private affairs among those who loved him, and to limit his repertoire to comic effects and parodies.... He pretended to take every word with utmost seriousness, which only enhanced the comic effect. He must have already begun changing the lyrics before we chanced on the scene, because the young poet and aspiring sycophant who had ostensibly authored the paean was suffering a visible agony of embarrassment:

Who recalls the days when Sulla was a lad,
Homeless and shoeless with not a coin to be had?
And how did he pull himself up from this hole?
How did he rise to his fate, to his role?
Through a hole! Through a hole!
Through the gaping cavern of well-worn size
That yawned between Nicopolis’s thighs!

The audience howled... Sulla shook his head disdainfully and pretended to glower.... The rewritten poet blanched fish-belly white.... With each succeeding verse the song grew increasingly ribald and the crowd laughed more and more freely....

Down in Chrysogonus’s banquet hall, surrounded by spoils of the Social War, the civil war, and the proscriptions, Metrobius stood with his head held high and his hands clasped, drawing a deep breath. His song was nearing its end, having reviewed in witheringly satirical detail the highlights of its subject’s career. Even the humiliated poet, having emptied his belly of whatever ailed him and slunk back to his couch, had finally joined in the raucous laughter. Tiro turned toward me, shaking his head. “I don’t understand these people at all,” he whispered. “What sort of party is this?” I had been wondering the same thing myself:

I think the rumors may be true. I think our esteemed Dictator and Savior of the Republic may be contemplating his imminent retirement. That will mean solemn occasions and ceremonies, hymns of praise, retrospective orations, the official publication of his Memoirs. All very stiff and formal, respectable, Roman. But here among his own, Sulla would rather drink and make a joke of it. What a strange man he is! But wait, the song isn’t over...

From _Rubicon?:

Lucius Lucullus was the most able and impressive of all the great noblemen who had attached their stars to the dictator [Sulla] and his settlement.... Lucullus had inherited the blood feud, and first made a name for himself by taking to court the man who had convicted his father. Such implacability was to prove an enduring feature of his character. It could translate all too easily into stiffness, for Lucullus was not blessed with the common touch, and rather than attempt to buy popularity, he was grimly content to be regarded as aloof and stingy. But he was also a humane and highly cultivated man, a philosopher and historian steeped in Greek culture and possessing a genuine concern for the well-being of Rome’s subjects. Inveterate in his hatreds, he was also passionate in his loyalties and beliefs. He was particularly devoted to Sulla and his memory. It was almost certainly Lucullus who had been the one officer prepared to accompany Sulla on his first march on Rome...

Lucullus still had to be confirmed in his command. Even with the backing of both Catulus and the Claudii, he found that a majority of senators remained against him. Desperate, he realized that there was no alternative but to put out the feelers to the Senate’s arch fixer, Publius Cethegus. Too proud to do so directly, Lucullus opted for the lesser evil of seducing Cethegus’s mistress and persuading her to bring her lover on board. The ploy worked: Cethegus began to spin and strong-arm in Lucullus’s favor. His bloc of tame senators was brought into play and the deadlock was broken. Lucullus was finally given his command...

While Pompey lorded it over the east the man he had replaced indulged himself with the most flamboyant sulk in history. Lucullus had every reason to feel peeved. His enemies, not content with having had him dismissed from his command, continued to goad him on his return to Rome. Most vindictively of all, they blocked his triumph....

Catulus and his supporters, who had been relying on Lucullus to take his place as a leader of their cause, were to be disappointed. With humiliation following humiliation, something inside Lucullus appeared to have snapped.... He abandoned the political battlefield to others and surrendered himself instead, with all the ostentation he could muster, to pleasure.... On a ridge beyond the city walls he built a park on a scale never before witnessed in Rome, a riot of follies, fountains, and exotic plants, many of them brought back from his sojourn in the East, including a souvenir from Pontus: the most enduring of all his legacies to his homeland, the cherry tree. At Tusculum his summer villa was extended until it spread for miles.

Most spectacular of all, along the Bay of Naples, where Lucullus had no fewer than three villas, he built gilded terraces on piers, fantastical palaces shimmering above the sea.... His extravagances were deliberately raised to be offensive to every ideal of the Republic. Once, he had lived by the virtues of his class. Now, retiring from public life, he trampled on them. It was as though, embittered by the loss of first power and then honor, Lucullus had turned his contempt upon the Republic itself.

In place of a triumph he instead flaunted his fabulous appetites. Sulla, to celebrate his victories, had feasted the whole of Rome, but Lucullus, with a greater expenditure of gold, positively reveled in private—and even solitary—excess. Once, when he dined alone and his steward provided him with a simple meal, he cried out in indignation, “But Lucullus is feasting Lucullus today!” The phrase was widely repeated, amid much shaking of heads, for nothing was more scandalous to the Romans than a reputation for enjoying haute cuisine. Celebrity chefs had long been regarded as a particularly pernicious symptom of decadence....

The talents that had once been devoted to the service of the Republic could not have been more spectacularly, or provocatively, squandered. “Piscinarii,” Cicero called Lucullus and Hortensius—“fish fanciers.” It was a word coined half in contempt and half in despair. For Cicero... the mania for fishponds.. spoke of a sickness in the Republic itself. Rome’s public life was founded on duty. Defeat was no excuse for retiring from the commitments that had made the Republic great. The cardinal virtue for a citizen was to hold one’s ground, even to the point of death, and in politics as in warfare one man’s flight threatened the entire line of battle.... It appalled him to see men he regarded as his natural allies sitting by their fishponds, feeding their bearded mullets by hand, leaving the Republic to twist in the wind.

But for Hortensius, as for Lucullus, the consciousness of having been bested, of holding only second place, was a burning agony.... The ancient Roman yearning for glory turned pathological. Lucullus, splitting mountains for the benefit of his fish, and Hortensius, serving peacocks for the first time at a banquet, were both still engaged in the old, familiar competition to be the best. But it was no longer the desire for honor that possessed them. Instead it was something very like self-disgust....

No wonder his contemporaries were appalled and perplexed. Not properly understanding his condition, they explained it as madness. Ennui was an affliction unknown to the Republic. Not so to later generations. Seneca, writing in the reign of Nero, at a time when the ideals of the Republic had long since atrophied, when to be the best was to risk immediate execution, when all that was left to the nobility was to keep their heads down and tend to their pleasures, could distinguish the symptoms very well. “They began to seek dishes,” he wrote of men such as Lucullus and Hortensius, “not to remove but to stimulate the appetite.”7 The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing into their depths, were tracing shadows darker than they understood...

It was Lucullus, embittered and determined on the ruin of his in-laws, who had first made the rumors of incest public. On his return from the east he had openly accused his wife of sleeping with her brother and divorced her. Clodius’s eldest and dearest sister, who had let him into her bed when he had been a small boy, nervous of nighttime fears, inevitably found her own name blackened by such a charge as well. In Rome censoriousness was the mirror image of a drooling appetite for lurid fantasy. Just as it endlessly thrilled Caesar’s contemporaries to think of him as the bed partner of the king of Bithynia, so the pleasure that Clodius’s enemies took in the accusations of incest against him never staled. No smoke without fire—and there must have been something unusual about Clodius’s relations with his three sisters to have set tongues wagging.

The charges of incest against Clodia... marked her out as a player in the political game. Misogyny alone, however, savage and unrelenting though it was, does not entirely explain the vehemence of the abuse that society hostesses such as Clodia provoked. Women had no choice but to exert their influence behind the scenes, by stealth, teasing, and seducing those they wished to influence, luring them into what moralists were quick to denounce as a feminine world of gossip and sensuality.

To the already ferociously nuanced world of male ambition, this added a perilous new complication. The qualities required to take advantage of it were precisely those that had always been most scorned in the Republic. Cicero, not one of life’s natural party animals, listed them in salacious detail: an aptitude for “debauchery,” “love affairs,” “staying up all night to the din of loud music,” “sleeping around,” and “spending cash to the point of ruin.”11 The final, clinching disgrace, and the ultimate mark of a dangerous reprobate, was to be a good dancer...