Recently, I have been reading about the ancient (proto) Indo-Europeans, and I find it fascinating. So, according to the wiki, the most likely theory is the Kurgan theory. There are, even with DNA analasys, still many gaps and anomalies:

- Large waves of migrations into Europe from the steppe, yet many European peoples lack Steppe DNA?

- When and why did the anatolians split off?

- Proto-Greeks came to dominate Greece, but they were with very few people?

- The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture: supposedly a million people strong building large cities, yet overtaken by steppe peoples? Were they the PIE speakers?

So many questions... let's find answers!

For me it’s Alcibiades. Dude’s life was a soap, a sitcom, a spy thriller, a drama, and a raunchy comedy all in one.

I have an assignment in World Civ where I have to write an essay on any primary source found in ancient history. You guys have any cool sources that’d be fun to write about?

Is the acquisition of an empire to blame? Or rather the political misbehavior of the elite?

What was the root cause of the end of the Roman Republic? Not the direct cause but that initial “evil” that inaugurated its declining process and eventually brought it down?

There are many theses and theories about why the republic fell and, likewise, many theories on when and how its decline began, and the most common among them is the expansion of Rome into a republican empire, which I'll describe later in the essay. There’s another theory exposed by author Edward J. Watts in his 2018 book “Mortal Republic – How Rome fell into Tyranny” and related articles.

If I had to sum up in one (long) phrase his thesis on why the republic fell, it would go like this:

“Its citizens chose to let the republic fall after a century-long period of disfunction and violence, brought about by political misbehavior, itself promoted by people’s passivity in punishing such behavior because, taking the endurance of the republic for granted, they thought it would never die”

Obviously, this doesn't mean that people actually voted to abandon the republic in some sort of assembly. It simply means that when the autocracy of Augustus began to consolidate itself, the people readily accepted it in exchange of stability. Mainly the end of civil wars.

Related to that, is the idea that republics only survive as long as its citizens want them. If a republic begins to malfunction, therefore provoking corruption, instability, violence, inequality, etc., its citizens will eventually stop supporting it, instead becoming willing to trade the liberty it offers for another system capable of offering political stability and economic and social security, regardless if that new system is perhaps an absolute monarchy.

 Regarding ancient Rome, if one accepts this premise, this of course begs the question of what caused Romans to lose faith in its republican order.

Was the “initial evil” the consequences of the acquisition of an empire? Or the political misbehavior of the elite? Let’s start analyzing political misbehavior:

First, we need to understand what is meant by “political misbehavior”.

The Roman Republic's government had a system of inner checks and balances to both prevent the rise of an autocrat, and to prevent political violence: Anual magistracies; re-election only possible after a 10-year interval; the power to veto proposals; the sacrosanctity of Tribunes, etc. and many many more.

Such checks and balances, therefore, were used to foster deliberation and, through it, political compromise and consensus. Political disputes had to be (and were) solved in a civilized, non-violent way. Political violence was a genuine taboo. As long as those rules and norms were respected, the republic worked well (in this context, “worked well” simply means “it discussed and solved its problems in a way that prevented violence from happening by successfully fostering political compromise and consensus”).

Political misbehavior therefore refers to politicians progressively breaking those rules, beginning to ignore them, or abusing them to fit their own short-sighted ambitions. And through such behavior, they brought about the violence that would progressively doom the republic. Political misbehavior includes, for example, bypassing the qualified opinion of the Senate and going directly to the People’s Assembly to approve laws; or abusing the veto power to block all attempt at reform instead of using it for its original purpose: to reach an agreement on the issue; or bribing citizens and politicians alike; or get someone threatened or killed, etc. In short, political misbehavior can be described as “the conscious breaking of republican norms to achieve short-sighted goals through any means necessary, including murder”, and when that came, political violence became commonplace, which in turn led to mob violence and eventually civil wars. It's not difficult to see why this happened: with republican norms used to settle disputes no longer respected/working, those disputes stopped being solved by words in the political arena, and began to be "solved" by daggers in the streets.

Alongside this breaking of norms, or abuse of powers, Rome’s citizens began to look the other way instead of readily punishing such acts. There's a particular sociological cause for this, but that's not the topic of this essay.

As stated above, with such behavior the republic progressively stopped working, causing first political violence (from 133 BC on), then mob violence (from 100 BC on), then eventually coups, military rebellions and civil wars (from 91 BC on). Such chaos, which progressively became the rule rather than the exception over the last century of the republic, caused its citizens to lose their faith in it, willingly abandoning the liberty of the broken republic and embracing the security and stability that Augustus’ autocracy offered, and delivered.

It is evident that political misbehavior played a crucial role in the republic’s downfall, and it's easily proven.

First is the timing of republican decline and breaking of political norms: there’s no historian, past or present, that doesn’t mark the year 133 BC as the year in which republican decline began, and that was precisely the year in which genuine political misbehavior began by the hand of Tribune of the Plebs Tiberius Gracchus. This is obviously not a coincidence. He inaugurated the political misbehavior that led to political violence in that same year for the first time in the republic in almost 300 years.

Second, there’s the fact that all political violence, mob violence, and then coups, military rebellions and civil wars were caused directly or indirectly by the breaking of political norms. For example, when in the year 100 a mob killed Tribune of the Plebs Saturninus and his followers, it was because Saturninus had previously sent a gang of assassins to kill the would-be Consul, in front of all the assembly. In this example, political violence led directly to mob violence. Political misbehavior always led to more misbehavior, to a breaking point.

Regardless, then, of which and where one designates and places the “first evil” of the republic, it’s undeniable that one cannot talk about the republican decline without talking about the political misbehavior of the very same period.

However, there’s another, much more common, mainstream theory:

That the "first evil" were the consequences of acquiring an empire.

It’s a common narrative to blame the origins of the fall of the republic to the acquisition and expansion of the republican empire. Such an empire begun to form a century earlier than political misbehavior did. It begun on 241 BC with the acquisition of Sicily as a province after Rome’s victory over Carthage in the First Punic War, but greatly and rapidly expanded in the period of 202-146 BC, between Rome’s triumph over Carthage in the Second Punic War, and the raze of Carthage (along with Corinth) at the end of the Third Punic War.

Those who support this theory, mainly that the woes of empire are what inaugurated the republic’s decline process, point out to the evils that the republican empire did indeed bring to Rome:

*An international climate in which Rome was no longer threatened by some serious foreign power, causing its elite to no longer stay united for the good of Rome, instead becoming more factionalist in nature, difficulting political compromise and consensus.

*Or, the immense influx of wealth from conquered territories causing a moral decay among the elite. Instead of seeking honor through service to the republic, it now sought wealth, and not necessarily for the well-being of the republic.

*Perhaps more importantly, the new financial opportunities, wealth and demographics created by the expansion of Rome came too quick for the slow, deliberative Roman system to adapt to.

Instead of expanding its bureaucracy and enlarging its political compass to manage the entire empire, the republic remained with a government meant to manage just a city-state. As a result, such imperial management was outsourced to private contractors: it was private contractors, not government officials, who ran the mines, built the roads, maintained the infrastructure and collected the taxes. This created a new class of super wealth citizens and a lot of corruption, creating a huge and very visible gap between rich and poor. This economic inequality fostered frustration among the plebeians.

This theory that the empire begun the decline runs against a problem, though. While the issues listed above were very real, how can it be explained that in the century they manifested, even in the second half of such century, when the great and most rapid expansion occurred, the republic still worked well? From 241 to 146 BC there was neither political violence nor misbehavior on politician’s side. There was no abuse of the Plebeian Assembly to bypass the Senate; no breaking of political norms; no abuse of political vetoes, no manipulation of the masses by demagogues, etc. Issues were still settled in the political arena. The republic still managed to channel individual ambitions towards acquiring the political offices that only the state could provide.

Because of this, it doesn’t seem that political misbehavior was a consequence of the woes and evils of imperialism at all. Rather, it seems like imperialism simply created an economic climate in which it was possible, though not inevitable, that the actual root-cause for the republican decline could manifest itself: political misbehavior.

At this point it becomes crucially important to understand two related but different concepts: Causes and Conditions.

A CAUSE is what provokes an incident. Example: there was a car accident. What CAUSED it? One of the drivers was very drunk while driving and doing it dangerously fast.

A CONDITION (or a SET of many conditions), instead, is what makes the mentioned CAUSE a possibility. Example: The mayor had just lowered the prices of alcoholic beverages and had removed many of the road controls. And so, this particular man found it easy to get drunk and drive dangerously fast.

But a CONDITION isn’t a cause in itself. It doesn’t inevitably begin a process. In the example, these two conditions the mayor of the city put into effect (lowered alcohol prices and fewer road controls) didn’t cause the accident. And it’s easy to prove it:

First, blaming the mayor for this particular accident is nonsensical. He can of course be charged with being responsible of creating a “climate” or “space” (a set of conditions) in which such accidents could occur, but he didn’t tell the man to get drunk and then drive his car like a maniac. That’s entirely the car owner’s fault. If the man had been more responsible, avoiding getting drunk, then the car accident could have been avoided, regardless of, and despite of, the low beverage prices and fewer controls the mayor put into effect.

So, the CONDITIONS that make the CAUSE a possibility, doesn’t cause it INEVITABLY. They just create a more “suitable” climate or space for the actual cause to develop.

Likewise, the acquiring of an empire by Rome can’t be said to be “the beginning of the end of the republic”, nor the beginning of its declining process. It was a condition for it, not a cause. The possession of an empire doesn’t necessarily cause the decline of a system of government. On the contrary, if the changes the empire brings are well managed, the acquiring of an empire can be extremely good for the current system.

Now, I’m not denying at all that the evils of imperialism didn’t play a role. They did. A huge one. They put enormous strains on the republic, and obviously Rome failed miserably at its attempt to correctly manage the newly acquired empire and wealth (just like the mayor did with his dangerous laws during his administration),  but what I meant to explain with this essay is that these imperialistic strains didn’t cause the chain of events that led to the end of the republic, (or the car accident), they simply created a suitable space for political misbehavior to emerge, (or for this man to decide to get drunk and drive fast), which eventually caused the end result: the death of the republic, (the car accident).

The origin of the end of the republic is not, therefore, the acquisition and expansion of its republican empire, or the wealth inequality it produced, but the breaking of political norms by politicians, and alongside it the passivity of citizens who failed to punish them for these acts, because they naively believed that their republic would last forever. It would not.

Hello!

I was researching my recent novel project involving a palace system like Qing Dynasty China and found out there were 48 departments that kept it running.

Does anyone know what they are or where I can get more information?