Pussification VS The Spartan Way! Cost/Benefit Analysis.

To Natasel, it's quite true they wanted to emulate the culture of the Romans most of the times - think Renaissance - but there were really quite a lot of attempts to revive the militaric spirit of the Romans, be it in Macchiavelli, be it in the popularity of Vegetius in the Renaissance and after, be it in the attempt to equalize the newborn USA and the Republic (Cincinnatus = Washington, their citizen-army and so on). I "love" how a lot of people(I mention this because you mentioned the orgies) think of the Romans as some kind of depraved, godless, orgy-loving, harp-playing madmen (read Pussies in terms of the name of this thread). It's their leyenda negra. Gods, the Romans had really high standarts, compared to today. You had to be pious, you had to be a good citizen, a good soldier, a good farmer, love your country, be couragous, be honest, be loyal, now THAT's romanitas. I don't think any ethinicity are better or worse than any other, or something like that, they just had really high standarts, you could even say, higher than original (meaning early) Christianity. I think the whole "Romans are depraved etc..." thing comes from the liberality of Romans regarding Sex... A thing which the early and later Christians could just not abide.

So people who the Romans oppressed started wanting to make their own Roman empire, but with them as the oppressors this time? Is that a fair assessment?

It's worth noting that The Prince was probably a satire, given the contents of Machiavelli's other work.

Yeah. Maybe. But the advice to imitate the Romans is omnipresent in Macchiavelli's works. He even wrote a book called Dell' arte della guerra (On the art of war), in which he overly praises the Roman republican army. He himself even thought "Dell' arte della guerra" was his most important work (not surprising, given the state of Italy at the time).

Michael, It's hard to say what the likes of the gothi exactly wanted, at the time Westrome fell. But the Imperium of the Franks definitly had the ambition to be the heir of the Imperium Romanum and to be the overlord of Europe. Likewise Napoleon - the French Republic started as a Roman-themed funpark, and continued to be romanesque... but don't say that to loudly to a Frenchmen...

The Roman Army of Republican eras really wasn't that good, at least not in comparison to the Imperial Army after the Marius reforms.

It relied way too much on the personal wealth of individual soldiers for purchasing equipment. Under the reforms, the Empire made sure that across the board everyone had equipment that was up to a certain standard as a minimum.

For it's time, the Republican era military of Rome was pretty good, but light years away from the Imperial Army, and with a lot more weaknesses to it, especially in the long term. Without the reforms, Rome wouldn't have had a chance of reaching the level of success that it did.

Militarily, the Empire was definitely stronger than the Republic — that was kind of one of the things that caused its eventual failure, as its generals became way too powerful and military coups became some sort of hobby for the Romans.

Socially, however, it was nowhere as worthy as the Republic (although it must be said that towards the end, the Republic had gotten corrupt to the point of uselessness.) Rome was strong; but Rome had lost what had made it great.

Yeah...the idea of wealthy patricians raising private armies was really, really bad.

I feel that a big part of it was also that it was vastly overstretched and that communication was a major issue. If you went back in time and introduced landline telephone technology to every roman city and linked them up, I don't think the empire would have gone away for quite some time. The focus on the actions and decisions of the senate in Rome taking forever to communicate with all of their satellite nations and provinces elsewhere was a major part of the troubles Rome faced.

Also, communication makes it much harder to pull off a coup. If someone could have just gave a ring to Rome to say that Caesar had plans to cross the rubicon, things might have gone way differently..

But empires are always obsessed with more greatness when they can grab it. If Rome had decided to circle the wagons and abandon their efforts in the British Isles, and pull back to consolidate all of their gains in the immediate nations around Rome, then they might have stuck around. I feel that nothing contributed more to the fall of the empire than biting off more than they could chew from a geographical perspective.

^

Well, it's happening all over again in the US, at least the beginnings of it.

edited 19th Aug '12 10:16:04 AM by Barkey

Perhaps we should limit this to PERSONAL choices?

Its hard enough when discussing only an individual, entire nations being described as Spartan (except for the Trope Namer) or Pussy would get ugly very quick.

Case in point: America is unquestionably the most powerful nation on Earth, its armed forces are among the most feared, well equiped and capable force in the world.

However, the average American citizen is supposedly fat and in danger of becoming diabetic.

People are also complicated, and you're trying to squeeze them into two overly-narrow and borderline-offensive little boxes.

I don't see this ending well.

Yeesh...yeah. Should have given this post MUCH more thought.

I suppose I should still give it a go then.

When confronted by a question on how to break a brick, two masters give two answers.

Spartan Master: "Train hard! Beat your fist upon the brick till blood weeps from your knuckles and beat it again! Ignore the pain, do not deviate from this course for you are strong! You WILL break the brick!"

Pussification Master: "Buy a hammer at Wallmart."

Tough guys like tools too you know.

But yeah, we were veering off a bit. I wouldn't mind a thread to discuss past versus present empires.

That's though too.

Past Empires can't measure up to some guy pressing a button and nuking them.

Bet the guy pressing the button didn't even work up a sweat or bother to stand up.

edited 19th Aug '12 10:42:42 AM by Natasel

They do measure up, on the basis that they didn't have the option of the red button. The level of accomplishments of an empire are more based on the results they got combined with the means at their disposal.

The Spartans were never really a legitimate Empire, nor were the Athenians, and both of them are opposites in many ways. There is a combination of both ways that is required in order to achieve greatness.

The Romans adapted advanced social principles that were in many ways learned from Greek states like Athens, but they created their vast expansion and in their later days kept the wolf from the door for so long because of their extremely tough, organized, and well disciplined armies.

The British used a firm and cunning understanding of economics and trade to achieve vast riches during the height of the British Empire, as well as leveraging their position as an island nation to focus greatly on having the most powerful fleet the world has ever seen, and leveraging that as much as possible when considering what was required to obtain and keep an acquisition. They used military force and socioeconomic cunning to get where they were.

America today isn't so different. The most powerful and advanced war machine the world has ever seen, coupled with lots of cunning and moral flexibility in the political arena. Leveraging favors, padding the right pockets and coffers, and essentially playing the world by offering a trade for whatever it wants, usually with a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other. It's going to get what it wants, but it would prefer you take the carrot. If you don't take the carrot, it's going to beat you with the stick and take what it wants. It isn't ideal, and I'm not saying that I approve, but realistically it's the strategy my country has used to get where it is today. Coupled with the fact that WW 2 obliterated most of our competition while we remained mostly untouched, thanks to having an ocean on each side of us and an entire continent of resources and people to leverage. That did put us in a great position to get where we are now. When the war ended we weren't focused on rebuilding our country like so many others, we were focused on shoring up our position and stacking the deck in our favor as much as possible.

There are two key focuses that separate those empires from other comparable ones. The system and the leadership. Nazi Germany, the Mongol Empire, Macedonia, and the Napoleonic Empire all thrived on a system of mostly using the stick and skipping the carrot, as well as the leadership of one particular charismatic figure to drive their empires. They were of comparable greatness, but could not last. When Hitler, Alexander, and Genghis Khan died, their empires died with them in spirit. The same can be said of the French when Napoleon was removed from power. The Romans, the British, and America today don't rely on specific people, they rely on the system and strategies that they use for success. It was the adaptations of others and the lack of adaptation of themselves that both led to their downfall, and will lead to the downfall of the USA. They all uniformly used the carrot+stick approach, and when they hit the apex of their empires was when the peoples that were beholden to them figured it all out and corruption from within made them inefficient. People got wise to the consequences of not taking the carrot, and instead of taking the whole carrot slowly took nibbles from it while getting ready in every possible way for the eventuality of the stick.

edited 19th Aug '12 11:03:25 AM by Barkey

I wouldn't say that the Empire was so much stronger in military terms... we must consider that the only real enemies the Romans had to fight after the reforms were ... themselves (I'm talking of the time before the Völkerwanderung, the Migration Period). Long before the reforms they had REAL threads. Carthargo. Phyrrus. The Gauls of Cisalpina, such. Then again, as a republican, Macchavelli WAS biased toward the Roman Republic. I once counted the battles described in Titus Livius and the results were that Rome constantly had a win/lose - ratio of about 2/1 before and after the reforms (I subtracted all the Civil war battles) but I must confess that's not very scientific. (Funnily, I also counted every battle I could find of the Spartans [yes, one of my sources was Herodotus, I apologize] and came up with 15 won battles and around 20 lost battles [I counted some two or three inconclusive as lost, when they lost more men than the enemy]).

The organization of the Legions were just plain better. Now they cost dramatically more to train and maintain, because in the Republic you had your best soldiers buying their own equipment and your poor soldiers not able to afford armor. In the days of the legion, everybody was outfitted well, and everybody had the same training. The Legion was a well oiled machine compared to the Republic.(militarily)

edited 19th Aug '12 9:33:30 PM by Barkey

Yeah, it certainly sounds better, given that the enemies did not have such a leviathan. The Romans were somewhat in lack of govermental control of their army, though, after the reforms. I think it's quite interesting that you had to be a good soldier before the reforms to be a good citizen, that too reminds me of the early phase of the US (even later, there were a lot of millitary officers in leading political decisions). This brings us, funnily again to the topic^^. As in Sparta there was the political, social live indistinguishable from military life, so was it in Rome. Today, not so much. Maybe that's what we're lacking.

What you are suggesting sounds like compulsary military enlistment.

There are a few nations out there that practice it (that are not complete hellholes).

South Korea, Israel, and I think the Finns have it.

How welcome would this idea be though?

I'm against it in the US. I don't want to serve with anybody who doesn't want to wear the uniform.

Yeah, I know, the times for that are over. You would have to make such a thing cool again, without making the populace too militaric. Where I come from, Germany, it was abolished only recently. The Bundeswehr, which was supposed to be "Bürger in Uniform" - citizens in uniform - was always viewed as some kind of joke, concerning military prowess. You forgot Switzerland, but they are all kinds of strange...

I know, now comes the flame-bait, but I think some kind of Starship Troopers like system would be preferable, civil duty or mititary service as prequisite for voting and taking office.

I totally understand the not to serve with unwilling, Barkey.

Same here.

The only thing I can think of would be mandated badass class or something....

^^

I kind of second the Starship Troopers thing, but people always take it the wrong way. In the book, Heinlein very specifically mentions that you can obtain citizenship via all sorts of occupations, from being a garbage man all the way to being a doctor. Anything that counted as civil service. Basically the equivalent of if anyone who ever had a city or state job, and anyone who ever served with the military, and anyone in a variety of occupations that are currently privatized that are considered public service.(Paramedics/EMT's and other jobs) as a route to citizenship.

People automatically go "OMG FASCISTS YOU HAVE TO BE IN THE MILITARY TO VOTE!" Those are people who never read the book, or glossed over that explanation which is in one of the first few chapters. Another argument is often that it's glossed over. Most of the starship troopers universe is glossed over and ignored, because the entire book is told from Rico's first person perspective, and anything that isn't relevant to him that he doesn't think about just isn't there. He doesn't do expository thoughts for the reader.