Sunday 31 August 2014

it happened on the way to the forum: oh weal, oh woe or sacer esto

 The matter of wealth disparity was the gravest threat to a Rome who had managed to quell all external threats, but the need for reform went virtually unnoticed by the Senate, who were each preoccupied with enlarging their estate own for fear that their colleague across the aisle might be able to eventually absorb the others holdings.

After another casting off of traditional laws regarding the sacrosanctity of the person of the tribune (the office made the holder untouchable—sacer esto, let him be accursed, for interfering with the business of the State) during the perennial gridlock over social legislation, the dissenting party, vetoing ever law brought before him, was merely instead removed by an angry mob loyal to the status quo for the sake of political expediency, rather than observing checks and balances that had been in place for centuries, patient but now having become too trying.  Laws were codified that made ostentation and extravagant displays of wealth a crime as well as new restrictions on how much land one man was allowed to accumulate.
There were ways, however, to skirt these new regulations with shifting fashion and the limitless expanses of the frontier colonies. These problems did not pass unrecognised by all, though, with many moralising figures arising in politics, like Cato the Elder, who warned of this new decadence—and even in the far-away kingdom of Pergamon in Asia-Minor. Nominally under the rule of first the Persians, then the Greeks and now the Romans, the last in a dynasty of philosopher-kings, without an heir of his own, decided to bequeath the lands and wealth of Pergamon to the people of Rome, in order to avoid further civil-strife there. The Senate interrupted the king's last testament differently and were not about to throw open the doors of the treasury (for fear of run-away inflation for price- and power-parity) to the rabble. This under-appreciated magnanimous act did not sit well with the people of Pergamon either.