Still reading Simkhovitch on ancient Rome.
I hesitate to post some of the thoughts I want to post because I know little-to-nothing of history. If I post something and get it right, you may have known it already anyway. But this hesitation is killing me.
"Rome's Fall Reconsidered", by Vladimir Simkhovitvh, published in 1916, presents the argument that the fall of Rome was caused by "exhaustion of the soil" and the consequences of that exhaustion: declining farm productivity, rising farm debt, and the consolidation of small farms into big farms and of big farms into latifundia, which were farms as big as some of the Roman provinces.
On page 228 (p.29 of 44 in the PDF)
Roughly speaking, Roman political and economic life found itself involved in a series of vicious circles. It is only too well known that as long as Italian land was productive and of value, the struggle for that land was the keynote if not the very content of Rome's political struggles. The wealthy were either in lawful possession or were unlawfully using the public land, and hence they were opposed to its subdivision among colonists.
Rome was not without patriots and prophets, to whose vision it was revealed what the Fates had in store for it. They were the great land reformers – and according to tradition they all had to die. Thus, Spurius Cassius, a consul and a triumphator, is said to have been executed in 486 B. C.
Who? (I have trouble with this when I'm watching TV, too. I can't remember the names, so I can't follow the plot. And you thought I was kidding about my memory!)
Spurius Cassius. I looked him up. Wikipedia says:
Spurius Cassius Vecellinus or Vicellinus (died 485 BC) was one of the most distinguished men of the early Roman Republic. He was three times consul, and celebrated two triumphs. He was the first magister equitum, and the author of the first agrarian law. The year following his last consulship, he was accused of aiming at regal power, and was put to death by the patricians.
I love it; I love the irony. The first of the great land reformers, trying to improve conditions for the poor, was put to death by the wealthy for aiming at regal power. Wikipedia says:
The strife between the patricians and plebeians was a recurring theme throughout the early history of the Republic, and in time cost Cassius his life.
The Republic was founded, according to legend, in 509 BC. When Spurius Cassius died in 486 or 485 BC, the Republic was still brand new. The "strife between the patricians and plebeians" in those years must have been the "Conflict of the Orders" that came to a head after the monarchy was abolished.
Anyway, the Roman Republic was still in diapers when Spurius Cassius wrote the first agrarian law of ancient Rome.
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