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History 104A, October 5: Dear Pres. Bush, the Younger: The US is not Rome!

Well, the numbers look a little smaller today. I don't know if

that's because of the exam and people decided to drop or because they

figured they needed a break. Those that were not here to get their

exam back, you can drop next time. I'm just kidding. Those of you

who were not here to get your exam back, you'll have to follow me to

my office because that's where it is. In going through Connie's

transcript yesterday, I realized that I screwed up in one area. I

said that the she wolf had nine tits. She only had seven. I don't

know -- I apologize for that. I did change it. It could have been

wishful thinking, I'm not sure, but whatever. And there are seven

hills to Rome, not nine. For whatever that's worth, minor stuff, but

I don't like -- sometimes talking without notes, I talk too fast and

forget what I'm saying, so I'm glad they're there at least to read and

generally not too many mistakes.

Rome was founded in 753. I identified, I guess, pretty strongly

an anti-Roman bias developing the concept in my mind that Rome was two

faced in the context of the way we often use it, meaning they say one

thing and mean something else. And I went on to talk about the

foundation of Rome based on war and rape at least even historically.

It is true that the Romans were war-like, perhaps the most war-like

people in the sense of training and development and organization.

Well, I shouldn't say since but certainly similar to the Spartans.

Coexisting, if we start in the area in 753, I mean there were some

settlements found in the seven hills that go back to about 1,000. The

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Italian peninsula does not have a lot of great ports. It isn't like

Greece where you've got all these built-in ports; and therefore,

basically it's looking like a peninsula siting there, so you would

think that they would be directing more to the sea, but they were

really land wolves not sea foxes, if you will.

Rome had phenomenal agricultural land far better than anything in

Greece. And so the Roman society was a conservative, basically land

society. It was similar to Sparta in that sense. And of course we're

going to get into, in a little while, the conflict the land power,

Rome, had with the sea power, Carthage. Carthage, as we indicated,

coming from the settlement of the Phoenician; therefore, being sea

oriented. So once again, the theme of sea power versus land power is

going to play away. Although it is mountainous, it is easy to move

through Italy. It wasn't that the mountains made it difficult to

cross from one area to the other. And the Alps did not really serve

as a barrier and protect the peninsula by any means. And for that

matter, neither did the sea with seafaring nations or city states like

the Greeks settle, also all along the coast here and the Carthageans

who settled here along Sicily and later Spain and France.

Rome was subject to invasions and it did have diverse peoples,

different culture, different languages, not like the Greek area where

you had Greeks who spoke Greek, same language, and anybody who didn't

speak it was outside the area called barbarians.

Perhaps the most fascinating group of people for me -- I guess

it's the mystery. The Minoans were a bit mysterious too. A bit north

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of the City of Rome as we know it were a group of people known as a

Etruscans. We don't know where they came from. Their language still

has not been translated. They're another one of those mystery peoples

of Europe. We're not even sure when they got there. If they came

around the time of Rome, there were in there. Somewhere between the

sixth, seventh century, they began to solidify the air. There's no

doubt that they had a influence on the Roman development of

civilization, and even more so, they actually conquered Rome or the

area around Rome for a while and a Etruscan kings actually ruled Rome

a few hundred or so years after its founding. And the date that is

traditionally given, 753 BCE.

The Etruscans were phenomenal jewelry makers. They were able the

make little earrings and necklaces with these little beads and

intricate detail of gold. And perhaps that's one of the more

interesting things to see about the Etruscans. They also made these

massive statues. And they were famous in ancient history in many ways

because they were one of the few societies that really showed absolute

affection, interaction, and perhaps what we might call liberty for

women. The Etruscan women were always at the side of the men in the

sculptors and elsewhere on the tombs. They were buried with their

husbands. I'm not sure whether I'd want that or not. Just kidding.

They were shown leaning and resting. And by the way, it was

interesting the Romans did pick up that tendency to eat basically,

what's the word when you're reclining, basically, sort of laying down

eating. I can't do that. I don't know how people can lay down and

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eat. It's like trying to sit down on the floor and eat like the

Japanese do. Do any of you lay down and eat?

A Sometimes.

THE PROFESSOR: You must be an Etruscan not a Swede. Sorry, I

get off into these weird things with my mind wondering how people can

do certain things, I guess.

And so to some extent, Roman women certainly were more involved

in society, maybe not at the beginning, but later on then certainly

any other of the early civilizations. And as I indicated, Roman

matrons, if you will, were very active in the political process. We

say most of the time behind the scenes, but often directly in front of

the scenes as well. We did not have any Roman women emperors like we

had in Egypt with the pharaohs, but we certainly had Roman women who

made the emperor and pushed their own children to become emperors and

of course were very much involved in eliminating rivals, using one of

the continuous elements of Roman women throughout history, right up

through the middle ages and perhaps even today for all I know --

poison. The Roman women were great at mixing poisons and that was

just part of whatever.

A There's a series that's on HBO right now that's called Rome. And

I watched it a couple of nights ago. And it's dealing with this right

now how influential the women were in politics. And I guess just the

family in general.

THE PROFESSOR: I don't get HBO. There was one that was on, I

think I was mentioning it earlier. There was one on, I can't remember

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Showtime or some station, probably the history charges, but it dealt

with the Roman period that nobody's interested in, which was about

200-300 CEAD. And it just dealt with the wars. It really didn't deal

with the culture. That sounds good if they were actually touching on

it.

A The history channel had a Rome week. If you only got one night

of it -- it had like the life of the people in the army, the life of

the family, everything.

THE PROFESSOR: I must have missed that. I taped about three of

them and they all dealt with the general and the battles around the

200 ADCE.

A There was a lot more than that.

THE PROFESSOR: More than that. In any case, we're identifying

Rome. And I pointed out, Rome certainly has been a fashion nation as

far as history is concerned. And as I also identify, many people do

identify the United States and its history with Rome. And of course

we play on that same theme. Are we declining because, like Rome

declined, because we're willing to have a supreme court justice who

believes in gay rights. That's one of the conservative criticisms of

the new nominee, Harriet Miers. That threw me for a while.

But the sense of that development of Rome, in a sense, perhaps of

the war-like element that I was mentioning -- let me go back to

Etruscans.

The Etruscans also contributed one of the most important things

to the existence of Rome and that is aqueducts. The aqueducts were

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those, well, first they were actually what do you call them, stones,

rocks with pipes, clay pipes that brought water into the cities. They

brought it down from the mountains. And when you have the city as

Rome was with a million, some say almost 2 million people, the fact is

that you need a lot of water. That water flowed because of the

aqueducts which, by the way, are still standing in parts of the area

of Rome. While of course they don't use them anymore, I might, now in

case I forget, one of the arguments for the fall and decline of Rome

were the pipes that used to bring the water in were made with clay

that had loads of lead in it. When there were lead on clay pipes, it

gets into the pipes of men. When it gets into male pipes, it creates

impotency and destroys sperm. And so they say that that lead from the

water destroyed Rome. Of course, again, the pipes have been flowing

for 1,000 years. But then again, perhaps that explains why many of

the Roman legions and others were made up of foreigners because they

had clean types.

The aqueducts later were reinforced and developed by the Romans

for one of their invention s -- I'm doing this a little out of context

but as long as it pops into my mind. Romans invented concrete. And

the aqueducts and many other buildings were reinforced with concrete.

The aqueducts were also built with an Etruscan invention, the arch.

That whole arch that was more or less the true arch was able to

support the weight and development that weight better. There is a

whole room, it's a large room at the metropolitan museum of art in New

York dedicated to Etruscan forgeries. Because of the mysteries of the

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Etruscans and because there was a lot of wealth in selling Etruscan

goods, many people 50-100 years ago began to create falsified Etruscan

statues, jewelry, and artifacts. And it was a big business. Two of

the sculptures there, which I had originally seen and thought they

were real before I found out they were phony, were these massive,

beautiful, Etruscan soldiers and they are weren't real.

During the early period of Rome, again, what we had were

basically farmer soldiers perhaps similar to the minutemen of the

early American nation or pre-nation, if you will. The Romans, as I

said, had a military cult, if you will. And perhaps part of that was

the need for the defense in this open territory. The Romans enjoyed

war. And often defended themselves, much like America defended itself

against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. One of the issues that

appeared in the American history recently was something that we didn't

do quite as blatantly in what people might call our imperialism or

not. We used a preemptive strike. We took over Iraq before Iraq

could hit us. And that usually has not been part of American history.

Perhaps it's the best way to go. Certainly the Israelis use it quite

often. But the argument is that it was against American tradition, by

using the war before we need to go to war. The Romans continue to use

preemptive strikes. And they use that as an excuse by saying they

were being attacked and therefore, they moved into areas to prevent

further destruction. Again, as I deal with there are some

similarities in the sense of the expansion, the ideas.

One of the major differences I would say between Roman history

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and American history, besides the system of government, is this

innovation. Americans have been extremely creative in innovative

means, technology and other factors. We create inventions, the

Edisons, the tinkerers, the New England tinkerers. The Romans, while

they develop some elements of technology, were more like many great

empires. They went in and they took it from other people. They were

re-engineered. That meant they built beautifully on other people's

creations. And that has been very typical of many societies. The

Soviet Union built on what they got externally. Japan has often been

used of building -- although obviously in recent years they've been

very procreative in development and technology and expansion. But in

the technological fields, the United States starts it out and they

have been surpassed by other nations that have built on that

traditionally. The Romans were great re-engineers. All roads lead to

Rome, as the story goes, but it was done basically because of the

power and strength of the empire.

In 507, according to your book, in 509, according to other books,

the Romans eliminated the monarchy that they had in the Etruscan

overlords. Under the leadership of the man named Brutus, which is no

relationship to the Brutus that deals with Popeye. Of course there

was Bruto and then Brutus. I don't know why there were two of them.

But the other Brutus, of course, historically, is the Brutus who may

be the son of Julius Ceasar, I don't know, although it's been claimed,

who helped assassinate Ceasar on the Ides of March, March 15, in 44

BCE. The first Brutus is identified as the founder of the Roman

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republic. The second Brutus kills Ceasar to preserve the republic but

does not succeed.

Also in this early founding of the Roman republic, there is at

name that comes down to us historically, a man named Cincinnatus which

gives us our city Cincinnati. George Washington was known as the

Cincinnatus of America, of the early republic. Cincinnati was called

upon to help defend against Roman invaders or invaders to Rome, again

war. And given the powers of the dictator, the dictatorial powers in

Rome had to be handed back. And Cincinnatus didn't want to deal with

them either. Once the war was over, once the battles were won, he

turned back the power and returned to his farm to be, as many of our

early founders were, a citizen farmer, a minuteman who went to war

when necessary. George Washington turned down the title of king to

become the first president. And after two terms, decided to step

aside rather than be a permanent president believing that he had

served his country well and went back to his Mount Vernon to continue

his farming. And the tradition of only two terms for the American

president lasted until Franklin Delanor Roosevelt was elected a fourth

term. And after that, the United States Congress and the states

passed an amendment to the Constitution, fearful of somebody

dominating and dictating America and a lot of people disliking

Roosevelt anyway. And that was that now, our presidents can only

serve for two terms. There was a little mobility, but not a lot

during Reagan's administration to extend it so he could serve again.

He was 77 when he left the administration, so it didn't go very far.

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The early Roman republic had the development of a city state

expanded out. It had to deal with certain internal problems. The

basic founders of Rome, the descendents of Romulus and Remus, the

descendant of the rape of the Sabine women, became the power of Rome.

And they were known as the patricians, a patrician class. We use the

word patrician in English to refer to upper class. However, the

people who they took over, the people who they conquered, the people

who they raped in the immediate area, become the working class. And

the term for these lower class underdogs was plebeians, meaning, the

term used for underclassmen freshman at West Point, plebeians. What

we have right after this founding of Rome is a conflict between the

patrician, wealthy, business class, wealthy farmers, who controlled

the Senate and whose followers of the patrician class become the two

councils. Rome had two councils elected by the patrician class. Rome

became a republic.

I need to clarify that the term republic simply means the absence

of monarchy. However, it also means representative government, but

you can have representative government today as we have it in a

monarchy. Yet similar again to the framers of our country, our

Constitution, the Roman patricians created a republic different than

the republic today here in the United States. We refer to our

republic as a democracy. We can argue back and forth whether it's a

true democracy. But when we elect representatives, we elect them

under the principle that they will govern "for" us, they will make

decisions based on our interests, that they will aid them, direct

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them, and tell them how to make those decisions so they're governing

for us. The original framers of the Roman republic believed that the

Romans should be governed. The framers of our Constitution believe

that the American people should be governed. What does that mean? It

means that originally we elected people who knew better than us what

was good for us, that when we voted for somebody, it wasn't because

they were going to listen to us, it was because we were going to

listen to them. Again, something that's difficult perhaps for us to

understand based upon our own concept of what representative democracy

is about. That was the fundamental belief of the framers of our

Constitution. As I say, we've expanded into a different kind of a

republic. The framers of our Constitution attacked democracy. They

believed it was mobocracy, ruled by the masses. In the early American

republic, to participate, even to elect somebody that knew better than

you, you needed to own property, because it was believed that if you

owned property, you had a vested interest in the society. And that

existed through the American Constitution and basically in most states

until 1820. Thomas Paine, the great American revolutionary, once said

in his writings, If you need to own property to vote, a man has a

jackass and he's worth the jackass, $50. The State of Virginia

requires you to have $50 worth of property to vote, so you can vote.

But then your jackass dies, and you can't vote, so who really voted,

you or the jackass? Of course many of our framers would say you were

a jackass as well, so it goes.

The top the Romans again, property was the foundation of the

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society. And all soldiers came from the a property class.

Translation, you actually weren't put in the military originally in

the early Roman republic unless you came from somebody who really

owned land. Wouldn't it be nice if you couldn't be drafted today if

you didn't own property? Of course we don't have a draft so it's

irrelevant. Of course that creates a major problems when you think

about it. If you're continuously at war, when the hell are you going

to go back and work your land? And what happens to your land? Well,

it paid good dividends to the large property holders. Somehow they

got exempt -- surprise, surprise. And as the people and as the war

expanded and Romans took a lot of losses in their wars, like many

early farming societies, they produced a lot of children. They loved

children. They believed in family. They believed in patria, the

fatherland. And it was important for the fatherland to survive. And

so they loved producing kids. The Roman legions destroyed their

enemies often through numbers. What was often known as a pyrrhic

victory, the way they defeated the Greeks. They lost 100 times more

men, but they just kept coming. P-H-Y-R-I-C, I think, pyrrhic

victory. They just outnumbered the people. But sooner or later, the

patricians, the wealthy, began to buy up the farmland and they began

to create what we called to agribusiness.

And the Roman common people began to find that they were without

land and they began to enter the cities. Later on in the Roman

republic, the Romans found a solution for that, bread and circuses or

the dole, which we refer to as welfare for the people who came into

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the city and were unemployed. They were given a handout. They were

given food, clothing and money to buy things with. And to keep them

busy since they had nothing to do during the day, they were

entertained at the hippodrome and at the coliseums. Translation,

horse races, chariot races, gladiator fights and also in places like

the coliseum itself they could flood them, the floor of those stadiums

and they would actually have sea battles. It sounds like a little

fun. And the people sit there and of course thumbs up, thumbs down,

you've seen that. We even have a whole planet that's based on the

Romans, the Romulans, for whatever that's worth.

In the fifth century, 400s, and third century, fourth century,

400s oops. Fifth century -- 300s BCE, plebeians repelled. They had

it. They wanted equal say. They did something that has historically

not generally been overly successful. And in this time in history it

was, something that has been known as a general strike. The plebeian

class, the working class, left the City of Rome. They marched out and

said, we ain't coming back. You people can eat your damn money until

we're given political rights. Two major general strikes brought on

the creation of plebeian assemblies, not one, but a number of

assemblies. Remember that the second house of the State of

California's government is called an assembly. Translation, what we

created were House of Representatives for the people. Candidly, they

didn't get very much power directly with it, meaning that the

patrician class aided them in getting elected. They bought them out.

They paid for them. They bribed them, and they continue to control

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them. They did have at least one minor power that was elected by the

plebeians. And actually, generally, they elected a patrician, a John

F Kennedy to be a people's representative. And they got two tribunes.

The tribunes had the right to stand outside the door of the Senate

listening to the debate. And if they didn't like what they heard,

they yelled out "veto," meaning I forbid. The tribunes did have a

veto over any legislation that might be harmful, the plebeian class.

Obviously again, it was often got around.

That tradition of a veto, forgetting the way we see it in our

government and the president's ability to veto, carried over into the

education system throughout most of the world, except in the United

States. And perhaps we have a little better system in some ways.

European universities and universities established along the lines of

the European universities have a position elected by the students

called a rector. The rector is a full professor at the university who

the students trust to defend their rights. And the rectors at the

universities speak for the students, and in some cases have a

quote/unquote -- I'm exaggerating here -- a veto over the legislation

created by the faculty senates in the university systems. Have any of

you ever heard of the rector positions before? I say in the United

States it's a little different. We have created, in most

universities, a vice president or dean for students. And today, of

course, going beyond the dean of students, who's supposed to look out

for student interests, we have often, especially in public

institutions where they had school boards of some sort, we have

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student representatives to the boards themselves. They do not have a

vote like at the Ohlone board, but they do have the right to speak for

the students and request that the board vote one way for the other and

perhaps even introduce issues to the board. Here at Ohlone our

student reps actually get paid the same amount of money as the board

members. And they actually also get, what's the word I'm looking

for -- they also get health insurance from the board. So if any of

you want a job that's really boring and you want to listen to our

board go on our hours, go on about nothing like which toilet paper to

buy, at least you can get health insurance, which you'll probably need

it afterwards.

After the class wars in Rome, Rome began to expand out in their

self defense, building and expanding their boarders until they

controlled much of the area around Rome. And by the fourth -- third

century, they actually moved into southern Italy, defeating the Greek

cities. And as they encountered and moved into the Greek cities, they

loved the Greek culture. I'm not talking about some of the culture.

I'm talking about the art and the Gods. They identified many of their

Gods and adapted the Greek Gods and gave their Gods very similar

attributes. So as we know, Jupiter became Zeus or the Zeus, Greek,

Jupiter, the Roman. Juno a God of the Earth for the Roman, the mother

God became very much identified with the same characteristics of Hera.

Now, in some sense, this worked because it brought the Greeks into

Roman society. The Romans and something the Greeks did not.

As they expand out because of the diverse population, one of

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their brilliant elements and one of the great workings of the creation

of Rome was the absorption of all peoples giving them citizenship.

Citizenship became by the later on in Rome, anyone who was conquered

was given a form of citizenship; but in early Rome, it was a little

more difficult to be a citizen. And they did something that we used

to do and I'm sure if we still do it. People who served in the armed

forces, as the numbers began to decline of Romans, they introduced

other peoples into the armed forces. After they served 26 years, they

were given Roman citizenship -- 26 years. Can you imagine surviving

in the military 26 years, being alive, literally, in the Roman

battles? Always amazing. Ours was basically a two year service with

the draft; or during World War II, people were brought in sometimes.

I don't know if that's still the process. I think it is if you serve.

In any case, the Romans brought these people in, adapted their

culture, and brought in holidays and Gods to make part of the Roman

pantheon of Gods. And so it made the people feel more a part of the

society even more than the Persian empire who had allowed them to have

a certain sense of self-rule.

There was a danger that later appeared in Rome. As they brought

in these barbarians using the Greek word, they didn't necessarily use

it. As they allowed them to become part of the Roman legions and they

trained them, these foreigners went home and taught their people the

Roman techniques of battle and were able, at times, to create real

dangers to the Roman legions. In fact, one of the biggest dangers

took place in the early years of -- well, not the early years, but in

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about 14 AD under Augustus, when one of the German Roman legionnaires,

a leader who the Romans respected, unified the German tribes and

defeated the Roman legions through all kinds of sneaky attacks. And

actually, with the emergence of Germany as an independent nation 150

years ago in the 1870s, they built a major -- I think it was an

85-foot statue to this individual whose name slipped my mind. It

begins with an A. It will come to me for his greatness of attacking

Rome. There was that specific danger.

Once the Romans had destroyed or controlled the peninsula of

Italy, then the boot needed to kick Sicily. And that, in a sense,

created the conflict that was to take place that we know as the Punic

wars, between the sea faring Carthage and the land based Romans. The

first Punic war broke out in 264 BCE. The wars lasted for over a

century, off and on, until 146 BCE. There were three of them

specifically we date.

And during the first one, the Romans were having tremendous

difficult defeating the Carthageans because the Carthageans controlled

the sea. However, the Romans decided that they could defeat the

Carthageans by turning the sea battles into land battles. What they

did was, they created these boarding ramps on the ships. They dropped

platforms. And the Romans would come up to the ships and the Roman

legions would go fight on board the ships; in other words, landing

parties on the ship. And so in 24l BCE, mainly the Carthageans were

defeated, but it was mainly around Sicily. Rome really got control of

Sicily, even though they had deceived Carthage. It did not go very

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far. Carthage did continue to control the area around Tunischur,

which is Tunis is the modern city.

The next war is more famous for many of you because of the

individual who led the battles for the Carthageans, a man named

Hannibal Lectur, no just Hannibal, the son of the king of Carthage.

Carthage still controlled much of this area in Spain, decided to go

across to Spain, his legions, and using and barges, brought across a

fair number of elephants. Elephants in north Africa was used sort of

as tanks. It sort of reminds me of --

The Carthageans who let the elephants go ahead in battle. The

fears, the noise, the tusks, if they had them, would certainly

frighten many of the people that they encountered. And Hannibal's

concept was to go down into Italy and hit them, rather than from the

sea, in this case, from the land. And we all know that he brought his

elephants across the Alps. And they did that by creating large

trails. And the way they did that, interestingly, was to build fires

in the rocks. They would find crevasses in the rocks and the fires

would create explosions, and they were able to flatten out the rocks.

They moved through Italy and defeated the Roman legions. But the

Roman continued using something known as Fabian tactics. They burned

the land. They scorched the land. They destroyed supply lines.

Hannibal was far from home. He needed food. If there was no food

here, he was running into trouble. The Romans protected themselves

behind their walls. And so for 10 years Hannibal and his forces

wandered in Italy not able to encounter major Roman legions. And

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we'll pick up on Hannibal and whatever on Wednesday.

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