Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
Well, let me clear that when I speak about plebeians I refer to them in the era before they became indistinguishable from patricians except for a few major offices.
Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)
- Thread starter Cetashwayo
- Start date
- Original Alt. History
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- Tags
- ancient greece alternate history empire builder civ quest democracy gods save us granary management hubris it's an eretrian thing. let lose the weasels of war lithocracy lithocracy is my fetish maximum hellene my big fat greek divine wedding this granary aint gonna fill itself cetash unwinnable
Well, let me clear that when I speak about plebeians I refer to them in the era before they became indistinguishable from patricians except for a few major offices.
- Location
- Mists of Albion
Once it loses its independence. It gets conquered, it becomes a vassal State, it loses a lot of its importance and it's rights, it's Empire is long gone and it's people have been cowed into a greater Polity.
How is that not equivalent to the near destruction I mention being one of the only ways for it to occur? If we lost all our vassals, were made into a subordinate and no longer dominated the Adriatic Trade, how is that not to the brink of destruction? Quest end.
You literally agreed with my point dude
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Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
An interesting alternative approach might be to retain metic status as a thing, but to shape it so that it's part of "path to citizenship" rather than a rigid, inherited class. Because having a semi-citizen status is remarkably useful in this period for handling new members of society from external sources.
EDIT: Which is to say that as a class it continues to exist, but that the population of individuals within that class will shift within or over the course of a few generations.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The closest I can see to coming to that would be something like a provision that, say, the child of a citizen and a metic who's been in the city all their lives, as have their parents, is a citizen. Or something like that.
[To clarify, I mean that a third-or-whatever generation metic might be able to marry a citizen and have citizen children or something]
[To clarify, I mean that a third-or-whatever generation metic might be able to marry a citizen and have citizen children or something]
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- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I doubt that's the end of the quest. Becoming a Mongol vassal sure wasn't the end of Muscovy, for example.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, but we can't imitate Athens. I mean, it's Athens. Bastards drove us out here in the first place!
- Location
- Mists of Albion
You used the example of Athens, which was essentially Quest End for their independent ability to do anything for a while, and I personally used the example of losing all our vassals, including the League, if I didn't make that clear enough, and our dominance over the Adriatic, before being vassalised.
Muscovy didn't lose 90% of its sphere of control and power over its most important trade routes before being vassalised by the Mongols. So you're switching examples, and ignoring the examples I used, to one that really doesn't fit the conversation we've been having.
I feel like you tried to make an argument, without quite reading the point in my original post where I mentioned near destruction, which was what Athens faced before it allowed Metics to buy citizenship. It had lost its Empire, a great deal of its economic dominance and had been reduced in influence by Sparta directly, and then conquered outright. Which is near destruction in my opinion. Even then the Metics had to buy citizenship. And that's not even factoring in cultural differences between us, as I mentioned in my original post, which causes possibly more issues.
Or I didn't make it clear enough what I meant by Near Destruction. In which case I apologise.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
OK, but I think the core point is well taken, inasmuch as Eretria specifically is unlikely to be conquered enough to make citizenship an irrelevant distinction, without first being too conquered for its future government policy to matter much.
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
I think players can probably agree that regardless of the potential effects of being conquered on the game or the benefits for citizenship reform, it is probably not a situation to be aspiring towards.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Conquer us Rome-Sempai!
Actually from what I can figure out, ideally we want a system by which the top 1% most influential Metics can reliably become Citizens...and no more than that for this era. The political purpose of granting powerful Metics citizenship is to eliminate Metics who normally would be dissatisfied by the system by making them part of the social class whose privileges are to be protected, and who thus wouldn't rock the boat too hard, instead favoring backdoor favors for the metics who are their friends, rather than pushing for Metic rights as a broader class.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
That's... not a bad idea. Unfortunately we're too far before Machiavelli for the idea to really spread around in-character within the system of Eretrian politics.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What about user motions?
Cetashwayo
Lord of Ten Thousand Years
- Location
- Across the Horizon
I don't think Machiavelli invented meritocracy as a isolating mechanism for classes
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
What I meant is, IC we'd pretty much have to have the ekklesia thinking "you know, it's fine if the hundredth or so of the metics with the greatest arete are made citizens by acclamation of the ekklesia" as opposed to "meritocratically promote the most talented metics to isolate them from the rest."I don't think Machiavelli invented meritocracy as a isolating mechanism for classes
Machiavelli didn't invent the idea- he didn't really invent any of the political ideas associated with his name. But he arguably invented "openly talking about those ideas."
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is basically what we're doing by accepting heroes as citizens, just in a manner far more palatable to all involved (and ignoring several categories of influential metics).
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I don't think Machiavelli invented meritocracy as a isolating mechanism for classes
that was confucius, duh
- Location
- Philippines
Then what do you call the Social War of 88 BC? Where Rome won and then gave citizenship to all of Italy?
Or the fact that Emperor Caracalla decided that everyone in the empire are now citizens during his reign?
- Location
- Mists of Albion
The Social Wars occurred because Rome refused citizenship. Remember, this is centuries after Rome was a thing, and centuries since they had a large population of non-citizens, and a good long time after the Punic Wars where Rome had became, temporarily, massively reliant on the Italians around them.
And it still fits the description.
Rome refused for centuries, until their subjects literally burned half of Italy down, whereas half the I referenced half the city. Not the best time for anyone, with 1/3 of all the men mobilised, by both sides, dying.
Edit: I absolutely concede the point on Emperor Caracalla though.
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- Location
- Hell
Actually, not sure if this can still be done or not but, @Cetashwayo, can we propose a user motion for a Metic-only jury?
- Location
- Mists of Albion
I think it's been addressed a bit already, it'd take something big and bad to get us to reform a legal ideology that's guided our cities hand for its entire history, over half a century, since it's vey foundations and has been defended from constant Metic attempts to hangs it during the near entirety of that time.
Here is the relevant quote
- Location
- Hell
Except I am not saying divide it into two whole new courts, merely the jury part of it.
- Location
- Luton Airport
I'd point out that the hardening of the exclusivity of citizenship is still relatively novel at this time period - Athens has only required two citizen parents to inherit citizenship for barely two decades at this point.