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Res Publica: A Quest of Ancient Rome

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Telamon said:
And again, the publicani were authorized to do anything and everything it took to get their coin. Sell your house, sell your clothes, and, if you still can't pay, sell you.
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Oh hi, did someone just walk over my grave? Cause a chill just went down my spine.

Maybe we should try to reform the publicani first by finding different ways of assessing how much each person owes in taxes. Just so you know, we arent in a constant state of slow self-pillaging.
 
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Telamon said:
Yes, probably the biggest benefit of the Empire was lifting the administration and government of the provinces out of the hands of ambitious nobles who just saw them as bags of money, and into the hands of capable slaves and ex-slaves who saw them as their only way of, well, mattering.

Though the Empire kept the same atrocious tax collection system as the Republic — the publicani. I've mentioned them before, but the publicani were basically private tax collectors. The Senate/Emperor would say "I need ____ amount from Judea/Asia/Greece", and the publicani would all vie to be picked, each promising a different amount. Those who promised to collect the most were usually picked, and would go wring coin from the province in question. Any money they gathered above the sun promised to the Senate was their payment, which incentivized them to bleed the provinces dry.

This is why the Bible and other ancient works treat tax collectors like the devil: because they basically were. The Senate's publicani might come by and squeeze you for their tax and his pay, then the local governor might send more publicani to get some money to build his new villa, then even more publicani might show up to squeeze you for even more because the Senate's raising a legion to fight a rebellion in a different province.

And again, the publicani were authorized to do anything and everything it took to get their coin. Sell your house, sell your clothes, and, if you still can't pay, sell you.

Not to mention that the publicani were raised from the equites, the same class as judges and prosecutors. So, like the consul Rufus, who once tried to stop the publicani from bleeding Asia dry, you might find yourself prosecuted on nonsense charges and exiled from Rome if you try to fix things or stop them.
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Make a note, if we ever achieve Augustus levels of power, IE: "We Can basically do whatever we want because we've climbed over a mountain of bodies to get here". We're getting rid of Publicani and replacing them with something better.
 
Teen Spirit said:
Make a note, if we ever achieve Augustus levels of power, IE: "We Can basically do whatever we want because we've climbed over a mountain of bodies to get here". We're getting rid of Publicani and replacing them with something better.
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The Tang Dynasty had a different system of taxes that was more sophisticated then just sending your goon squads out to the provinces to shake down as many people as they need to make their quota. They had the Double Tax system, which levied taxes twice a year based on the amount of land you cultivate. We could do that for the land holders, and something else for the cities. In Cetashwayo's game, Eretria levies a tax based on the amount of tiles on your roof, with a requirement for all the tiles to be at least a set minimum size. We could levy something similar to that.

Also: Knowing specifically how much tax revenue comes out of each province can probably help for planning because you get your coin while ALSO keeping your provinces rich and productive so that they can provide more revenue. A state is only as strong as its ability to organize and collect taxes.
 
Cetashwayo said:
And put it into the hands of who? This made sense as a solution in the empire because Augustus was undisputed. There was no one for him to levy armies against, and so he could afford to institutionally tie armies to the institution of the empire. But how do you establish such overwhelming power without going down Augustus' path, which requires bulldozing the institutions you're meant to be saving?
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Hence why I said earlier that the only way to even fix the republic would be to break it. The institutions the Republic is built upon as well as the culture surrounding it are what causes these recurring issues. You would need to be both a Caesar and Cincinattus in one to truly found a working republic, and you'd need to do it with fewer resources and less influence than either of those historical characters.
 
Telamon said:
Not to mention that the publicani were raised from the equites, the same class as judges and prosecutors. So, like the consul Rufus, who once tried to stop the publicani from bleeding Asia dry, you might find yourself prosecuted on nonsense charges and exiled from Rome if you try to fix things or stop them.
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What do we need to roll to invent the concept of a conflict of interest? :V
 
HeWhoAdds said:
What do we need to roll to invent the concept of a conflict of interest? :V
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Oh, my bad — judges and prosecutors could be from any order.

The juries were equites.

So even if you had the best lawyer and a sympathetic judge and a horrible prosecutor, if you had incurred the wrath of the publicani, who controlled all the wealth and influence in their class...then you were done for.

The publicani were also the ones who were hired to construct buildings and public works (hence the name publicani), which meant they had influence over the aediles, the magistrates in charge of public works (you do want that fountain repaired, right?), influence over the priests (you do want that new temple done sometime this year, right?), and even supplied the legions with weaponry and gear, meaning they had influence over generals who wanted the best equipment for their troops.

Lastly, they of course collected port dues and tariffs, meaning that they had a stranglehold on trade, and that corrupt publicani (a common occurrence) could make themselves obscenely wealthy.

When Jesus ate with tax collectors, it was a bigger deal to the Roman-era Jews than him eating with thieves and prostitutes because tax collectors were essentially devils in human skin in antiquity, incapable of being sued, stopped, or really interfered with in any way. They would bleed you and your business dry, sell the skin off your bones to pay your debts, and probably had control over anyone you could reasonably turn to for help.
 
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Telamon said:
Oh, my bad — judges and prosecutors could be from any order.

The juries were equites.

So even if you had the best lawyer and a sympathetic judge and a horrible prosecutor, if you had incurred the wrath of the publicani, who controlled all the wealth and influence in their class...then you were done for.

The publicani were also the ones who were hired to construct buildings and public works (hence the name publicani), which meant they had influence over the aediles, the magistrates in charge of public works (you do want that fountain repaired, right?), influence over the priests (you do want that new temple done sometime this year, right?), and even supplied the legions with weaponry and gear, meaning they had influence over generals who wanted the best equipment for their troops.

Lastly, they of course collected port dues and tariffs, meaning that they had a stranglehold on trade, and that corrupt publicani (a common occurrence) could make themselves obscenely wealthy.

When Jesus ate with tax collectors, it was a bigger fucking deal to the Roman-era Jews than him eating with thieves and prostitutes because tax collectors were essentially devils in human skin in antiquity, incapable of being sued, stopped, or reasoned with.
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Oh lord. How do we fix this? They are like a flesh eating bacteria consuming the Empire from the inside.
 
Of course, we cannot forget the crippling flaw at the heart of this country, the ruined foundation that inevitably sends every edifice constructed above it into the swamp.

The name shortage.;)
 
Professor Vesca said:
Oh lord. How do we fix this? They are like a flesh eating bacteria consuming the Empire from the inside.
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Basically? As Augustus's imperial bureaucracy expanded, many of the jobs that had solely been done by the publicani became part of the bureaucracy— they became solely tax collectors, and the rise of the bureaucracy meant that there were now some limits on their powers. They were still terrible, but they essentially became just tax-collecting thugs, not the omnipresent vampires they were in the Republic.

Right now, however, they are at the height of their power. Everyone in Rome hates them, including many Senators, but no one can deny their usefulness, and attempting to replace them would cause too many problems in too many places. Any attempt to reduce their powers/find an alternative would likely be bribed away, or perhaps you would be sued for something ridiculous and found guilty. They can be fought — Scaevola spent much of his life trying — but they will hit back, and hard.
 
To reform them would take overwhelming force AND a period of time where you aren't bleeding coin on yet another military adventure
 
Telamon said:
Basically? As Augustus's imperial bureaucracy expanded, many of the jobs that had solely been done by the publicani became part of the bureaucracy— they became solely tax collectors, and the rise of the bureaucracy meant that there were now some limits on their powers. They were still terrible, but they essentially became just tax-collecting thugs, not the omnipresent vampires they were in the Republic.

Right now, however, they are at the height of their power. Everyone in Rome hates them, including many Senators, but no one can deny their usefulness, and attempting to replace them would cause too many problems in too many places. Any attempt to reduce their powers/find an alternative would likely be bribed away, or perhaps you would be sued for something ridiculous and found guilty. They can be fought — Scaevola spent much of his life trying — but they will hit back, and hard.
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I wonder, is it worth it? I feel like the price paid will outweigh any benefit acquired.
 
We do have to accept that no matter how good we are we're probably not going to solve all or even most of Rome's problems. With luck we might make it functioning.
 
Ridiculously Average Guy said:
Ah. Yeah no I'm not voting for learning Greek while we've got Theo with us, we should focus more on studying the army we're going to get tossed at.
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Brushing up on our Greek (as an educated Roman, we can safely assume Atellus knows how to speak rusty Greek, in much the same sense that we can safely assume he knows how to read and write) will be advantageous in our interactions with Greek mercenaries, in any attempt to engage in politics that influences the locals, and in any attempt to interact with the locals that has them NOT see us as a foul barbarian interloper.

Just having a slave who speaks Greek and is very charismatic doesn't make up for lacking this. Theo can't give inspiring speaches to the people of a city for us; that's our job, and no matter how absurd his charisma is, the job isn't transferable. Having a well-spoken Greek to translate complex ideas for us won't win as much respect as grasping them ourselves.

Theo can help us in these areas- but he can't just take our place. There are a lot of skills we can't outsource and be effective, and in the eastern Mediterranean, "speak Greek" is one of them.

Meep said:
Did we ever get confirmation that only the optimates knew? And are we sure that none of those optimates jumped party lines after the all riots started? A fair amount of people know of the conspiracy. Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead, etc, etc. All I really remember is that Scaevola took care of it, then Pompey sent us a message that he knew it was us by murdering a slave and dumping the body in the river.
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Yes, and the fact that it stayed "over" after that is your best proof that the Marians never found out. If they found out that some group of young noblemen had plotted a coup against them, those noblemen would be DEAD. The fact that the coup never happened would be no defense; heads would literally roll.

I don't think this analogy really works. World War One didn't start off because of Franz Ferdinand getting assassinated in particular, it started because everyone wanted to go to war and they suddenly had an excuse. There are also no equivalents to Russia defending Serbia. We could say the Marians are the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but AH didn't explode after Franz died, they went to war with countries that don't have an equivalent in ancient Rome. Unless you want to say the Catilinarians are Serbia, but you already said they're the assassins. The Sullans are in hiding. I also don't think Mithradates or Sulla count as Serbia or any other nation, because those wars are already happening. We're also personally involved in those wars, so we have opportunities to influence them. Also, we're not in Vienna in this analogy. We're in the same city as the Black Hand, or our friends/family are anyway, which means they can strike at us. And if they can kill Ferdinand, they can kill anyone else.
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I think you're being a bit over-literal here.

The point I'm trying to make is that there's a high likelihood of the Catilinarians being involved in any major political upsets in Rome. The Marian dominated status quo will tend to act in fairly predictable (if potentially horrifying) ways. It's the Sullan-aligned optimates, currently the underdogs, that bear watching, and the Catilinarians are likely to show up as middle or low-level participants in anything along those lines, just as they did in real life, and just as Pompey's conspiracy involved younger, more reckless optimates trying something the more prominent and senior Sullans would never dare.

Teen Spirit said:
Yeah my opinion is that any chance of saving the Republic died with the gracchi brothers.
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Ultimately, what killed Rome (and the Gracchi brothers) was the fact that so much of the wealth generated by its conquests fell into the hands of the senatorial class that it placed them effectively above the law. Even when no charismatic general happened to be marching on Rome in that specific year, there was always an ongoing basis for discontent. And the senators themselves would never actually resolve that unless forced to, so the system could never be stable.

[The publicani were Super Not Helping, of course]

racnor said:
Of course, we cannot forget the crippling flaw at the heart of this country, the ruined foundation that inevitably sends every edifice constructed above it into the swamp.

The name shortage.;)
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I mean, this is actually legit a problem, hilariously.

See, one of the reasons ancient societies resorted to tax farming was because "give a guy license to loot the province in exchange for a big sack of gold that he will gather by looting the province" is SIMPLE. More rational systems of taxation that don't result in economic chaos and self-pillaging require innovations like property records and (importantly) a census. You can't collect head taxes if you don't know how many people are in the village; you can't collect property taxes if you can't settle who owns what.

Which means...

...

Tax Collector: "Wait, so, um... forty percent of all men in this town just go by 'Quintus,' thirty percent by 'Marcus,' and twenty percent by 'Gaius.' Aaaand fifty percent of all land in the town is owned by Marcuses and forty percent by Gaiuses. And even though you all HAVE family names that does precisely DICK-ALL to resolve my confusion."

[TWITCH]

"THAT'S IT, PLUNDERING YOU ALL!"

...

Seriously, one major, often unheralded, social change that had to happen in many societies as they made the transition to 'Western bureaucracy,' either in late medieval and early modern times or as part of European colonialism, was the establishment of highly unique names for each inhabitant of a community, to make it easier to tell people apart in public records.
 
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In other news, I've added a fully fleshed out dramatis personae to the character sheet -- everyone of importance that Atellus has met/has been mentioned in the Quest so far is listed into various groups with a short description. Check it regularly for changes.
 
Tinkerer said:
Could always have Atellus become good at Stewardship and create the idea of unique names.
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This please, more names!
Professor Vesca said:
The Tang Dynasty had a different system of taxes that was more sophisticated then just sending your goon squads out to the provinces to shake down as many people as they need to make their quota. They had the Double Tax system, which levied taxes twice a year based on the amount of land you cultivate.
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I think Diocletian (but I'm not sure), did something similar. He reformed the tax system and would regularly send out bureaucrats whose purpose was assessing the worth of the holdings in the empire and on that basis the landholders would be taxed. It made sure money would flow back into the imperial treasury after the crisis of the third century.
 
Egypt really is the key, I think. Because it seems like the trick is that we need to become wealthy enough to just sort of build our own shadow bureaucracy that keeps track of everything in the Republic and then donate it to Rome when we die.

Also to use the civil wars as an excuse to actually purge the Senatorial class or at least to confiscate and redistribute their wealth and property. Which then allows the relocation of much of the poor population of Rome out into the provinces, reducing the ease with which mobs can be pulled together by rich men to assault their enemies, while also helping to Romanize conquered regions.

On the other hand, controlling Egypt also allows for the possibility of dealing with the wealth of the Senatorial class by bleeding it away through expensive Asiatic luxuries. Provide enough of an initial supply of silk, spices, and tea to get them hooked, then soak them for all they've got and plow the profits back into the other Republic-strengthening projects. A shame that we're still a bit too early for sugar, though, at least from a "taking rich people's money" standpoint.
 
The Sandman said:
Egypt really is the key, I think. Because it seems like the trick is that we need to become wealthy enough to just sort of build our own shadow bureaucracy that keeps track of everything in the Republic and then donate it to Rome when we die.

Also to use the civil wars as an excuse to actually purge the Senatorial class or at least to confiscate and redistribute their wealth and property. Which then allows the relocation of much of the poor population of Rome out into the provinces, reducing the ease with which mobs can be pulled together by rich men to assault their enemies, while also helping to Romanize conquered regions.

On the other hand, controlling Egypt also allows for the possibility of dealing with the wealth of the Senatorial class by bleeding it away through expensive Asiatic luxuries. Provide enough of an initial supply of silk, spices, and tea to get them hooked, then soak them for all they've got and plow the profits back into the other Republic-strengthening projects. A shame that we're still a bit too early for sugar, though, at least from a "taking rich people's money" standpoint.
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Worst comes to worst if we get involved in Egypt, we can always pull a Mark Anthony and start our own, hopefully you know, without dying horribly at the end.
 
Telamon said:
Visella Tertia: Last of the Samnite holy priestesses whom you destroyed at Ampscantus. Has sworn an oath of vengeance against Rome, and the house of Atellus.
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I still ship it.:p
The Sandman said:
On the other hand, controlling Egypt also allows for the possibility of dealing with the wealth of the Senatorial class by bleeding it away through expensive Asiatic luxuries. Provide enough of an initial supply of silk, spices, and tea to get them hooked, then soak them for all they've got and plow the profits back into the other Republic-strengthening projects. A shame that we're still a bit too early for sugar, though, at least from a "taking rich people's money" standpoint.
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You mean state-strengthening of course, since the republic should be done away with.;)
 
The Sandman said:
Which then allows the relocation of much of the poor population of Rome out into the provinces, reducing the ease with which mobs can be pulled together by rich men to assault their enemies, while also helping to Romanize conquered regions.
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Although promoted by Gracchus this policy was probably never going to work on the scale he wished to because the only way to ensure real stability in the provinces was to make it less, not more obviously exploitative (as it became in the Principate and Dominate), and depositing massive numbers of colonists from expropriated local land would result in endless revolts. The Romans did plenty of colonies all across the empire, but only after an extermination campaign was it truly large-scale, as when the city of Jerusalem was replaced with Aelia Capitolina or when Carthage was refounded by Julius Caesar (after having been briefly refounded first by Gracchus).

Although you can certainly be more successful in doing so than Gracchus was, there's going to be a point where the "free" land stops existing and you're going to have to start taking land from the locals, leading to more social wars, more local rebellions, and a repeat of the Asian Vespers across the empire. All the while, your rivals in the senate will be opposing you, and the rebellions your policies inspire will eat away at any attempt to make a power base or functional bureaucracy in the east.

Not really trying to piss on your parade here, mind you, just poking some historical holes in "easy" assumptions such as "just build a bureaucracy" or "colonize".

Teen Spirit said:
Worst comes to worst if we get involved in Egypt, we can always pull a Mark Anthony and start our own, hopefully you know, without dying horribly at the end.
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Bold of you to assume Mark Antony was the one steering the ship in his and Kleopatra's relationship :p
 
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Teen Spirit said:
Hey I have no problem playing second fiddle to someone like Cleopatra. Just Cleopatra through, her inbred nightmare of a dynasty was basically a complete waste of flesh until she came around.
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Oh hey, let's check up on the Lagids! How're they doing right now? Oh, well Ptolemy IX Lathyros is ruling. That's nice,. And who's after him-
Besides Berenice III, Ptolemy IX had at least four other children: two sons by Cleopatra Selene I, both of whom probably died young;[2] two illegitimate sons, Ptolemy XII of Egypt and Ptolemy of Cyprus; and perhaps an illegitimate daughter Cleopatra V, the wife of Ptolemy XII.[9][10] Berenice III reigned for about a year after her father's death. She was forced to marry her cousin, Ptolemy X's son Alexander, who reigned under the name Ptolemy XI and had her killed nineteen days later. Shortly afterwards Ptolemy XI was lynched by an enraged Alexandrian mob.[9]
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let's not go to egypt
 
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