The reason Rome sucked was because big landowners bought Carthaginian estates -> driving out small farmers -> move to cities that aren't prepared -> need order to be restored. Also soldiers from the Punic Wars are out of jobs.
Not quite. Punic estates weren't so much a problem as an overall decline in smallholders
within Italy. Free smallholders - the average citizen-farmer that comprised the majority of Golden Age classical Greek polis and pre-Marian Roman armies - were driven into the cities, where they helped form the basis of revived mob politics along the lines of earlier Roman civil strife (well, insofar as we know about earlier Roman civil strife).
Marius attempted to resolve this problem partially by professionalizing the army, removing any citizens' obligation to serve in favor of a longer-term paid force (a development that was already presaged by Roman long-term campaigns abroad from the start of the second century BC, and the need to compensate citizen-farmer soldiers who couldn't be around for the harvest - various solutions had been proposed for this, and moves towards a professional army had been considered, but Marius' plan was the single biggest move). This provided a major new outlet for urban poor, who could now enter the army. Except when their terms of service were up, they were back to square one again. Commanders started proposing to settle these farmers on Italian farmland, which would necessitate a land reform and limited redistribution of lands taken over by the bigger landowners. This became a major object of political struggle in the last century of the Republic. And, of course, it is more complicated than I'm letting on; this is just the short version.
Huayna Capac357 said:
And Athens's democracy died because Sparta had more troops, not because of any of the things this crap video said. This video takes history and twists it beyond recognition in order to fit its preconceived notions. Hilarious.
Well, to be fair, the Athenians did lose the Peloponnesian War partly because of that problem that you mentioned. (Partly.) Hence the Thirty Tyrants that Sparta imposed. But Athenian democracy did exhibit tyranny-of-the-majority problems before that on the one hand; on the other, the Four Hundred, an oligarchy, came into being for a few years after the Sicilian disaster in 415-3 BC, because the democracy was perceived as being unable to secure military victory (the loss of several Athenian colonies by revolt in the Aegean coincided with the Sicily failure). Classic example of "trading security for freedom". (In that case, democracy was reimposed, first by a countercoup by Thrasyboulos and Theramenes in favor of limited democracy - the "Five Thousand" - and then full democracy. This in turn was partially driven by the Four Hundred's problems, namely the failure to prevent the breakaway of Samos, a former colony, where Athenian democrats and exiles gathered in opposition.)
Of course, the Thirty were driven out within a year's time, again by mah boiiii Thrasyboulos, in favor of restored democracy. And after the Lamian war or so, Athenian political problems were more or less intimately connected with Makedonian occupation. Political developments at Athens progressed vaguely towards a system closer to the rule of law (elimination of ostracism, introduction of a form of judicial review) as time went on. But the video does, if in a rather overblown way, highlight some problems with Athenian democracy. The government
did fall to an oligarchic coup (whether this would have been prevented with a constitutional government is doubtful), and it did
not have very much legal limitation on its power.
Again, not to conflate the size of government, the power of government, and government's ability to do things detrimental to individuals. Associating ostracism, for example, or the Gracchi reforms with the current health care bill seems ludicrous to me, at least.
