History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I can't imagine that any explanation that has to generalises between Gauls and Egyptians is going to explain very much, especially if, I take it, we're talking about the first few generations of Roman rule. Even if the idea of monarchy is more compelling to these people than some distant republic, you're still going to have to package that idea in vastly different ways, which would in turn prove so vastly different from the realities of political power in Rome as to be very nearly works of fiction. It doesn't even appear to require the existence of an autocracy in Rome, provided the Roman elite were happy to go along the ruse, so can't really be taken to explain one.
I think it's more likely that the symbolic power of the emperor increase precisely as these regions became used to Roman rule and the Roman way of doing things. Perhaps having the central, personal figure of an autocrat made that process a little smoother, but that seems like something that would only really be visible at too distant a level of abstraction to legitimise or stabilise a regime on the ground.
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Well the actual quote doesn't mention Gauls, I just extrapolated that (and probably wrongly, since it was talking about orientalization). "The Caesars became monarchs in Rome because they were monarchs abroad. Caesar Augustus, for instance, because he was also the titular King of Egypt, did not dare retire. The Egyptians would tolerate being ruled by him, but not by some bureaucrat in the name of a faceless “republic.”"
You think Egyptians would have resisted Roman control if they hadn't had, essentially, a Pharaoh to rule them? I think it's uncontroversial to say that wealth and titles from abroad played a huge role in undermining the Republic, but the quote refers to a cultural influence.
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
But the Egyptians didn't have a pharaoh, they had a Roman military dictator pretending to be a pharaoh, and mostly not even doing the pretending himself, mostly having other people pretend for him, indirectly, through decrees and monuments. It's not self-evident t that a paper-pharaoh in Egypt required an effective military dictator in Rome to sustain it.
Perhaps for a Roman to hold the title of "King of Egypt" personally required him to wield autocratic power in Rome, but that only tells us how the emperors were able to obtain the title for themselves, rather than leaving it in the hands of a client-king, as they had done previously and as they continued to do, it doesn't explain why a Roman autocratic existed in the first place.
Perhaps for a Roman to hold the title of "King of Egypt" personally required him to wield autocratic power in Rome, but that only tells us how the emperors were able to obtain the title for themselves, rather than leaving it in the hands of a client-king, as they had done previously and as they continued to do, it doesn't explain why a Roman autocratic existed in the first place.
Ajidica
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I think you are overstating the influence the peasants had in Antiquity. It is important that the Egyptians of Antony and Cleopatra weren't like extra from The Mummy Returns ancient Egypt. The governing elite of Egypt were thoroughly Hellenized aristocrats, and was we saw with the rest of the Diadochi, none of the other Hellenized aristocrats weren't too fussed about who was ruling them so long as their position remained intact.* As far as peasants went, well, they were peasants and didn't really matter.
*I will say I have no idea how prevalent the Egyptian religious cult was under the Ptolemaics but from what I have picked up I think it ended up like a lot of other Near East religions - a messy syncretic mix of Hellenistic and local beliefs.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
How far did peasants actually care about the Pharoah, anyway, and how far did the Pharaoh just manage to interpose himself between the peasants and things they actually cared about?
There are records of Egyptian peasants leaving offerings to the Sphinx as late as the 14th century, to the annoyance of their piously Muslim rulers, which suggests that the peasants were pretty capable of a self-sufficient religious life, and that this was something that rulers had to deal with, rather than something that trickled down from the rulers to the peasants.
(A bad example because the Sphinx was built by the pharaohs, but a good example because it involves people looking at a big statue of a cat and going "hey so I'm pretty sure that thing is a powerful god, who even cares what some dumb old sultan has to say about it", a pretty firm rebuke of a top-down model of religious life.)
There are records of Egyptian peasants leaving offerings to the Sphinx as late as the 14th century, to the annoyance of their piously Muslim rulers, which suggests that the peasants were pretty capable of a self-sufficient religious life, and that this was something that rulers had to deal with, rather than something that trickled down from the rulers to the peasants.
(A bad example because the Sphinx was built by the pharaohs, but a good example because it involves people looking at a big statue of a cat and going "hey so I'm pretty sure that thing is a powerful god, who even cares what some dumb old sultan has to say about it", a pretty firm rebuke of a top-down model of religious life.)
IIRC there's simply not enough information on them to give a real answer. Wasn't as though any of those fancy tombs were for peasants.
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Generally professional but limited. It was fashionable to hold him up as an example of the "right" kind of general some decades ago (the contrast between them in the film Patton picks up on this) but over the past few decades I would say that scholars have rediscovered some of his less admirable qualities (while by comparison Patton's generalship remains highly regarded).
The events in northwest Europe during the fall and winter of 1944 generally do not reflect well on him. He followed faulty strategic analysis, an overinflated ego, and a misplaced sense of nationalism into a path that led him to deeply flawed military decisions that got many Americans unnecessarily killed and lengthened the war, while simultaneously being insubordinate and sabotaging his commander's intentions. He was a bad and hypocritical boss who relieved officers who disagreed with his vision in a constructive way, while supporting ones who blindly followed orders into disaster. Bradley's actions from August to December would have earned him a court-martial from an impartial judge, so long as that judge could ignore the propaganda effect on the American public of relieving one of its highest-ranking officers.
Most of the rest of his career was somewhat better. He appears to have rediscovered how to be a good subordinate when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; although he waffled on whether Truman should relieve MacArthur in Korea, he ultimately supported the President's decision and was willing to give a memorable address to Congress in doing so.
Here's another Egyptian question. It mostly comes from a low-level history book, but it claims that Egypt didn't want cats outside of Egypt and would bring them back to Egypt, if possible. Considering the range of cats and that Mesopotamia, and not Egypt, was a center of domestication, is there any truth to that claim?
Absolution
King
Browsing some answers in Quora, I've got the impression that the Roman inevitable reliance on slave labour was its greatest disadvantage, as an "Empire" / politically organised culture. Is it true, and not exaggerated?
Disadvantage in what way?
Obviously it's one of the more monstrous moral atrocities to ever occur in human history, but I assume you're not talking about that.
Gen.Mannerheim
Grand Moff
Which is absolutely mindblowing to me.
Name an ancient empire that didn't engage in slavery in some form. Sure you can find plenty of late Republican authors and statesmen making a lot of hay over the large number of slaves in Italy & Rome at that time. However much of this is rooted in political talking points to win favor with the mob in the various political struggles of that day.
Absolution
King
Now I realise it wasn't clear at all.
A disadvantage for the functioning of the empire, for its survival, for the cultural hegemony of the Romans, for a potential further expansion, and pretty much anything.
Many answers to questions like "If xyz didn't happen, could the Roman Empire survive until modern era? / conquer Easter Europe?", while being extremely long and detailed, all start with explaining how the slave labour was an essential part of the Roman society, and end up with how Rome couldn't maintain themselves anymore because more army means more resources which mean more slaves which mean more conquered people and so on.
That's one example. I know I'm a bit vague, but I assume some of you know the issue and don't need my full description. In case you don't, I'll search for links to some examples.
MacArthur was considered far more of a hero than he should have been. He should have been relieved by FDR in 1941.
Buster's Uncle
AC2 Owner
Mac had a couple full-time PR people working for him when he was Army Chief of Staff in the mid-30s. -I believe that explains many mysteries about what he got away with for the rest of his life. He was just a big famous 'war hero' deal by his own design. He was already running for president 20 years before he was free to run, and woulda got it, too, if he'd been willing to do the work touring and kissing babies.
Ah.
Most historians don't view slavery as an essential part of the collapse of the western empire. The late Roman economy is usually described as being "fine". The state was not short of funds until it lost control of actual tax-paying territory (and the means by which this occurred are still hotly contested among historians). For the most part, historians tend to view the end of the western empire as a combination of two things: failure of elite management and military catastrophe. The causes of both of those things are still a matter of dispute, but slavery was not essential to either one of them. In fact, it is very possible to construct a factually accurate narrative of the fall of the west without mentioning the word "slave" once.
The empire certainly didn't suffer from a shortage of slaves. While Roman territorial expansion ended in the second century, Roman military operations did not. Up through the fifth century, Roman armies continued to mount expeditions into neighboring territory to destroy political enemies and take slaves. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that either a) the Roman economy started to fall apart or that b) this event occurred because of a lack of slaves.
So yes, I would say that these Quora answers do exaggerate the situation. Although slavery was an essential part of the Roman society and economy, nothing about slavery caused the Roman Empire to collapse.
MacArthur never should have been brought back in the first place. He had the preposterous idea in his head that "the Japanese" feared his name so much that they would never attack the Philippines if he were commander. While I obviously enjoy the benefit of hindsight, I think that FDR's decision to end MacArthur's retirement was, apart from Japanese internment, his greatest miscalculation. Most other generals would indeed have been relieved after the sort of fiasco that MacArthur presided over in the Philippines.1 But he was too politically dangerous to relieve, and instead he went on to establish a personal fiefdom in the South Pacific, diverting American resources, wasting American (and Filipino) lives, and lengthening the war with Japan.
Psychoanalysis is usually a bad idea in history, but it's hard to avoid the notion that he had a massive ego and was tremendously overconfident. When fighting against an enemy with little ability to maneuver, the overconfidence could be a boon, because things that would be risky against a wily and resourceful enemy were comparatively easy against a less-competent or underresourced one. But when fighting against an enemy that could take advantage of mistakes, like the Imperial Japanese Army in December 1941 or the Chinese People's Volunteers in November 1950, MacArthur's personality flaws led to real military catastrophes of the first order.
He could obviously come up with some very good ideas, usually about the operational level of war. While he never came up with "island-hopping", and in fact remained very wedded to outmoded ideas about land-based air cover that wasted time and lives and nearly caused two military disasters, he eventually managed to figure out a way to conduct the New Guinea campaign that bore some resemblance to military logic. The campaign was mostly pointless, but at least by 1943 it was well-run. And, of course, the Incheon landing was a risky and brilliant maneuver that he seems to have shepherded through almost entirely on his own initiative. The irony of MacArthur being the quintessential example of the American "political general" was that he had little understanding of either politics or strategy, even though he was quite competent at operational art.
1 = That said, the American military struggled with relieving higher commanders in the Second World War, even with cause. MacArthur kept his post after the fall of the Philippines. Bradley and his pet generals, Hodges and Patton, kept theirs after their open insubordination in the fall of 1944. Patton avoided relief over the slapping incidents in Sicily in the summer of 1943. Lower-level commanders, like Lloyd Fredendall or Charles Corlett, were relieved, sometimes with cause (Fredendall) and sometimes without (Corlett), but if you commanded a numbered field army or higher, you were safe as houses.
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