Search results for ""author jeremiah mccall""

This is the story of how some Roman aristocrats grew so competitive in their political rivalries that they destroyed their Republic, in the late second to mid-first century BCE. Politics had always been a fractious game at Rome as aristocratic competitors strove to outshine one another in elected offices and honours, all ostensibly in the name of serving the Republic. And for centuries it had worked - or at least worked for these elite and elitist competitors. Enemies were defeated, glory was spread round the ruling class, and the empire of the Republic steadily grew. When rivalries grew too bitter, when aristocrats seemed headed toward excessive power, the oligarchy of the Roman Senate would curb its more competitive members, fostering consensus that allowed the system the competitive arena for offices and honors, and the domination of the Senate to continue. But as Rome came to rule much of the Mediterranean, aristocratic competitions grew too fierce; the prizes for winning were too great. And so, a series of bitter rivalries combined with the social and political pressures of the day to disintegrate the Republic. This is the story of those bitter rivalries from the senatorial debates of Fabius and Scipio, to the censorial purges of Cato; from the murders of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, to the ultimate rivalry of Caesar and Pompey. A work of historical investigation, Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic introduces readers not only to the story of the Republic's collapse but the often-scarce and problematic evidence from which the story of these actors and their struggles is woven.

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Marcellus military exploits were largely unmatched by any other aristocrat of Roman Middle Republic. As a young soldier in the First Punic War, he won a reputation for his skill in single combat. In his first consulship, he earned a triumph for defeating a Gallic tribe, no small feat in and of itself, and also slew the Gallic chieftain Britomartus in single combat. Consequently, he earned the spolia opima, an honor, according to Roman antiquarians, that had only been earned twice before, once by Romulus himself. He went on to defeat the hitherto-invincible Hannibal in a small battle around the central Italian city of Nola, and subsequently led an army to subdue and plunder the powerful city of Syracuse in an epic 2 year siege (despite the ingenius defensive measures of the inventor Archimedes). Yet, despite his undeniable success as a warrior and commander, Marcellus met with considerable political opposition at Rome. Marcellus career not only makes exciting reading, but gives an excel

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