Comments on: Introduction and Overview — Lecture #1

By: Loki

Loki — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:13:15 +0000

Yup. So I try measuring by lectures, but not necessarily reading the thing the lecture will be about. If, for instance, last week’s lecture was chapters 1 and 3 in a book, but next week’s is chapters 5 through 7 in another, I’ll read chapters one through five in the five in the first book between them. By the time the lectures actually get to those chapters, then, it’ll be old enough in my head that I can make use of the lecture as handy repetition.

By: Dread Pirate Terje

Dread Pirate Terje — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:53:24 +0000

My experiences exactly. It’s even harder to take notes when you come prepared, as that makes averything the lecturer has to say seem self-evident, and why would I want to write *that* down?

Still, having lectures as a kind of deadline for when something has to be read is, I’ve found, effective for, you know, actually getting around to reading it… :\

By: Loki

Loki — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:41:29 +0000

I agree about rather wanting the lecture before the text. Text before lecture makes everything the lecturer’s saying seem boring and old news, lecture before text makes it easier to grasp what’s the main points and gives you an overview that makes it smoother to read.

By: Dread Pirate Terje

Dread Pirate Terje — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:30:49 +0000

I’m actually quite proud that I’ve been able to do so for two and an half week now, which is, like, fifteen or sixteen days longer than ever before.

Not sure if I’ll continue, though; I often find that reading after having had a lecture on something is more enlightening, as I then come better prepared to the text. And it is, despite everything, the texts that are the primary thing in a university education. (To the extent that the relation between the forms of learning isn’t sybiotic, of course.)

By: Loki

Loki — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:23:23 +0000

Wow, you read relevant curriculum in advance of classes? You, sir, are a better student than I’ve ever been.

By: Dread Pirate Terje

Dread Pirate Terje — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:53:10 +0000

We all win, then!

But now I’ve got to go; I’ve spent too much time on typing out that second lecture, as well as a couple of other frivolities, so now I gotta go read some British Politics. (And possibly also some Roman stuff; I suddenly discovered that we have something like eighty pages to read to prepare for Thursday’s lecture.)

By: Loki

Loki — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:45:06 +0000

You mean I actually made sense? Yay! (And I’ll have you know, if I say something that I’ve misunderstood myself or am remembering a tiny bit wrong, I’m not to be held accountable if you put it in an exam! )

For instance I just looked up pater patriae (father of the country) on wikipedia now on a whim, and it turns out that while I didn’t write anything outright wrong about it, my parantheses implied that a ton of people had had it before Augustus, Cicero merely being one of them, while according to Wiki, Cicero was the first we know of to recieve the title, and the only other to recieve it before it became a Roman Emperor special honour was Caesar for having restored Pax Romana after the civil wars. (Of course, the morons then went on to ruin that with killing him and fighting for another twenty-some years…)

So, good example on how writing this stuff for you from memory might keep out the blatant errors but still hold implicit wrongs. I talked about it as though this was an example of a title that held long traditions along the lines of primus inter pares, and in fact we only know of two people who held it before Octavian…

By: Dread Pirate Terje

Dread Pirate Terje — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:56:20 +0000

Man, you are SO going to get me an A!

By: Loki

Loki — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:50:01 +0000

Well, in Rome, many titles DID bring you “non-soft power”, as you say. The magistrates of the people - most important and powerful among which were the people’s tribunes, the praetores, and the consuls, as well as special offices such as the proconsuls, the propraetors, the censors and the dictators - all had several explicit responsibilities and powers. Octavian, however, gathered up a lot of the largely ceremonical but prestige-heavy ones in one individual, elevating himself socially far above anyone else whilst cleverly never making up any single new poisition. The magistrates were formerly still the people with the “non-soft-power” in Rome throughout his reign. (It was somewhat different in most of the provinces, but that’s a little too complex to get into, as Augustus was basically named governor of almost all of the militarily important ones and thus technically was such a magistrate himself, just on a very large scale) Augustus was in fact only consul, the formal head of state, a handful of times after the initial years, and was quite happy with having acquired tribunal powers of vetoing anything he wanted to. A powerful right to have, yes, but one that all the people’s tribunes in Rome had already had for decades and decades.

“Augustus” is by the way pretty much the only of his many honorourifics without any actual power beyond the immense prestige that was made up for him in particular. Everything else that was bundled up with prestige without actual power he just hogged for life, like the title of Father of the Country (which amongst others Cicero had had before him) and Primus Inter Pares. (The tiles with actual power, on the other hand - those he tended to tweak a bit before doing so to seem less of an usurper and retain all the regular magistrates.)

By: Dread Pirate Terje

Dread Pirate Terje — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:26:09 +0000

“I’m not 100% sure, but I think “princeps” is used in the term “princeps senatus”, first in the Senate, whereas the term “primus inter pares” literally means first among equals on a more general level, though it is also used of the same position. I don’t think you can combine the words from the two like you did, though.”

I read up on the subject, and it seems you are right.

“(Also, so that you know, the title had existed for centuries before Augustus, and as so many of his titles it, too, was on paper merely honourific, not holding any actual power beyond the prestige that came with it.)”

I think I was at least semi-aware of this (except from the antiquity (hehehe) of the title), and I don’t think I wrote anything that overtly said that the title brought any non-soft power with it. After all, there have been very few societies in which titles brought with them anything but prestige, which could then be “cashed in” for more substantial forms of power.

Thanks for clearifying, anyway.