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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3539 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 16, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So, a fun little kidding/not kidding hypothetical.

What if Marcus Aurelius was not a cuck?

I've been reading Gibbon lately, and this immediately jumped out at me from the text.

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent. His meditations, composed in the tumult of the camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of sage, or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that Avidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him, by a voluntary death, of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend;; and he justified the sincerity of that sentiment, by moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor. War he detested, as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a just defence called upon him to take up arms, he readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns, on the frozen banks of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.

Faustina, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus, has been as much celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind. 2 The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina; which, according to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honor and profit, 3 and during a connection of thirty years, invariably gave her proofs of the most tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. 4 The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed, that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay their vows before the altar of their chaste patroness.

The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father’s virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic. Nothing however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate favorite; and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this labored education, by admitting his son, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to a full participation of the Imperial power. He lived but four years afterwards: but he lived long enough to repent a rash measure, which raised the impetuous youth above the restraint of reason and authority.

To summarize, Marcus' wife fucked around a lot, Marcus' "son" was nothing like him at all, and he was so soft hearted that he was oblivious to all this, despite literally the entire empire knowing. To add insult to injury, Marcus had such affection for his "son" that he bequeathed the empire to him, arguably damning it to 100 years of civil war, invasion, famine, and plague.

Now sure, Roman families were different. The last several Emperors had "adopted" whole ass adult "sons" to bequeath the purple to. They divorced and remarried to seal alliances at the drop of the hat. It's debatable how much family meant to them at all. All the same, had Marcus at least kept up that pragmatic tradition, he would have chosen a more worthy successor from the Roman Senate.

Gibbon really puts all the ills that eventually end the Roman Empire on Commodus. Rome's own military industrial complex is birthed under him. He showers the armies in the wealth of the empire to purchase their loyalty, a tradition every succeeding military dictator will have to keep up after him. It results in such rapacious taxes over the next 100 years that famine and disease roar through the empire. Gibbon estimates that over the course of the third century crisis the population of the Roman Empire may have fallen by as much as a half! And when war and disease isn't reducing the population, apparently the taxes are so burdensome that the workers of the empire refused to have families! I can't find the text at the moment, but a later emperor tried to decree tax exemptions for families to encourage them not to just commit infanticide on children they couldn't afford the taxes on. But apparently the system was merely gamed and did little to raise the fertility of the Roman Empire.

So let that be a lesson. Invisible and inevitable, like a cuck that beats his meat in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the prosperity across the whole of an empire.

First of all great post.

My opinion is that Commodus hastened the descent into chaos but didn't cause it.

By the time of Marcus Aurelius, the vitality of the empire was already spent (even if it was economically richer than it had ever been). Someone like Commodus was bound to come along. Having five good emperors in a row was a small miracle that never happened before and never would again.

The empire couldn't overcome the tyranny of Commodus because it was weak. By contrast, the empire of a century earlier was able to weather similar tyrants like Nero and Caligula and come out stronger than ever.

And now, a tangent... How has Warren Buffett managed to pick so many winners in the stock market? One of the ways he does so is to buy companies that have untapped pricing power. These are companies that charge less than the market will bear and thus can raise prices for a long period of time without losing market share. Examples include Coke and Apple (note: at the time Buffett bought them, not now).

Rome in the time of Caesar had "untapped pricing power". The government wasn't collecting large tax revenues and there were plenty of lands to conquer and tribes to enslave.

By the time of Marcus Aurelius, all the untapped power had been tapped. The empire was at is territorial and economic peak, but there was no more room to grow. Maintaining the empire's current territory already demanded 100% of its resources. Stagnation and decline were inevitable. Commodus might have lit the fuse, but he was not the cause of the decline.

This, especially given the Antonine Plague that struck during Marcus Aurelius's reign. It might've killed a quarter of the Empire, population it never had a chance to gain back afterwards. The Empire couldn't bounce back after Commodus's tyranny because it had just been seriously weakened.

Don’t have anything of substance to add, but what a writer Gibbon was, at least half the sentences feel expertly constructed, pored over, slot together like puzzle pieces.

As for the question, I have long taken the view that many famous historical cuckolds were submissive homosexual men who lacked the ability to have (regular or any) relations with their wives and so requested they provide them with children by whatever means necessary.

Don’t have anything of substance to add, but what a writer Gibbon was, at least half the sentences feel expertly constructed, pored over, slot together like puzzle pieces.

I do deeply appreciate Gibbon. Usually material this dense is slow going for me, but I slide through Gibbon as easily as a pulpy sci-fi novel. The first volume especially gets into a rhythm where the details are interesting, but not particularly important. Between Commodus and Diocletian an uninterrupted procession of military dictators, virtually held hostage by their own military, who reign for relatively short periods of instability and decline. Some slow the decline, but don't reverse it. Some go full speed ahead. It gets to a point where people are begging not to be proclaimed emperor because the military has murdered so many of them when they aren't bribed enough. I honestly can't tell you, despite having just read it over this last month, most of the particularly good or bad emperors from that period. But I wasn't studying for an exam, and I mostly don't care. It was a pleasure to read all the same, and the arc of history, at least as Gibbon tells it, is made clear.

I suspect there are a lot of roads that lead to paying off the local military. Most of which the Roman Empire was determined to tread. Keep in mind that the first of those last Five Good Emperors probably got the job by couping Domitian.

I didn't quite reach Marcus Aurelius yet, but I've read a few books on Roman history this year and it's more or less a story of how Roman citizens just can't catch a break. I'm somewhat less impressed with Hoppean "kings have low time preference" argument now

I'm somewhat less impressed with Hoppean "kings have low time preference" argument now

The weakness of that argument is that a king with iron-clad legitimacy has low time preference, which is rare. Modern dynasties like the Stuarts and Bourbons kicked the can down the road for literal decades on obvious financial problems, even worse than our entitlements crisis, leading to civil war, because their power actually rested on the support of internal power brokers. Pissing those guys off (eg by amending the tax system) would topple the regime. This was also true for Roman emperors, who gave naked unsustainable bribes to the military for this reason.

If anything, I would say the average democracy affords its chief executive more freedom of action. Elections grant a special popular mandate to each new leader, thus the "First 100 Days" trope for American presidents. Though this advantage may be atrophying in western democracies where fewer people accept elections as granting legitimacy.

The Rotating Triple Crown is mainly an attempt to design a rule of succession that solves the problem of the stupid eldest son. One reason why a king might lack iron-clad legitmacy is that he took the crown as part of an ad hoc modification to the succession rules when the legitimate eldest son is seen as unacceptably stupid. The other side of this coin is when such an attempt at ad hoc modification fails, and the legitimate eldest son ends up lacking legitimacy because no-one wants to be ruled by an idiot. To the extent that the Rotating Triple Crown does actually solve the problem of the stupid eldest son (with its very limited use of election) it also eliminates two possible causes of a failure of legitimacy.

There is a third indirect boost to legitimacy

The descendents of the Blue King meet to choose a new King from among the White princes. When, in the fullness of time, the White King dies, the descendents of the Red King will meet to choose a new King from among the Blue Princes. The cycle continues with the each King succeeded by a prince of the next colour chosen by a conclave of KingMakers, all of the previous colour.

The blue kingmakers are choosing a White king. Presumably they are also looking ahead to when a member of their own, blue, line ascends to the throne. Therefore, they have an incentive to select as White king, some-one with a responsible attitude to the long term future of the kingdom; some-one who will fix problems, rather than leave them to fester and become a challenge for the next blue king.

The Rotating Triple Crown is attractive world-building for an alternative history science fiction novel set in a world with twentieth century technology, but still having executive monarchies. The world-building gifts the author an explanation for how executive monarchy has managed to survive. It also lets the author write competence porn. The kings are shrewd and effective, because the kingmakers chose shrewd effective kings, not because the author wrote them that way.

The Rotating Triple Crown is mainly an attempt to design a rule of succession that solves the problem of the stupid eldest son. One reason why a king might lack iron-clad legitmacy is that he took the crown as part of an ad hoc modification to the succession rules when the legitimate eldest son is seen as unacceptably stupid

[....]

There are three Royal Lineages: Red, White, and Blue. The first king is drawn from the Red line. The second king is drawn from the White line. The third is Blue. And then it cycles: 4th is Red. 5th White. 6th Blue. And then a Red king takes the throne, the Seventh King of the Rotating Kindom and Third King of the Red line. And so on.

The descendents of the Blue King meet to choose a new King from among the White princes. When, in the fullness of time, the White King dies, the descendents of the Red King will meet to choose a new King from among the Blue Princes. The cycle continues with the each King succeeded by a prince of the next colour chosen by a conclave of KingMakers, all of the previous colour

The non-regnant elector sons would inevitably represent warring factions within the palace, property-holders, and nobility. They would choose a candidate who's least threatening to the interest of their faction, and extract concessions from that candidate in exchange for the crown. Meanwhile, factions left out in the cold would then #resist the #notmymonarch heir with their influence for the rest of that king's reign.

Some Roman Emperors who were raised by the consensus of different factions within the Roman state, like Claudius, got around this obstructionism by replacing the entire administrative bureaucracy with e.g. freedmen who were personally loyal to them. But this is hard, and it alienates a lot of important people, so it's probably no accident Claudius was poisoned and his favored successor killed to make way for Nero.

This is the fundamental source of instability in a monarchy, not the stupidity of the chosen heir or whether his genetic pedigree is solid. "The benefit of monarchy is one guy can do whatever he wants" is a huge misapprehension of history; to the extent that the king has power, a sword always hangs by a thread over the throne.

I think that the rotation of roles does help a little. The blue electors may well treat with the white princes, saying "I'll give you the crown if you give me X". On the other hand, the big prize is that one of the blue elector's children will go on to become king. Can they do a trade for the big prize? Can blue electors say to white princes "I'll make you king, if you make my son king in turn" ? No! When the white king dies (or perhaps demits the throne due to an age limit) it is the blue line that supplies the princes, but it is the red line that supplies the electors/kingmakers. Picking a blue electors' son as heir is beyond the power of the white king and beyond the power of the white line.

Perhaps blue electors can treat with members of the red line. "Promise to make my son king, and I'll give you the white king that you desire." But the members of the red line will have to have a deal set up whereby the white king pays them back. Complicated deals in smoke filled back rooms are certainly a thing, but now timing gets in the way. The blue electors are talking to members of the red line, but the election of the blue king is perhaps thirty years down the line; it is the children of the members of the red line who need to be trusted to keep the bargain.

Perhaps the Rotating Triple Crown fails because it depends too much on people believing in it. If the blue line believe that the kingdom will last, they may chose a good white king in the hope that their son inherits a thriving kingdom. But if belief falters, then the blue electors will sell the crown for a prompt reward, preferring to cash out and loot a system that they think is failing.

Real Platonic philosopher-kingship has never been tried!

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