
Secessio plebis - alasarmas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessio_plebis
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The last secession was in 287 BC. Why were there not secessions after it? The
reason has to do with the growth of the Roman Empire. Rome’s conquests really
went into overdrive after that and they conquered many kingdoms. Along with
those conquests, there came a lot of slaves. This totally changed the
dynamics. After a while, the wealthy depended not on their poor fellow Romans
to farm or make goods, but on slaves. Now it did not matter if the plebes
didn’t not show up.

I fear that globalization may have served the same function in the United
States. The wealthy don’t depend on their poor fellow Americans to provide
goods for them and work for them. They depend on good produced oversees and
even for domestic production on immigrant labor(look at who gets employed in
fame labor or domestic help). They have an alternative to their fellow poor
Americans.

Now, a strike in the US has a good chance of resulting not in long term
employee benefits like it did before, but in the plant being moved oversees.

Unfortunately, this has bad consequences. When the relatively peaceful
secession was no longer an option, Rome devolved into outright violence in the
Roman Revolutions which saw demagogues and authoritarians mobilize the
disaffected poor to kill their enemies and establish their power. When it all
ended with the ascension of Augustus in AD 31, Rome was a republic in name
only, but in reality a military dictatorship. And the people were generally
happy with it because it brought peace after decades of violence and
bloodshed.

I hope our democracies can find a better solution to the issues of wealth
inequality, before this story happens to us too.

~~~
ashtonkem
Also worth mentioning was the consolidation of small free-held farms into
large estates held by senators and run by slaves.

This consolidation was partially driven by war debts; Roman citizens accrued
debts during the wars of conquest, while the generals won the spoils with
which they could purchase the land of indebted citizen farmers. It was also
driven by economies of scale; the larger estates were more efficient, had
lower costs of operation, and had the market contacts to grow the crops that
generated the best profit when shipped.

Of course this means Italy basically stopped making food when senators could
sell oil at higher margins, and began to depend on Sicily and Egypt to produce
the grain for Rome, with the latter eventually becoming the _personal_
property of the emperor. This would cause serious problems later, but the
senators profiting neither knew nor cared.

~~~
chewz
> Nexum was a debt bondage contract in the early Roman Republic. Within the
> Roman legal system, it was a form of mancipatio. Though the terms of the
> contract would vary, essentially a free man pledged himself as a bond slave
> (nexus) as surety for a loan. He might also hand over his son as collateral.
> Although the bondsman might be subjected to humiliation and abuse, as a
> legal citizen he was supposed to be exempt from corporal punishment. Nexum
> was abolished by the Lex Poetelia Papiria in 326 BC, in part to prevent
> abuses to the physical integrity of citizens who had fallen into debt
> bondage.[26]

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage)

------
runawaybottle
This exists in modern American history as well under the term ‘solidarity’.
For example, in the 50s if the teachers union went on strike, so did bus
drivers. It made labor movements strong.

We’re far from that type of world now. If you take the recent issues at
Amazon, we had an isolated case of solidarity with one tech engineer backing
up warehouse workers. That won’t get it done.

The general public, in it’s vastness, ironically, vastly underestimates it’s
power. All it takes is for us to stop going to movies, restaurants, flights,
etc , and suddenly we are not powerless against any industry.

The rest of Amazon does not backup the warehouse workers. It is something to
think about, we all play a part. Lack of solidarity is one of the most
disheartening developments of our present.

~~~
pizza
I have a sense part of that is the "Oh Dearism" \- we just watch sad news each
day and it makes us think all that can be done is say "oh dear" \- reflected
in this short video by Adam Curtis -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok)
(also featuring Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror)

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jaclaz
Just for your interest inspired by the "secessio plebis" there was an
initiative (failed) against Mussolini's government in 1924, after the killing
of Giacomo Matteotti:

[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessione_dell%27Aventino](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessione_dell%27Aventino)

(not too bad in Google Translate)

Shorter article on en.wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventine_Secession_(20th_centu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventine_Secession_\(20th_century\))

so it is still an used expression in italian to "retire on the Aventine Hill",
particularly regarding political debates meaning "to boycott".

------
gorgoiler
One thing I don’t really have a sense for is how much did Roman culture change
over the centuries of its existence?

The article says there were estimated to have been five of these _general
strikes_ over a two century period.

That feels a bit like saying there were a handful of major upsets on
/r/politics over the past couple hundred years — the timespan seems very long!

Was Roman culture pretty static for a very long time?

~~~
edoceo
It just takes the plebes a few generations to get riled up and protest.
Boiling frogs and all that.

And there are loads of books on Roman culture - interesting reading of you
have the time - and the empire was vastly different across the whole area of
influence.

Edit: Start here:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_a...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire)

It's !w about this long book(s) and it's fascinating.

~~~
jimnotgym
I have not read it, but I believe that whilst a seminal work that modern
scholars draw a great deal from, it is neither the entry point for the casual
reader, nor is it the latest thinking on many parts.

Can I recommend 'SPQR' by the wonderful Mary Beard as a better entry point.

~~~
Amezarak
I actually did not like SPQR, though I concede it may be a better introduction
to someone who otherwise knows nothing. I found it too informed by 21st
century perspectives, too set on telling me what to think, and uninteresting
for that reason.

 _But_ , I know the subject material better than the average reader, and there
is no single older work I can think of that covers the same time period.
Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ is really much broader than Rome: he covers the
Empire all the way to shortly after 1453, and not just Rome as such, but the
broader theater of Europe and the East. But it does not cover the Republic or
the early Empire. Gibbon surely is guilty of some anti-religious bias (which
he confines, for the most part, to a single chapter), and there are a few
things we have learned through later archeological research - but not much
that would be of interest to a general reader - and a few things he did just
get plain wrong. But as a whole, the work still stands tremendously, and for a
non-academic historian, there's nothing wrong with it - except that in this
case, you're not getting the whole history of Rome.

I actually think its a great read for a casual reader, as long as they're
looking for a history of the time period specified. It is long, not dry at
all, and the style is very refreshing. But for the earlier history of Rome,
I'd do what Gibbon did for his work: go to the primary sources. Read Livy,
Plutarch, Caesar, and the like. Read the Romans as they presented themselves,
without anyone else interpreting it for you, or putting any kind of lens in
front of you. To be sure, all the Roman writers had biases too, and where
history gets hazy, they are sometimes much more eager than a modern writer
would be to plunge into myth - though they are usually willing to say so, and
often present interpretations of what they think actually happened. To be
sure, there will be a lot of things we never _know_ , things there can never
be any evidence for aside from stories. But if nothing else, it adds color.

I've also found that modern academics are far too skeptical for my taste, and
too ready to take absence of evidence as evidence of absence; generally too
ready to deem myth as having no basis in reality whatever, improbable stories
as impossible, unlikely ones as highly improbable, and even entirely plausible
ones as exaggerated or unlikely, if any historian has lately, in need of
making a career and publishing papers, an axe to grind against it. Half of any
modern academic history nowadays seems dedicated to sneering at the
gullibility of earlier historians. To be fair, maybe this isn't a new trend,
only an old one refined to new heights - I recall a passage in _Decline and
Fall_ where contemporary writers were shocked at the numbers involved in the
Goth migration, and suddenly realized that maybe accounts of army size in the
Persian War weren't so crazy after all.

I don't know. Maybe the best thing for someone unfamiliar altogether with it
all is to read SPQR, then, if they are still interested, read Gibbon and the
more popular and accessible primary sources.

~~~
keiferski
Agreed on all accounts, especially the importance of reading historical books
from the past (I.e. books on history that were written 50-100-300 years ago).
Modern culture, including academia, is permeated by a particular type of
thinking, one that is extremely shallow and historically ignorant in terms of
the history of thought, or ways of thinking. The past is indeed a foreign
country, but we (Western) moderns don’t seem to understand this when
discussing previous times and civilizations.

------
OliverJones
A similar popular revolt to these secessii plebies took place in Industrial
Revolution - era England in the years before 1832. The districts -- called
boroughs -- were laid out according to agrarian-culture history instead of
population.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832)

The United States presently has a similar imbalance of political power between
states with large cities and more rural states.

These sorts of imbalances can lead to instability.

------
ggm
After the uprising of the 17th of June

The Secretary of the Writers' Union

Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could only win it back

By increased work quotas.

Would it not in that case be simpler

for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

(Die Lösung, Berthold Brecht, 1953)

~~~
fit2rule
A brilliant expose of the truth of the matter: the people always get the
governments they deserve, and thus: vice versa.

~~~
emmelaich
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.

\- H. L. Mencken

------
edoceo
I'm in.

~~~
labster
Let's do this, chums!

~~~
nautilus12
Um... society already is...

------
blackrock
Until a vaccine is found for the virus, I think states will next begin
limiting interstate travel. Or at least forcing a two-week quarantine on
incoming visitors, like what Hawaii has done.

These states, or cluster of adjacent states, can effectively become their own
operating government.

If the next door state has the virus running rampant, because they did a
terrible job with their quarantine, then so be it. They will get travel
restrictions from freely entering.

The interesting thing is, this scenario puts these cluster of states into
positions of independence. The only thing missing, is to declare their own
currency. At which point, the federation government will declare war.

------
jv22222
As Elon Musk said yesterday on Joe Rogan:

"If no one is making stuff... there is no stuff!"

~~~
chroem-
Maybe it's just me, but generally I would expect a higher level of competence
from the leaders of our public and private institutions, than "throw bodies
and money at the fire" would imply. If there had been any sort of long term
planning or disaster preparedness, we wouldn't be forced to choose between our
personal wellbeing and the continued operation of our economy. Unfortunately,
that long term thinking fell outside the scope of next quarter's earnings. The
fact of the matter is, the emperor has no clothes.

~~~
koonsolo
> If there had been any sort of long term planning or disaster preparedness.

Any politician that would have said "hey, we need to prepare for a global
pandemic" would have been a laughing stock. Bill Gates knew (see ted talk),
the rest of us didn't.

I think the only teacher we accept is a pandemic itself. Therefore I'm very
happy it's Covid19 and not something worse.

Let's hope we learned our lesson and are prepared next time.

~~~
chroem-
It's not just the politicians though: the private sector deserves just as much
of the blame. Watching this unfold from inside BigCorp has been truly eye
opening. In a company of 100k people, nobody thought about preparedness or
risk management. Instead, BigCorp bought its own stock on margin, and now it
has to throw thousands of human beings at a worsening viral pandemic in order
to generate cashflow. People are going to die so that the company can stay in
business.

~~~
koonsolo
I don't know if you are running your own business, but it's just so hard to
take into account all kinds of possible risks. It's just impossible to work
like that. Most of the time you gamble which resources to put where. Else you
end up in analysis paralysis.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We're talking about very large businesses. Risk analysts should have been
anticipating a pandemic given the several near-misses (Ebola, SARS, MERS,
H1N1, ...) that we've had recently. If you're a large business that risk is
going to be significant enough to consider.

When I took family holiday insurance in early January, I had to check that
pandemics were covered, and they were specifically mentioned. So I'd expect
them to be a general part of risk analysis.

A pandemic that's covered by insurance is a massive risk for an insurance
company, so it's always going to be a paragraph in business insurance, I'd
expect. Which should raise the question, "as this can't be insured against,
for us, what's our contingency".

