Lucan was a contemporary of Nero, and in fact died at the age of 25 when he slit his own wrists after he was discovered involved in a plot to overthrow the emperor (it seems as if this was a dignified way to die in the early empire). As such Lucan's poem regarding the civil war between Caeser and Pompey remains unfinished. It is clear from the text that Lucan does not like Julius Caeser, and that the translator of the version I read (Robert Graves) does not particularly like Lucan. So, if the translator does not like the writer, why does he bother translating the book. Well, he answers that question himself: because of its historical value.

The Pharasalia does give a good outline of the civil war, right up to Caeser's arrival in Egypt and his seduction of Cleopatra, however it is questionable as to whether this is what would be termed revisionist history. Considering that the other source of the civil war is from Caeser's own hand (and further sources, such as Seutonius and Plutarch, were written a lot later), there can be an argument that Caeser's account could be somewhat biased. However, it is clear that Lucan is quite biased as well as he does not paint Caeser in a particularly appealing light.

Now, interspersed amongst the text are a lot of stories relating to mythology, as well as some pseudo-scientific theorising (and I say pseudo-scientific because it seems that Lucan attributes a lot of things to the gods). There are also some interesting accounts, such as Caeser rowing across the Adriatic Sea in a row boat (and it is interesting how Lucan says that it is when he makes landfall that he regained his empire, suggesting, and there is a lot of truth to it, that while he was in the middle of the Adriatic in a rowboat he was no longer master of his own destiny, nor was he master of Rome, but then considering that he was in the middle of a civil war, he wasn't master of Rome anyway). The other story was that of Cato's march through the desert to visit the oracle that Alexander of Macedon had visited. The story of how Cato refused water, and marched alongside his troops, gives a lot of credence to his character. However, since Cato was originally on the side of Pompey, and that Lucan is an admirer of Pompey (as well as a barracker for Caeser's assassins), it is not surprising that he paints him in a really attractive light.

After Pompey's defeat, and his assassination in Egypt, Lucan raves for quite a while about how undignified a death it was, how he was denied proper burial rights, and how such a great man deserves many more honours than what he received. However, it should be remembered that Caeser was just as horrified at Pompey's undignified murder as was Lucan. However Lucan is writing very much a 'what if' book, believing that all of Rome's current troubles are the result of this one civil war, and he lays all of the problems faced by Rome squarely on Caeser's shoulders. He does forget though that Ceaser did turn down the crown, and that he had also seen major flaws in the Republican system of government, yet even though his murderers, who were appalled at the idea of a single ruler, ended up moving Rome further to the Imperial State by killing Caeser. Further, they forget Sulla, who established himself as dictator, and then stepped down once his reforms had been completed. The other thing that is forgotten is that Caeser did not proscribe (that is mark for death) any of his enemies, and it is because of this that he ended up meeting his fate.

The time that Lucan wrote in was a much different time than the one that he writes about. It was about 100 years after the events in his poem, and Rome had changed. There was no freedom, and Nero ruled the empire with an iron fist. If you disagreed with Nero, you pretty much kept your mouth shut because there was no freedom of speech. It is in a sense why the Pharasalia was Lucan's way of criticising the current regime, however he ended up not simply keeping it in his poem, but attempted to act it out in his own life, which resulted in his suicide.

At the end of the poem (or at least what he wrote of it) he seems to describe it as lasting for as long as the story of Ceaser lasted, however why this particular piece of literature was kept in the absence of other works is beyond me. I can't read Latin so I cannot comment on it's poetical value, though it does provide us with an interesting, if somewhat biased, view of the ancient world.

I have to admit that this is a pretty long speech, though I'm not entirely sure if it is the closing speech, the opening speech, or just the actual defence (namely because he does call for evidence to be presented to the court at least three times). Pliny apparently believes that it is his best, though I'm probably not going to argue with him, with the exception that Cicero seems to talk about anything but the innocence, or guilt, of Cluentius. In fact Cicero seems to spend an awful lot of time talking about corrupt judges and bribes amounting to the 100s of thousands of sesterices, which I have to admit is somewhat mind-boggling considering that the Romans didn't have paper currency but rather used minted silver, which means that we are talking about an awful lot of coins – in fact I once lugged $1000.00 worth of coins to the bank to deposit them and I have to admit that it was pretty heavy, which suggests that these guys were probably lugging the money around by wagonload (and these wagons must have been pretty heavily guarded).

Anyway, this is another case that involved the accused murdering his father, but it didn't seem to be as bad as the previous case Pro Sextus Roscius in this book since it wasn't his biological (or adoptive) father but rather his step-father, and it appears that the step-father isn't held in as high a regard as a biological (or adoptive, which are fairly much the same in the eyes of the Romans) father. Actually, this was he fourth father that Cluentius had, since it appears that his mother keeps on marrying other men, though it wasn't all that clear if the previous marriages had ended through the death of the husband, or just divorce (both of which is a distinct possibility during this period of Republican Rome). Also, the women, at least the noble born women, weren't as oppressed as they were in, say Ancient Athens, namely because they did become involved in political machinations.

What we get in this defence speech (as is similar to the previous case that I read) is a glimpse into the lives of the Roman upper classes. However times had changed since the trial of Roscius in that Sulla had died, and Cicero was now a praetor. In fact Cicero willingly stepped down from the role so that he could defend Cluentius. Maybe he saw this case as a challenge (and even today lawyers will willingly take of cases, even <i>pro bono</i> if the case proves to be one that is likely to increase their profile. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if you find a quarrel of lawyers milling around a court, all fighting to represent the defendant in a particularly high profile case. In fact in my younger years I remember a time when a friend of mine was brought up on charges and out of the blue this guy rocks up and told him that he was going to be his lawyer. However, while there are times when lawyers will all want to take a case, there are times when it is completely the opposite.

The tactic that Cicero uses in his defence speech is a tactic that is basically known as 'throwing sand in the eyes of the judges'. No doubt this is still used today, particularly in jury trials where a defence lawyer will point out the complexity of the case, and that the jury could have no way of being able to understand the law that applies, so they should simply find for the accused – and it works (though I wouldn't recommend trying it because you have to be a really good lawyer to pull this off, and juries aren't necessarily idiots, though it is interesting that if you have had legal training, or have worked in the legal fraternity, that you can actually get off sitting on a jury – it isn't actually all that much fun).

Even though Cicero seems to go all over the place in this defence speech (which he is doing on purpose mind you) as I have mentioned, we still get an interesting perspective of life of the upper classes during to fall of the Roman Republic. We have poisonings, bribery, corruption, and of course people being framed. Mind you, whether Cluentius is guilty or not is a moot point because it is not the job of the defence lawyer to get to the truth of the matter, but to rather prove to the court that his client is innocent of the charges put before him. This is why it is very important that the prosecution get their case right simply because if they charge the accused with the wrong charge then the case gets dismissed, and the rule of double jeopardy means that the accused cannot be tried for the same charge again. Ahh, technicality, such a beautiful word.

I must admit, I love a good murder trial. Okay, this is only one of four that are in the book that I'm reading (Murder Trials) but I feel that it is probably worth reviewing all on its own (in fact I'll be reviewing each of the four trials individually and then looking at the book at a whole once I've finished it – which does break it up a bit). Mind you, this is only the defence spech, as written by one of Rome's greatest orator's, Marcus Cicero, so unfortunately we can only work out what the opposing argument was based upon what Cicero says, however since it was his first (actually second, but since his first was a contractual dispute that didn't end in bloodshed it sort of doesn't count) trial and he was victorious, and managed to avoid getting executed by Sulla, I guess I would be with the majority to say that I was convinced by his argument.

Anyway, poor Sextus Roscius Junior (whom I will refer to as Junior from now on) was having a bit of a rough time. First of all his father, Sextus Roscius Senior (whom I will refer to as, you guessed it, Senior) was fraudulently put on the proscription list, a list of people that the then dictator Sulla had decreed as enemies of the state and thus could be murdered with impunity. So, when Senior was murdered all of his property was confiscated and sold to the highest bidder, that happened to be the guy that originally put his name on the list (sounds like there was a bit of corruption going on here). So, poor Junior is left penniless, but Chrysogonus (the villain of the piece) is not content to let Junior live the life of a beggar, but instead accuses him of murdering his father, which was considered to be an incredibly heinous crime in Ancient Rome.

Anyway, the whole case was incredibly toxic – not only was Senior one of the proscribed, but Junior was a parricide (father killer), so not surprisingly nobody wanted to touch it, with the exception of one young barrister, Marcus Cicero, who was starting to make his name in Roman society. It was obvious to anybody with half a brain that Junior was not a murder, and this was simply an act by Chrysogonus to clean up a few loose ends, but the problem was to get on to the wrong side of Chrysogous was to dance with death. The fact that Ciciero did, and lived to tell the tale, goes to show how cunning he actually was.

The argument is intriguing because Cicero goes to prove that since parricide is such a heinous crime, only the most depraved and violent of individuals could even consider doing such a thing. Okay, we see it happen these days, and in fact there was a recently case in Adelaide when the son of the coach of one of the football teams murdered the coach. Sure, people were horrified, but not so much because his son had committed the deed, but rather because of the status of the person that was murdered. However there were suggestions that drugs were involved in that particular instance.

Family ties were much stronger back in those days than they are today, however even then a rebellious child would still be disinherited and cut off from the family. These days I sometimes wonder if our family ties are anywhere near as great. I suspect it had something to do with Rome being a patriarchal society, and while divorce was common, due to the nature of society back then the male tended to retain the right to the property while the woman would be out on her own (there was no alimony in Ancient Rome). These days the male isn't necessarily the one who retains the right to the property, which means that he does not necessarily remain the master of the household. In the Roman era, because the father was the head of the household, murdering him would be akin to murdering a king.

The other interesting thing that Cicero does (and I'm not sure if defence counsel's do it today) is that he then goes to prove that while Junior does not fit the character of a person who could murder his father, Chrysogonus was the type of person to murder Senior. However the catch is (and Cicero is clear on this in his speech), is that it doesn't matter whether Chrysogonus is guilty or not, Senior had been proscripted, and as such if it is the case that Chrysogonus is guilty, he acted within the bounds of the law. In the end all Cicero was doing was saving Junior's neck.

Well, here I am, once again sitting in the passenger seat of my Dad's car on our final trek to Melbourne, and since I have been reading, sleeping, or driving for most of the day, I might as well fix up a couple of my reviews while I am sitting here (and since I have a smartphone, and my Dad has this adapter that allows me to plug my laptop into the cigarette lighter, I might as well make use of it – such are the benefits of having an electronic engineer as a father).

Lucretius (I wonder if there is a connection with Star Trek) wrote this treatise on the natural world some time during the 2nd century BC. The period is important because it gives us an idea of the background in which the text was written. In a way it is probably one of the last ancient texts that have a scientific feel to it since most later philosophical texts (unless they dealt with medicine) focused mainly on ethics (with maybe the exception of Ptolemy), as opposed to scientific explanation (though there are probably a lot that have been lost). It wasn't until the renaissance that people began to once again question the nature of the world in which they lived.

The reason behind this is probably two-fold. Firstly, there was no need for industrial development namely because the culture was a slave based culture. Who needed machines when you had slaves to do all of the menial tasks. This can actually be seen in the United States in the lead up to the civil war, as well as in England, because in the North, where slavery was illegal, there was a lot of industrial development, while in the South, where slavery was legal, the society was still very much an agrarian society. The second reason was simply that nobody saw a need to actually question the world around them. As far as anybody was concerned, if something happened, then it was because the gods had willed it to happen, and there was no need to venture beyond that (and even then, to suggest that the gods didn't exist, even in Rome, was nothing short of blasphemous).

Lucretius wrote at an interesting time: it was after the decline of the Greek culture and during the rise of the Roman culture. Lucian wrote in Latin, but at this time Latin was still a very basic language, used mostly for trade and war. However the Greeks had already had a developed language that was being used much more culturally, which suggests that what Lucretius began was the slow morphing of the Latin language, as well as the Roman culture, into the culture that ended up producing the greats such as Cicero and Tacitus, among many others.

Lucretius was not the first to write a treatise that was enquiring into the nature of the world. This had been begun centuries early, almost as early as the Seven Sages of antiquity. There were sages like Democritus who developed the idea of the atom, Aristotle who wrote treatises on zoology, and even Plato dabbled in writing a scientific treatise (not that there was a distinct field of study at the time because back then everything was philosophy). The person, however, who influenced Lucretius the most was a guy named Epicurus.

Now, during this period there were three popular philosophies: the Epicurians, the Stoics, and the Cynics. I will describe these philosophies in a nutshell: Epicurians pretty much believe 'if it feels good, do it'; Stoics believe 'no pain, no gain'; and Cynics believes 'life sucks, and then you die'. Okay, that is probably being very basic description of each of these philosophies, but that is how I remember them. Mind you, we get the term stoic from the stoic philosophers, and the word cynic from the cynic philosophers.

It is interesting to see how Lucretius understands the universe, and in a way there is a lot of what we understand in his ideas: such as the idea of the atom, that everything is made up of atoms, that there is space between the atoms which determines the hardness of the objects. We also know that Lucretius comes to his understandings through observation, something that is done very much today, however there is no well defined scientific method in the way that he performs his enquiries. Another aspect that we see is the idea of the vacuum, which Lucretius suggests is the space between the atoms. However his understanding of a vacuum is different to our understanding because he does not necessarily see the air as molacules. Because he can see anything (despite being able to feel wind, which demonstrates, at least to me, that there is something there) then he assumes that there is nothing there. Further there is no concept that nature abhors a vacuum.

Lucretius seems to see everything in the form of atoms, though this is not unusual today in modern physics where certain elements have both wave and particle like properties, however we must remember that much of what Lucretius was writing about was little more than educated guesses. Basically he had come up with a theory, based on observation, and used this basis to try to explain everything. Light (and darkness) are particles that hit the eyes, which allows us to see. Sound is also made up of particles, however we note that he does not seem to understand the concept of waveforms. By saying this I refer to where he tries to understand why one can hear sound through solid objects. We know this because the sound hits the object causing the object to vibrate, which then causes the air behind the object to also vibrate and thus continue the sound wave. We also notice, interestingly, that his concept of colour comes, once again, from particles. An object has a certain colour because the particles on that object also have that colour.

It is ideas like this that makes a typical modern like me baulk, namely because even though I may have only completed year 12 physics, I still remember quite a lot of it, and as such know that what he is suggesting is basically wrong. I know that an object has a certain colour because the object absorbs that particular part of the colour spectrum. However, Lucretius was not working from much because there was not all that much before him. In a way Lucretius is no different from the early scientists of the modern era in that much of what he was writing about were educated guesses, and it was only after further study and experimentation that we have come to understand that the beliefs of those that came before us were, well, wrong. Once again I point to the idea of light travelling as a wave. Many of us who do not understand, or have not been taught, advanced Physics believe that is the case, but those of us who know advanced Physics know that light can also travel as a particle (it's called a photon).

The funny thing that I have noticed is how much of our science is still actually based on the findings of Lucretius. The wave particle duality of light aside, we still understand sight as working on the basis of things striking the retina in our eyes. Lucretius had an understanding that the eyes were more than simply windows, or doors, that allowed the brain to see out (namely because he points out that if you remove the eyes then, well, you can't see) but rather an integral part of how we see. The same goes with the idea of smell, that we smell things because particles drift into our nose which causes the nerves in our nose to react to the particle. While Lucretius may not have had a full understanding of the nervous system, he still understands the reactions and senses that are caused when the body feels pain.

As for religion, I was going to suggest that Lucertius is a 'functional Athiest' namely that while he believed in the gods, he does not believe that they have any power or control over the way the universe functions. However I thought about this for a bit and realised that it is not that he is an Atheist, but more of what one would consider an ancient version of a Deist. The reason I say that is because he still believed in the polytheistic religion of the time, but responded in the same way to the gods that a modern Deist would respond to Christianity, namely that while God may exist, he has little or no influence, or care, over the operation of the universe in which we live.

This brings me onto Lucretius' idea of the soul. He believes in the soul but not in its immortality. In fact he goes to great pains to demonstrate that before birth the soul, and the mind, of that particular individual, does not exist, and as such, after death the soul ceases to exist as well. Lucretius has no interest or time for theories and ideas relating to the afterlife (which is probably why he holds to the Epicurian idea of if it feels good, do it). In fact, he seems to think that the whole idea of the afterlife, and in particular Hades, is absurd (and spares no haste in pointing that out). As such, Lucretius does not believe in reincarnation either, so it is clear that his ideas are purely materialistic, in much the same way that modern materialism holds their beliefs.

It is interesting to compare some of Lucretius' thoughts to the what modern evolutionists accept today. One of the things that I noted was Lucretius' ideas of the origins of various parts of the body, such as the limbs. The modern belief is that a need arose therefore the body adapted an organ to meet that need. However Lucretius holds the opposite view in that the organ exists prior to the need arising, and when the need became apparent, the body was able to meet that need with the limb. As such it appears that Lucretius is not an evolutionist (and the evolutionists claim that it is the Christians that are backward). Further, Lucretius believes in a young Earth, but his argument in this regard is incredibly flawed. His argument is that because there is no recorded history dating back before the Theban and Trojan wars then, ergo, there must not have been anything, therefore the Earth is young. Obviously he is not an anthropologist (nor has he read Herodotus, which I would find very surprising from such a learned person). Mind you, similar flawed reasonings (and educated guesses) are still made today in relation to the arguments verses the young Earth and old Earth theories. As for me, I find both postulations (namely, the Bible says the Earth is 6000 years old, therefore it must be so, to which I respond by saying, no it doesn't; and it is the best theory we have, so we might as well stick to it, to which I respond, but what if it is wrong) have their flaws.

Mind you, Lucretius' section of cosmology seems to read more like an evolutionist's, in that it is suggested that he may have come up with something similar to the big bang theory thousands of years before modern science had postulated it. It seems that he believes, just as the modern cosmologist believes, that the universe began as a chaotic mess and that it was only through the collision of particles (which is the word that I feel obliged to use, because that is what I understand Lucretius' atom to be, though it is interesting that in the modern world we seem to continue to break this building block into smaller and smaller things – these days we have quarks, which are sub-subatomic particles). However, I also notice that Lucretius believes that the Earth is stationary and that the stars, sun, and moon, move around the Earth. In reponse to that, I wonder why the Catholic Church branded Galileo as a heretic when their ideas were actually taken from the pagans. Also, finally, it is interesting to see how he describes that lightning is caused by the collision of particles in the clouds (which themselves are made up of particles) and points to the sparks that are created when certain rocks are smashed together. Once again, it goes to show how many of Lucretius' theories came about through observation and educated guessing, which in many ways is how modern scientists come up with their theories.

Unfortunately this is not one of those books that you can simply go down to your local bookshop and buy off the shelf because I suspect that it is very long out of print. From what I gather from the introduction (and that is not taking into account that the entire book is an introduction) is that it is a companion to a Latin Reader and from reading the book it is quite clear that this is the case. What I found interesting was the number of Latin words that are used in the book, not in that chunks of the book are written in Latin, but rather when Petrie is describing an aspect of Ancient Rome, he will give us the Latin word that corresponds with it . For example, he will refer to the night guards, and give us the Latin word vigiliae, or refer to the winter camp, and say hiberna. What is this does is also gives us glimpses on how words in our own language – such as vigilant and hibernate – have come about.

The book is also interspersed with black and white pictures of statues, coins, and other works of art which also assist us in understanding the nature of Roman culture. One particular picture was a photo of the Forum taken around the time the book was written, and it was fascinating see the Forum back in the early 20th Century. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a replication of that picture, however I have found this picture:

Another fascinating thing that I have discovered about Ancient Rome is that we have a reasonably good idea as to what some of the major figures at the time looked like, thanks in part (actually not in part, but primarily because) of the life like statues that have been preserved. For instance, here is a statue of Julius Ceaser:

and here is a statue of Mark Antony:

and just because I feel that I should include him, here is a statue of one of Rome's greatest orators, Marcus Cicero:

Actually, there is a statue of Cicero standing outside the law courts in modern Rome, but that is beside the point.

While writing a book on the history of Rome can be quite a task, it is somewhat simpler to do than to also include in this short book an outline of Roman culture. The reason I say that is because we are dealing with a civilisation that was around for something like over a thousand years. To put it in perspective, the attitudes of Shakespearian England are substantially different to the attitudes of modern England, and in fact that attitudes towards marriage were different at the beginning of the 20th Century than they are now – for instance people did not live in defacto relationships in 1906, where as they are part an parcel of our society today. As such it is difficult at best (and impossible at worst) to be able to have a simple outline on the aspects of Roman society, and in the end you will only be able to capture a small part of the society, and even then there is the danger that we end up mixing two different eras due to the lack of information that we have (for instance, the Forum that we can walk around now is certainly not the Forum that Julius Ceaser and Marcus Cicero walked around – at the time the Colosseum did not exist). However, after reading this book I have now a much better understanding of the Roman political system as it existed at the later part of the Republican period, and this is something that I wish to discuss.

First of all Rome was not a democracy - far from it. Rather it was a Republic, which meant that it exists under the rule of law as opposed to the rule of a tyrant (though that changed with the ascension of Augustus Ceaser). Roman society was a very stratified society with four distinct classes of citizens, the patricians, the plebians, the resident foreigners, and the slaves. At the beginning only patricians could hold ruling titles, but after numerous struggles the plebians were able to attain such ranks, and then the resident foreigners were also given citizenship (not in the sense that they moved to Rome for a better life, but because the Romans invaded their territory, meaning that they had no choice but to live under their rule). Anyway, there are a number of parts that went to make up the Roman government, being the Senate, the Consuls, the Quaestors, the Praetors, the Tribunes, the Aediles, the Censor, and finally the Comitia.

Senate: this was the highest body in the Roman government, and while initially they acted as advisors to the king, and later to the Consuls, in time it became the chief legislative body. The interesting thing though is that they could not introduce legislation, they could only enact it, which meant that another arm of the government had to introduce the legislation. They would then debate it and in turn enact it. However, other arms could also enact legislation, which would lead to conflict. The senate was elected by the Comitia, but once elected to the Senate, you were elected for life.

Consul: there were two of these characters and they initially took over from the king. The reason that there were two was because the constitution did not allow power to be concentrated into the hands of one person (expect during emergencies, and then one could be appointed dictator). The Consuls in time simply became the commander in chief of the armies as other aspects of the government came about in an attempt to dilute the power. As the empire grew, the office of pro-consul was created so that foreign wars were able to continue under a single general without the need of returning to Rome to attempt to be elected for a second or third term. The term was for a year, and the most terms held by a single person was seven terms (they they were generally not concurrent) that being Marcius. Marcius died halfway through his seventh term.

Quaestor: these guys basically held the keys to the Roman treasury. It would be wrong to consider them with public servants in the sense that we understand them, but the closest that we could equate them to our time would the the members of the Federal Reserve. From what I gather the role of the Quaestor was to set economic policy, and also to facilitate the collection of the taxes (though they were substantially more important than a simple tax collector).

Praetor: these guys were the equivalent of our Supreme court judges. They pretty much held supreme judicial authority, however if one was convicted under a Praetor one had the right of appeal to the Comitia, which is sort of like appealing to the populace at large. We do not have a system like that in our society, though some times we wonder if the modern media does act like a defacto court.

Tribunes: We do not have an equivalent position in our society to the tribunes. Basically the tribunes represented the plebians, the common people, and held the power of veto if they believed that the legislation was not in the best interests of the people. We see this in action in the Shakespearian play Coriolanus, where the election of Coriolanus to the position of Consul is vetoed by the Tribunes, who then put forward a counter proposal of exiling him, which is then adopted. The office of tribune is one of the major reasons that the Roman Republic came to a constitutional crisis which resulted in its collapse and in turn the rise of the Imperium (and the emperor then took the role of the Tribune).

Aediles: From what I gather this role is pretty much a ceremonial role and was more connected with religious observance than anything else. Despite this, Rome was not really a religious nation. Rather it was more of a secular nation, though they did have their gods and their religious festivals. However, when you consider the persecutions of the Christians during the Empire you will discover that this is more of a secular and a state reaction rather than a religious reaction.

Censor: It is suggested that this was the highest office in the land, and is probably the equivalent of the chief public servant. However, he had no legislative power but rather ran the public service. He performed functions such as collecting census data (from which we get our word census) and also was pretty much in charge of the treasury. Sort of like all of the public servants rolled into one.

Comitia: Now this group is pretty much comprised of the citizens of Rome, and as such is very similar to the electorate of the modern day. In fact, the way the Comitia voted was similar to the way that we vote in our modern democracies, in that the Comitia were divided into groups, and the groups would vote as a whole. The Comitia would elect the various positions and would also act as the court of highest appeal.