I was logging onto about ten different BBS's a day, (they were High Speed Schtuff in those days) and as my real name is a fairly common one, I was sure to run into the dupliate username problem.

As I was studying, and had always liked, ancient history, I decided that to use a Greek or Roman name might be Purty Cool.

However, I did not want to use the name of a famous Greek or Roman, as to usurp a name like Cicero, Socrates, Pericles, or Marcus Aurelius seemed a bit presumptuous.

The nickname that my classmates had given me in Latin class back in high school, Caligula, carried with it a reputation for aberrant behavior and an aroma of sexual depravity that I decided to avoid.

They called me Caligula, by the way, not because I had any reputation for sexual derring-do, (I wish. At fourteen, I was still wondering what sex with somebody else in the room was gonna be like :-) but for the reason that I always wore this pair of brown Dingo boots and the fact that I was a dinky kid.

You see, "caligula," translates roughly as "Little Boots." The original Caligula, whose real name was Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, earned the name as a child. His father, Germanicus, was a famous Roman general, and took young Gaius on campaign with him.

The legions took a shine to the lad, adopting him almost as if he were their mascot, and had made a pint-sized general's outfit for him, complete with a pair of the hob-nailed sandals, caligae they all wore. They began calling him Caligula, and the name stuck.

To drift even farther afield, the English idiom "pin money," like Caligula's name, has to do with the humble caligae.

The legions marched everywhere they went, and after a few weeks slogging down the Roman military roads, the hobnails hammered into the thick soles of their sandals would begin to wear away. As the legions at this time didn't recieve regular pay, but just a share of the spoils and whatever else the grateful general wanted to toss in from his own personal funds, and/or whatever he could pry out of the Senate, it became the custom for the general to give the soldiers, every now and again, small sums for repair and upkeep of their uniforms and equipment, to include new hobnails for their caligae.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. If you're going to read this blog on anything like a regular basis, you might as well cope as Twain said men and dogs should do when dealing with women and cats - that is, get used to the idea that the latter pair are going to do whatever the hell they want, and the former just might as well get used to it. :-)

Let's see, where was I again? Aaah yes, picking a name.

I ended up choosing the name of a relatively obscure Roman senator, Marcus Livius Drusus.

Marcus Livius Drusus (the Younger) was a relatively unknown Roman politician who lived during the late Republic. This is the period, from the end of the Third Punic War to the beginning of the Empire, (roughly 140-30 BCE) that saw the Republic transformed, from a small bucolic nation of farmer/soldiers, to a military and economic giant that ruled the entire Mediterranean.

This transformation strained the traditional form of government and polarized the differences between the two classes that controlled the nation: the landed aristocrats, powerful in the Senate, and the equites, or knights, that largely controlled trade and industry. The equites controlled those two areas because Senators were forbidden by long-standing custom from engaing in commercial activities. Senators were allowed only to own things, primarily large farms and other real estate.

Central to this dispute was the proper way to dispose of the vast amounts of land captured in the war, and compensation for the Roman soldiers and allies.

The aristocratic Senate favored keeping these lands as, ager publicus, or public lands. These lands were leased at favorable rates, mostly to wealthy Senators and their cronies, for use as, latifundia, immense agricultural plantations, worked primarily by slaves captured in the provincial wars.

The populists, led by the tribunes of the people, and aided by military leaders and some sympathetic senators, favored dividing the public lands into smaller plots, and giving them to Rome's veterans and lower classes. Their aim was to keep strong the small yeoman class of farmer from which Rome had always recruited her legions.

Allow me to insert a disclaimer here: most historians believe few politicians had any genuine concern for the fate of the lower classes, and created public policy with an eye more toward enhancing their personal prestige and influence than any genuine humanitarian concerns. The more things change...

The, socii, the Italian allies of Rome, had long furnished manpower and taxes for Rome's conquests, and had borne most of the suffering when the Carthaginians had campaigned on the Italian peninsula. However, the Romans still denied them citizenship status, conferring on them only, "Latin Rights," a sort of second-class citizenship, with limited civil rights, and a diminished legal status, or worse, status as an, "Italian Ally," with even fewer advantages.

Marcus Livius Drusus was born to a conservative, wealthy, and powerful aristocratic family. His father (MLD the Elder) was one of the most obdurate foes of one of the Gracchi brothers, two of the earliest and most famous of the populist reformers. The younger Drusus would have most likely continued directly in the conservative family tradition, but for an accident of history.

While performing his time of service as a junior military officer expected of all young men of his class, he had the misfortune of serving under a particularly incompetent general. This general had been appointed for political reasons, as opposed for his military ability. This general compounded his failings by refusing to join forces with another Roman army, for reasons of vanity, in the face of a barbarian enemy. The division of forces led to the complete rout of both armies. Drusus narrowly escaped, but thousands of soldiers, both Roman and allied, were killed in one of the worst defeats the Roman legions ever suffered.

It was the epiphany that changed his political aims forever. Trained in rhetoric and law, and an eloquent public speaker, he formulated a plan of legislation that would offer effective land reform, and increased rights for the Roman allies. His aims were no different from earlier reformers, but he worked strictly within the traditional methods of the Roman legislative process, whereas the earlier reformers such as the Gracchi brothers had at times turned to extralegal tactics and violence as a last resort.

Because of his prestige, competence, aristocratic lineage, and the patronage at his disposal, he was able to gather the needed votes for his reforms. Then, on the eve of a critical vote that would have finalized his plan, he was assassinated on the steps of his home. His plan, and the coalition he had created to advance it, died with him.

Within months, the Italian Allies revolted in what came to be known as the Social War. This was the first in a chain of civil wars, the exigencies of which allowed a series of "men on horseback," (Gauis Marius, Cornelius Sulla, Pompey Magnus, and eventually, Julius Caesar) to trample the Republic into the dust.

I wonder how different the course of history might have been, had that assassin failed. Had Drusus and his plan survived, I think it at least possible the Roman Republic might had been able to survive its pangs of growth, and prospered for centuries more. Given that, I cannot help but wonder if a strong Republic might have better born the challenges that eventually destroyed the Empire.

The Dark Age following the collapse of Rome set civilization back a thousand years. Could it have been averted?

Had it been, you and I might be talking about this sitting in our homes on one of the moons of Saturn, with mankind safely spread off this one earth and immune to a planetary catastrophe.

Then again, we might instead be discussing any of the plays of the Greek playwrights such as Sophocles and Aeschylus that are now lost to us. Some of their extant plays, considered, even in these modern times, among the greatest dramas in the Western tradition, were only the second or third place winners in the annual playwriting competitions.

We know that Sophocles wrote 123 plays; today, we only have seven of them. Aeschylus wrote over 80, but only eight survive. Similar numbers hold true for the other Greek playwrights.

We lost many of them when the great library at Alexandria in Egypt was accidentally set afire by Julius Caesar's soldiers in 48 B.C. during a war he fought with Cleopatra against her brother Ptolemy XIII, a war one could plausibly argue would not have happened had the Republic not fallen into the strife of its conversion into Empire.

That is just one of the ways in which our world today is very different from the world that might have been.

So, that is the story of Marcus Livius Drusus, and why I chose that name.

It's worked well for its original purpose - I've never in all these years had to come up with another username.

It makes a good conversation piece, and reflects my interest in history, especially ancient history. People are always asking why I use such an odd name, (hence this entry) and most find the tale interesting.

Maybe they're just being polite. :-)

But most important, I think, is that I like to remind myself that one man can sometimes make a difference.

... Link