Rome is no longer a city nor even an empire, Rome is the world, and the world forever after will build on the roads Rome paves. For the first half of my life, the defeat of Parthian Empire was the goal to which Rome strove, and from the moment of victory over King Mithridates, Rome's decline began.
No nationstate is meant to be as powerful as Rome is. No Roman feat of engineering can govern an empire of 60 million peoples. And no Roman feat can make habitable the city of a million inhabitants Rome now is. The more Rome accomplishes, the more accomplishment is demanded of it, and even the greatest most resourceful state on earth could not achieve what is demanded of Rome.
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There is no longer an immediate goal outside Rome around which Romans might unite, and therefore Romans can only unite around competing visions of what Rome should be, competition which will destroy precisely the dynamic republic which let Rome defeat all its competitors. All that competition once used to unite a people is now the agent by which Rome will destroy itself.
Where can that chaos end but with a single overarching figure who demolishes the republic for all time? Without war to fund, the biggest demand is for civil progress, expenses grow by the month to fund everything at home from temples to gods to the tiniest mouths.
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Catallus, that fat fuck whose hair could serve as its own battle helmet, was just bait to measure how many fish would bite at a dictator. He had neither the money nor the legions nor the brains to organize his own rebellion, and even were that clown to become dictator, there clearly was a puppetmaster to whose questions he provided every answer. The feeling of many here is that it's King Pharnaces of Pontus, eager to avenge the defeat of his father and willing to infiltrate Rome from the inside. As implausible as it seemed prima facie, evidence is overwhelming of at least some Parthians colluding with Catallus. But my feeling is that even if Catallus had Parthian handler, there had to be collusion within Rome's most powerful interests as well. Was it people from Crassus's camp, did it come from Pompey's, was it Caesar's? Was it all three? Or was it a different puppetmaster abroad? Perhaps it was King Antipater but that's too tempting a leap: everyone loves to blame Judeans for things they don't do,
But even were there no conspirator behind Catallus, even if such a stunningly dumb man orchestrated such a breathtaking conspiracy of his own accord, all these powerful men and many more look oh so closely upon the example of the Cataline Conspiracy, testing its data, formulating precisely where it went wrong and documenting every way it went right. Had the Roman Republic hope of survival before Catallus, there is no hope now. Rome will be a dictatorship by my death, should Hashem choose for me a natural one, And doubtless the Holy One BBH views it as my duty to steer Rome to choose the least bloody option. God forbid Hashem do this by making me something more powerful than a Roman Jew.
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Progress now seems a daily occurrence, but once all those democratic energies are stopped, will progress stop too?
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