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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3075 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.

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