A marble bust of the Roman Emperor Commodus | Christie’s
“… Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus (161-192 AD), or Commodus as he was more commonly known, was the last emperor of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, which ruled the Roman Empire for almost 100 years from the end of the 1st century AD onwards. The first five emperors of the dynasty, which included Trajan and Hadrian, each adopted their elective successor based on merit. When the sixth emperor, Marcus Aurelius, named his son Commodus as heir, it caused outrage amongst the Senate and the people of Rome.
Unlike his father, who was a renowned military leader and stoic, the young Commodus was perceived as unruly and arrogant. ‘He was famous for being this archetypical megalomaniac,’ says Christie’s Antiquities specialist Claudio Corsi. ‘He loved violence, he loved murder, he was very involved in the gladiatorial games — he once killed 100 lions in one day.’”
A ROMAN MARBLE PORTRAIT HEAD OF THE YOUNG COMMODUS
CIRCA 175-177 A.D.
Estimate
GBP 50,000 – GBP 80,000
(USD 65,400 – USD 104,640)
Source: A marble bust of the Roman Emperor Commodus | Christie’s
Fascinating story, isn’t it? I wish I had that kind of money laying around so I could own something like this 🙂
In other news there’s a fantastic article by Clive Irving (I’m a huge fan) today in TDB: It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini.
My Mazamet 
You want this? It’s well done, to be sure, but that means you can see that this guy is trouble, and not in an amusing way. I wonder who will buy it?
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Yes! It’s the story aspect that I like. A lesser known emperor with a dark history, the arrogant expression captured perfectly by the artist 🙂
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The people and the army loved him (as they did Caesar) but the senatorial class hated him (as they did Caesar). He sort of left out the senatus part of SPQR. His mom and dad were first cousins and he had some illnesses probably because of it but his dad was the last of the so-called good emperors and his death made way for the year of 5 emperors, whose names I never memorized because they just all got killed in a year anyway.
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Clever clogs! Very impressive. Where have you been? I presumed that as a woman and also a Canadian, Donald Trump had blocked your access to the internet 😀
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Haha! That’s exactly it! I was blocked from the internet. I’ve been lurking a lot lately instead of posting but I’ve been around.
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So the megalomaniac Commodus ended the reign of the “Five Good Emperors” and Rome was never the same again – slowly descending into oblivion.
Now that the megalomaniac Trump is doing something similar in America, what should we call his predecessors (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W, and Obama)? The “Five ???? Presidents” – fill in the blank descriptor.
Thanks also for the editorial referral.
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Isn’t it absurd these cycles are still repeating themselves? That we haven’t developed better systems to stop them reoccurring?
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It’s truly absurd, and sad commentary on our species.
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The greatest difference between the developed democracies and the dictatorships is that democracies are systems where the influence of a one-off individual is very limited. The U.S. is affected by Trump, no doubt, but Trump does not change the principles of how this country functions. I think the US will survive as a country. The country has seen worse times and worse presidents. With dictatorships, everything depends on the leader. Some people in Russia say that “Russia is Putin”. And this is not flattery. It’s a statement of an unfortunate fact that one person determines what the country is – the laws, the foreign policy, has unlimited influence on the courts, the lawmakers, and the media. It means that without Putin Russia will become a completely different country or may even cease to exist in its present form.
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… also Turkey, and Syria, and if they’re not careful Hungary and Poland might be on the same path.
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That’s not very reassuring. Germany under Hitler was a country, and it survived that terrible catastrophe as a country. But, the human cost was too high.
What’s important is the effect on people, not whether a nation-state or even a cultural identity remains in existence.
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That’s true.
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Bumper sticker wisdom: Elect a clown, expect a circus
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And so very true 😀
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I would have thought it’d be much, much more pricey.
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Like many markets, the art world has disconnected itself from reason. Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde sold for 9.6 million, meanwhile this extraordinary piece of art (and world) history will sell for a small fraction of that.
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I did a mildly-drunk Pollock drip painting last night… I *think* it’s worth millions 😉
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And we complain about “psychopaths” coming to power today!
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A much better parallel for Trump would be Andrew Jackson.
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Indeed. Andrew Jackson is an excellent parallel. Where I think he aligns well with Mussolini is in the lack of genuine belief in any political ideology. Their loyalty is to populism itself rather than to a cause.
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I guess, both also tend to clownishness, but any analogy with European fascism fails to take into account that the American right is about decentralization of power as much as it is about nationalism. You can’t very well have a decentralized fascist government.
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These Trump supporters aren’t really the American Right anymore. The American Right also believes in small government and Trump has just created Space Force. They also believe in lower deficits and Trump just increased it. The GOP supported institutions like the FBI and the CIA while Trump’s party calls them the corrupt “Deep State”. The old GOP is no more; it’s been taken over by this new group that even the Tea Party can’t relate to. But, many get in line with this shell of the GOP because he’s sticking it to the Liberals. It’s party over country.
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I’d say the more nationalist wing of the right is currently ascendant and that pulled some Jacksonian Democrats with it. But Trump has also done his share of decentralizing: deregulation, lowered taxes and demanded congress take action on things rather than just inventing rules the way Obama and Bush did. Taking the FBI and CIA down a peg is also decentralizing.
But your overall assessment that Trump is changing the GOP into a populist party is correct, things will not be the same.
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But don’t you have the impression the Trump policies only give the impression of the old school conservative agenda? Just lowering taxes, just wrecking institutions (without a plan of what to rebuild) is nothing more than short sighted vandalism.
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Maybe. He seems to be picking some low-hanging fruit right now. I don’t see much of a plan besides pushing for immigration reform and hoping for a revolution in Iran.
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That perception of American conservatism is traditional, widespread, and it is also misleading. The internal Republican Party fissures which had been widening for decades, and which were exposed during the 2010 midterm elections, tell the real story. The GOP has four major ideological factions: 1) its plutocratic establishment, 2) religious fundamentalists, 3) anti-government libertarians, and 4) white nationalists. Only the purely libertarian wing favors government decentralization. The plutocrats oppose federal regulations on business (e.g. labor and environmental rules), but strongly support a federal military and law enforcement. Christian fundies want to abolish secular law and create a federal theocracy. The xenophobic and racist faction want to abolish constitutional and statutory civil rights protections while also strongly supporting the military and police power.
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That all sounds very reasonable except it is mostly fiction. I have never in my life met a Christian theocrat or a white nationalist. I’ve never known a libertarian who was a registered Republican. A few rich people who were Republican, yes.
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I have, and a great many of them too. It’s real, alright.
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Wasn’t Ron Paul a registered Republican? I presume you’re not implying, with a straight face, that Christian theocrats and white nationalists are a myth?
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I forgot about the Pauls, who are not strict libertarians. I can’t think of any libertarians I know personally who are Republicans.
As far as I can tell theocrats and white nationalists are a myth used by lefties to scare children. I’m sure you can find them on the internet and in trailer parks but they are not a serious political force.
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Fascinating. So what was Falwell? What was the Charlottesville march about? How does the anti-gay movement fit into libertarian ideology? Or are the anti-gays just not *real* libertarians?
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An American “Christian theocrat” would be analogous to the throne-and-altar Catholic integralists who still exist in Europe. That is different from a European Catholic who accepts the logic of modern government but wants some sort of recognition of the church and approaches political problems in the natural law tradition, which is pre-Christian. Here in the States the Religious Right was never so much as asking for a confessional state, mostly it was over abortion and you don’t have to be religious to find US abortion laws obscene.
White nationalism is stronger than maybe a generation ago but is generally regarded with suspicion, and I don’t think their real numbers are meaningful. Being against current levels of immigration is often conflated with white nationalism but you find that blacks and Hispanics are against the current immigration status quo because it drives down wages.
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That sounds a bit like sidestepping. Prohibitions, like prop. 8, are about forcing everyone to follow religious rules. In fact that’s true about all restrictive laws. Legalisations, on the other hand, allow people to choose for themselves. Religious groups are almost universally on the side of laws restricting what’s not in line with their ideology, hence theocracy by limitations.
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We seem to be defining theocracy differently. I would define it as rule by religious authorities. In the US I would loosely apply it to someone who wanted the US to be a confessional state, because here it would make no sense, but lots of European nations have state churches and no one calls them theocratic.
A secular government enforcing a religious rule does not strike me as being theocratic, here in Massachusetts we have the Blue Laws which control for example the hours alcohol can be sold on Sunday. No one would call Massachusetts a theocracy.
Thinking a marriage is mostly about producing children and therefore not applicable to homosexuals is not religious. If it were pagan cultures would have it, but they don’t.
All law is about prohibiting something. Law always removes an option, doesn’t it?
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Applying religious regulations and pretending they’re secular is disingenuous. The motivation for anti-gay laws in America was universally religious. Led entirely by religious groups. Funded by religious groups and using religious arguments to justify said position. The pretence it was about reproduction is debunked by the fact there’s no obligation to reproduce in marriage and marriage isn’t restricted to people who cannot reproduce.
Laws to restrict behaviour based on religion are a form of theocracy. Illegalising divorce, prohibiting birth control, restricting access to services based on identity or status – In fact I recall American Evangelicals even supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa using “biblical principles” to defend it.
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Why don’t they have gay marriage in atheist China?
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Because authoritarian regimes place tremendous importance on conformity and obedience. Anything outside the conventional model is rejected.
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But in pre-Mao traditional Chinese culture there was space for homosexuality, why did they never have gay marriage?
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In fact they did. China is one of the places where there are documented variations of historical gay marriage. John Boswell the historian wrote quite a lot about it.
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Interesting, I’ll look it up.
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“Same-sex unions were known in Ancient Greece and Rome,[2] ancient Mesopotamia,[4] in some regions of China, such as Fujian province, and at certain times in ancient European history.[5]
Same-sex marital practices and rituals were more recognized in Mesopotamia than in ancient Egypt. The Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favoring on an equal basis the love of a man for a woman and of a man for man.[6]
In the southern Chinese province of Fujian, through the Ming dynasty period, females would bind themselves in contracts to younger females in elaborate ceremonies.[7] Males also entered similar arrangements. This type of arrangement was also similar in ancient European history.[8]
An example of egalitarian male domestic partnership from the early Zhou Dynasty period of China is recorded in the story of Pan Zhang & Wang Zhongxian. While the relationship was clearly approved by the wider community, and was compared to heterosexual marriage, it did not involve a religious ceremony.”
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Per Wikipedia the Fujian contracts were more analogous to concubinage since 1) the man was renting the boy from his family rather than the boy’s family paying a dowry and 2) the relationships were expected to be temporary and eventually superseded by marriage to a woman.
The other cases mentioned are private matters of the heart, not marriage contracts.
Gay marriage did not exist in human history until five minutes ago. It has nothing to do with the Christian revelation.
If you want to argue that contraceptives and no-fault-divorce have fundamentally transformed the marriage contract from a family-focused institution into a mere convenience for a couple, and that there is now no reason not to extend to homosexuals, I would not disagree.
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That’s a fairly basic error you’re making. You take a post-war Christian definition of marriage and say that unless a union fits that definition it’s not a marriage. That’s bad reasoning from all angles. How about a Nikah mut’ah or Sigheh?
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The general point of marriage in any culture, Christian or not, is the generation and care of children, at least up until the invention of the pill. Things are different now and who knows how they will shake out.
I’m vaguely aware of temporary marriage in Iran, it also just looks like a form of concubinage to me. I’ve heard it is mostly used to get away with prostitution.
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Again, because you’re using as the standard definition the modern Christian version. The same way your definition of concubinage is culture specific. A Chinese concubine, for example, was for all intents and purposes a “wife”.
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But a Chinese (or Roman or whatever) concubine was not a wife, she was considered something different. She had a different role, her children had a different status from that of a wife’s.
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That in no way contradicts my assertion. The concubine had similar status to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th wives in Mormonism. Wives! Status simply implies hierarchy. The same way a first son was the official heir. Second and third sons were still sons nonetheless.
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That depends on who you are. For the aristocracy, it was to create alliances. In some cultures, it’s to make business deals and unite families. Often marriage was more about politics than anything else. In Ancient Greece and Rome women were expected to remain monogamous to their husbands but it was accepted that husbands could rape the slaves or visit with courtesans during symposia. Some of those relationships were gay ones. Greeks were pretty okay with that and the Romans a bit less so because Romans were all about having babies. I’m sure, however, they were fine with it as long as you also made babies with some poor wife who had no fun of her own. Long ago, I decided I’d rather be a vestal virgin. You get good seats at all the games, you are often entrusted with secrets and your only job is to keep the stupid flame lit. Of course, mess that up ans you get killed but better than dying in child birth and knitting stupid sweaters all day long.
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The political aspect is still based on making babies: uniting bloodlines and properties in the next generation.
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No. You’re making that interpretation. The “political aspect” is based on creating stable units that make a positive contribution to society. That’s what is in the interest of society as a whole. A married gay couple of entrepreneurs who support their extended family and, for example, have a company together that employs twenty or thirty people are doing more for society than a married heterosexual couple who has 10 children they can’t support or educate and who become a drain on the resources of their community. This idea that birthing is the only contribution couples make to society is pure religious claptrap.
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“This idea that birthing is the only contribution couples make to society is pure religious claptrap.”
That is not what I said.
I observed that marriage was always a contract for the production of children… up until about 50 years ago anyway when it started to become something else.
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That’s the logical progression of your argument. Because if marriage can be for other reasons then your argument is moot.
And I have to correct you on your understanding of the institution – as it was only in the middle ages that marriage was “generalised” – meaning before then marriage contracts and marriages officiated by the church were almost exclusively for people who owned property. This is the same period when confession becomes obligatory in the Catholic church. With the spread of Protestantism the Vatican looks for more and more ways to tie the general population to the faith, so confession and marriage become major factors in that campaign.
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A person might have motives other than having children for entering a marriage, but that does not change the form of the contract. Even in a polygamous culture the understanding is to produce heirs.
In the ancient church there was no separate rite of marriage, a man and woman permanently living together and faithful to one another were considered married in the church. The reason being that slaves were a large part of the congregation and they could not legally contract a marriage.
What was considered unacceptable was a young man living with a concubine, because the expectation was that the relationship was temporary, such a man could not be baptized, as was the case with Augustine. But an older man, say a widower who already had legitimate children, could have a concubine because he had no motive to get rid of her. Even a freeman and his slave girl would be considered married in the church if there was an expectation of permanence. They might not produce legal heir but they can have a Christian family.
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Again, you start with a religious conclusion and then try to hammer facts to make that fit. The marriage contract doesn’t change depending on the gender of who signs it, the rights and obligations are exactly the same. In fact many countries didn’t have to even change marriage forms when gay marriages were introduced. You’re playing word games again. You can’t say just living together is a marriage and at the same time that marriage is some sort of sacred contract to protect children.
An unbiased analysis starts with a question, which in this case is: If there’s a government endorsed contract citizens can sign that will have benefits for the individual and society as a whole, which citizens should have access to it?
The answer is obvious. As many as the government can get to partake.
Your argument is essentially that if nitrous oxide was discovered in a study looking for ways to treat consumption, it can’t be used for anything else. That’s absolutely ridiculous. And it’s based neither in logic nor reason but in loyalty to *religious dogma*. And not only that, but these arguments are based on lies, half truths, and straight out deception. When people say the problem is the “word” marriage, and they opposed civil unions – that means the problem was never the “word” marriage.
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Wow, Pink’s response to your perspective as “sidestepping” might be an understatement. Ron Paul was the GOP’s libertarian champion in Congress for decades, and even named his son after Ayn Rand whose writings inspired such infamous libertarians as the Cold War era John Birch Society membership and today’s Koch brothers whom were all vigorously active in the Republican Party.
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Maybe you know more than me about the Pauls. Though they are also pro-life, which is not a libertarian position. Maybe Peter Theil would be a better example of a libertarian Republican?
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The four Republican factions I spoke of earlier describe the party’s ideological composition. No person is 100% libertarian (or anything else, for that matter) at the exclusion of other ideologies. We are all individually a unique mix of various beliefs. The Pauls are strongly libertarian on the issues of government, economics, and war; but, they lean towards religion on social issues (partly, at least, for electability reasons).
I don’t know much about Peter Theil other than he is a billionaire and founder of PayPal.
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The current method of debate coming from certain factions of the right (and I believe popularised by the alt-right) is to create the impression of reasonable doubt. This is done as if it proved an alternative theory, even when there’s no evidence for the alternative theory.
You say water boils at 100 °C, they say “A-HA, at 2000 metres water boils at 93.4 °C” as if that disproved your statement. I give that as a generous example because usually the format is much more simplistic e.g. Obama’s election is proof there’s no racism in America. Oprah Winfrey’s fortune is evidence there’s no gender pay gap etc. etc.
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Indeed. I learned of those basic tactics in college when I studied debate and rhetoric, so it’s nothing new. What is new (and dangerous), however, is the mainstreaming of radical ideologies within the Republican Party. They’ve pushed the political envelope so far that objective reality is simply ignored and supplanted with subjective perspective – hence, the alternative “facts” of the Alt-Right.
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Sensible enough about the mixing.
But your Christian theocrats and white nationalists don’t exist in any appreciable numbers as you described them.
Though the white nationalists do seem to be growing.
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That depends on your definitions. When swathes of people buy into the notion that Mexicans are rapists & murderers and Muslims in NY were cheering on 9/11 it’s implicit that whites are superior. When immigrants are equated to criminals, that implies value and morality based on birthplace, which is in itself another form of supremacist ideology.
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It is the growing influence of these ideologies which is important. How individual people self-identify is not all that relevant.
From: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/year-hate-and-extremism
From Wikipedia – Dominion Theory:
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From the very moment the religious attempt to enforce prohibitions using the law, they’re attempting dominionism – because they don’t need the law to practice they’re beliefs. They’re free to not get gay married, free to not have abortions, free to not drink alcohol and not smoke marijuana, even free to not look at porn. But they’re not looking for freedom to practice their religion, they want to dominate society by imposing the tenets of their religions on everyone else.
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Exactly. And, dominionism is the logical result of their beliefs. If one accepts “God” as the highest authority, and accepts that “His” will is both sacrosanct and inviolable, then one must also subordinate secular government and law.
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Extremely well said. I’m gonna copy and paste this for later use.
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Rushdoony, Jesus, nobody reads the guy. Its like Republicans obsessing over Saul Alinsky while Democrats never heard of him.
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“From the very moment the religious attempt to enforce prohibitions using the law, they’re attempting dominionism – because they don’t need the law to practice they’re beliefs. They’re free to not get gay married, free to not have abortions, free to not drink alcohol and not smoke marijuana, even free to not look at porn. But they’re not looking for freedom to practice their religion, they want to dominate society by imposing the tenets of their religions on everyone else through enforced prohibitions.”
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Again, thinking gay marriage is self contradictory or that abortion is perverse has nothing to do with being religious.
Now aside from a few experiments like Calvin’s Geneva the understanding in Christian nations has always been that the civil law is a practical reflection of the moral law but not identical to it. Something being sinful does not mean it should be illegal, that is a practical question. Likewise something might be illegal that is not per se sinful. But the civil law should not contradict moral law, and hopefully promotes it, but no one expects them to be the same thing.
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It has everything to do with being religious if religion is the causal factor, which it evidently is.
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That article by Clive Irving scared me half to death. Do we never learn?
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The problem is only some of us do
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Tell me about it. Most people think that history is just one of those boring things you’re forced to learn at school – dusty books, dusty dates. So few realise that ‘history’ began as cautionary tales told around the camp fire as our distant ancestors struggled to survive. Now those cautionary tales fall on deaf ears. 😦
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I’m making a bust of Trump and painting it orange. I’ll bet I can get a cool million from one of his wealthy followers for it. They worship the guy. Though most of his followers aren’t millionaires. Hell, maybe Paul Ryan will buy it if I include a rectum on the bottom of it for him to kiss.
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That’s what my husband says, ppl note the resemblance in Trump’s autocracy to Hitler but my husband always says, “No Benito Mussolini.”
We must resist. We must keep resisting. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini could have accomplished their terror if it weren’t for the masses and masses of people who supported them. Fear is a very powerful motivator, and Trump is convincing people to fear immigrants. To blame immigrants for their own shitty life. “Lügenpresse,” lying press in German, Hitler convinced the people to not believe the press, that is exactly what Trump does and it is scary.
We have seen this before, people buy into this narrative, and Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon are smiling, smirking, reveling in what they have created. I have hope that we will survive Trump, but I cannot say I am sure we will. I do think it is an open question right now.
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And the best time to resist is now. Resistance is most effective in the beginning when everyone still has rights. It gets much harder as time goes one. If the American economy falters I think more will resist, but right now things are good. Americans should be walking out of their jobs and protesting in the streets but it’s a lot harder to do when you have a decent job. If things are shitty for some now, just wait until it gets worse! But it may be too late by then. I am just hoping he doesn’t hit Canada with the 25% car tariff. It will be nothing to the US (a bit of an inconvenience) but it will destroy Canada’s economy, putting us into a long recession if not a depression. I’m actually preparing for job loss.
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I think the negative economic effects of his policies are going to be felt quite soon. The thing with his tariffs is he’s not just targeting Canada. It’s Europe, China, Mexico – everyone, so there’s no way it won’t boomerang back and hit Americans in the teeth. And that’ll mean he’ll be out in 930 something days 😀
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Oh it will affect Americans but the ones that support him won’t change their minds. They’ll blame someone or something else. Even in Canada, I see the opposition party blaming Trudeau for the tarriffs as if he had anything to do with it. He probably kept Trump at bay for as long as he could. Someone even commented on an article, that the Trudeau government insisted on having female CEOs and that provoked Trump into a trade war, They’ll always find something and if they can squeeze it in, they’ll throw in some bigotry as well.
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Looks like Mark ZorkerBorg – even fits his arrogant megalomaniac attitude.
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Wasn’t this story used in Gladiator? I have yet to delve into Ancient history. I am stuck most times between 1492 and 1665 and that was violent enough but I think Italy wins the medal for producing so many deranged rulers.
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Commodus was the emperor in Gladiator played by Joaquin Phoenix. Not sure if this is true, but I’ve read somewhere that our modern use of the word commode comes from Commodus’ name. Apparently, his unpopularity among the elites made them name toilets after him.
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Toilet humour never dates does it.
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No, but sometimes the jokes kinda stink. 🙂
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Sorry to be a wet blanket, but “commode” comes into English via French which got it from Latin where it means “suitable” among other things: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commodus
I also question some of the descriptions of Commodus by Christie’s but I do like the bust because it shows some of the features that become popular in the later empire, in particular the drilled out eyes. The 6ft head of Constatine looks that way and I had loads of laughter saying it had fish eyes and that the head was going to say, “Don’t call me fish eyes, white girl!” which I translated into Latin: “non me ‘ranae oculis’ appellare puella pallida”. My Latin my be rusty these days but back then I’m sure it was spot on!
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Christie’s (and nearly everyone else in this business) has a tendency to use carefully selected language and phrasing to create a buzz and generate interest. I think it’s Sotheby’s whose selling this month “The first vase Marie Antoinette ever loved” or some other description along those lines 😉
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Like I mentioned, I wasn’t sure if the story was true. Now we know: it’s not. However, the word “lasagna” was first created by Henry the 8th. He was eating a piece of cheese cake which made his mouth very dry. When Anne Boleyn asked him what he wanted to eat after the cheese cake he said, with a very dry, full mouth, “MM..laa..ss..ga..naaa!” Not really sure what he meant by this, and not wanting to upset him, as he was very temperamental, Anne slapped together some flat noodles, cheese, and pasta sauce, cooked it for an hour or so, and served it to the King. “Damn, babe,” he exclaimed after eating it. “That was wonderful. What’s it called?” “Oh, uh. ummm. lasagna! Glad you liked it,” Anne replied. And thus, the first lasagna was served. 🙂
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LOL 😀
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Hmmm…who does Commodus remind me of? Hmmm
… History repeats itself when the populace is too ignorant to realize it. 😔
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Which evidently is very very often
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