Why was the Roman Senate unable to reestablish their ancient constitutional power after the initial fall of the...

This

A lot of Romes problems can be traced back to land reforms regarding soldiers, and that mainly starts with the gracci brothers attempts at reforms

No one in the senate was willing or able to resolve the land issue, and of you're a senator it's in your best interest to have a despot keeping the plebs busy with bread and games and wine and war

...

After Sula there were alot of brave, opinionated and dead senators. It's hard to have balls when everyone with them became prescription as fuck

I hate the senate as much as you do. It may have been a practically useful institution in the beginning but after the second Punic war it's influence took a decidedly negative turn

Keep telling yourself that, pleb.

The gracci dindu nuffin wrong, the retarded economic system of the early republic lead to the army not expanding as the state did so the establishment of a professional army was unavoidable

Because the senate was basically retarded.
>Cato supports the virtues of the roman agrarian society, farms owned by free men and such.
>Proceeds to write a book on how to exploit big farms with slave labour, bankrupting the small roman landowner.
>Hurr durr muh roman virtues.
>Chimp out.
>Gets BTFO by based Caesar.
>Kills himself by taking his own guts out.
>Caesar mokcs this in his triumph.
The senate was run by short sighted idiots.

fugggg :DDDDD got both catos mixed up.

>tfw Cicero was the only good and intelligent Senator worth mentioning

The Senate became little more than an elite clubhouse for aristos to circlejerk each other and their hurritage for endless hours. This continued basically unabated until the end of Byzantium.

It didn't help that muh neoplatonism was in vogue at the time and many elite in Roman society saw Plato's philosopher king in Augustus. By the time the downsides of absolute power made itself known, the last generation that still gave a shit about republicanism was dying out. Tacitus would remark about this a fair amount.

>Because they didn't want it.

This.

Greed.

It was easier to just pick a side and be a boot licker than it was to be accountable for your own decisions.

Same shit's going on today with the fight between the "left" and the "right" in most western democracies.

the definite turning point in which Rome's Senatorial institution was corrupted beyond salvation was the Jugurthine war IMO.

that guy was a fucking snake.

>Same shit's going on today with the fight between the "left" and the "right" in most western democracies.

Honestly, Roman history has never been more relevant to learn from. If we could just fucking collectively fucking get into it as a society a lot of our current problems would have a context.

Rome had ceased to be a functioning republic long before Caesar. You really think one guy proclaiming himself dictator for life, however popular he was, would be enough to undo centuries of tradition? They had undone it themselves through generations of corruption and nepotism. Octavius let the patricians remain convinced they still held the power by allowing the Senate to continue on, granting them nominal authority even as he fully usurped the reins of power for himself.

You seem to have conflated Cato the Censor and Cato Uticensis.

Roman names... what's up with that?

Would largely agree -- note that after Caesar the Dictator was assassinated, the Republic brie3fly went back to functioning more-or-less as it had before. It quickly unraveled in another round of warlords fighting it out, but for one moment ol' Cicero seemed like he might pull it off and save the day for fans of the Republic.

One quibble -- Octavius did not do all that, as that was no longer his name. After his testamentary adoption by the Dictator, he was also Gaius Julius Caesar (I'd argue that even using Octavianus is incorrect. since HE never took that as part of his name, though it was applied to him by his opponents.) Use of some form of Octavius for him after the assassination saves some confusion, but suffers the drawback of being incorrect.

>If we could just fucking collectively fucking get into it as a society

"We" never learn from history, user.

Individuals may, but "people"? Never.

Give it a whole year in high school to Rome and Rome alone. Or fuck, change it from history to civics as another subject. Just find a way to tell people this has all happened before.

sadly this is a role big blockbuster hollywood movies could play, nobody gave a fuck about Spartans before 300, now you see roided douchebags with tattoos of Corinthian helmets.

We don't learn from our own history, let alone Roman history.

See: unchecked immigration

I realized it after posting ( ) still, they defended similar ideals and the argument is still valid.

such is the dangers of thinking Man as the collective

How much is a consequence of the fact that Rome was basically still ruled, despite its power, like a smallish city state? Or is this a meme?

Just a reminder that in the 5th century AD the Senate regained its power and significance, albeit unofficially.

I saw that movie the other day. It was weird. Really, really weird.

The praetorian guard decided to put Caligula's uncle in power, but the senate did attempt to restore the republic.

mostly due to the fact that the Praetorian guards were basically secret police for the emperor and them and the army both thought of "Senate back in power" and went "fuck no"

More or less, by this time the senate had grown more complacent. They very swiftly falling from a governing body to a social status.
Claudius was put into power within about 48 hours of Caligula's death; the senate didnt have a ton of time to act. Nor did they have the power to. The Praetorian guard were probably (after the emperor) the second most powerful institution in Rome, and in fact were only instituting Claudius as emperor because they thought they could control him.

The Julio Claudians past Augustus were disasters. It is true that the senate had grown lazy, and didnt really want power any more, but the ending years of Tiberius' reign and those of Caligula were under no circumstances safer or easier than Republican government.

exactly as you think they couldn't manage shit so the emperors took the management away from them.

hope the small gov'tfags take note that small governments cannot into managing of big empires

was Claudius really that bad?

No but he wasn't good. he was so-so.

>The Praetorian guard were probably (after the emperor) the second most powerful institution in Rome,
I strongly disagree.

The power of Rome after the Marian reforms has always lain within the one institution that set the intra-Roman powerbase for all the following emperors: the legions. Who was able to control the legion, controled the Empire. The Praetorian Guard only played a role for the short time around Sejanus, due to the power vacuum left by Tiberius not doing anything. That they were successful in crowning Claudius is less an expression of their power and more one of the fact that Claudius was accepted as legitimate by the legion commanders.

>Tiberius offered power to the Senate but they wouldn't take it,
He didn't actually do that. The offering of power was a carefully planned act of political theatre for legitimizing oneself, which Tiberius repeated after Augustus did exactly the same as to not appear as a tyrant.

The message of him being thrust upon the "burdens of emperorship", despite claiming that one doesn't even want emperorship, rather than him, in the fashion of Sulla, seizing power with an army, was a powerful way to act like one isn't a tyrant.

It was also necessary to have this sort of introductory ritual in a pro-forma republic, which cannot officially nominate a successor like an open autocracy or monarchy.

>Roman names... what's up with that?
I like Roman names. They are very structured and information-dense. They're tripartite as follows:

A praenomen: the name for the individual person ("Quintus", i.e. the fifth son)
The nomen gentilicium (or just "nomen", because it was considered to be the most important part): the name of the gens [clan/house/tribe] ("Iulius", i.e. someone of the Iulii)
A cognomen: special traits (titles they held or feats they committed, habits, places they've been to, or peculiar bodily or mental features of them, etc.; e.g. "Africanus", i.e. conqueror of Africa, or "Censor", i.e. someone who held the prestigious position of censor, or "Minor", i.e. small one, to distinguish onee-chan Rufia from imouto Rufia)

As for why they are so often the same within close generations: This is due to ancestor worship. Taking the name of your father or an earlier ancestor was a signal that you continue their legacy and that you have the same qualities as them.

Couple that then with the low number of personal names, it creates really funny situations were great-great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son are all called "Quintus".

Claudius was the most capable of the Julio-Claudians save Augustus. He was not an effective diplomat and this hurt his reputation in later writer's eyes.