Hi TimR,
Great comments and food for thought.
Berman's general thesis, from what I gather from you, seems to resonate with what was expressed by such as Polybius and Cicero (see below) before the supposed time of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, before the 'modern emancipation' of the serfs and the Jews in Europe perhaps we were always dealing in a vacuum of general ignorance by the general populace, at least. Where it was assumed, or preferred(?), or just part of the vector of general human societal advancement, that the common man must be kept slavishly busy producing titheable products for his respective 'lords' benefit. This idea, IMHO, seems somewhat belied by such as the modern pride of many 'modern' agrarian communities where they take (or took - in the case of Iowans for instance, now infected by anti-intellectual fundamentalsim) justified great pride in intellectual advancement. And as d'Toqueville (or was that Jefferson?), I think, suggested that it would take an informed public to make a democracy work in the long term, then who all is responsible for the dumbing down of such?
From Polybius, a 2nd century BCE Greek student of Roman institutions:
My own opinion at least is that the Romans have adopted this course of propagating religious awe for the sake of the common people. It is a course which perhaps would not have necessary had it been possible to form a state composed of wise men, but as every multitude is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger, the multitude must be held by invisible terrors and such like pageantry. For this reason, I think, not that the ancients acted rashly and at haphazard in introducing among the people notions concerning the gods and beliefs in the terrors of hell, but that the moderns are most rash and foolish in banishing such beliefs. (6.56.9) from translation of W. R. Paton, LCL
Another member here recently turned us on to Mathis, and maybe you have seen his theory about a trully shadow government of fake assassinated American elites (from his JFK analysis)? One might then see an elite motive for doing so in alignment with such as Cicero's feelings, where BTW, he expresses, like Plato, long before him the need for one master and ruler - god, who first was Augustus, and then the Flavians further veiled the 'divine' Caesars (and then the papacy) by using the fictive Jesus. With Mathis's shadow government then the people can go on with their wedge politics thinking they are running the show, but really our true leadership is pulling the strings behind a ghostly veil of Oz.
From Moses Hadas's
Hellenistic Culture pp. 284,285:
If
mos majorum conferred such authority on office-holders, it clothed law with a more definitely religious sanction. Republican Romans thought democracy of the Athenian type frivolity and never tired of praising the disciplined responsibility of Roman citizenship as against
the individualistic and politically irresponsible Greeks. Cicero, for example, writes (
Republic 1.53):
"When equal honor is given to the highest and lowest--for men of both types must exist in every nation--then this very 'fairness' is most unfair; but this cannot happen in a state ruled by its upper class." But Cicero also provides the innate Roman reverence for law with a philosophic rationale which is more explicitly religious. When he speaks of the
natural authority implicit in law, as he repeatedly does, he is plainly echoing Stoic theory. To the Stoics, it must be remembered, Zeus and nature are virtually interchangeable terms, and if the law carries the authority of nature its sanction is in effect religious. A passage like the following from the
Republic (3.22) gives the position:
The law is right reason in agreement with nature, it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed of its obligations by senate of people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, god, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator and its enforcing judge.28
Law, then, is universally binding, its source is deity, and transgression is sin. All that was left to do was to substitute Rome for the universe and make Augustus the authorized representative of deity, and this, as we have seen in the chapter preceding, is what Augustan propaganda actually did, by showing that the Romans were an elect and Augustus their divinely designated leader, by linking Rome and Augustus as objects of worship, and by making the Roman's highest duty service to the ideal of Rome.
Elsewhere Hadas reveals a letter from Cicero to his brother discussing the merits of Epicurius points about the gods being fakeries, and then years later lying that he ever new anything about Epicurius.
One also has to remember that even Greek democracy was for the elites, just as the American one was intended, i.e. white males with sufficient property. Land is what the basis of aristocracy is. So nothing is said about the respective 'irresponsible' state of the
hoi polloi like the Spartans enslaved Greek helots. The Spartans were widely admired even by the Jews, of which Hadas has much to say regarding the latter's role in our narratives.
