Livy – Page 2 – Lee Duigon

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If you know me, you know I don’t have much patience for conspiracy theories. I really don’t think John Kerry and Jimmy Carter are smart enough to fix a Monopoly game, much less micromanage everything that happens, or seems to happen, in the world.

Nevertheless, I must concede there are such things as criminal conspiracies; and one of the gaudiest and most ambitious of them was suppressed by the Roman Senate in 186 B.C. We know about it from the massive Roman history written by Livy during the reign of Augustus Caesar, and from a surviving decree by the Senate officially suppressing this conspiracy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_de_Bacchanalibus )–whose name has come down to us as “the Bacchic cult,” or “the Bacchic conspiracy.”

Essentially it was a blackmail ring. The ancient worship of Bacchus, or Dionysus, was famous for its wild orgies. The Romans in those days were a bit too strait-laced to tolerate that; nevertheless, the cult of Bacchus was imported into Rome via southern Italy. Once established in the city, it soon mutated into a rather horrible criminal enterprise.

It worked by enticing young Romans from important families into the Bacchic rites, where they would be encouraged in behavior that could get them banished or even put to death. That gave the cult a hold over you, and you had to do whatever they told you to do–including murder, theft, forgery, etc. More importantly, you had to suck other rich young Romans into the cult: so it was a kind of pyramid scheme, too.

The Senate feared that, beyond debauching Roman society and enriching itself, the cult aimed ultimately at taking control of the state. The Senate passed a decree outlawing the cult and took very vigorous measures to wipe it out. According to Livy, there were more executions than banishments: he doesn’t say exactly how many, but historians believe it must have run into the thousands.

We are free to speculate as to what would have happened, had the cult been able to recruit leading members of the Senate. Probably they tried. But the whole business failed when it was publicly exposed and Roman society violently rejected it.

The question that must be asked is this: If the same thing were being done here and now, today in America, would it be rejected and suppressed–or would it parade its vices openly, with the blessings of the Supreme Court and the Democrat Party?

I had occasion yesterday to consult “Biblical scholars.” But as usual, I found their company to be annoying–because most of them seem not to believe hardly a single word the Bible says. They (most of them) would have us believe that virtually the whole Old Testament is fiction, cooked up by Jewish priests looking to wile away the years of captivity in Babylon by spinning tall tales.

I like to think that I know something about writing fiction. I’ve been doing it for almost all my life. And reading a lot of it, too. Not to mention history produced by Greeks and Romans, Britons, Scandinavian peoples, and others.

The great medieval Icelandic historian, Snorri Sturlusson, said he trusted his sources–royal poets, most of them–because, had they praised the kings who employed them with stories and boasts that people knew were not true, they would only win for their kings mockery, not praise. I take that to be always true. People have always laughed at empty boasts.

So not only would those fictioneering Jewish priests have exposed themselves to ridicule–but why would they take their two greatest kings, David and Solomon, and describe how those kings fell into sin and folly, and brought evil on their country? No Roman historian–and Roman historians, like Livy, are always, always accused to making their subjects look much better than they were–would have dreamed of writing such a thing.

The practice of tearing down the great and famous men of the past never came into general use until late in the 19th century. There could have been no reason whatsoever for Biblical chroniclers to show Solomon, wise King Solomon, indulging in foolish behavior that ruined his kingdom.

They would not have written that unless it were true and everyone knew it to be true. Ditto David and some of his more egregious mis-steps.

This, of course, is a vast subject and I have only scraped its surface here. But if scholars are going to accuse the Bible writers of spinning yarns, they would do well to acquire some slight understanding of fiction.