Damon said: > WHen Alexander died he had no formal rules of > succession in place. It was only natural for his > empire to fragment into lesser factions for all that > had a legitimate claim. Similarly, the Roman Empire > had no formal rules of succession (beyond designation > by the living emperor of whom he wanted to succeed > him). Combine that with Imperial pandering to the > military, and you have a situation ripe for civil war.
I thought that Alberto was talking about the situation in the first century BC before the Principate was formed (the conquest of the Mediterranean being essentially complete by the time Octavian became Augustus). Then, there was a perfectly clear set of formal rules for deciding who should be the next consuls, praetors and so on, especially after the cursus honorum had been formalised by the Sullan constitution. (What the late Republic lacked was any way of adequately discharging soldiers and providing for their later civilian lives. It's probably a bad idea to make them dependent on their generals and not the state for this!) Rich _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
