Headline, August14, 2013

''' !! YOU DA MAN !! HOW MUCH $ $ $

 COMING TOMORROW?? '''

The very Headline captures the spirit of public service not only in the late Roman Empire  -but since those very times, and ever later, the world over.

History at times, documents just so very well. and great lessons follow but only to be lost to the world. By the thousands, and over all these many years,  you all asked, I now set out, heavy at heart, to  ''Tale'' it for you:

A little more than 50 years ago, the great Oxford Historian Geoffrey de Ste, Croix,  a radical thinker and formidable classicist,  decided to take a close look at the change in the connotation over five centuries of the Latin word ''suffragium,''  which originally meant ''voting tablet''  or ''ballot.'' This change, he concluded, illustrated something fundamental about Roman Society and its ''inner political evolution.''

The original meaning went back to the days of the Roman Republic, which had possessed modest elements of democracy. The citizens of Rome, by means of the suffragium, could exercise their influence by electing people to certain offices. In practice, the great men of Rome controlled large blocks of votes, corresponding to their patronage networks. Over time, Rome's republican forms of government calcified into empty ritual or withered away entirely.

Suffragium meaning  'ballot'' no longer served any real political function. But the web of patrons and clients was still the Roman system's substructure, and in this context suffragium came to mean the pressure that could be exerted on one's behalf by a powerful man, whether to obtain a job or to influence a court case or to secure a contract. To ask a patron for this form of intervention and to exert suffragium on behalf of a client would have been a routine social interaction.

Now stir large amount of money into this system. It is not a great conceptual distance, Ste, Croix observes, to move from the idea of exercising suffragium because of an age old sense of reciprocal duty to that of exercising it because doing so could be lucrative. And this, indeed, is where the future lies, the idea of quid pro quo eventually becoming so accepted and ingrained that emperors stop trying to halt the practice and seek to contain it by codifying it.

Thus, in the fourth century, decrees are promulgated to ensure that the person seeking the quid actually delivers the quo. Before long, suffragium has changed its meaning once again. Now it refers not to the influence brought to bear but to the money being paid for it : a gift, payment or bribe. By empire's end, all public transactions require the payment of money, and the pursuit of money and personal advancement has become the purpose of all public jobs.

The arc traced by suffragium covers not just the political history of Rome but its social and military history. It goes to the heart of the question that is only just starting to be asked the world over. Where is the boundary between public good and private advantage, between ''ours''  and ''mine'' ? From this question others follow: What happens when public and private interests are not aligned?

Which outsiders, if any, should be allowed to put there hands on the machinery of government? How can governments exert collective power if the levers are winched and cogs lie increasingly outside public control? The phenomenon with which all these questions intersect was called the ''privatization of power,'' or  sometimes just ''privatization'' by the historian Ramsay MacMullen in his classic study:

''Corruption and the Decline of Rome.'' 

The Post continues. Hope to have all of you share it forward with the whole world.

With respectful dedication to the ''Chief Justices Of The World!''

Lets have the Honour to have you all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : '''Stimulating-Beautiful-Full Of Light''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless