Shadi Bartsch: evaluation

Transcript context

…From reading the Romans, what might we learn about the psychology of power that we don’t already know? The psychology of power. Well, I think the way the Romans brought their religion into the psychology of power was fascinating and perhaps a bit alien to us. Roman religion — religiō — actually represented a kind of binding contract between the gods and the mortals. It was very much a quid-pro-quo relationship. “I’ll give you X. You’ll give me Y. I will sacrifice 10 cows for you, and take the auspices, and consult with you while I’m doing this about whether or not we should invade Spain. ” The idea is, if the sacrifices are done correctly, and the auspices are good, what we’re doing in invading Spain is a just war because the gods have allowed it to happen, and they’ve nodded at it. So, every time before the Romans went to war, they would make sure that they were told by the gods that it was a just war, so that they could proceed with impunity. If the omens they got after the sacrifices — when they opened the animals up — were bad omens, instead of saying, “Oops, we better not invade Spain after all,” they would simply do the procedure again until they got the answer they wanted. I think that’s a pretty interesting way of tying religion to your political bandwagon. There’s also a famous story about a Roman general at a sea battle, who had sacred chicken on his boat. He threw grain to the sacred chicken, and how the chicken ate the grain was supposed to be either a good omen or a bad omen as to the upcoming naval battle, but the chickens refused to eat anything. He lost his temper and he shouted, “If you won’t eat, then maybe you’ll drink.” He threw them all overboard, and he lost the naval battle, of course. When reading Seneca, how is it that brings out something of the performative and perhaps also hypocritical elements in stoicism? And are those essential to stoicism? Or is it just that Seneca ultimately was a deviant from his own philosophy?…

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