For duties, see King Vanimen.
And another responsibility is added in the following paragraph. He is:
"...expected to be hospitable and openhanded..." (p. 28)
His rewards, before the destruction of their city, were:
to live in a hall instead of a simple home;
to have his needs provided when he did not want to hunt;
to receive splendid gifts;
to be highly respected by an otherwise irreverent tribe.
Only the fourth reward remains.
He does not seem to have had any counsellors.
In the Bible, the people of Israel want a king to be like other nations even though they are warned that he will exploit them. In CS Lewis' A Preface To Paradise Lost and Perelandra, kingship is inherent in the first unFallen man whereas, in Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, Aslan institutes human kingship of Narnia only because a human being has introduced evil into that newly created world. In this case, kingship is a stopgap measure.
Those of us who are republicans have to regard kingship as an earlier way of doing things. The Romans were the first to depose a king and establish a republic. We have a long tradition with ancient precedents.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I am indifferent to fussing about forms of gov't. What truly matters is whether the State, in no matter what form, is believed by its people to be legitimate.
And most real world republics are pretty ghastly, btw. And most monarchies are not that bad. Or even good.
Ad astra! Sean
Disagree.
Kaor, Paul!
The coup prone republics of Latin America or the corrupt and brutal republics of Africa, or the utterly nasty People's Republic of China, etc., contradicts your hopes.
Ad astra! Sean
They do not.
Sean:
Most countries that are *called* republics don't really qualify for the term, while many of the monarchies of the world eg: the UK look more like "crowned republics" than anything else.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: They do.
Jim: No, the error you are making is thinking a "republic" is somehow morally better than all other forms of gov't, when in fact that is all it is, a mere form of gov't which can be either bad or not, depending on many factors. The prime reason for why all forms of gov't are flawed is because of us, we are all of us flawed, imperfect, and often prone to strife and violence and folly.
If you read either Thucydides HISTORY OF THE PELPONNESIAN WAR or JB Bury's HISTORY OF GREECE you can't help but noticed how often the Greek republics were corrupt, torn by often violent factional strife, or at war with one another. It ended first with the Greek states actually appealing to the Persian King of Kings to arbitrate their quarrels--which must have given the Persians a good deal of sardonic amusement!
Secondly, the rise of Macedonia under King Philip and his son Alexander the Great had the Greek republics falling Macedonian domination. And, even if that did not last long, the Greek republics became more and more powerless, esp. after Rome began its own rise to far more long lasting power.
Again, no, if constitutional monarchies like the UK (and Canada!), Belgium, Japan, Spain, etc., insist on calling themselves monarchies, that is what they are. Many monarchies in Medieval Europe began as very limited in their powers, after all. Anderson discussed this in essays like "Thud and Blunder."
Ad astra! Sean
They do not.
We are not prone to strife and violence. I have often replied on how violence results from social conditions that can be prevented in future.
The British monarchy hoards a great deal of wealth which could be put to better use.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe you or your arguments. Your opinions don't fit the facts of real life, real history, real human beings. I don't believe in your "conditions." And neither did Anderson or Stirling. We are prone to strife and violence because of our innate flaws and weaknesses.
Again, no, what you said about the Crown Estate. Because I don't trust politicians and bureaucrats to handle large sums of money wisely.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I don't trust kings or princes to handle large sums of money wisely. You know I don't want bureaucrats.
My "conditions" are simply that there is no cause or reason for violence between my neighbour and me here and now. Neither of us lacks food while the other hoards it. Nor is there any other reason for either of us to attack the other. So we don't. Many people live peacefully in this way all the time. More can do so, can be housed in neighbourhoods like this. There is nothing mysterious about it. Whatever innate flaws and weaknesses either of us may have do not make us prone to strife or violence. You speak in vague generalities instead of in specific examples.
Paul.
This is real life, human beings. History is full of earlier conditions. And there are still bad conditions. The Western economy wants oil so there is horrific conflict in the Middle East, not because of the innate flaws or weaknesses of the people living there.
real human beings.
Kaor, Paul!
My point is that in the limited state, in no matter what form, power is distributed, no single person or group has all the power. That is why I am not entirely happy about how much power the House of Commons has in the UK.
I don't believe your arguments about yourself or your neighbor--because you cannot speak for everybody else or future generations. It is not wise to assume they will be like you. And the only reason you have peace is because the State exists to cow those who don't want to be peaceful. Moreover, you overlook those who will compete for status and power.
My views are more realistic than yours, based on the hard facts of real life and real history.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I do not defend the present British political system.
I am not generalizing from the single instance of my neighbour and myself. I am using us as a typical example of millions of other people living in peaceful conditions. Are future generations likely to include entire populations living in peaceful conditions and yet attacking their neighbours for no reason and under no provocation? Human nature is not like that.
I have not overlooked status and power but have replied about them repeatedly. I do think that at this stage we should start to avoid repetition.
My views are more realistic than yours, based on the hard facts of real life. The future will be different from past history.
You always try to sign off by effectively claiming that you are right and I am wrong. That will not do as a way to conduct an argument.
Paul.
Sean "the error you are making is thinking a "republic" is somehow morally better than all other forms of gov't"
Latin "res publicus" concern of the people.
If one person or a small number of people are the only ones who have a voice in government, then the country is not a republic. You *can* have an oligarchic republic in which only a minority of the people living in the region are considered part of the people who properly have a voice in government.
This definition does not mean "the people" will always make good decisions, it just means that if a Stalin makes all the decisions in a nominal 'republic', it isn't actually a republic.
In principle a 'benevolent dictator or king' *might* run things better than a truly democratic republic. So I am not saying a republic is morally better, I'm just saying there are objective criteria for saying how republican or democratic a government is.
Kaor, Jim!
No, "res publica" simply means "the State," which is how it is used in Stirling's Antonine Rome books.
Exactly, you unwittingly touched on an important point, most republics were or are oligarchies. The ancient Greek and Medieval Italian republics set rigid limits on who could be citizens, meaning only a very limited number had the franchise or were allowed to hold offices. The Greek republics were esp. notorious on how narrowly they limited citizenship. Just for starters a citizen had to be the child of freeborn Athenian citizen parents to be a citizen himself. And I'm sure there wee other qualifications as well. In the Florentine republic of Dante's lifetime citizens had to be members of certain guilds to qualify for public office. And the Venetian republic would not allow, just to start with, any immigrant to become a citizen who had not continuously resided in Venice for 25 years. And so on and on in both classical and medieval republics.
Which means I do not agree with your too narrow and unhistorical definition of "republic." But I do agree the hideous USSR Lenin set up was was not even an oligarchical republic, just a totalitarian one party despotism. I also agree there can be objective criteria for defining whether a particular state, whatever its form, can be called democratic, or better, simply a limited state.
Ad astra! Sean
Technically, "res publica" means "public things" -- things the government is concerned with, like peace and war.
Athenian citizenship in the democratic period was not limited by property, only by ancestry -- both parents had to be Athenian, and the public assembly could waive that requirement but did it very rarely.
Now, -Roman- citizenship was much easier to get. Freed slaves previously owned by Roman citizens got citizenship, with a few restrictions. Their children were full citizens.
This was enormously more liberal than almost any other Classical state, and an important reason Rome grew so broadly. You could aspire to substantial equality.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, the "res publica," the "public things," was what I meant by the State. And all states, whatever their forms, are public things.
You did mention in THE WINDS OF FATE of the great difficulty even so powerful a politician as Pericles getting his son by his non-Athenian mistress Aspasia made an Athenian citizen. Betcha Pericles had to grease palms for that!
Roman generosity about citizenship was a big contributory reason for its power, in both the Republic and the Empire. There were times the grandchildren of freedmen even rose to the Senate.
Ad astra! Sean
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