Athena democracy against the facism Sparta

Antic city-state gravitates between two centralization principles a man or a law or two competitive logics: mendiocracy against facism. The third one, the productivism seems completely absent of the political struggle. I did not find any individual politically successful due to his personal agricultural or artisanal productivity. Super productive individuals were in fact called slave and live at the bottom of the political scale. They are listener and killed if they do not listen and start to talk too much.

Athenian democracy appears around 500 BC Athena had a strong military force due to its farmer-military-citizen ready to fight for their democratic right. Athena stop two militaries invasion from the Persian empire.

The Athenian democracy is remarkable by the size 30000 of the 300000 Athenian had the right to debate laws. Usually, 6000 citizens effectively took place in the debate, which means that entrepreneurial, commercial, artisanal and possible farmer had the capacities to take part in the debate.

Athenian remains in the history by their high achievement in term of conceptualization. In fact, most of the concepts used in the antic world and the modern world came from the Athenian. They creates the concept of history, physics, atom, democracy, philosophy, … they innovate massively in mathematics and in medicine. This high level of conceptual capabilities is the sign of a highly engaged and debating society. Concepts are created by individuals and spread through debate before becoming politically active. Then, concepts make the debated more efficient and increase the capacity of city-state to innovate and to decide about the launch of national projects.

But in 404 BC, the Athenian democracy has been however destroyed by a city not also without interest Sparta in order to study facism political tendency and introduce the most successfully politic state of the western antic world: the Roman republic. Sparta has two elected kings for 1 year and so there are not really king and equilibrate each other. The Spartan laws were oral laws and debate special policy maker, the gerousia, a council consisting of 28 elders over the age of 60, elected for life and usually part of the royal households. High state policy decisions were discussed by this council who could then propose action alternatives to the Damos, the collective body of Spartan citizenry, who would select one of the alternatives by voting. The Demos comprised the citizizens with military training most of the Spartian male. The spartian society did not produce anything and were so a pure facist society. Sparta had a small population of 10000 military males. Sparta submits in its vicinity a far larger population of 200 000 helots which assures the agricole activity. The helots has to provide 50 % of their output to the Spartian state but keep the property of their land. Spartian had a tradition to make a yearly campagn against Helots to preserve their submission. The Spartiate is a pure facisted in a sens that they were unproductive. The fact that the products was robbed from the Helots make its easier to make the more egalitarian state in term of redistribution of the output. Political initiatives should have rather been of limited: war or not. It should so have been relativily easy to converge. Military efficiency means that Spartan were unified under the feeling of solidary and the shame of fear. Despite its very small size, the Spartian state was the military power of greece. It is the only state were 100 % of the population has the same jobs: military. As Spartan did not need to have any productive incentive, egalitarism redistribution was the most beneficial and natural social system. Sparta  last a long time till its avoid war, and just show its strength but in 430 BC. Sparta starts war against Athena and ultimately submit it.  However, its military population reduces and Sparta did not have the demographic base to quickly restore its strength. If you have 100000 citizens including 10000 military.  Losing 4000 military in war was not a big deal at a population growing 2 % a year, you will go back to 10 000 years in around 2 years. But from its initial base is 10 000 reduced to a base of 6000, it will take log(10000/6000) / 2 % =  25 years.

Athena was well advance on their time. Most of the concepts uses in the western science came from the Athenian. Athenia had a better balance of power between the three competitive of facisme, mendiocracy and productivism than any other state. This balance had leaded to a lot of political initiative to citizens with others interest than military. The business community and farmers had a real political influence on their world.  But, as a political system Athena failed and was defeated by a super facist State Sparta. It leads to the conclusion that the society can not balance on mediocratic or productivisms competition if the facism competititive logic is not civilized by a world social contracts.  

And so, one super facist state has to defeat all his enemies under his rule in an empire covering all his known world to become able to set a new moral rule to move political competition towards the productivism and mediocratism.

When a republic submits all monarchies

The roman republic appears 509 BC by an overdrown of the Monarchy and it by far the the successful political structure of the ancient world. It ultimately end up by the facism competitive logic to start to move the competitive logic with the emergence christianism towards mediacratic competive logic. The roman republic was cimented by the hatred of monarchy and so the exitive was under the hands of two consules elected like in Sparta for one years. The roman citizen were divided into two classes the wealthy patrician who held the place in the senate and debated the law and the plebeian who elected representive to defend their interest named tribunes. In 287, the plebein obtain the right to vote laws by plebiscites. The eager of roman farmer/legionary citizen to protect their freedom against Monarchies, was the base of the military strength of Roma. The roman republic conquiert all Italy and develop a western empire after its victory of the carthage in 146 BC. The roman republic starts to conquiert an empire mainly to protect its freedom and then to rob and reduce to slavery other people population. One of the caracteristic of Roman fascime is an explosion of the institution of slavery. Despite Sparta, Rome successful accessimilate population in the italian surrounding by giving them special political. The roman army becomes composed of legionary of non roman stocks more attach to their general than the republican institution. This lead to several overthrough of the republican institution by Sulla in 80 BC, Julius Caesar in 49 BC and finally Octave Augustus which establishes the imperial institution in 27 BC. The law were replaced by imperial orders and ratified by the senate. Octave Augustus develop a network of governors to administrate the province and a large bureaucracy. Those governers where from modest origines and so reliable to the emperor. The victory of the roman republic leads an end of the fascism competitive over a large territories and so the mendiocratic competive logic develop. The emperor was the source of power on the political power develop in the vicinity of the emperor. On constrast, the emperor has difficulties to know what exactly go on in his empire and had to rely on his governors and huge bureaucracy to get inform. 

In his book, The Fall of The Roman, chapter: The limit of the empire, the historian Peter Heather illustrate the political situation of the empire by the anecdote of the lepcis scandale:

 IN AD 373 OR THEREABOUTS, the commander of Roman military force, in North Africa (in Latin, comes Africae), one Romanus by name, was cashiered for provoking some of the Berber tribes settled on the fringes of the province to rebel. Theodosius, the field marshal (magister militum) sent to deal with the emergency, found amongst Romanus' papers a highly incriminating document. It was a letter to the cam commander from a third party, which included the following greeting from a certain Palladius, until recently a senior imperial bureaucrat: `Palladius salutes you and says that he was dismissed from office for no other reason than that in the case of the people of Tripolis he spoke to the sacred ears [of the Emperor Valentinian I] what was not true." On the strength of this, Palladius was dragged out of retirement from his country estates and frogmarched back to Trier. Lying to the emperor was treason. Rather than face interrogation, which in such cases routinely involved torture, Palladius committed suicide en route. The full story slowly emerged.

The trail led back to 363, when Romanus had first been appointed. The countryside around the town of Lepcis Magna in the province of Tripolitania had just been looted by Berber tribesmen from the neighboring desert hinterland, and its inhabitants wanted Romanus to retaliate. He duly gathered his forces at Lepcis, but demanded logistic support to the tune of 4,000 camels, which the citizens refused to provide. Romanus thereupon dispersed his soldiers, and no cam­paign was mounted. The outraged citizens used their next annual provincial assembly, probably that of 364, to send an embassy of complaint to the emperor Valentinian. Romanus tried to head things off at the pass, getting his version of the story to Valentinian first via a relative called Remigius who was currently magister officiorum (some­thing like the head of the Civil Service, one of the top bureaucrats of' the western Empire). Valentinian refused to believe either version at first telling, and ordered a commission of inquiry. But it was slow to get moving, and in the meantime further Berber attacks prompted the townsfolk of Lepcis to send a second embassy to complain about Romanus' continued inactivity. Hearing of yet more attacks, Valentinian lost his temper, and this is where Palladius enters the story. He was chosen to conduct a fact-finding mission, and was also given the job of taking with him gifts of cash for the African troops.'

Following the emperor's orders, Palladius travelled to Lepcis and discovered for himself the truth about what Romanus had - or rather, had not - been up to. At the same time, however, Palladius was doing deals with the commanders and paymasters of African army units, which allowed him to keep for himself some of the imperial cash in his care. Everything was set up for a meeting of minds. Palladius threatened Romanus with a damning indictment of his inactivity, while Romanus brought up the small matter of Palladius' embezzlement. In a devil's bargain, Palladius kept the cash, and, back in Trier, told Valentinian that the inhabitants of Lepcis had nothing to complain of. The emperor, believing his time had been wasted, unleashed the full apparatus of the law on the plaintiffs of Lepcis. Palladius was sent to Africa a second time, to preside over the trials. With so much at stake far the judge, there could be only one outcome for the defendants. So a few witnesses were bribed, and agreed that there had never been any attacks; the loose ends were neatly sewn up, probably in 368, and one governor and three ambassadors were executed for making false statements to the emperor. There the matter rested until Palladius' letter to Romanus came to light six years later. Two surviving ambassadors, who'd had the sense to go into hiding when sentenced to have their tongues cut out, then re-emerged from the woodwork to have their say. The affair duly claimed its final victims: Palladius, of course, and Romanus, not to mention the magister officiorum Remigius, and the false witnesses.

At first sight, there might seem nothing out of the ordinary here: negligence, embezzlement and a particularly nasty cover-up. What else would you expect of an imperial structure caught in a declining trajectory towards extinction? Ever since Gibbon, the corruption of public life has been part of the story of Roman imperial collapse. But while the fourth-century Empire had its fair share of corruption, it is important not to jump to conclusions. In sources of the time you can easily find examples of every kind of wrongdoing imaginable: from military commanders who artificially inflate manpower returns while keeping their units under strength so as to pocket the extra pay, to bureaucrats shuffling money around between different accounts until it becomes `lost' in the paper trail and they can divert it to their own purposes.' But whether any of this played a substantial role in the collapse of the western Empire is much more doubtful.

Uncomfortable as the idea might be, power has, throughout history, had a long and distinguished association with money making: in states both big and small, both seemingly healthy and on their last legs. In most past societies and many present ones, the link between power and profit was not even remotely problematic, profit for oneself and one's friends being seen as the whole, and perfectly legitimate, point of making the effort to get power in the first place. When our old friend the philosopher Themistius started to attract the attention of the emperor Constantius in the early 350s, Libanius, a friend who taught rhetoric and was a great believer in the moral values of a classical education, wrote to him: `Your presence at [the emperor's] table denotes a greater intimacy ... anyone you mention is immedi­ately better off, and ... his pleasure in granting such favours exceeds yours in receiving them.' For Libanius, Themistius' new-found influ­ence was not a problem: quite the reverse. In fact, the whole system of appointments to bureaucratic office within the Empire worked or, personal recommendation. Since there were no competitive examinations, patronage and connection played a critical role. In more than one speech to different emperors, Themistius dwelt on the topic of 'friends', an emperor's immediate circle who were responsible far bringing to his attention the names of suitable appointees for office. Certainly, Themistius wanted these friends to have powers of discern­ment, so that they would make first-class recommendations; but he had no desire to change things in any structural way. Nepotism was systemic, office was generally accepted as an opportunity for feathering one's nest, and a moderate degree of peculation more or less expected.

And this was nothing new. The early Roman Empire, even during its vigorous conquest period, was as much marked as were later eras by officials (friends of higher officials) misusing - or perhaps one should just say `using' - power to profit themselves and their associates. According to the historian Sallust, writing in the mid-first century BC, Roman public life had been stripped of its moral fibber with the destruction of Carthage, its last major rival, in 146 BC. In fact, though, the great magnates of public life had always been preoccupied with self-advancement, and the early Empire had been no different. Much of what we might term `corruption' in the Roman system merely reflects the normal relationship between power and profit. Some emperors, like Valentinian I, periodically made political capital out of cracking down on `corruption', but even Valentinian made no attempt to change the system.' To my mind, it is important to be realistic about the way human beings use political power, and not to attach too much importance to particular instances of corruption. Since the power-profit factor had not impeded the rise of the Empire in the first place, there is no reason to suppose that it contributed fundamentally to its collapse. In the Lepcis scandal, Romanus, Palladius and Remigius overstepped the mark. Looked at more closely, Lepcisgate offers us something much more than a good cover-up.

IN THEORY, the emperor was the supreme authority when it came to issuing general legislation, and in individual cases he had the right to modify the law, or break it, as he chose. He could condemn to death, or pardon, with a single word. To all appearances, he was an absolute monarch. But appearances can be deceptive.

Valentinian, a long-time soldier before his accession, had first-hand experience of supervising the Rhine frontier; based at Trier, he was close enough to investigate promptly any untoward incident. But a problem arising in Africa was a very different matter. The first Valentinian knew of the Lepcis episode was the sudden arrival at his court of two diametrically opposed accounts of it, one brought by the first legation from the provincial assembly, the other from Romanus via the magister officiorum, Remigius. Trier placed Valentinian about 2,000 kilometres away from the scene of the action. As he couldn't leave the Rhine frontier to investigate one relatively minor incident in a rather obscure corner of North Africa, all he could do was send a representative to sort out the facts for him. If that person fed him misinformation, as was the case here, and ensured that no alternative account reached the imperial ears, the emperor was bound to act accordingly. The essential point that emerges from Lepcisgate is that, for all an emperor's power, in both theory and practice, Roman central government could only make effective decisions when it received

accurate information from the localities. The regime of Valentinian liked to style itself as the protector of the taxpayer from the unfair demands of the military. But, thanks to Palladius' false report, the emperor's actions in the case of Lepcis Magna had entirely the opposite effect.

A leap of imagination is required to grasp the difficulty of gathering accurate information in the Roman world. As ruler of just half of it, Valentinian was controlling an area significantly larger than the current European Union. Effective central action is difficult enough today on such a geographical scale, but the communication problems that Valentinian faced made it almost inconceivably harder for him than for his counterparts in modern Brussels. The problem was twofold: not only the slowness of ancient communications, but also the minimal number of lines of contact. The Lepcis problem was exacerbated not only by the snail's pace of such communications as there were, but also by the sheer paucity of points of contact: two in the first instance (the ambassadors, plus Remigius representing Romanus' view), supple supplemented by a third when Valentinian sent his fact-finding mission in the person of Palladius. Once Palladius verified Romanus' view, that was two against one, and Valentinian had no additional sources of information. In the world of the telephone, the fax and the internet, the truth is much harder to hide. Beyond the immediate vicinity of his base on the Rhine frontier, Valentinian's contacts with the city com­munities that made up his Empire were sparse and infrequent.

Insight into the problem is provided by another extraordinary survival from the later Roman Empire: papyrus documents preserved through the centuries by the dry heat of the Egyptian desert. (As fate would have it, most of the archive ended up in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, a city famous for its rainfall.) These particular papyri, purchased by the great Victorian collector A, S. Hunt in 1896, come from Hermopolis on the west bank of the Nile at the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt. One key letter got separated front the rest, ending up in Strasbourg. When identified as part of the same collection, it became clear that these were the papers of a certain Theophanes, a landowner from Hermopolis and a fairly high-level Roman bureaucrat of the early fourth century. In the late 310s he was legal adviser to Vitalis who, as rationatis Aegypti, was the finance officer in charge of the arms factories and other operations of the Roman state in the province. The bulk of the archive refers to a journey

Theophanes made from Egypt to Antioch (modern Antakya in southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border), a regional capital of the Roman east, on official business, sometime between 317 and 323. The papers don't provide a narrative of the journey - we can only guess what the aim of the mission may have been - but something in its own way more valuable: packing lists, financial accounts and dated itineraries which, between them, bring Roman official travel vividly to life.

Being on official business, Theophanes was able to use the same public transport system that carried Symmachus to Trier, the cursus publicus, which comprised neatly spaced way-stations combining stables - where official travellers could obtain a change of animals - and (sometimes) travel lodges. The most immediately striking documents are those dealing with Theophanes' itineraries: daily listings of the distances he managed to cover. Having begun the journey to Antioch on 6 April at the town of Nikiu in Upper Egypt, he eventually rolled into the city three and a half weeks later on 2 May. His daily average had been about 40 kilometres: on the first part of the journey, through the Sinai desert, he made only about 24 kilometres a day, but speeded up to about 65 once he hit the Fertile Crescent. And on a breakneck final day into Antioch, scenting the finishing line, his party covered over a hundred. The return journey took a similar time. Bearing in mind that Theophanes' official status allowed him to change horses whenever necessary - so there was no need to conserve equine energy - this gives us a benchmark for the bureaucratic operations of the Roman Empire. We know that in emergencies, galloping messengers, with many changes of horse, might manage as much as 250 kilometres a day. But Theophanes' average on that journey of three and a half weeks was the norm: in other words, about 40, the speed of the oxcart. This was true of military as well as civilian operations, since all the army's heavy equipment and baggage moved by this means too.

The other striking feature of Theophanes' journey is its complexity. As might be expected, given such rates of travel, only the top echelons of the Roman bureaucracy tended to travel outside their immediate province - hence, lower-level officials wouldn't know their counter­parts, even in adjacent regions. Egypt, for most purposes, ran itself, so Theophanes didn't usually need to know people in Antioch, and neither, for that matter, did he know people anywhere else en route. Vitalis armed him, accordingly, with letters of introduction to everyone local communities were left - as the municipal laws we examined in Chapter 1 imply - to be autonomous, largely self-governing communi­ties.' Keep Roman central government happy, and life could often be lived as the locals wanted.

This is a key to understanding much of the internal history of the Roman Empire. Lepcisgate illustrates not so much a particular problem of the later Empire, but the fundamental limitations affecting Roman central government of all eras. To comprehend the operation of government fully, the logistic impossibility of day-to-day interference from the centre must be considered alongside the imperial centre's absolute legal power and unchallenged ideological domination. It was the interaction of these two phenomena that created the distinctive dynamic of the Roman Empire's internal functioning. Given that it was administratively impossible for central government to control everything, anything to which it did add its stamp of authority carried an overwhelming legitimacy, if put to the test. What tended to happen, therefore, was that individuals and communities would invoke the authority of the centre for their own purposes. At first sight, this could suggest that the imperial finger was constantly being stuck into a whole host of local pies, but such an impression is misleading. Outside of taxation, emperors interfered in local affairs only when locals - or at least a faction of local opinion - saw an advantage to themselves in mobilizing imperial authority.

We have already seen this pattern at work in the early imperial period. As the Spanish inscriptions (pp. 38-9) show us, Roman-style towns existed right across the Empire as a consequence of local com­munities adopting municipal laws drawn up at the centre. In particular, the richer local landowners had quickly appreciated that securing a constitution with Latin rights was a path to Roman citizenship, which would qualify them to participate in the highly lucrative structures of Empire. The story had its shadier side, of course. A grant of Italian status was so valuable to the leaders of the community involved that they were willing to do whatever it took to win the privilege, often by courting patrons at the centre who would put in a good word for them with the emperor of the day. This kind of relationship between centre and locality was the bedrock on which the Empire was built."

The historian Peter Heather describes us the political situation of an empire which has growth up to protect a huge number of its subjects from the risk to be raid by foreign enemy but he is now facing the problem of the blindness of his decision center (the brain) who relies exclusively of the information from the local authorities to decide. We have a brain where the eye and hear can change the information according to their own need.

However, the Roman Empire as the Chinese empire in the East has created a situation where most of the citizens do not live anymore with the fear of being killed, or plundered. It is a far contrast from the preceding period where Roman where in the constant fear of being attacks by Gauls as it had happened in 387 BC.

Brennus (or Brennos) was a chieftain of the Senones, a Gallic tribe of the Adriatic coast of Italy, who in 387 BC, in the Battle of the Allia, led an army of Cisalpine Gauls in their attack on Rome. It has been theorized that Brennus is actually a title rather than a name.

The Senones captured the entire city of Rome except for the Capitoline Hill, which was successfully held against them. However, seeing their city devastated, the Romans attempted to buy their salvation from Brennus. The Romans agreed to pay one thousand pounds weight of gold. According to legend, during a dispute over the accuracy of the weights used to measure the ransom of gold Brennus demanded, he threw his sword upon the scales and uttered the famous quote "Vae victis!", which translates to "Woe to the conquered!". (Source Wikipedia.org)

Before the roman empire, every generation could expect to be invaded and plundered at least twice in their life time. They had so to be able to train themselves to face a permanent risk of war. In the conquest of Gauls, Ceasar expands by diplomatically facing Helvete than German invasors and justity the presence of the Roman army to the Gauls by securing their territories from a foreign threat.

The Roman empire has changed this politic logic. The facism logic is institutionalized by a network of tax collector who get a commission on the taxes they collected from the empire. The roman legion which break down revolts usually fiscal and protects the border. The tax collector are supported from the legions. Most of the taxes are centralized on Rome and then dispatched back to the province to support pay legions. In this centralization tax mecanism, the emperor and Rome hold the power by being the center where the taxes are concentrated, the army recruited and then dispatched. It is illegal for a provincial governor to recruit his own army to assure the defence of the province. So, as the incident of Lepcis demonstrates the decision to dispatch an army has to come through Rome.

An exception occurs in 58 BC, when pro consul Julius Caesar becames governor of Gauls cisalpine and uses locally collect taxe to raise four legions to start the War of Gauls against the Helvetii which starts a migration to settle in Gauls. The recruitment through local taxes was illegaled and Ceasar had to justify it by the Helvetii threat on roman alliis. Even so, Ceasar got numeruous enemy who believes that Caesar wants to establish a tyranny. In 49 BC, Caeasar finishes to conquer Gauls, but he had to dispatched his illegal army to face a trial in Rome and risking exil or jail.  Caesar did not dispatched his self recruit army and moved to take Rome with one of his legion after crossing the Rubicon. His legionaries confidents on their tactical superioties of their general or willing to secure a land for their retirement decident to follow their general against a rebellion against the Roman republic. The big civil war last up to the Battle of Munda in Spain  in 45 BC. And, Caesar did end the republic roman by being nominate life dictator in 44 BC.

This concept of centralized taxation is still the rule in modern state. In France, an experimentation has been done by forcing companies to pay a taxe directly to University with the right to select the University. The idea is to give a political power of companies over the University system to force Universities to adapt to the business needed. In the area of networks, you can imagine a complex fiscal network from wealth producer: citizens or companies paying their taxation directly to the administrations, schools, army, hospitals with the intermediary of agency and the capacities of the tax payer to negotiate the right service for the right price. It was the case in many primitative society and despite being inefficient to maintain a strong army to face an invasion, it was rather socially stable. People accepts to pay taxes because they need the service but they also to have a power of negotiation to adopt the service to their needs and budgets. But unfortunately, it stops to be so 2000 years ago, when the Roman emperial  power understood that the base of their power is centralized taxation. At the end of the roman empire, this taxation would end up at around 60 % of the agricultural output and justify by the Persian Sassanide threat on the East Border in nowadays Syria and Iraq. Taxation becomes the tools of transfer of power from the citizens to the central of government. At this time, it is not yet necessary to justify and moralize this transfert of political power. The facist order roman legion give a good reason to pay: pay your taxes or be crucified.

In this roman society, the facist competitive logic has been legalized and so stabilized. Inside the roman world under the rule of one emperor, there is no political group or ambitious individuals, which is also to strengthen his political position by fact of law. So, the only way for example to increase his self political power, it is through the mediocratic logic. Most roman citizen of the empire will so past administrative exams to enter in the administration to serve the emperor or others civil servants around the emperor. The emperor hold his power by collecting the taxes and its redistribution so it should satisfy the most civil servant by offering a life long situation and fire him  in case of disobedience. This position will create individuals highly politize which will face situation in which they will have to balance their social position against their conscience. To keep their job and for the safety of their families, they will have to forget their conscience to the efficiencies of the imperial system. This is the first point of the powerful cultural revolution of Christianity.

The Christian political revolution

The emergence

In AD 311, more than 350 after the foundation of the empire by the emperor Augustus, the emperor Constantine the Great autorizes the proliferation of Christianity through the Edict of Milan. Christianity has a religious dispise by Roman citizen, the move of the emperor towards mark a major change in the political values of the subject of the empire.

At the end of the republic, most of the upper class Roman declares themselves follower of the stoicism hellenistic philosophy.

Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos). A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individual’s spiritual well-being: "Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature."^[2] This principle also applies to the realm of interpersonal relationships; "to be free from anger, envy, and jealousy",^[3] and to accept even slaves as "equals of other men, because all alike are sons of God."^[4]

Stoicism's prime directives are virtue, reason, and natural law. Stoics believe that, by mastering passions and emotions, it is possible to find equilibrium in oneself and in the world. Greek philosophers such as Zeno and Cleanthes, and later Roman thinkers such as Cato the Younger, Seneca the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, are associated with Stoicism. Stoic philosophy is often contrasted with Epicureanism.

The Stoic ethic espouses a deterministic perspective, in regards to those who lack Stoic virtue; Cleanthes once opined that the wicked man is "like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever it goes."^[2] A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy."^[3] For positing a "completely autonomous" individual will, and at the same time a universe that is "a rigidly deterministic single whole".

Stoicism became the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Greco-Roman Empire,^[5] to the point where, in the words of Gilbert Murray, "nearly all the successors of Alexander [...] professed themselves Stoics."^[6]

The political basis of stoiscism is to strengthen the individual by being capable to adopted the full control of himself. The religion was extremely suitable to a warrior society which had to take a point to the individual sacrifice for the common cause and the benefits of the common cause. Stoicism could be compared to today Zen Buddhism which can be understood as the philosophy of Samurai. The samurai would search for a perfect control of themselves to succeed in combat.

The roman of the republic look down Asian for their taste for good meal, their epicurism feminism character and their wickness at fight. Julius Caesar was venerate by his legionaries for dorming on the floor in his tents during cold winter and risking his life during the fight. It is an attitude of stoicist roman general. It was not the attitude of Asian king to improve the moral of the soldier by sharing their destinies.

How at the start of the empire, Roman starts to have a taste for good meal, to be indiferent for politics and to accept the imperial institution. The move of the empire was the start of a cultural swift in the western roman world.

Before Roman were involved in politics and ready to fight to maintain their individual political power but at the start of the empire, Roman starts to like Asian (Greek and Egyptian) meals, and have a more. The institution of slavery took a major proportion at the end of the republic. During the 70 BC slave rebellion of Spartacus, Italy is reported to have 1 millions slaves for a population of 7 millions. This new population was imported from abroad through warfare and during successive generation were slowly affranchised. The roman citizen also was given to more and more people leaving in all the corner of the empire. So, we assisted to the growing political significance of a population trained to be submitted to the authorities had a very different values system than the combative roman republican.

The first century AD marks a spreading of Asian cult like the egyptian deis Isis or the persian god mithras. Most asian country lives under Monarchy and so spread religious value supporting Monarchy. The emperor Augustus establishes his imperial cult as a immitation of the god king pharaon. Like most god of an agricultarian society, Augustus pretend to be bornt the December 25^th from a virgin enfanted by the god Sun. The imperial cult starts by the initiative of Anatolyan greek and spread easily and fast in the Eastern part of the empire. The roman aristocracy in the western part attaches to the lost republican values accepts the emperor on the base of the benefits he gave them and not the imperial cult. Those benefits were games, free wheat and an administrative career in the imperial bureaucracy.

In this context and from the lowest part of the society a new religion appears: christianism. Christian did not a chose a super man as a son of god but one of them , Jesus of Nazareth, a man crucifies as a rebel leader by Ponce Pilate under the accusation of King of the Jews. Jesus is a man who shares their hardship and so inspires them compassion not only for Jesus for themselves. In choosing this new god, most Christian does not look to acquired superior capabilities to succeed better in their ambitious; they chose to be part of a community, united under a common moral code.

The conversion of Constantine

What did Constantine find in Christianism ? Constantine is a succesful military general, fighting and winning civil against other emperor, assassinating  Maxentius, his wife and his son, does not have any psychological character of a believer even less of a converter. There are some studies about the psychology of converts mainly on Asian converters in Korea and China. The ratio of converter is usually 3 women for one man. These ratio is corroborate by some study of Christian Community by an inventory of donnation. A christian community in Tunisia prove to have 3 times more women than man. Between male newly converter in new asian communities, you will hardly find an male individual with an ambitious character like Constantine. It does not mean that Christian children born from Christian can not be ambitious. The act of free conversion necessitated a reject of the current values and a search for new values. To be bornt in a religion and staying in the religion of your parents is a completely different process that will should be study in the chapter concerning genetics.

Constantine does not have any reason to enter in a Christian community. He does not have any attraction for the Christian fraternity. He found a religion which was one of the largest of the empire (from 2 % to 10 %). At the time of Constantine, the province which has the largest Christian population was the African and the Asian. The Celtic northern province was indeed very little Christianize.

But furthermore, he finds a body of citizen in search of a brain. And, Christianity should be understood as a social process evolution towards a society where the largest part of citizens accept that decision concerning their destiny of the one of their children will be taken by very  few of them.

Look to the concept in the gospels of Mathew. 5, Jesus taught the beatitude, a glorification of submissive characters of the disciple

[3] Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[4] Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
[5] Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
[6] Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
[7] Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
[8] Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
[9] Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
[10] Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[11] Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

The parabole of the god shepherd in the latest of the gospels, written when Christianity starts to be a separated religion, is even more revelatrice:

John 10:1-21

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.

Believers are considered to be a sheep, who need to accept the authority of Jesus to stay in the path. The sheep, who believes that he can find the path by himself, will be eaten by the wolf.

The process is having disciples accepting to put themselves down to deny their own capabilities, is extremely unconvenial and up to now I did not find any example in any others institutionalized religion.  In China in 450 BC, Confucianism inforced a brain/body system by completely different kind of arguments. Confuscius  justify the necessity a decision center on the person of the emperor. He will then explain the limitation of the person as the reason of the imperial wrong doing. And then, Confuscius concludes that coordination of China gave to Chinese subject have more benefite to obey collectively the commands of the emperor than to follow his own and eparse individuals choice. Confucius like most spiritual leaders never humiliate his disciples by contesting their own judgment.

This process is And it will find some

The political value of the Christian scripture

The influence of our genes

From this first genetic differentiation, the human nature develops multiple characters with different individual benefits. One of them is the age differentiate. We are genetically programmed to have changed of personalities according to the age. For example, children have a fearing individualist psychologist. In face of dangers, they try to save themselves first. We all know characters that can be qualified of selfishness, which can be attributed to the youngest. The young are always selfish because they have to stay alive and accumulate the maximum potential (or properties) to secure their capacities to have children. For aged and middle aged individuals, the psychologies are completely different. Individuals tend to give away their belongings toward the youngest and are usually ready to sacrifice their life for their children. Another age-oriented attitude is learning programs. Human being likes most living creature is “programmed” to learn different things at different age. Young girl are playing to be a mother at 6 and a nurse at 10. Young boy play to war with their friend in the wood at 6, and to trading game or hunt building at 12. Those ages dependent psychology has one major thing in common is this age is not a constant and varies considerably from an individual to another.   Some individual lose their childish fear or their childish greediness very young. Others will keep it to a very old age and might die before losing it. The age dependent psychological characters are extremely important in order to consider in the variation of personality pool according to the environment. They depend of genes, which are limited number of function so government could consider changing them without risking endangering the health of the newborn. For people who are traveling and live in different continents, we have the tendency to see others childish according to some character and they see us also childish according to other criteria. For example, adult African looks childish toward European due to the directness toward the other sex or high attraction toward physical performance. Adult European looks childish toward an Asian by its tendency to say jokes or sarcasm. Adult Asian looks childish toward European by its tendency to accept the authority of the knowledgeable. Those characters were often believed to be a cultural artifact but in fact, you usually have the culture that our genes can adopt. It will important to consider later why nature are programmed us to resist cultural changes and the also variation between country and continents.