Rendering unto Caesar: Fasces in Hand

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

"If the Creator had meant for people to be citizens of Rome, they'd be born with fasces in hand."

Once we come to see the Pontifex Maximus as the vicar of Caesar, it makes sense that Roman priests oppose birth control. After all, to control one's own ability to reproduce implies freedom from the fear of the blunt instrument of Roman rule. Caesar seeks to dominate all of his subjects to the point of manipulating their reproductive practice.

The other side of the revelation involves the freedom from imposing the Roman bludgeon on children. Parents who were raised in the Roman religion are wising up to the brutality of Roman rule. They don't want their children to be forced into reproducing by accident the way that they had been forced by a vicarious pseudo-father.

If you were a Catholic parent, would you obey the rules of Caesar by trying to beat your children into conformity with Roman social custom? Would you use the fasces of Caesar to bring your offspring into subjugation?

Comments

Re: The Eagle...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Romulus and Remus were convenient myths to explain the origin of the Roman people.

Re: The Eagle...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the legend was crafted by that legendary order of legendcrafters: the Druids.

Re: The Eagle...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is a big failure of history on your part, the Druids were the Gallic/Brythonic priesthood. The Romans had no need of Brahmans, their concept of religion was far more pragmatic than that.

Re: The Eagle...

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I know Romans had Greek influences to their religious mythology, but how much Babylonion influence was there?

Re: The Eagle...

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Babylon by this time had been all but forgotten in terms of historiography. Though the influence was a bit more indirect in the influence of the Middle East on Greek religion itself, this influence conveyed by the Greeks who had been ruled by the Achaemenid Dynasty. Depending on how one interprets Heliogabal, one could say that there was an abortive attempt to create a Theodosian shift under the Severan Dynasty, which had a bit more obvious influence. The Eastern cult of Elagabal was unfortunate enough to have a Roman state that wasn't on the verge of complete collapse, which was the reason that Heliogalabus failed with his attempt to create Romans following a Middle Eastern religion and Theodosius succeeded.