Comments | estellacat: Aww, Maxime is ambiguous about Romans too!

estellacat

Aww, Maxime is ambiguous about Romans too!

May 19, 2009 15:07

Actually, here he's pretty unequivocal, as E. Hamel reports (Tome III, p. 16 of his Histoire de Robespierre, if anyone's curious):

( I believe this is from the session of 17 June 1793. )

finals, romans, translation, hamel, robespierre, voting

Comments 13

(The comment has been removed)

estellacat May 19 2009, 21:47:35 UTC

Yes, it's quite amusing. I'll have get translating then. Though they're fairly brief. I might just post the entire speech, which is in itself rather brief, though he also discusses actors and Protestants. (Fair enough.)

citoyenneclark May 20 2009, 05:54:30 UTC

Cato inspired a lot of people during the American Rev also. I believe Nathan Hale's last words were paraphrased from him also.

estellacat May 20 2009, 06:56:07 UTC

It's quite true; Washington even had a play about Cato read to the troops at Valley Forge to boost morale.

maelicia May 20 2009, 21:20:20 UTC

This quote itself is quite the proof that they were not "following blindly" the model of Antiquity as the "liberal interpretation", following Constant and co., simplistically put it.

estellacat May 20 2009, 21:34:00 UTC

Which is why I'm abundantly glad I decided to read through Hamel's whole biography of Maxime; I had never seen the quote before (it does seem to be a rather inconvenient piece of evidence for certain people) and short of reading all his speeches, I probably wouldn't have found it. It could certainly prove useful.

maelicia May 20 2009, 22:00:56 UTC

Speaking of which, I'm working on the minutes of the Comité d'instruction publique, as I already spoke of. I'm now on the Convention. It's very interesting to note how idiots like Mona Ozouf say that Saint-Just's "education project" (or the very rought outline scripted in the so-called "Institutions Républicaines) was "totalitarian" because it was trying to control what children were eating, how they dressed, how they would sleep. And I found this ( ... )

estellacat May 20 2009, 22:14:37 UTC

but I'm sure the projects of the Directoire were pretty much the same.
Doubtless. They maintained quite a bit of what the revisionists seem to hate most about the projects of the Year II. How do they explain away the festivals, I wonder?

Thread 8

trf_chan May 22 2009, 15:29:45 UTC

Ohhhhh, that is very awesome. *_* Maxime never disappoints.

I suppose he probably likes him for much the same reason that I do: more for what he was against than for what he was for. And then, it's hard not to esteem him for his probity and his decision to kill himself rather than go plead with Caesar to "pardon" him.

That's what I admire about Cato, too.

Yay, voting! =D Don't worry, even "inspiring" elections aren't that much more interesting to actually vote in...the only special thing that happened was that I got a sticker and the the brilliant, shiny knowledge that I voted against four more years of Republican stupidity.

estellacat May 22 2009, 18:59:39 UTC

Isn't it though? Too true.

So that one particular mystery seems to be cleared up then.

I'm sure not, but I didn't even have that experience--just the experience of voting against a lot of stupid propositions that would not have changed California's budget situation. (The only thing that can do that is allowing the state assembly to raise taxes with a simple majority--because right now it has to be two-thirds and the exactly one third Republicans are holding the rest of the assembly hostage in the matter. >.>)