Libera res publica

The word republic actually originates from the Latin idiom libera res publica meaning "free from things public". It was meant to express an idea that which liberates the public or "pure republic".

It required the full participation of the moral and virtuous citizen to maintain that "libera res publica". Participation in the weightier matters within Roman society was the basis of liberty and enhanced an individual social status.

Attending to the "rule of law" and the rights of every natural citizen to secure the status of "non-domination" for themselverequired the practice of mercy with eye to strengthening the poor.

Cultural welfare

Some imagine that Rome 2,000 years ago had no facilities for the care of the ubiquitous poor or homeless with little or no concern coming from the affluent who saw the poor as iniquitous. Few people today understand the social bonds required to maintain a true republic.

A republic does not have the bands that bind the people in other forms of governments like Cain's city-state, Nimrod's Babylon and other cities of blood. Many of these forms of government depend upon the promises of the "bounties, donations, and benefits”^[1] to entice the people and Contracts, Covenants, and Constitutions and debt to bind them.

It is true that the Roman ethic of hard work and industry as well as loyalty and fraternity often saw the slothful and self indulgent as iniquitous. The same could be said of the Christian way of thinking.^[2]

Culture of character

Titus Livius, or Livy, stressed the importance of character. As a historian he wrote the monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, entitled Ab Urbe Condita, From the Founding of the City.

He understood the industry and team work required to build something greater than the mud and stick huts of the Roman people. There need to be a measure of morality, integrity, and sacrifice of people to pull themselves up to greatness.

Livy described the tugurium or mud hut from which all of Rome arose but he also knew the values ingrained in the culture of Rome, the family, hearth, community, and eventually the patrimonial.

It was the values of that culture like bravery, loyalty, piety, seriousness, respect and authority that made them great and brought wealth.

Cicero described the “scum(or laterally the dung piles) of the city” with the words dordem urbis et faecem. But it was clear there was welfare for the people provided through what was sacrificed to the temples and Marcus Tullius Cicero saw evidence of degeneration in the character and virtue of the Roman people due to the means and method that aid.

Marcus Tullius Cicero also said, "The evil was not in the bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."

Culture of giving

Euergetism in the Latin or evergetism in the Greek was common in the ancient world. It was form of giving or investing in the good people of the populous by those who were more successful in hope that it made the whole of society more productive and the social bonds stronger. It was a practice of generosity that reaches back to the ancient tribes and the early city-states known as leitourgi or liturgy.^[3]

There was always the possibility of invasion or usurpation, crop failure, or disease. The rich needed the loyalty of the common man for his own protection as much as everyman needed the respect and brotherhood of his own neighbor.

Private euergetism(εὐεργετέω "do good deeds" derived from the ancient Greek euergetes, benefactor) was common amongst Christians.^[4]...^[5] Because it was common among Christ and his followers.^[6]

This decreased under the socialist approach of the Church of Constantine. After Justinian's death it was replaced by the ecclesial charitable schemes.

In the original Republic of Rome the power of the State was returned to the people and held individually by citizens whose rights were "not connected to the administration of government".^[7] The people gathered in small groups called hearths and maintained their liberty through voluntary deeds of the people.

Social welfare was provided through voluntary "deeds" and charitable temples. Other temples maintained by the people also approached the promotion of individual wealth through capital investments.

The culture of sloth

The original Senate was merely a gathering of older men selected through a network of people gathering in small local groups. They did not have a legislative power that was capable of infringing on the natural rights of the people. Rome was a Republic and enjoyed a Republican form of government.

As the people became slothful in the responsibilities of a republic the power of government grew. As the people became willing and accustomed to receive benefits from society by way of the authority of the State and at the expense of their neighbor Polybius writes of their degeneration into an unnatural state which brought about a centralization of government power under the Caesars.

“Tacitus repeatedly contrasts the res publica under the emperors with the pre-Augustus libera res publica; and in the Germania 37, encountering the disasters which Germans inflicted upon the res publica Romanorum, he distinguishes between the old res publica, which he calls the populus Romanus, and the new res publica, which he calls “Caesar.” The old res publica hardly had the mixed constitution which dreamers assigned it and which actually never can exist, but it was something greater and majestic which lives on as a glorious memory in a mean age.” The Ruling Power: A Study Of The Roman Empire In The Second Century After Christ Through The Roman Oration Of Aelius Aristides, James H. Oliver, Kessinger Publishing, July 25, 2006. ISBN-13: 978-1428659315. see Republican form

Roman society was patriarchal in the purest sense; the male head of household (paterfamilias) held special legal powers and privileges that gave him jurisdiction (patria potestas) over all the members of his familia – a more encompassing term than its modern derivative "family" that included adult sons, his wife (but only in Rome's earlier history, when marriage cum manu was practiced), married daughters (in the Classical period of Roman history), various dependent relatives, and slaves. The patron-client relationship (clientela), with the word patronus deriving from pater (“father”), was another way in which Roman society was organized into hierarchical groups, though clientela also functioned as a system of overlapping social networks. A patron could be the client of a socially superior or more powerful patron; a client could have multiple patrons.

The ancient Roman republic had three branches of government. In the beginning, the Senate, a group made up of 300 citizens from Rome's patrician class, the oldest and wealthiest families of Rome. It was the patricians, tired of obeying the king, who revolted and threw out Tarquinius Superbus revolting against unwarranted usurpations.

The cursus honorum (Latin: "course of offices") was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in both the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank. The cursus honorum comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election. There were minimum intervals between holding successive offices and laws forbade repeating an office.

The equites (Latin: eques nom. singular; sometimes referred to as "knights" in modern times) constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class. A member of the equestrian order was known as an eques (plural: equites).

The distinction between patricians and plebeians in Ancient Rome was based purely on birth. Although modern writers often portray patricians as rich and powerful families who managed to secure power over the less-fortunate plebeian families, plebeians and patricians among the senatorial class were equally wealthy.

A senate composed of patricians elected these consuls. At one time, lower-class citizens, or plebeians, had virtually no say in the government. Both men and women were citizens in the Roman Republic, but only men could vote.

The term plebeian referred to all free Roman citizens who were not members of the patrician, senatorial or equestrian classes. Plebeians were average working citizens of Rome – farmers, bakers, builders or craftsmen – who worked hard to support their families and pay their taxes.

Plebeians and patricians could also get married. Wealthy plebeians became part of the Roman nobility. However, despite changes in the laws, the patricians always held a majority of the wealth and power in Ancient Rome. A third social class in Roman society was the slaves.

By the Late Empire, few members of the Senate were from the original patrician families, most of which had died out. Rome continued to have a hierarchical class system, but it was no longer dominated by the distinction between patricians and plebeians.

The culture of change

Rome evolved over the centuries from a Republic, with no emperors, into an indirect democracy and socialist state. Polybius accurately predicted that through the covetous practices of its citizens and their desires for free bread and entertainment at the expense of others the people would become perfect savages ushering in one tyrant after another.

The Imperial Cult of Rome, run through its government-financed temples, was a social welfare scheme that weakened the people, loosened the bonds of the community, and broke down the health and wellbeing of the family structure, which had been the foundation of society. Their benefactors became their rulers until Rome's destiny and destruction were fused.

The teachings of John the Baptist, Jesus the Christ and His early Church would spark new life in the hearts and minds of people, including Romans, who had the ears to hear and the eyes to see another way.

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Footnotes

↑ Destroyers of liberty
"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities. But this mischief crept secretly and gradually in, and did not openly make it's appearance in Rome for a considerable time." Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.) This would include Julius Caesar and eventually Augustus Caesar which is why Plutarch also reported, “The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.” This was a major theme of the Bible:

There were tables of welfare which were both snares and a traps as David and Paul stated and Peter warned would make us merchandise and curse children. Proverbs 23 told us not to not eat the "dainties" offered at those tables of Rulers and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 we cannot eat of those tables and the table of the Lord. We are not to consent to their covetous systems of One purse or Corban which makes the word of God to none effect.

We know when the masses become accustomed to those benefits of legal charity which are the rewards of unrighteousness provided by benefactors who exercise authority and the Fathers of the earth through the covetous practices that makes men merchandise and curse children as a surety for debt.
↑ 1 Timothy 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
↑ Liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia. It literally means "the people's work". The religious meaning is similar. Liturgy is the work that all Christians do to make our traditions, our beliefs, our faith, work in our lives and in the world.
↑ “And the wealthy among us help the needy ... and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.” "Justin the Martyr's Apology" to the Emperor Antonius Pius in 150 AD, (Ch. 65-67)
↑ alternate translation:
“And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.” Chapter LXVII
Geof T Emery interlinear:
6. Οἱ εὐποροῦντες δὲ καὶ βουλόμενοι κατὰ προαίρεσιν ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ὃ βούλεται
The prospering and also wishing according to choosing each one the of himself what willing
δίδωσι, καὶ τὸ συλλεγόμενον παρὰ τῷ προεστῶτι ἀποτίθεται, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπικουρεῖ
he gives, and the being collected with the having presided is deposited, and he he gives aid
ὀρφανοῖς τε καὶ χήραις, καὶ τοῖς διὰ νόσον ἢ δι’ ἄλλην αἰτίαν λειπομένοις,
to orphans both and widows, and to the through sickness or through other cause being in want,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν δεσμοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τοῖς παρεπιδήμοις οὖσι ξένοις, καὶ ἁπλῶς πᾶσι τοῖς ἐν
and to the in chains are, and to the sojourning being strangers, and briefly to all the in
χρείᾳ οὖσι κηδεμὼν γίνεται.
in need being a guardian he is.
↑ Acts 10:38 "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good(εὐεργετῶν euergetōn), and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him."
↑ Citizen: “Civil rights are such as belong to every citizen of the state or country, or, in a wider sense to all its inhabitants, and are not connected with the organization or the administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by laws, freedom of contract, trial by jury, etc.” Right. In Constitutional Law. Black’s 3rd p. 1559.

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[desliberty-1] Destroyers of liberty
"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities. But this mischief crept secretly and gradually in, and did not openly make it's appearance in Rome for a considerable time." Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.) This would include Julius Caesar and eventually Augustus Caesar which is why Plutarch also reported, “The real destroyers of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits.” This was a major theme of the Bible:

There were tables of welfare which were both snares and a traps as David and Paul stated and Peter warned would make us merchandise and curse children. Proverbs 23 told us not to not eat the "dainties" offered at those tables of Rulers and Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 we cannot eat of those tables and the table of the Lord. We are not to consent to their covetous systems of One purse or Corban which makes the word of God to none effect.

We know when the masses become accustomed to those benefits of legal charity which are the rewards of unrighteousness provided by benefactors who exercise authority and the Fathers of the earth through the covetous practices that makes men merchandise and curse children as a surety for debt.

[2] 1 Timothy 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

[3] Liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia. It literally means "the people's work". The religious meaning is similar. Liturgy is the work that all Christians do to make our traditions, our beliefs, our faith, work in our lives and in the world.

[4] “And the wealthy among us help the needy ... and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.” "Justin the Martyr's Apology" to the Emperor Antonius Pius in 150 AD, (Ch. 65-67)

[5] ternate translation:
“And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.” Chapter LXVII
Geof T Emery interlinear:
6. Οἱ εὐποροῦντες δὲ καὶ βουλόμενοι κατὰ προαίρεσιν ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ὃ βούλεται
The prospering and also wishing according to choosing each one the of himself what willing
δίδωσι, καὶ τὸ συλλεγόμενον παρὰ τῷ προεστῶτι ἀποτίθεται, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπικουρεῖ
he gives, and the being collected with the having presided is deposited, and he he gives aid
ὀρφανοῖς τε καὶ χήραις, καὶ τοῖς διὰ νόσον ἢ δι’ ἄλλην αἰτίαν λειπομένοις,
to orphans both and widows, and to the through sickness or through other cause being in want,
καὶ τοῖς ἐν δεσμοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τοῖς παρεπιδήμοις οὖσι ξένοις, καὶ ἁπλῶς πᾶσι τοῖς ἐν
and to the in chains are, and to the sojourning being strangers, and briefly to all the in
χρείᾳ οὖσι κηδεμὼν γίνεται.
in need being a guardian he is.

[6] Acts 10:38 "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good(εὐεργετῶν euergetōn), and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him."

[citizenrights-7] Citizen: “Civil rights are such as belong to every citizen of the state or country, or, in a wider sense to all its inhabitants, and are not connected with the organization or the administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by laws, freedom of contract, trial by jury, etc.” Right. In Constitutional Law. Black’s 3rd p. 1559.

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Libera res publica

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