History Repeats Itself

(If you know examples of how history has repeated itself, please send them into us.)

"Credit was the great weapon of the aristocracy against the lower class. the nobility was thereby enabled to place in its power the small farmers, whose labor and lives it controlled until the day when they realized that they were oppressed and formed alliances strong enough to break for the time being their state of serfdom.
As securities were unknown during the first centuries of Rome and since creditors claimed guarantees, cruel laws gave them all powers over the person and property of the debtor. Not only were creditors able to add to their own domain the land of an insolvent borrower, but they were even entitled to reduce him to slavery and, in virtue of the earlier laws, to divide his limbs among themselves. It may be conceived that the question of debts was for numerous reasons one of the fundamental problems of roman antiquity, and that it will be found at the basis of all social development from the downfall of the monarchy to the laws of Licinius and also, during the second period of this history, until the civil wars of the first century. The concentration of land reposed to a great extent on the workings of the credit system, the property of the rich increasing almost automatically by the addition of that of the poor, and the seizure of mortgaged property being the main reason for this expropriation."

"Ancient Rome At Work"
An Economic History of Rome from
the Origins to the Empire
by Paul- Louis pp. 85-86

"As in the Greek republics, the abolition of debts was in Rome practically a normal governmental measure, repeated at almost regular intervals and apparently necessary to the equilibrium and good order of the State. We know that this was done after the secession of the Sacred Mount, that it was repeated two hundred years later at the time of secession of the Janiculum and that the Licinian Laws, which marked a date of capital importance in the internal history of Rome, granted a whole series of reductions and remissions to the borrowers who were most heavily in debt. And it would seem that the lenders were on other occasions defrauded, in the interest of public tranquility, of all or part of the returns which they expected. They were far from being discouraged by these set-backs. The future was to be theirs."

"Ancient Rome At Work"
An Economic History of Rome from
the Origins to the Empire
by Paul- Louis pp. 87-88

"The severity of the law in its application to borrowers, the cruel exactions of the lenders, the progressive confiscation of the land of the small farmers and the unceasing threats to which their liberty was exposed contributed to create rancour and to sow among the masses of the plebeians the seeds of revolt. The resistance offered by the patricians to the political demands of this mass of men coincided in so far as its effect was to foment sedition with the rapacity of the usurers who sprang from the ranks of the same patrician class. When the people, in the middle of a foreign war, left the city, took refuge on a hill on the outskirts and refused to fight, they were giving vent to their anger against as arrogant oligarchy and their hatred of their pitiless creditors. The secessions of 495 (BC) and of 286(BC) of the Sacred Mount and of the Janiculum are the best known, but there were others. The remission of debts was on many occasions the slogan of the peasants who voted in the city and of the artisans who by the very force of events were associated with their party. When public anger became too clamorous and the swollen ranks of the debtors became too dangerously active, the magistrates took measures to calm them. The aristocracy abandoned or reduced their claims, but only to resume after a short delay the usurious operations which strengthened their hold over men and increased their chances of monopolizing property."

"Ancient Rome At Work"
An Economic History of Rome from
the Origins to the Empire
by Paul- Louis pp. 87-88

"… The SENAT, favoring the wealthier citizens, began to be at variance with the common people, who made sad complaints of the rigorous and inhuman usage they received from the money=lenders. For as many as were behind with them, and had any sort of property, they stripped of all they had, by the way of pledges and sales; and such as through former exactions were reduced already to extreme indigence, and had nothing more to be deprived of, these they led away in person and put their bodies under constraint, notwithstanding the scars and wounds that they could show in attestation of their public services in numerous campaigns… But when, after they had fought courageously and beaten the enemy, there was, nevertheless, no moderation or forbearance used, and the senate also professed to remember nothing of that agreement, and sat without testifying the least concern to see them dragged away like slaves and their goods seized upon as formerly, there began now to be open disorders and dangerous meetings in the city; and the enemy, also, aware of the popular confusion, invaded and laid waste the country."-----

Plutarch, 51 - 130 A.D.
from Plutarch's Lives
Harvard Classics, pages 150 -151
P.F. Collier and Sons, 1969 printing

"When a land rejects her legends,

Sees but falsehoods in the past;

And its people view their Sires

In the light of fools and liars,

'Tis a sign of its decline

And its glories cannot last.

Branches that but blight their roots

Yield no sap for lasting fruits."

Author Unknown

Paul and Joseph of Arimathea

Missionaries to "the Gentiles"

by Sheldon Emry

"The numerous researches which have been made into the constitution of Servius have not succeeded in elucidating all the details. They have however made clear to us that Rome was far from being democratically governed in the years which elapsed between the introduction of the reforms and the collapse of the monarchic system. The latter event, which took place in 509 (BC), was due to the abuse by Tarquinius Superbus of his personal power in order to oppress the great families. The gentes took thier revenge and during the first centuries of the Republic monopolized all the public offices.
It is not our intention to develop here in detail the incessant struggle which took place between the patriciate and the plebs for these offices. De jure and de facto and oligarchy imposed itself upon Rome. The curiae and the assemblies of the centuries alike were made to vote as it desired. It kept the magistracies in its hands. The laws were made by it and for it, and the plebeians, deprived of all civil rights, were even ignorant of the legal texts which the judges could apply against them and which remained, except to the nobility, formulae enshrouded in mystery.
It was the economic crises, the periodical famines, the increasing debts and the terrible plight of the debtors which provoked the first political convulsions. The plebeians came to realize that, so long as an aristocratic minority monopolized all authority and confounded the fortunes of the State with its own, the oppression of the masses could only increase.
In 494 (BC) they started a kind of secession or general strike. Making their way to a hill-the Mons Sacer or Sacred Mount- near the capital, they announced their intention to form a new city. The Senate took fright, negotiated with the people and, among other concessions, grated them the right of choosing from their ranks two representatives (tribuni) with the express duty of championing their cause on all occasions...
Rome, under the Republic as under the Kings, was to remain in the hands of a restricted class, which used its wealth to safeguard its political authority and its political authority to increase its wealth."

"Ancient Rome At Work"
by Paul-Louis
page 31-33
(First Published 1927)

Prayer given by Minister Joe Wright of Central Christian Church to the opening of the state Senate of Kansas:

"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Amen!
["With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called 'One Nation under God."]

Why is this prayer on the "History Repeats Itself" page? Because every great empire that has done the actions mentioned above has fallen and only their ruins are left for us to walk threw.