Bears, honey and mice - an alternative fairy tale

There once were twenty-six bears that lived in a rather nice house called The Curia down in the depths of the woods.

One Saturday morning some of the bears decided that as everything was tidy in the house they could set off for a quiet stroll through the woods while their breakfast cooled. They left two bears fast asleep in their beds, or so they thought.

On their return the bears were shocked to find that the door to The Curia had been kicked down. In fact there was so little left of the door that the bears wondered if the NRA had raided them looking for trophies. They just stood looking at the remains of their nicely polished and maintained entrance; slivers of wood and broken shards of glass lay everywhere. Fearfully the bears peered in expecting to find the bullet-ridden corpses of their two co-occupiers, but there was no sign of them.

Stepping into The Curia the bears looked in each room. In the dining room they found five extra places had been set. They tip-toed upstairs to the bedrooms of the other bears, where the shock of their lives awaited them. In a bedroom that was meant to be vacant they found a large pot marked “Censorial F avoured Honey”.

This was in fact “Censorial Flavoured Honey” which all the bears had only handed out in the past after a communal meeting of the House Council. Obviously someone had scratched out the missing “l” on the label. As they looked into the pot the bears saw a mouse squirming and wriggling in sticky gloop that was their pride and joy. They went and checked four other vacant bedrooms and to their increasing dismay they found in each, a similarly defaced pot complete with mouse.

The bears were now quite irritated but at the same time puzzled as to how the mice had destroyed the front door, they were just mice after all, so ignoring them they went to look for the missing two bears. When they opened the door of one of the bears, who was in fact a polar bear, they found them both sitting on the floor with a deck of cards dealt between them. Each card had a name of a mouse on. When asked what they were doing and what the mice were doing in the honey pots, one of them, a real GEM of a bear, replied that they were nice mice and they deserved a swim in the honey.

One of the bears said “So let me get this straight, behind our backs, without even a hint of what you were going to do, you smashed our door down and let these mice into our house? These wouldn’t be the same mice that help fund your rent here would they?"

The GEM bear roared out “You're obviously angry, and as obviously have no damn idea what you're talking about. Whose favors do you think were returned?”

Another bear said “What are you doing with all those cards?”

GEM said without a hint of embarrassment or guilt “Right now I'm in the position of horse trading.”

Polar Bear said nothing, but then he rarely did.

The other bears just sat down wearily on the floor and watched as GEM and Polar kept gambling away. Apparently they were going to parcel out the remaining rooms in The Curia, until it would be so full that the walls would bulge. It seemed certain that GEM wanted to move all these new tenants in so that he could command a majority on the House Council and be allowed to stay top bear for the remainder of his life.

So children, do you think that the Bears sorted out their differences and lived happily ever after? Well the end of this story has yet to be written, but it seems certain that GEM bear will continue handing out pots of honey to his friends.

What a marvellous Patron GEM is. I wish I were a mouse, don’t you children?

The potestas pot

As the 29th January draws close, individuals known to be either members of the Libra Alliance or the Moderati are trying to convince citizens to emancipate themselves.

One of them is in the Censor's office and would be privy to the number of requests for emancipation. One can surmise that had the majority of active citizens applied already there wouldn't have been so much consternation. The 29th is the date when the sun sets over the concept of the large all embracing gens and rises over that of the familia. The concern of these people, of course, lies with patria potestas.

The Lex Equitia de Familia enshrined formally the extent and operation of patria potestas. This was a substantial step in the direction of reconstruction. Not everyone was happy, with some existing paters decrying the attempt to create more historic structures as too much, too soon.

Since very little of major note ever happens as far as reconstruction is concerned, this is somewhat alarmist. A number of the old gens had paters who were silent, head count and even socii; they had essentially abandoned their gens. The emphasis on the familia will create a structure where there is order, structure and a sound historic basis.

What could those in the Libra Alliance and the Moderati have against the concept of patria potestas? It appears that they fear that people will be "controlled" by their pater. Of course this actually translates into their being very concerned that the familia will form voting blocks, and one also assumes that the fear is that they will vote against Moderati and Libra Alliance candidates.

We have had to endure a number of alarmist posts in this vein. Gnaeus Iulius Caesar Cornelianus attempted to rectify that imbalance by a number of posts urging that citizens be left to their own devices. All he got for his trouble was a series of confrontational posts from some of the emancipators.

The familia was the core unit around which early, regal and Republican Rome grew. Anything that promotes the familia in Nova Roma is a good thing. Patria potestas is a historic fact, and its benefits within a familia structure are obvious.

In reality the likely result after the 29th January is a mix of familia and emancipated individuals. Gradually those that are emancipated will gather familia members around them. There will be no great crisis and Nova Roma will endure and if everyone concerned applies enough wisdom, it will benefit greatly from the focus shifting to the familia.

Will those in familia vote for Moderati and Libra candidates? Who knows. A paterfamilias cannot exert his potestas in respect of voting or the membership of the Ordo Equester, so their electoral success or failure will depend, as always, on whether those factions appeal to individual voters. It is exceptionally sad that as this milestone approaches these few individuals who engaged in these alarmist posts had only the self-interest of these two political factions at heart.

To be fair there was one member of the Moderati who did his best to strike a balance in the advice he gave, and he did succeed in doing so. Others in their posts risked whipping up a maelstrom of concern and anxiety and the strong suspicion is that the motivator for doing so was concern over the electoral fortunes of their factions.

In the face of the most recent real injection of significant historical reconstruction the modernists urged a move away from the familia, the backbone of ancient Rome. The conclusion must be drawn that despite all the florid statements to the contrary, reconstruction is just too unappetising for them.

One assumes they won't be dipping into the pot of potestas, because that would be too contradictory and hypocritical - or will they?

Perhaps those paters and maters that enter into a covenant to advocate support for the Moderati and Libra factions will receive a certificate allowing the bearer to dip at will into the potestas pot?

I think I will pass on that particular dish. It would probably be poisoned anyway.