Citoyenne la traductrice jacobine

I guess I'm not keeping up too well with this. Oh well. The most pressing news is, I suppose, that I've been expelled from my co-op. This was partially my fault, but since the immediate cause was my illness (I've had the flu for the past few days and therefore missed one of my jobs after missing two for I-forget-what-reason at the beginning of the semester) and since I don't have any friends in the co-op (they're all very clique-y since it's a big co-op--I feel like now I know what high school would have been like if we had had a cafeteria), I'm going to go with: yes, they had an above-board official reason for expelling me, but this wouldn't have happened if I weren't a) sick, and thus unable to plead my case properly (in addition to missing the job), and b) without co-op friends, who would have spoken up for me in the discussion.

I accept their decision because (apart from the fact that I have no choice in the matter), it was taken by a co-op wide vote. That said, if courts were run like that it would be a serious miscarriage of justice, considering in "appeals to the co-op" such as mine, the co-op takes the role of judge, prosecutor, and jury. Not to mention the fact that expusion for 3 missed jobs out of 61 total in a semester seems a bit excessive to me--a score like that in the classroom and you'd still have an A!

...Then again, as I said, I'm not entirely blameless in this. I did inconvenience two meals and neglect to do my extra crew for one of those. And everyone else gets sick and has lots of work to do and so on as well without this happening to them. Even if there are some unjust aspects to this appeal system, I can hardly claim to be innocent. I should have known better....

In other news:

Tell me what you think, f-list: Can I in good conscience like the Romans? That is to say, not necessarily in general, but any given Roman: Brutus, say, or Cicero, or Cato. I mean, sure our Revolutionaries liked them, but I feel that this isn't quite enough of a reason, since their information about them wasn't as up-to-date and there was a certain bias in their education (not to mention the fact that they didn't have many better role models).

Now, I have the general complaints about Roman society that one might expect:

Romans didn't see anything wrong with slavery. (Even in the case of slave revolts, the slaves were revolting not so much against the principle of slavery but more about not wanting to be slaves themselves). Can I write acceptance of slavery in a Roman individual off as a cultural prejudice, even though I would never do the same in the modern era? Isn't that hypocritical?

Roman society was aristocratic. I don't think I even need to elaborate on this.

Romans were generally corrupt. Some, like Cato, most famously, were exceptions to this rule, admittedly, but it remains a problem for almost everyone else.

Romans, universally, not only have no problem with conquest, but think it's great. Again, I don't really think I need to explain why this problematic.

And then there's the problem of the Optimates and the Populares. All the principled people, all the defenders of the Republic, are (to a greater or lesser degree) in the former group. This is something of a problem, considering they're very conservative and aristocratic and against extending citizenship rights. On the other hand, the Populares were for the most part opportunists who actually deserve - unlike certain other historical figures - to be called demagogues, in as much as they wanted to use the people to set up their own personal power and destroy the Republic.

If I had to choose between them, I'd have to choose the Optimates, who are certainly by far the best by Roman standards, but by the universal standards I'd apply to anyone else, there's not much to choose between them and the Populares.

...Which is a shame, because I really want to like the defenders of the Roman Republic. I'm just not sure that I should. D:

So help me f-list, if you know anything on the subject:

What do you think?