South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt to impose martial law collapsed after 190 Members of Parliament barricaded themselves into the National Assembly chamber and voted to end martial law while the military tried to break in to stop them before they could vote. Many members had to climb a fence at the back of the building to break in to get a majority of the 300 member body in the room to vote.
Can you imagine trying to explain this to a 3rd century crisis Roman general?
Maximinus: “So the… ‘president’ had the army surrounding the legislature? So he gets to be emperor now, right?”
“Well, almost, but then the lawmakers got into the building and voted that the army had to go away.”
Maximinus: “So the army went in and killed them, right? The lawmakers didn’t have any swords.”
“Well, no. Because they voted the army couldn’t do that.”
Maximinus: “But couldn’t they just do it anyways?”
“Sort of? But then everyone would be really mad and it would get even worse for the president.”
I feel like Maximinus would actually get this perfectly? He might think that these are unusually law-abiding soldiers, who exhibit rather a lot of the old Republican virtue; but nonetheless “willing to prevent the Senate from getting a quorum, but not to defy the edict of that quorum” actually feels kind of Roman to me.
