Will Rome Rule the World Again
This article was published online on March 11, 2021.
The scenes at the Capitol on Jan 6 were remarkable for all sorts of reasons, but a distinctive autumn-of-Rome flavor was ane of them, and information technology was hard to miss. Photographs of the Capitol'southward droppings-strewn marble portico might have been images from eons ago, at a plundered Temple of Jupiter. Some of the attackers had painted their bodies, and one wore a horned helmet. The invaders occupied the Senate sleeping room, where Latin inscriptions crown the due east and west doorways. Commentators who remembered Cicero invoked the senatorial Catiline conspiracy. Headlines referred to the violent swarming of Capitol Hill equally a "sack."
Exterior, a pandemic raged, recalling the waves of plague that periodically swept across the Roman empire. Equally the nation reeled, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the role of a magister militum addressing the legions, issued an unprecedented advisory that put the sitting ruler on detect, condemning "sedition and insurrection" and noting that the inauguration of a new ruler would proceed. Amid all this came a New York Times report on the discovery and display of artifacts from the gardens of Caligula, an erratic and vengeful emperor, one of whose wives was named Milonia.
E'er since Edward Gibbon'due south The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the prospect of a Rome-inflected apocalypse has cast its chilling spell. Britain's former American colonies, which declared their independence the yr Gibbon'due south commencement volume was published, have been especially troubled by the parallels they discerned. The Founders feared the stealthy pitter-patter of tyranny. Half a century later, the narrative progression of The Form of Empire, Thomas Cole's allegorical series of paintings, depicted the consequences of overweening ambition and national hubris. Today, every bit e'er, observers are on the alert for portents of the Terminal Days, and accept been quick, like Cato, to hurl warnings. And of form there are some Americans—including the January six attackers—who would notice national plummet momentarily satisfying. "Sack Rome?" a barbarian wife says to her hubby in an onetime New Yorker cartoon. "That'southward your answer to everything."
The comparisons, of course, can be facile. A Roman state of some sort lasted so long—well over a millennium—and changed and so continuously that its history touches on any imaginable blazon of homo occurrence, serves up parallels for any modern issue, and provides contradictory answers to any question posed. All the same, I am not immune to preoccupation with the Roman past. A decade and a half ago, I published a book called Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, which looked closely at the age-old Rome-and-America comparing. The focus was mainly on themes that transcend partisan politics, but it was also written at a particular moment, and reflected certain animate being realities: The country was mired in Iraq and Afghanistan; fearfulness and suspicion of foreigners were on the ascension; and public functions of all kinds (maintaining highways, operating prisons, providing security) were being privatized. All of this had echoes in Rome's long story.
It's not as if the themes I wrote about so are obsolete. Just they have a new context. The comparisons that come to heed now are non just about realities on the basis just about unrealities in our heads. The debasement of truth, the cruelty and moral squalor of many leaders, the corruption of basic institutions—signs of rot were proliferating well earlier January 6, and they remain, though the horde has been repelled.
If I were writing Are We Rome? today, one new theme I'd emphasize emerges from a phrase we heard over and over during the Trump administration: "adults in the room." The basic idea—a delusion with a long history—was that an unfit and childish principal executive could exist kept in check past the seasoned advisers around him, and if non by them, and so by the competent career professionals throughout the government. The administration official who anonymously published a famous op-ed in The New York Times in 2018 offered explicit reassurance: "Americans should know that there are adults in the room." Various individuals were given adult-in-the-room designation, including the White House counsel Don McGahn and Primary of Staff John Kelly. I sometimes imagined these adults, who included distinguished military veterans, wearing special ribbons. The obvious flaw in the arrangement was that the child could summarily dismiss the adults with an intemperate tweet.
For long periods in the belatedly 4th and early fifth centuries, the Roman empire was literally in the hands of children, as reigning emperors died unexpectedly and sons as young as 4 and 8 ascended to the well-nigh exalted rank. Adults in the room were appointed to serve them—oftentimes capable generals such as Stilicho (who served Honorius) and Aetius (who served Valentinian III). The idea was to admit regal authority equally sacrosanct but at the same time accept people in accuse who could handle the job. And often it worked, for a while. The diplomat and historian Priscus described what happened when Valentinian grew up. The emperor'due south intemperate tweet took this form:
Equally Aetius was explaining the finances and calculating tax revenues, with a shout Valentinian suddenly leaped up from his throne and cried out that he would no longer endure to be abused by such treacheries … While Aetius was stunned past this unexpected rage and was attempting to calm his irrational outburst, Valentinian drew his sword from his scabbard and together with Heracleius, who was carrying the cleaver gear up under his cloak (for he was a head chamberlain), fell upon him.
There is no substitute, it turns out, for actual leadership at the top. Yet, when the adults are gone, the next line of defence force is bureaucratic heroism. A ceremonious service is i reason entities as large as the Roman empire—or the British or American one—take had staying power. Sentinel the behavior of majestic functionaries in the fifth century, when much of the Roman earth was falling autonomously, and you see the ability of bureaucratic procedure and administrative competence—nutrient goes here, gold goes there—to concord $.25 of the rickety scaffolding together when no one seems to be in accuse. I'grand not aware of aboriginal references to a civitas profunda, but the "deep state" is neither a mod nor a malevolent invention.
Notwithstanding these backside-the-scenes efforts at preserving normalcy do eventually stammer, and a second new theme might be the dangers that apparent continuity, including symbolic continuity, tin muffle. Corrosive change—in values, behavior, infrastructure—is often hard to observe; things look the aforementioned, until they don't. Fifty-fifty earlier January 6—or November 3—many worried that the outward forms of American republic might prove more than robust than the matter itself. Inaugurations lift the spirit, just among Millennials in the U.S., fewer than a third believe that it is "essential" to live in a republic (this from findings reported by the political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk). Congress has ceded potency to the president across a wide front, preserving mainly its capacity to hinder, acclaim, and conspire. The power to declare war survives only every bit an artfully arranged fig leafage; information technology was in fact relinquished decades ago. For all that, the Capitol is yet reverenced every bit "the people's house."
Octavian, Julius Caesar'due south adopted son, fabricated himself Rome's start emperor, ruling under the name Augustus. Simply he understood the utility of make-believe, maintaining the fiction that he had preserved republican government. Augustus did not proclaim himself an despot; the title princeps would practice—the "commencement human being." In the manner of Donald Trump's 1776 Projection, but adroitly, he invoked the blessing of aboriginal sentiment to conceal radical intentions. The Senate would go along meeting, enjoying what the Roman historian Tacitus chosen "pretenses of liberty" long after it ceased to play whatever important part; in fact, information technology went on meeting after the empire was gone. Tacitus is always a delight:
This was a tainted, meanly obsequious age. The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them, all ex-consuls, well-nigh ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other's offensively sycophantic proposals.
Form endures when substance is gone. In time, the urban center of Rome became as much a fiction as the vestiges of the old commonwealth. Augustus adorned the upper-case letter not only with temples but also with election facilities. (And he showed up in person to vote, though the process was a charade.) Centuries later, Rome continued to look like an imperial capital, and extract wealth like one, even after becoming an empty shell. The real action and power had shifted elsewhere. Generals and armies roamed the provinces, responding to emergencies (and the ambitions of 1 some other). Rival cities rose. But grain shipments to Rome connected. Monuments were cherished every bit touchstones of enduring greatness. Distinguished families lived in splendor. Senators plotted.
A third new theme might take upwardly the idea of "alternative facts." The term was coined by the Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway to put a gloss on one gear up of lies; it soon became shorthand for all of them. The administration'southward reliance on falsehood needs no belaboring. It gave life to conspiracy theories, undermined organized religion in a national election, and stoked acts of insurrection. Allies on television and on social media helped all of that along. The Romans had a word for such allies: panegyrists.
Social media in ancient Rome was of the old-fashioned kind—word of oral cavity. While serving overseas as a provincial governor, Cicero designated an associate named Caelius to continue him up-to-engagement nearly rumors back home. Caelius informed Cicero that he was paying special attending to the susurratores ("whisperers"), the political gossips who lurked in the Forum. There were truth-tellers throughout Roman history, but as the centuries wore on, the telling of official lies became a recognized fine art form. Panegyrists were paid performers, subsidized by those they historic. The narrative arcs—virtually the prosperity of the empire, about success in boxing—bend toward glory. The panegyrist Mamertinus evokes the glowing nimbus of Maximian's hair. The panegyrist Claudian describes how Honorius volition make Rome great again:
Oak groves shall baste with dear; streams of wine well up on every side, lakes of olive oil abound. No price shall be asked for fleeces dyed scarlet, just of themselves shall the flocks grow crimson to the astonishment of the shepherd, and in every sea the light-green seaweed volition express joy with flashing jewels.
We will be tired of so much winning. The fulsome phrases of the panegyrists made Edward Gibbon squirm. But by empire's stop, giving praise to the ruler was the dominant form of rhetoric. And to many eyes, Gibbon knew, the portrait painted by the panegyrist was synonymous with history.
I subscribe to an academic news feed that drops inquiry well-nigh Rome into my inbox—a history-volume version of the beer-of-the-calendar month gild. Scholars engage in heated arguments nearly the Roman empire, simply one thing we know for certain is that it is gone. And, unlike Brexit, no one was enlightened of the "end" equally information technology was happening. Rome was sacked, as were other cities, and armed conflict at times brought turmoil, but decay occurred over centuries, and for many the transition from 1 thing to some other was not stark. The human life bridge puts blinders on perception.
But that same life span concentrates human concerns in a useful mode. Call up of information technology as the inertia of the ordinary, a terminal new theme. For all the images of Roman calamity, the makings of a quieter gear up of images sit on a table near my desk—mundane odds and ends from the ancient world, given to me over the years. Well-nigh of them are from imperial Rome: a clay oil lamp, a frail drinking glass vase, colored marble from a villa's flooring, curved white limestone from a window'south curvation, a grinding stone, a writing stylus, a key in the shape of a ring, a votive figurine. And coins—a silver denarius from the reign of Marcus Aurelius, for instance, and some other from the reign of his unfortunate son, Commodus.
What the antiquities stand for are non triumph and glory, just basic human needs—nutrient, shelter, safety, noesis, commerce, beauty, the life of the spirit—and the organized activities that secure them. These activities have, so far, always survived calamity—a bridge from every past to every future. Human being society is resilient. And tending to bones needs can be a source of aspiration. America'southward Constitution divers the promotion of "general welfare" and "domestic tranquility" as office of the country's very purpose.
Merely resilience does not prevent calamity. And being blindsided in dull motility is the hardest fate to avert. The historian Ramsay MacMullen one time distilled the long arc of the Roman empire into 3 words—"fewer have more"—but just the time-lapse perspective of a millennium and a half allows us to understand such a thing with brutal clarity. The sack of Washington unfolded of a sudden, in a way no one could miss. The greater dangers come in stealth.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/no-really-are-we-rome/618075/
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