The Roman Conundrum
I've remarked before (a time too many for some, no doubt) about the preoccupation I've had since age 8 or so about parallels between the Roman Empire and America. At 8, it was just the sudden realization, after a moment of basking in the light of what came to be called The American Century, that empires had always fallen: why wouldn't ours?
As I got older and a bit more historically sophisticated, I discovered I wasn't alone in making the comparison (Spengler's The Decline of the West takes the prize in that department), but I tried to see how much water the parallel could hold. It held a lot. From the "invasion of the barbarians" (a false characterization of populations outside an empire migrating in - often invited to do so), to the decline of traditional religions and the increasing attraction of exotic ones, there were a multitude of ways in which the Roman and the American stories bore comparisons. But there was always a lacuna in my logic: Rome "fell" ("declined" is a better word) over centuries; America has only had empiric dimensions for a handful of decades. If America were already in decline, the timeline would have to be compressed, stages of decline speeded up - not a far-fetched idea, given the way in which modern technological change has . . . well, speeded everything up.
But then, a few weeks back, I read Mary Beard's new SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. I hadn't read a good history of Rome in quite a while, and Beard made me spot the flaw in my model. There were really two Romes: one, the empire we know from Ben Hur - with its conquering legions and emperors of all different stripes; and the other - the Roman Republic - which was actually much less monolithic than its successor, even democratic within the limitations of the ancient world. The Republic worked well as a limited democracy, but in time it grew to such size and complexity that it became militaristic - a simple way to handle both. And it was only a hop and a skip to the next (over)simplification: dictatorship. Thus Caesar crossing the Rubicon and, in short order, the establishment of the Empire under his anointed successor, Augustus. And thus the replacement of the democratic traditions of the Republic by autocratic traditions enforced by the power elite.
And so now I no longer think of America as an empire in decline. But I do find worrying the shift away from its traditions of democracy and equality - most especially in regard to distribution of wealth and the growing domination of the rich and powerful. And I find chilling the fact that it has now put an imperious, dictatorial personality within a single step of taking over the democracy. What we may well be witnessing is the tipping point that would lead inevitably into decline. History may, indeed, be repeating itself: democratic traditions exchanged for autocratic ones, promises of bread and provision of spectacle used to veil the downward spiral into demagoguery and decay. Not today, or tomorrow. But inevitably . . .
