America: Just Another Ancient Rome? (Part 1)

Rome didn’t fall in a day. That’s a historical myth.

On September 4, A.D. 476, the Western Roman Empire came to an end. At least that’s the date historians eventually put on the tombstone.

The strange thing is that most Romans probably didn’t realize anything momentous had happened.

A Germanic military commander named Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the young man conventionally remembered as the last Western Roman emperor. But Rome didn’t disappear. Senators still met, laws still ruled, taxes still were due, merchants still sold their goods, and ordinary people still worried about tomorrow. Even the Roman Empire itself wasn’t entirely gone. Its eastern half, governed from Constantinople, would survive for nearly another thousand years.

That’s what makes the fall of Rome so fascinating—and unsettling. Rome didn’t collapse like a building demolished with dynamite.

It deteriorated over generations, slowly enough that people learned to live with each new crack in the foundation.

What shocked one generation became familiar to the next. Political instability was routine. Economic troubles were common. Violence happened every day. Government dysfunction became normal. Eventually, people could inhabit what was still called “Rome” without realizing how profoundly different it had become from the Rome their ancestors had known.

Edward Gibbon understood the paradox. His monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire began appearing in 1776, remarkably, the same year another civilization declared its independence across the Atlantic. Looking backward at Rome, Gibbon concluded that its spectacular success eventually contributed to its weakness: “Prosperity ripened the principle of decay.” As Rome expanded, he argued, “the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest” until “the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”[1]

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” –Will Durant[2]

That doesn’t mean America is Rome. We aren’t. Two thousand years separate dramatically different civilizations, governments, economies, religions, and technologies. But Rome still matters because technology changes much faster than human nature. Ambition, greed, corruption, political hatred, fear, luxury, debt, demagoguery and the temptation to exchange liberty for security aren’t uniquely Roman problems. They belong to us too.

And America’s Founders knew it.

The Founders knew Rome’s warning.

The generation that created the United States was steeped in classical history. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and their contemporaries read the histories and political writings of Greece and Rome because the ancient world offered something extraordinarily valuable: centuries of evidence about how republics succeed—and how they fail.

That’s why America’s political vocabulary sounds surprisingly Roman. We have a Senate. Congress meets on Capitol Hill. The Founding generation spoke repeatedly about republican virtue, civic responsibility, and public character. George Washington was famously compared to Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who accepted extraordinary power during a national emergency and then voluntarily surrendered it.

The Founders admired Rome’s achievements, but Rome’s failure interested them just as much.

The Roman Republic endured for centuries before descending into political violence, civil war, and, eventually, autocratic rule.

If that could happen to Rome, why couldn’t it happen here?

John Adams was asking that question before America officially existed. In January 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, he wrote Mercy Otis Warren that “Virtue and Simplicity of Manners, are indispensably necessary in a Republic.” Yet Adams was troubled by what he already observed among his fellow Americans: “Venality and Corruption,” “Avarice and Ambition,” and a “Rage for Profit.” His conclusion was startling: “I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to Support a Republic.”[3]

America hadn’t even been born, and Adams was already worried about its old age.

Rome Fell Long Before We Think

If we want to understand Rome’s collapse, A.D. 476 is actually much too late to begin. We need to travel backward more than six centuries to 133 B.C., when a Roman politician named Tiberius Gracchus proposed sweeping land reforms intended to address growing economic inequality and the concentration of public land.

His proposals were controversial, and his methods were strange. Gracchus’s opponents grew furious. None of that was particularly unusual in Roman politics.

What happened next was.

During a political confrontation near the Capitol, Tiberius and many of his supporters were beaten to death. Ancient accounts say his body was thrown into the Tiber River. Roughly a decade later, his younger brother Gaius pursued another ambitious reform agenda, encountered equally fierce opposition, and also died amid political violence.

Something important had changed. Romans had always disagreed, argued, and fought politically, but increasingly their opponents weren’t merely wrong. They were becoming enemies.

Once political violence became an acceptable means of solving political problems, Rome discovered how difficult it was to put that weapon away.

When the unthinkable becomes possible. 

Several decades later, the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla crossed another line. Roman armies traditionally served the Republic, but military loyalty was becoming increasingly personal. Soldiers depended upon successful generals for rewards, advancement, and sometimes land, giving ambitious commanders enormous political leverage.

Sulla exploited it.

In 88 B.C., he marched Roman soldiers across the Rubicon into Rome. Think about it. A Roman army entered the Roman capital to settle a Roman political dispute.

It was terrifying and breathtaking.

Sulla eventually seized power, destroyed political enemies, and ruled as dictator. His infamous proscriptions publicly identified men who could be killed while their property was confiscated. Then, remarkably, Sulla eventually relinquished power and retired.

But the precedent didn’t retire with him.

Once somebody demonstrates that the unthinkable can be done, it becomes considerably easier for someone else to do it again.

George Washington understood that danger. In his Farewell Address, he warned that even when an unconstitutional exercise of power appears temporarily useful, “the precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit.”[4]

Rome would prove his point.

And then came the Caesar

After Sulla came Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar. The Republic still looked healthy from a distance. The Senate still debated issues. Elections were still held. Judges continued to hold court. But the political culture underneath those institutions was deteriorating. Factions drew their lines. Personal ambition increasingly overrode constitutional restraint. Each side justified its extraordinary behavior by pointing to what the other side had already done. Sound familiar? Nothing really changes.

Then, in 49 B.C., Julius Caesar reached the Rubicon River.

Bringing his provincial army across that boundary into Italy was forbidden. Caesar crossed anyway, launching another civil war. After defeating his enemies, he accumulated extraordinary political authority. That is, until senators assassinated him on March 15, 44 B.C.

The assassins apparently believed they were saving the Republic. Instead, they accelerated its death.

More civil wars followed until Caesar’s adopted heir Octavian defeated his rivals and eventually became Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.

Yet Augustus didn’t abolish every republican institution. He kept the Senate. Magistrates also remained. Republican titles and ceremonies survived the transition.

Rome still looked like a republic, but in reality it wasn’t.

That’s an important distinction. A political system can retain its buildings, titles, elections, laws and traditions while something fundamental changes beneath them. The architecture survives even as the character of the government changes.

How Republics really die.

Will Durant observed that Roman patriotism had once been formed through “the home, the school, the temple, the army, the Assembly, and the Senate.” Rome wasn’t merely territory controlled by a government. It was a civilization that deliberately taught the Romans what it meant to be Roman.

Durant then summarized the transformation in one sentence: “Devotion to the state marked the zenith of the Republic, as unparalleled political corruption marked its fall.”[5]

Notice what initially destroyed Roman republicanism. It wasn’t invading barbarians standing at the gates.

It was Romans themselves—politicians hungry for power, factions increasingly unwilling to accept defeat, generals willing to violate political traditions, citizens tolerating abuses when those abuses benefited their side, and political leaders who increasingly regarded constitutional restraint as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.

That’s the danger every republic faces. Constitutional principles are easy to defend when they restrain your opponent.

The real test comes when they restrain you. Once political opponents become existential enemies, almost anything can be justified in the name of defeating them. Temporary exceptions become precedents. Precedents become accepted practices. Accepted practices become political culture.

And political culture eventually reshapes government.

That’s when everything starts breaking apart.

Rome’s political deterioration was only part of the story. Its spectacular success had created spectacular obligations. More territory required more borders; more borders required additional soldiers; more soldiers demanded greater revenue; and administering an empire stretching from Britain to North Africa and the Middle East called for enormous resources.

Then disease reduced the Empire to desperation.

The Antonine Plague swept through the Roman world beginning in the second century, followed decades later by another devastating epidemic traditionally known as the Plague of Cyprian. Historians continue debating the pathogens and precise death tolls, but their consequences were serious: population losses, labor shortages, economic disruption, reduced tax revenues and military recruitment problems.

During the third century, Rome also experienced extraordinary political instability.

Emperors were assassinated, overthrown and replaced with alarming frequency while civil wars, invasions, monetary instability and breakaway territories battered the Empire.

The problems began feeding one another.

Disease weakened the population and economy.

     Economic weakness affected government revenue.

          Fiscal problems impacted military strength.

               Military weakness encouraged external enemies.

                     External threats increased political instability.

This is how civilizations become vulnerable. They rarely collapse because of a single thing going wrong. They become fragile when too many things go wrong at once.

James Madison understood what ultimately held everything together. During Virginia’s ratification debates in 1788 he asked, “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.” Constitutional mechanisms alone could never guarantee republican government because, without sufficient virtue among the people, Madison warned that “no form of government can render us secure.”[6]

Rome possessed laws, elections, senators, courts, and centuries of republican tradition.

Yet Rome still lost its Republic, largely because enough Romans eventually became willing to sacrifice republican principles to win Roman political battles.

That is why Rome’s most important date may not be A.D. 476. Technically, Rome lost its Republic centuries before it lost its Empire.

And once the political virtues that sustained republican Rome began disappearing, another question emerged:

What happens when a civilization can no longer produce enough people committed to the values that built it?

That’s where Part Two begins.

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ENDNOTES

1. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 38, “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West.” Gibbon wrote: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”

2. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), concluding analysis of Roman civilization and decline.

3. John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, January 8, 1776, in Robert J. Taylor, ed., Papers of John Adams, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 397–399; also Founders Online, National Archives.

4. George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796. Washington warned that although unconstitutional exercises of power might sometimes produce immediate benefits, “the precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.”

5. Durant, Caesar and Christ, discussion of Roman republican government and political decline. Durant emphasized the role of “the home, the school, the temple, the army, the Assembly, and the Senate” in forming Roman patriotism.

6. James Madison, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 11. Madison asked, “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation,” and warned that without virtue, “no theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.”