Meanwhile I was still thinking
The last couple days I reread Guglielmo Ferrero’s first volume of The Greatness and Decline of Rome. What a book! What a history! Funny thing, after literally reading for decades about the Roman republic and its fall, I only found Ferrero’s work a couple years ago. A book more relevant now then when written 125 years ago, completely disappeared like some Guatemalan democracy agitator of the 70s and 80s. Ferrero explains his effort, “The fact is there is no country to whose history it is so profitable to return as Rome, because there is no other that reflects more of the great political and social questions of every age.”
There’s wonderful thinking across Ferrero’s work. Like the ancient Roman and their Greek slave writers, he includes character studies of many of Rome’s leading figures. Throughout he demonstrates the actors’ personal traits, their character impacting political actions for better and most of the time for worse. Also, he clearly documents the moments in history, where character, no matter how flawed or enlightened is overwhelmed by events. Ferrero writes of Publius Cornelius Scipio Emilianus, one of the first to grasp the republic’s troubles and need for reform a century before it collapsed. “But was it possible to work single-handed against the sweep of the stream? The pupil of Polybius had forever in his ears the noise of the falls towards which the current was setting; but he knew ― for he was steered by a higher wisdom than that of Rome ― that no pilot could guide his ship upstream against the swirling rapids of the river of history.”
Not one in ten-thousand can tell you the difference between the fall of the Roman republic and the fall of the Roman empire. The events separated by five centuries, fifteen if you want to include Constantinople, after all, they called themselves Romans until Mehmed provided them a new identity. Ferrero sublimely sketches images of the wealth and imperialism that powerfully generated the underlying political currents that violently swept away the res publica. Ferrero’s tragic description of the corrupted and dysfunctional Roman electorate, a decade before Caesar declared himself dictator perpetuo, exemplifies his art of the historical vignette. He writes,
“The Roman electorate numbered at this time some 910,000 voters. Only a part of this total, however, was resident at Rome, and the remainder, who were scattered up and down the country, could not be relied upon to come up for the annual elections. (The republic’s assembly was a participatory citizen system. A citizen had to be in Rome at the assembly to vote in any election.) This alone introduced a great element of uncertainty into the voting, which was intensified by the nature of the resident electorate itself. The larger part of it consisted of the proletariat: that is to say of small shopkeepers and workmen, clients and dependents of men in high station, petty officials occupying posts in the administration reserved for free citizens, and the familiar derelict assemblage of unemployed and unemployable loafers and beggars. Few of these would scruple to sell their vote for a consideration. Skillful wire-pullers had thus gradually been enabled to elevate dealing in votes to the level of a regular trade. They formed the dregs of the electorate into organized clubs or colleges, and made sure of their men by a careful system of free dinners and petty largess. Then they sold their votes by contract to the several candidates, with complicated precautions to ensure the faithful execution of promises. The remainder of the electorate, on the other hand, consisting of the well-to-do bourgeoisie in Rome and Italy, the contractors and tax-farmers, merchants and landowners, wealthy freedmen and men of leisure and culture, rendered vain and capricious by their sense of power and the varied intellectual influences of the time, voted, when they voted at all, for some candidate they happened to like or to respect, on the inspiration of some momentary enthusiasm or animosity, or of some item of intelligence, whether true or false, which chanced to be circulated at the time of the elections.”
Decrepit as it was, in a certain sense it was more honest than our reality-TV/compute election spectacles today.
In the last decades, the republic’s politics were subsumed in conspiracy and violence. A representative example is the Catiline Conspiracy. Reading again, I was struck for the first time by the similarities with the Russiagate fiasco of Trump I. Upon losing an election for Consul, basically the Roman presidency, Catiline was accused of plotting a coup to take power. Now, it’s always been unclear, though mostly accepted as real, whether the conspiracy ever really existed. Certainly, Catiline always claimed and acted innocent, but then that’s day to day routine for the most culpable of our present political class.
There is no doubt numbers of senators led by Cicero blew it up, insisting on its reality. They shouted, especially Cicero, the conspiracy was an existential threat to the republic. Wouldn’t it be an appropriately ironic lesson for our age, if in fact, Cicero, who history crowned a champion of democracy, was instead a chief instigator and innovator of its fall — an ancient Adam Schiff.
Ferrero certainly makes a strong case but does not conclude that Cicero, as Catiline and his supporters always claimed, concocted the scheme. History remains conflicted, but reading Ferrero’s account combined with the abhorrent contemporary experience of the Russiagate charade, orchestrated by among others by the Democratic and National Security establishments, one gains greater sympathy for Catiline.
However, there is absolutely no historical dispute concerning the extra-constitutional actions Cicero undertook in the name of saving traditional civitas. In a great example of end republic politics, Cato, supposedly the republic’s ultimate conservative, urged the Senate against all tradition to radically execute a handful of Catiline’s accused co-conspirators. Ironies of ironies, Caesar defended tradition against killing them. A decade later, Caesar slayed all number of Romans, though always with regret, claiming his furious hand was always forced. One can say, as tyrants go, Caesar was magnanimous to those he defeated. On the other hand, the great democrat Cicero created a public spectacle leading a procession of the radically condemned through the streets of Rome to the executioner’s lair.
I’ve never been a great fan of Cicero. His writing’s ponderous. What he personally experienced of the actual practice of democracy was a degraded, corrupt, and completely dysfunctional process, just like ours. Most importantly, if you look at his political actions starting with Catiline, you can’t help agree with Ferrero, “Cicero was little more than a weak and contemptible little figure in the rough arena of politics; not all his fine moral qualities or professions of independence could shield him against the arts of intrigue and intimidation.”
Catiline was certainly no great pillar of virtue. Rome’s politics had become a vast, stinking, increasingly violent cesspool. Cicero’s actions, as those of every single actor who claimed to act in defense and restoration of the republic, only contributed to its putridity. With the vanishing of peaceful political accountability, violent political retribution flourished. Two decades later, when Antony had Cicero’s severed head and hands nailed to the Rostra, a case can be made he had it coming, but in the immortal words of William Munny, “We all have it coming kid.”
After previously reading Ferrero’s whole work, I concluded in the republic’s last half-century the very wisest Romans slipped away to the countryside, lost to history.
Now to a couple reflections on our present Rome on the Potomac. With the reelection of Trump, it’s been amusing glimpsing a few of America’s own Ciceros at the NYT. They’ve been doing some public learnin’, don’t worry, it’s never much. The top of America’s political class learns the concerns and attitudes of the great proletarian electoral rabble with polling, that is, at a secure distance. In a recent poll, the NYT learned, “Most Americans say the United States has ignored serious problems at home while entangling itself in costly conflicts abroad.”
Even better, 60% of Americans think “our nation’s political system has been broken for decades.” What’s a
matter with the rest? For decades, a few tried to alert our fellow Americans the system was broken and desperately needed reform. In fact in 1992, with a few others, I tried my damnedest to publicly make this point as loud as possible. I assure you, the NYT was in vehement opposition. They cared to learn nuthin’. As the case with the first, there’s no teaching our Ciceros. Ferrero astutely opines on Rome’s and our present elite, “It has always been a failing of rich and educated men to have too high an opinion of their own abilities.”
The NYT’s learnin’ couldn’t top Old Joe’s Farewell however. Who could not be amused by the president’s recognition of “oligarchy” and a “tech-industrial complex?” Joe never showed much interest in the political implications of tech, except as provider of campaign funds. I don’t ever remember him saying much about tech development at all. Surprising. It was always said in the turn from rotary dial to touch-tone Joe was an early adopter.
Joe’s Farewell insight harkens back to Ike’s 1961 Farewell confession, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Ike was greatly responsible for its creation. The military-industrial complex established the councils and mechanisms of empire, all of them two or more steps removed from any direct citizen control. Far too few ever complained or showed concern. Just as with the Roman republic’s Mediterranean imperial creation, the global Pax Americana spread wealth across US society. Ferrero writes about Rome’s ancient War Nerds,
“The conquests of Lucullus and Pompey had afforded vast gratification to the imperialist susceptibilities of the middle class; they had disseminated a sentiment bordering on adoration for Alexander the Great, together with the most fantastic dreams of world-wide domination. But the great majority of the arm-chair strategists who were ready to overrun the world in the footsteps of the great Macedonian, could not have endured a single day of genuine soldiering.”
The tech-industrial complex is newer and less understood. Joe variously helped it grow, doubtful he himself could tell you how. The new complex’s ever expanding power and control are completely bereft of democratic politics and accountability. The wealth created overwhelmingly concentrates in the hands of a few.
Ferrero notes the fundamental difference between the Roman republic and the modern republics that began with the founding of the US. He writes,
“The mercantile democracies of our own epoch depend, like all communities, upon sustained effort; but they depend upon an effort in which the struggle of man against nature exerts a more powerful leverage than the struggle of man against man. They depend, that is, upon industry: and the object of industry is to make the forces of nature subservient to human use.”
Rome’s politics predominately concerned the questions and the structures of power between people. A politics with ancient roots reaching back before our ancestors pounded the first rock. Certainly, technology helped define Rome. Bricks, roads, aqueducts, and the iron sword all decisively shaped it, but this pales in comparison to the technological revolution of industrialism and its reshaping of politics and nature. Now, newer compute-information technology reshapes established industrial society and nature. For those in the 21st century who still have trouble with notions of human equality, nothing more acutely defines the fundamental equality of humankind than our radical, collective, eminently egalitarian interactions with nature.
Ferrero concludes of the political actors who ended the Roman republic,
“Like all other human beings, they were the plaything of what in history we can name destiny, though it is nothing more than the unforeseen coincidence of events, the emergence into action of hidden forces which, in a complex and disordered society such as that of Rome or of our own day, no contemporary can be expected to discern.”
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A short note — I’m headed down to Peru for awhile. I have half an idea of writing something on the five thousand years of stone civilizations that sprouted along the 2,000 mile Peruvian coast. How could that not be a best seller! Roughly, these civilizations are global contemporaries of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, the Indus, and Mexico. Climbing across such ruins always gives me a certain aesthetic sense, an inkling of a greater grasp of time. A fleeting sense of time greater than the shortness of one human life. It also provides a truly enlightened understanding that whatever is happening in our present civilization, none of it had to be — a freedom of thought most recoil from.
Any interest in helping fund such a work, let me know. Also in regards to good work for an old man and for moneyed art interests, I noticed over the years, stumbling around these sites and museums stretched across the planet, there are similarities at certain times in the development of all human civilizations. Times where pottery and other early tools are immensely similar in substance, shape, color, and decoration. A wonderful exhibition of the commonality of human development defined by what we are as a species.
Yet, I don’t believe there’s ever been an exhibit revealing these similarities. In fact, just the opposite, they are keenly kept separate promoting false senses of uniqueness and more troubling, superiority. Such an exhibit might prove fruitful for our times, art as political avant garde Coppola recently contended, ancient proofs of our collective identity as a species. A grand work of art in and of itself. Though as far as it offering any healthy politics, in the end, Rome’s long and vigorous tradition celebrating Latin commonality didn’t keep them from lustily butchering each other in the republic’s last decades. But then, a century ago, that British pseudo-Arab violently traversing the Arabian desert assured, “Nothing is written.”