People have been comparing the US to the Roman Empire in decline since at least the 1950's. It was a favorite meme of my mother, child as she was of the Great Depression and the Second World War. And yet we sometimes look back now to that early postwar period as 'the good old days.'
Unstable times bring great risks. A.H. Beesley wrote this history shortly after the First World War, when the flower of Europe had been lost in the trenches and the British Empire was staggered. Most people are not aware of the foundation of the Roman Republic with the overthrow of the monarchy around 500 BC, and the four hundred year period of the popular consuls, with their own decline, the third servile revolt of Spartacus, and the rise of the princeps, clever politicians and powerful generals, epitomized finally by the dictator, Julius Caesar.
Beesley asks the rhetorical question in 1921 that a Roman citizen might have asked in 70 BC, 'The hour for reform was surely come. Who was to be the man?'
And so, seemingly, here we are again.
Universal degeneracy of the Government, and decay of the nation
Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the
civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected
in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the
small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers
are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to
pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, but ideas
of true beauty in very few men's souls; when the business-sharper is
the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts;
when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice
according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into
great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief
gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is
increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing
impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation;
when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out
the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon
which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely
light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply
replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any
number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in
robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or
burglar'--when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before
which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.
A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed
class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other,
and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of
Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea;
more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood
over revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of
cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the
population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a
speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to
organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, whole sale
luxury, and monstrous vice.
The hour for reform was surely come. Who was to be the man?
A.H. Beesley, The Gracchi Marius and Sulla, 1921
