Reply #39: The late great USA - Ancient Rome part deux? [View All]

[Scott Lee]

Being a history hobbyist is annoying, because you have a tendency to view everything around you in comparative historical terms. Even some of the most trivial stuff. Wow, my toast is burning...I wonder if Tacitus ever burned his toast?

I notice a rising tide of despair and anger with many of us at the state of affairs in our own nation. People are pissed. Disillusioned. Disenfranchised. Put out. They are sure that we shouldn't be this way, under the new Police Daddy State. But my question is, are you so sure?

More and more I am seeing parallels to Ancient Rome. Look at how they started out (we can skip the two little brats suckling off a Shewolf). Borrowing all that democracy from the Greeks and dreaming up this way cool notion of one hundred representatives from around the realm (100 = "cent", hence Senatus or place of the hundred) gathering in one place to discuss and solve the problems of the young republic. The people would be citizens, not all slaves to the state (yes, I know Rome had plenty of slaves but so did we in the early years of our nation as well), they would be "citizens" and pay taxes (tribute) to fund the great republic. They flourished in the arts, sciences and grew in power.

Then they became Empire. The military got increasingly powerful, spread its adventures far and wide, taking ever more territory for Greater Rome (no doubt telling the newly "conquered" that they were liberating them, not enslaving them in a vassal state). The conquered peoples were made "citizens" of Rome, in an eerie precursor of what later would be the US determination to include all nations in the "family of democracy".

But the weight of a military empire got too great. The law became savage, Draconian. Its symbol became the Fasces, representing the unbending, brutal and literal application of its full weight. Emperors came an went, were installed and assassinated. The Senate lost its prestige and power. Revolutionary government became rank and corrupt. The empire shrank as money for the efforts dried up and rebellions began squeezing in on it.

When the pissed off hordes of former conquered peoples showed up at Romes gates, they met little to no resistance, as the once great empire had rotted from within and the citizens could care less.

Does this all sound familiar? Is the USA merely playing out another round of what inevitably happens to "republics" that become too powerful?