The Last Roman

What were the causes of the collapse of the Roman Republic and how were these faults corrected in the early Empire?

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

- Ronald Reagan

Address to the annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce

30 March 1961

We attribute Edmund Burke for observing "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."   When the Republic dies, it dies because the enemies of liberty overwhelmed the defenders of liberty.  It was true in Caesar's day as it was in Tsar Nicholas' day, Tadeusz Kościuszko's day or the days of the Weimar Republic.

Aristotle wrote on Ethics of three men.  One man has no idea what ethics are and if he acts in an ethical way it is by chance or threat of violence.  The next man knows what ethics are and but acts in unethical way by inclination.  The only thing deterring him is an act of violence.  The last man is the man who knows what it means to be ethical and follows an ethic lifestyle by choice.  These are the philosopher kings.  This is what the Roman people were for 727 years until the end of the republic.

Romans stood vigil against the enemies of liberty thwarting the designs of men like Tarquin the Proud and Appius Claudius.  Rome resisted these men simply put because the defenders of liberty had more strength in numbers and in force of character than the enemies of liberty.

Those enemies of Roman liberty were Gaius Julius Caesar, Octavian Caesar, Gaius Marius, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Mark Antony, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Caitline,  Pompey, Saturninius, Suplicius, and the legion of sycophants, fools, traitors and changelings that surrendered their liberty to be lackeys of these dangerous blood thirsty men, men like Annius, Asiaticus, Flaccus, Fimbria and to a degree Sertorius.

The Roman Republic had one last hope – Cicero, one of the greatest Romans to live since Camillus.  Cicero, this novus homo who defended Sextus Roscius, convicted Gaius Verres in all but name, exposed and crushed the Caitline conspiracy, guided the ship of state through the tumult of the triumvirate, waged a Fabian strategy against the illegal dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar and blunted the mad tyranny of Mark Antony. Consider this episode recounted by Anthony Trollope in The Life of Cicero:

He gives his brother an account of the doings in the Senate, which is interesting as showing us how that august assembly conducted itself. While Pompey was speaking with much dignity, Clodius and his supporters in vain struggled with shouts and cries to put him down. At noon Pompey sat down, and Clodius got possession of the rostra, and in the middle of a violent tumult remained on his feet for two hours. Then, on Pompey's side, the "optimates" sang indecent songs --"versus obscenissimi"--in reference to Clodius and his sister Clodia. Clodius, rising in his anger, demanded, "Who had brought the famine?" "Pompey," shouted the Clodians. "Who wanted to go to Egypt?" demanded Clodius. "Pompey," again shouted his followers. After that, at three o'clock, at a given signal, they began to spit upon their opponents. Then there was a fight, in which each party tried to drive the others out. The "optimates" were getting the best of it, when Cicero thought it as well to run off lest he should be hurt in the tumult.

Rome fell from within and the causes of the decline come from one source - moral degeneration.

When died a patriot's death at the hands of his executioners in 43 BC, so did dreams of Roman liberty - NEVER TO BE RECOVERED.