The Verrine Orations by Marcus Tullius Cicero

End of Empire

The Roman Empire fell in 42 BC at the battle of Philippi where Mark Antony defeated decisively the forces of Old Republic led by Marcus Brutus - the de facto stepson and rumored cuckolded son of Julius Caesar.

The unraveling of the social fabric created in Republican government took three hundred and fifty five years.  Julius Caesar, Marius and the Gracchi dreamed not to emulate Cincinatus or Camillus but Alexander.  In establishing monarchy with the trappings of liberty, Julius Caesar continued the monarchies of the Diadochi.

There was one important consequence the peace among the Greeks.  That united Greek hegemony against Rome envisioned by Perseus of Macedon found fruit in Caesar who established a Greek hegemony within Rome.  Greeks and Greeklings found themselves vying for the monarchy in Rome.

The problem with monarchies as the Sassanid empire demonstrates is that they aren't very stable.  The year of the four emperors and the crisis of the Third Century demonstrate this.

The empire that Diocletian inherited may have been a sinking ship due to sociological factors rather than political ones.  That said, his decision to divide the empire into a tetrarchy served as a death warrant for city born on the banks of the Tiber ford.

Sulla or Caesar?

A question on the facebook page of Ancient Rome Refocused from a Canadian fan posits:
would it be better to have a Sulla who respected the Senate but was extreme in his ruthlessness time travel to the the White House, or a Julius Caesar who saw democracy as an obstacle but who was compassionate to his enemies?


 I don't think Caesar was all that compassionate to his enemies. He did not participate in the proscriptions that his nephew and Sulla whole heartedly bathed themselves in. Caesar fought six campaigns for absolute power and when he held it, according to Plutarch he wasn't well liked. I estimate that he killed over 115,000 Romans or 1/3 the Roman population according to Toynbee's figure.

The solution to our spiritual crisis is not a political one though it has political consequences. If all of the world's problems could be solved by rounding up the problem population and disposing of them, then we should stop speaking English and speak German, Russian or Chinese. 

We have to practice our religion. Cato was a stoic. Cicero was a peripatetic. I am a Christian. Numa Popilius was a pagan. If we obey the will of God, seek the harder right over the easier wrong, we will be just fine and like Cicero, our virtue will immortalize us. If we fail, we will be overrun by the babarians who will regard us much the same way Tamerlane regarded the Baghdadi.


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Rome and Fascism

A fan of the Ancient Rome Refocused page asserted that the Romans would be more comfortable in a fascist state than in our own democracy - never mind that the founders based our own U.S. Constitution on the Roman Republic.  I responded thus:


If these census figures are to be believed, the Romans had representation indirectly through their client-patron relationships in the Senate. They could also participate in the 3 assemblies.

Though the Emperors enjoyed a type of totalitarianism. They all thought such unchecked power to be despicable. That is why Imperial historians like Suetonius were critical of men like Caligula and Nero. Again it is important to appreciate the genius of the Lycurgian constitution explained by Polybius:

How the Roman Republic fell is the same is why our constitutions are failing us, because more evil men are overwhelming the virtuous men. The solution is to create more virtuous men - like Cato the Younger, Cicero, and Cincinnatus. The creation of more virtuous men can only be done by example. Cato the Younger, Cicero, and Cincinnatus knew that.

In a lot of ways Rome's problems as our own problems are spiritual.


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