[This
is Chapter Four of Murphey’s book Understanding
the Modern Predicament.]
Chapter Four
The
point I am making in these chapters is preliminary to my discussion of modern
society. It is that modern civilization began not on a firm foundation, but on
the basis of a still-immature humanity and without definitive models from the
past. The non-paradigmatic nature of all previous societies suggests that
history has consisted of a series of make-shifts.
A society that endured, as
Gibbon
didn't begin his study of the decline of
I
would say, though, that it is difficult really to understand the decline
without tracing the weakness back through almost the entirety of Roman history.
Jose Ortega y Gasset's perceptive eye went more to the heart of the matter when
he saw the "desperation of ancient man" as having begun in the first
century B.C.2 This desperation was the result of earlier weaknesses,
which can be traced back through the Gracchi and beyond. I believe that those who
would understand Rome's fall almost seven centuries later must start in the
second century B.C., just as Americans must begin with the generation of
Emerson and Thoreau if they are to understand the civil dissension in late
twentieth century America.
The
skepticism of some modern scholars has cast doubt on the exact year in which
the Romans threw off their kings and established the Republic. The date
traditionally assigned has been 509 B.C., but the event may have occurred
somewhat later. In either case, almost a thousand years elapsed from the
beginning of the Republic to the time when the last Roman emperor in the West
was deposed by the barbarian Odacer in 476 A.D.
The
Republic's beginning centuries were consumed by the "Struggle of the
Orders," through which the Plebeians gradually gained political equality
with the Patricians. During those centuries Roman society moved toward equality
and away from its original aristocratic complexion.
The
Punic Wars severely tested the Republic. The first war continued for
twenty-three agonizing years, the second for seventeen.
These
military struggles had significant internal effects. The powers of government
were brought into the hands of the Senate as a body offering experience and
continuity. The upshot was that the earlier democratic gains were undone; the
old dichotomy of Patrician versus Plebeian no longer existed, but there was a
new Senatorial aristocracy, the Nobiles, which consisted of the
magistrates and their descendants.
A Cohesive Society: the MOS MAIORUM
As
a small city-state under the pressures of constant war, the Romans became
tightly knit. Mommsen's comment that "life in the case of the Roman was
spent under conditions of austere restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less
he was a free man," indicates that the community was proud and austere.3
Mommsen goes on to say that "all-powerful custom restricted [the Roman of
this period] to a narrow range of thought and action; and to have led a serious
and strict or, to use the characteristic Latin expressions, a sad and severe
life, was his glory." There was a "collective sense of dignity in the
noble families of Rome" that "swelled into that mighty civic pride, the
like of which the earth has never seen again." And there was a strong
veneration of family and ancestors.
It
was from this that the conception of the mos maiorum arose; the mos maiorum -- or "the tradition of our
ancestors" – was an image of close cultural unity by which the Romans
perceived their society. This unity contained several elements:
To
Polybius, "a scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the
Roman commonwealth together." He remarked that the religious devotion was
carried to "an extraordinary height… both in private and public
business," although he expressed his belief that religion was used by the
nobility to control the remainder of the people.4 Roebuck says
"the highest Roman virtue was pietas, the proper observance of obligations
to the gods, to the state and to the family, and the most important quality of
Roman character was gravitas, a serious dignified attitude to
life." R. E. Smith confirms that
Rome "was essentially a religious society."5
The
upper class in particular had a close family life that Roebuck says was
"characterized by strong patriarchal authority." Smith says that
"obedience to the constituted authority, disciplina,
was the foundation of the Roman state" and illustrates this by pointing
out that "their early history was filled with improving stories in
illustration of this virtue; the greatness of the Roman army depended on this
absolute obedience and disobedience was sternly punished." The individual
was in various ways absorbed into a cohesive society. "The individual was
subordinated to the society and found his means of self-expression in his
society and as a member of it." Smith underscores the importance of the
family when he adds that it was on "the sacredness of family life"
that "Rome's earlier greatness had so much depended."
Behavior
was closely controlled. "The Romans thought that no marriage, or rearing
of children, nay or feast or drinking-bout, ought to be permitted according to
everyone's appetite or fancy, without being examined and inquired into,"
according to Plutarch. He says the Romans were of the opinion "that a
man's character was much sooner perceived in things of this sort than in what
is done publicly and in open day." The result was that "they chose,
therefore, two persons, one out of the patricians, the other out of the
commons, who were to watch, correct, and punish, if anyone ran too much into
voluptuousness, or transgressed the usual manner of life of his country; and
these they called Censors."6
The
Rome of the mos maiorum amounted to what we would today call a
"closed society." This is well illustrated by Smith's observation
that "for the guardians of a close-knit society, whose ethos was
based upon a mos maiorum that owed nothing to
Greece, there could be a danger in the indiscriminate admission of foreign
ideas and ways which might conflict with those of Rome.” He says that "in
all spheres of life… they exercised a vigilant censorship, aimed to exclude
anything that might destroy the harmony of Roman society."
Expression
of all types was strictly controlled (although this wasn't totally
accomplished). According to Smith, the control of literature was easy, since
this depended on wealthy patrons and the nobles were the educated and leisured
class: "Those who might have been antagonistic did not have the
opportunity to express themselves." Plautus found it prudent to circumvent
the restraints by making Greece rather than Rome the locale for the plots of
his plays; and Naevius was imprisoned and then banished because he didn't toe
the mark.
The
purpose of the control was not malevolent, since a serious ideal lay behind it.
A spirit of duty, of noblesse, pervaded Roman life. The restraints
followed naturally in a community in which the ideal was, Smith says, "to
be the leading man in the State in war and peace, to hold the highest office
and the most important military command, to acquire wealth honorably and to
have children to carry on the family."
Panaetius
gave the mos maiorum at least some theoretical basis, but for the most
part the Romans were practical, not contemplative. Panaetius was the exception
when "he took the Roman ethos and the aristocratic ideal and gave
them a philosophic basis; Stoicism and the ideal became fused in his
interpretation."
Rome
was governed almost exclusively by the nobiles. It is apparent from the
statistics cited by Smith that a novus homo -- a "new man" --
was rare: “How tight a hold they kept upon the consulship the figures for these
years show; during the 100 years preceding the tribunate of Tib. Gracchus,out
of 200 consulships 159 went to 26 families, 99 of them to only ten families.
Between 200 and 146 B.C. only 4 novia homines forced their way to the
highest office, all of them helped by some section of the nobiles."
Polybius was something of an ancient Montesquieu when he wrote about a
"mixed constitution" involving a check and balance among monarchy,
aristocracy and democracy; but in fact Rome was overwhelmingly aristocratic.
The
economy was based on the small family farm. Rostovtzeff says "the citizen
farmer lived on his land and tilled it with the help of his family, or perhaps
with a few slaves who formed part of the family from the economic point of
view."
All
of these ingredients together show the nature of the Republic's concordia
during the Punic Wars and for a few years thereafter. But what are we to think
of the soundness of such a social order?
The
mos maiorum was
a tight little island of social mores and thought. Because it depended upon
insulation, it was foredoomed to eventual dissipation; it couldn't last and
history shows that it didn't last. Such a closed society could not be sustained
once the unique conditions upon which it was based had shifted. Eventually a
flood of alien ideas and influences poured in upon it from the rest of the
world. Such a society would only be an anachronism under changed conditions,
but it could hardly last even as an anachronism, since its unique
characteristics could not be sustained in an open setting. In the section that
follows I will trace its disintegration under those outside forces. The mos
maiorum was, from the point of view of virtually all later Romans, the best
time in Roman history. It is also a time in which Roman society contained all
of the elements Burkean conservatism would desire for a society: social
hierarchy, tradition, a strong religious center, private property, community,
control over will and appetite, and an integrative-type state. There is,
therefore, considerable significance in my conclusion that it was little more
than an impermanent make-shift founded on uniquely insulated conditions. Such a
conclusion is not only at odds with Burkean conservatism but leaves Roman
civilization existentially naked. It means that even the best part of the Roman
experience was non-paradigmatic. The Roman concordia was valuable for
its own purposes, but those purposes were transient.
The
historian Polybius, although a Greek, lived in Rome during the second century
B.C. He made two contradictory predictions: he estimated that the "mixed
constitution" that he praised would keep licentiousness in check, but he
is better remembered for his other and more prophetic prediction foretelling
the dissolution of the mos maiorum: "The future of the Roman polity… is quite
clear, in my opinion… When a commonwealth, after warding off many great
dangers, has arrived at a high pitch of prosperity and undisputed power, it is
evident that, by the lengthened continuance of great wealth within it, the
manner of life of its citizens will become more extravagant; and that the
rivalry for office, and in other spheres of activity, will become fiercer than
it ought to be. And as this state of things goes on more and more, the desire
of office and the shame of losing reputation, as well as the ostentation and
extravagance of living, will prove the beginning of a deterioration. And of this change the people will be
credited with being the authors, when they become convinced that they are being
cheated by some from avarice, and are puffed up with flattery by others from
love of office. For when that comes about, in their passionate resentment and
acting under the dictates of anger, they will refuse to obey any longer, or to
be content with having equal powers with their leaders, but will demand to have
all or far the greatest themselves. And
when that comes to pass the constitution will receive a new name, which sounds
better than any other in the world, liberty or democracy; but, in fact, it will
become the worst of all governments, mob-rule."
After
the Punic Wars the changes that would shatter the mos maiorum did occur.
With the pressure of war removed, the need for senatorial continuity was less
urgent and the demand for military virtue declined. It became possible to relax
again. The cauldron of war was no longer mixing the brew of pietas and gravitas.
Where
economic causation is involved, there is a temptation to assign the effects
exclusively to it. Such a single-minded explanation is a mistake in the Roman
context as elsewhere, but this does not mean that the economic factors were not
of major importance. They helped shatter the underpinnings of the old order.
Rome
now had extensive overseas provinces that provided a continuous flow of
indemnity, slaves and booty. Cowell says "a new economy based upon money,
foreign booty, cheap imports and skillful slaves were
all
signs that the Romans were embarking upon a new and feverish pursuit of wealth
and luxury."7 Heitland places considerable emphasis on the
economic and social impact of the provinces when he says that "in
promoting the private self-seeking and public impotence that foiled all efforts
for reform, the provincial system played a great part, and it was through the
influence of the Provinces that the Roman Republic came to a violent and
unlamented end."8 Roebuck adds that "too many governors saw
only an opportunity for their own aggrandisement and made very considerable
personal gain."
Slaves
poured in from the provinces, altering the economic base. An "agricultural
revolution" occurred as large slave plantations, the latifundia,
replaced the family farm. "This agricultural revolution helped to create
an idle mob in Rome with serious political and military effects for the
state." Roebuck explains that
"because the plentiful supply of slave labor drove free men from the large
farms and public works projects, Romans and Italians of the lower class
consequently faced unemployment in both the country and the city." Nor was
it just the small farmers and the laborers on the large estates who migrated to
the city to form the new proletariat; the slaves themselves were often freed
and be- came part of the same urban element. Smith gives a good description:
"The growth of latifundia …, the absentee landlord running his farm
with slave labor, the conscription of the yoeman class for war service, were
all combining to create social distress, and to take away from a large number
of people their means of livelihood. The persons thus dispossessed came to
Rome, where they contrived to eke out a livelihood as hired laborers in public
works and as clientes of the nobles."
The
estates became larger as, according to Heitland, "there was in this period
a marked tendency to give up tillage for grazing." As to the manual
trades, he says that just as "slavery was driving out free labor in the
country … the same was taking place in the manual trades, though we hear less
of it." He adds that "old
prejudices against bodily labor other than agriculture helped to give our
handicrafts to the slave-artisan."
The
result was that "if we try to discover what were the occupations of
ordinary Roman citizens in this period, we come upon three lines of life, (a)
soldiering with an eye to profit, (b) finance, including a certain amount of
commerce, (c) acquiescent pauperism." In the next century the Marian army
reforms made soldiering for profit a seriously disruptive force. It remained so
for six centuries, creating and destroying demagogues and later setting up and
pulling down emperors. The "acquiescent pauperism" grew to massive
proportions; by the time of Augustus there were 200,000 people supported by
subsidized grain. The growth of so large a dependent proletariat was certainly
incompatible with the mos maiorum. Heitland points out that with
"the mere dependence of the poor as poor upon the rich as rich, the quest
for corporal sustenance rather than social protection, was already
beginning." Political opportunism took full advantage of "cheap
grain," as we see during the first century B.C. in the conduct of Rullus
and Clodius.
Nor
was cheap corn the only manipulative instrument. The appeal to the proletarians
included lavish free entertainment and "above all," Dickinson says,
"outright bribery."9 The corrupting influences that the mos maiorum had sought to suppress were
intensified. "Human blood was first shed for sport in the Roman forum in
490 (264 B.C.)," Mommsen says. Such
"amusements" began as funeral games, and as they became more vulgar
they were opposed by the nobles. In 268 B.C. the "government carried a
decree of the people prohibiting the bringing over of wild beasts to Rome, and
strictly insisted that no gladiators should appear at the public
festivals," but Mommsen says this wasn't enforced. Heitland describes the
entertainments as "demoralizing" and cites "the indecencies of
the actresses (slaves under orders) at the ludi Florales" The
gladiatorial fights in which slaves killed each other were for a long time an
"irregular private affair," but they eventually became public
spectacles. When they later became a political instrument, "the people of
Rome were cultivated by new techniques of mass bribery and propaganda."
A
commercial middle class developed during the Punic Wars. Smith says that
instead of being a positive force they had little sense of
"community"; they "took no part in Rome's government, and were
untouched… by moral scruples." The aristocracy voiced a theme that has
been important throughout Western civilization: it "despised"
commerce and remained a landed nobility.
"As
government contractors, as financiers, and as business men plying their
business in many parts of the world, (the Equites) became a rich and
influential class." At first their political thinking and alignment
"was unformed," but Gaius Gracchus sought their support and later
they became a major power behind Julius Caesar. As "a party of material
interest without past traditions of ancestral virtue," they weren't fitted
to sustain the tightly knit mos maiorum.
The aristocracy itself was slowly transformed by a number of forces that
at the same time affected the entire society. Its austere virtues were slowly
dissolved. By the time Cicero and Cato the Younger attempted to rally those
loyal to the Republic almost a century later, the Senate was just a shadow of what it had been. This weakness was not
entirely due to the civil wars or even to the competition for demagogic glory
that predominated during the first century B.C., although these were important
factors. Although Smith criticizes Sallust for assigning to the nobles of 112
B.C. the same debasement they embodied in 60 B.C., it is evident that the decay
began before the Gracchi.
Hellenization was an influence that was
general but that had its main effect on the nobility. As Rome lost its
preoccupation with purely Italian affairs and became a world power, its
educated leisure class came in touch with the intellectual ferment that had so
long existed in Greece. "Among the upper classes," Roebuck tells us,
" a steady change in education and manners set in." Cato the Elder
had been right in thinking that Greek influence would help shatter the mos
maiorum; he had tried to block the influx of Greek ideas. To prevent such
an influx, "they exercised a vigilant censorship, aimed to exclude
anything that might destroy the harmony of Roman society." Prompted by Cato, a party of Reform arose
that sought unsuccessfully to erect barriers to shelter the distinctive Roman
culture. In 186 B.C. the Senate suppressed the worship of Dionysus, which was
conducted through secret societies with an orgiastic ritual. The worship of
Bacchus, also characterized by secret rites and nightly orgies, flourished
mainly in the Greek district, and it too was suppressed. A few years later in
157 B.C. the Senate suspended the construction of a permanent theater, since
according to Mommsen "the Roman drama was, at this epoch when men were
wavering between the old austerity and the new corruption, the academy at once
of Hellenism and of vice." Rome didn't have its first permanent theater
until a century later. In 161 B.C. the Senate banished rhetoricians and
philosophers. Seven years later three Greek philosophers -- Carneades
a skeptic, Diogenes a stoic, and Critolaus a peripatetic -- visited Rome as
ambassadors of Athens, but were "hustled untimely out of Rome,"
according to Smith, "their business having been rushed through the Senate
at Cato's instigation."
These
measures were an effort -- ultimately futile -- to preserve the mos maiorum.
To keep this effort in perspective, it is worth noting Mommsen's view that,
although culturally conservative, the Catonian party was not unnecessarily
bigoted: "Cato was by no means chargeable with an opposition to culture
and to Hellenism in general. On the contrary it is the highest merit of the
national party, that they comprehended very clearly the necessity of creating a
Latin literature and of bringing the stimulating influences of Hellenism to
bear on it; only their intention was, that Latin literature should not be a
mere copy taken from the Greek.…"
The
influx of Greek culture was best manifested in the education of Publius
Cornelius Scipio, known as Scipio the Younger, who was one of the soundest men
of the second century. Roebuck says of him that "Scipio was representative
of a new type of young Roman just emerging in this period, well educated along
Greek lines and with a broader, more international outlook than the
farmer-senators, men of Fabius' type, who constituted a majority of the
Senate."
The
overall effect, though, was socially unsettling; Hellenization introduced,
through rationalism, a relativism and an individualism that were inconsistent
with the old concord and austerity. Mommsen tells us that "the tragic
drama of this period and its principal representative Ennius displayed… an
anti-national and consciously propagandistic aim." He goes on to say that
"this Attico-Roman comedy, with its prostitution of body and soul usurping
the name of love --equally immoral in shamelessness and in sentimentality --
with its offensive and unnatural generosity, with its uniform glorification of
a life of debauchery, with its mixture of rustic coarseness and foreign
refinement, was one continuous lesson of Romano-Hellenic demoralization, and
was felt as such."
The
corruption is evident in this passage from Mommsen. The following statements by
Smith show the rationalistic questioning and the advent of individualism
(neither of them necessarily bad, but both inconsistent with the cultural
insularity of the mos maiorum): "The nobles began to seek in reason
a foundation for their social customs and beliefs, and the individual began to
assume a position of greater importance." He says that Lucilius was
"the first instance of an individual writer" who recounted "his
own views and experiences" and says that "his appearance at this time
has a certain symbolic quality, for the Gracchi, like himself, were in their
individualism the product of their age; but he was in sympathy with, they in
revolt against, their society."
The
rapid increase in sensuality was another general influence. The
"glorification of a life of debauchery" was thoroughly at odds with
the Roman virtues of pietas, gravitas and disciplina. Paterculus states
that "when their dread of Carthage was at an end, and their rival in
empire was removed, the nation deserting the cause of virtue, went over, not
gradually, but with precipitation, to that of vice; the old rules of conduct
were renounced, and new introduced; and the people turned themselves from
activity to slumber, from arms to pleasure, from business to idleness."10
Polybius also spoke of "the general deterioration of morals," and
related that "some had wasted their energies on favorite youths; others on
mistresses; and a great many on banquets enlivened with poetry and wine, and
all the extravagant expenditure which they entailed." He added that
"to such monstrous lengths had this debauchery gone among the young men,
that many of them had given a talent for a young favorite."
Plutarch
wrote in the same vein later when he said that "he was very rare who would
cultivate the old habits of bodily labor, or prefer a light supper, and a
breakfast which never saw the fire, or be in love with poor clothes and a
homely lodging, or could set his ambition rather on doing without luxuries than
on possessing them. For now the state, unable to keep its purity by reason of
its greatness,... was fain to admit... new examples of living. With reason,
therefore, everybody admired Cato, when they saw others... grow effeminate by
pleasure."
A
number of scandals occurred during the ten years between 179 and 169 B.C.,
particularly in the conduct of officials overseas; and two years previously, in
181, a law had been enacted to limit the size of private parties. "It is
said," Heitland tells us, citing Macrobius, "that gluttony grew fast,
with disastrous effect on the morals of young men, and that the example of
their betters led to an epidemic of drunkenness among the common people."
Mommsen elaborates this point when he says that "hitherto the Romans had
perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking-banquets in the strict
sense were unknown; now formal revels came into vogue, on which occasions the
wine was little or not at all diluted and was drunk out of large cups... In
consequence of this debauchery dice-playing, which had doubtless long been in
use among the Romans, reached such proportions that it was necessary for
legislation to interfere." In 173 two men were expelled "for
preaching Pleasure as the rule and guide of life."
Slavery
played a role in this evaporation of the moral values of the mos maiorum.
Heitland reports that "from gratifying the wishes of their owners it was
an easy step to create in them new desires and then provide the satisfaction …
The Roman once roused was apt to take his pleasure with a riotous appetite, to
which his slaves ministered with the mature vitiosity
of the East. But in no respect were the oriental slaves more mischievous than
in their treatment of the young. It was their immediate interest to curry favor
with the rising generation, and their means of doing so was a course of
indulgence and secret connivances, demoralizing from the first, and becoming
worse as the children grew up.”
The
moral decline was most immediately harmful in its effect on the nobility.
Mommsen comments that "the government of the aristocracy was in full train
to destroy its own work.." He says
that "there was a profound meaning in the question of Cato, 'What was to
become of Rome, when she should no longer have any state to fear?"'
The
point was reached at which there existed "a degenerate oligarchy and a
democracy still undeveloped but already cankered in the bud." According to
Heitland the moral collapse made reforms useless, since "there was no
point at which to make the beginning of a fruitful crusade." He observes
that "it was a moral force that was the mainspring of the whole machine,
and it was precisely this moral force that was now failing fast." Once
this was true, it would do no permanent good to elect the best men, to punish
the worst abuses, to enforce honesty by law. Once the positive was gone, a void
remained.
The
same trends were present in the decline of the family. Mommsen relates that
"the ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The evil of
grisettes and boy-favorites spread like a pestilence." Much later Augustus
sought to reestablish sexual mores that would strengthen family ties, but
during the period we are discussing "the loose relations between the sexes
among the higher classes of society was one of the most obvious consequences of
the disintegration." Women had earlier been confined tightly within the
patriarchal family, but there was now a
movement toward their emancipation. Mommsen comments on it, but Heitland
provides the following description: "The Roman ladies of the period had…
fallen away from the solid moral type of earlier days… Their extravagance and
love of display were becoming a marked feature of the age. In the scandal of
the Bacchanalian orgies women of position had played a leading part, and it was
believed that in that affair vice had been followed by crime: those whose
secrecy was doubted had been silenced by poison."
The
mos maiorum's religious base eroded at the same time. Mommsen says that
"towards the end of this epoch, complaints were loudly made that the lore
of the augurs was neglected, and, that, to use the language of Cato, a number
of ancient auguries and auspices were falling into oblivion through the
indolence of the college." He adds that "the Hellenistic irreligious
spirit found free course," and observes that the government began to use
religion as a manipulative device, treating "the national religion in
accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on
the public at large." The growing Hellenism introduced skepticism:
"The first great blow to the current theology was dealt by Ennius, who
lived into the middle of this period. He translated into Latin the work of
Euhemerus, and drove home the skeptical attack by applications in his own
works."
Another
factor was that the Roman constitution was clearly insufficient for the
broadened circumstances that now existed. Rome had grown beyond a city-state,
but retained its earlier governmental mechanism. This was unsuited for
governing all of Italy, much less a major portion of the Mediterranean world.
Citizens were required to come to Rome to vote. Heitland concludes that
"the constitution was no longer sufficient for the needs of the
time," although he sees that there was no chance for successful reform,
since the human material needed for that purpose was no longer present:
"It had come to this, that no privilege could be successfully assailed or
defended without resorting sooner or later to the use of the sword. And
military revolution meant monarchy."
The power of the Senate was founded entirely on consent and had no further legal basis. In 287 B.C., the Hortensian Law had "recognized the plebiscites of the Tribal Assembly as valid and binding on the whole state, without senatorial ratification." Necessity had set aside this democratic standard during the Punic Wars and placed power in the Senate, but after the wars the Senate lacked constitutional justification for exclusive power. The day was approaching when Senatorial hegemony could not be maintained. Senatorial control was in difficulty the moment it was seriously challenged.
There
was an incubation first of anarchy and then of despotism as the replacements
for the mos maiorum. The tendencies I have
traced were only the beginning: the ensuing ninety years of civil disorder
magnified each of them until finally there could be no social order without the
cements of military dictatorship.
Tiberius
Gracchus was elected tribune in 133 B.C. Most
historians describe the personal characteristics of the Gracchi brothers
favorably. Rostovtzeff refers to Tiberius as "highly educated, absolutely
honest, and remarkably able." Monnnsen says that Gaius "was very
different from his brother, who was about nine years older. Like the latter, he
had no relish for vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of
thorough culture and a brave soldier;... But in talent, in character, and above
all in passion he was decidedly superior to Tiberius.” Plutarch said about both
that "the greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow
that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was improved
also by a generous education." Although the moral and social
disintegration provided the setting for the civil disorder that began with the
Gracchi, the Gracchi brothers themselves did not embody the profligacy.
Although
he was a member of the Senate, Tiberius' purpose in becoming a tribune was to
bypass the Senate. He proposed to reassert the old Licinian-Sextian
law that had limited the amount of public domain anyone could occupy to five
hundred acres. When another tribune vetoed the bill, Tiberius
unconstitutionally obtained a vote removing him from office. The Senate refused
to finance the administration of the land statute and Tiberius was threatened
with impeachment as soon as he left office. Tiberius accordingly announced his
candidacy for reelection, even though the reelection of a tribune would be
unconstitutional. During the ensuing campaign he and three hundred of his
supporters were killed and their bodies thrown in the Tiber. Dickinson says
that this enormity "was the first act of political violence, the first
instance of resort to extralegal force, in the course of nearly four centuries
of the history of the republic. " But Scipio, who was probably the
greatest Roman of his day, commented favorably by repeating a line from Homer:
"Even so perish all who do the same.”
Just
the same, Tiberius had left his mark. The land reform was continued by a
senatorial “middle party" headed by Scipio himself. But it satisfied
neither the reform nor the opposition factions; significantly, Scipio was
assassinated by a member of the Gracchan party and the efforts of the
"middle party" were cut short.
The
reform party lacked leaders and remained quiet for nine years after Tiberius'
death, but in 123 B.C. his brother Gaius Gracchus was elected tribune. His
mother foresaw "the country's ruin" and urged him to hold back, but
he came forward with a program that Mommsen has
described as "nothing else than an entirely new constitution." It
included (a) a provision permitting the reelection of tribunes, (b)
distribution of cheap corn in Rome, (c) changes in the order of voting in the comitia
centuriata, (d) a proposal to establish colonies in Italy and overseas, (e)
modifications in army recruitment, (g) a measure for the diminution or
remission of debt, (h) the establishment of a "middle man" system for
the collection of taxes in the provinces, (i) a public works program that included
extensive road projects, and (j) a transfer of the functions of the jurymen
from the nobility to the equestrian order. The program was based on an
assumption of tribunician democracy, and therefore repudiated the central role
of the Senate.
Mommsen
observes, however, that democracy was not viable in the Rome of that time and
that what Gaius actually sought was an absolute monarchy "in the form of a
magistracy continued for life by regular reelection and rendered absolute by an
unconditional control over the formally sovereign comitia, an unlimited
tribuneship of the people for life." Interestingly, Mommsen approves such
a move, saying that it was precisely a monarchy that was needed; but he
criticizes Gaius for his techniques, which continued to stimulate the incipient
class warfare. For my part, I wonder how Gaius could otherwise have created a
monarchy. To do so without a class war would have required Senatorial support.
Monarchy eventually came into being, but not because everyone agreed to it
amicably; it followed ninety years of conflict that exhausted the Roman people
and gave military predominance to one man.
Gaius
soon found that the demagogic bidding for public favor is a game many can play.
Cowell reports that the Senate promptly "persuaded another tribune, Livius
Drusus, to overbid Gaius." Plutarch comments that Drusus set about
"playing the demagogue in opposition to (Gaius) and offering favors
contrary to all good policy." We are told that "when Gaius required
those getting land allotments to pay the State a rent, Drusus proposed that
there should be no rent. When Gaius proposed two colonies Drusus suggested
twelve."
Gaius
was reelected in 122 B.C., but was defeated for the next year. Not
surprisingly, he began to keep a bodyguard with him. This alarmed the Senate
into empowering the Consuls to "take all necessary measures
for the
safety of the State." One of the Consuls then killed Gaius and,
incredibly, three thousand of his supporters -- another in an accumulating
string of outrages that were creating embittered division within Roman society.
Gaius' body was also thrown into the Tiber.
An
evaluation of the Gracchi's careers must contain many elements. The most
important is to realize that the catastrophe that began at this time arose only
superficially from their efforts. We recall Tolstoy's later observation that
great men merely ride a wave and have no more influence on the direction of
events than would a bubble moving with the wave.11 The Gracchi were creatures of their time. Given the conditions
that had come into existence, it is probable that if the Gracchi had not done
what they did, the same role would have been played by someone else. Scipio's
"middle party" was the most constructive alternative, but Scipio's
assassination tells a great deal about the viability of anything really
constructive. During the period of affluence that preceded the Gracchi, the Romans had developed the "child-man"
psychology that Ortega has described with reference to twentieth century
Europeans.12 They felt expanded desires with an urgent need for
immediate satisfaction, but without real appreciation for the roots of their
society or the principles necessary to social order. The "direct
action" techniques reflected the psychology of the typical man of the day.
A hundred years later the state became the most powerful "direct
action" tool, absorbing life into itself, as Ortega has said, as an
anti-vital influence.
Smith
says that "the Gracchi by the means they adopted in pursuit of their needs
precipitated a spiritual crisis in Rome which was the first cause of all that
followed. The crisis was largely spiritual, but we may doubt whether the
Gracchi created it, except superficially. They reflected it and acted on the
basis of it. Once the consensus of the mos maiorum had disintegrated,
things could not be put back in their old form. It was a unique growth which
men could not artificially recreate.”
Gaius and Drusus learned from
each other that demagogic techniques feed on each other. Most leaders of the
first century B.C. turned to demagoguery, although men such as Cicero and Cato
the Younger were exceptions. This demagoguery had begun with the Gracchi.
Roebuck shows how the older brother had set the pace: "A current of
doctrinaire humanitarianism and political theory became increasingly apparent
in (Tiberius') speeches and conduct. Tiberius' appeal to the urban poor in Rome
was an embittered call to class strife. 'The savage beasts in Italy (Tiberius
said) have their particular dens... but the men who bear arms, and expose their
lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it
but the air and the light; and having no homes or settlements of their own, are
constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children... They
were styled the masters of the world but in the meantime had not one foot of
ground which they could call their own."
Gaius
adopted the same inflammatory manner, perfecting it to indicate his rejection
of the Senate. Plutarch reports that "while he was arguing for the
ratification of this law, his behavior was observed to show in many respects
unusual earnestness, and whereas other popular leaders had always hitherto,
when speaking, turned their faces toward the Senate house, and the place called
the comitium, he, on the contrary, was the first man that in his
harangue to the people turned himself the other way, towards them, and
continued after that time to do so. An insignificant movement and change of
posture, yet it marked no small revolution in state affairs, the conversion, in
a manner, of the whole government from an aristocracy to a democracy, his
action intimating that public speakers should address themselves to the people,
not the Senate."
Constant agitation, conspiracy, proscription, murder and demagoguery continued until in 31 B.C. Octavius gained sole power by defeating Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. As a first step in reviewing this extended period of civil disorder, it is to be noted that Marius, the Consul elected in 108 B.C., radically altered the nature of the Army. "The people assumed the right to assign important military commands to particular individuals by direct popular vote," Dickinson informs us. At the same time, the army was professionalized. The army would thereafter serve its generals, who would simultaneously be popular demagogues. The army played an increasingly important role in internal politics. Under the Empire it was often the army itself, or the Praetorian guards, that named the emperor.
For our
purposes, it is sufficient just to review the highlights of the disorder of the
first century B.C.:
With
their armies behind them, Marius and Sulla fought for personal supremacy. Each
proscribed many of his opponents. Saterninus, a tribune, and Glaucia, a praetor,
were murdered. Drusus was assassinated. Sulla sought as dictator to reestablish
the constitution, but after his retirement the accumulated bitterness proved
irrepressible. Pompey and Caesar rose as competing leaders. The Catilinian
conspiracy failed; Cataline himself died in battle. The First Triumvirate was
formed by Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. Cicero was exiled. Crassus was killed at
Carrhae. Caesar was assassinated. The Second Triumvirate consisting of
Octavius, Antony and Lepidus defeated Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. Octavius,
renamed Augustus, established his Principate after Antony and Cleopatra were
defeated and committed suicide at Actium. It is clear (except perhaps to the
Nietzschean glorifiers of violence from whom we heard so much in nineteenth
century thought) that the first century B.C. didn't offer a paradigm for later
civilization to follow.
The
Punic Wars had pressed Rome into the tightly knit mos maiorum, but the
slaughter of the first century had no similar effect; the degeneration
continued to grow, increased by the brutality of civil war and the effects of
continued demagoguery. When the disorder ended, the Roman who emerged was far
removed from the austere virtue and noble dedication of the old Roman. If we
believe a solid base was reestablished, we are misled by the Republican forms
assumed by the Augustan military hegemony. The Augustan Age gave respite from
disorder and provided world-wide Pax Romana, but the moral fabric was
characterized by sycophancy and debasement.
Historians
give varied interpretations to the Augustan period. To Smith, Rome "awoke
to the fulfillment of her destiny after the nightmare of the first century B
.C." Rome was now a "world
power" and enjoyed a "cosmopolitan philosophy and sense of moral
responsibility which came eventually after a century of bloodshed." In his opinion, "the Augustan Age was
true to Rome," and he speaks of "the faith and confidence in
Rome" that summed up the spirit of the age. He believes that "the Age
of Augustus gave back to men the opportunity -- for the wish had long been
there -- to live once again in conformity with their former moral code, to take
up again the ideas and ideals of their happier past and give them life and purpose
in an even greater future."
Cowell,
on the other hand, interprets the times differently, although he acknowledges
that there was "a sudden bound forward" after order was
reestablished. He observes that "what was essentially a military tyranny
was veiled by the use of old Republican forms and labels" and asserts that
historians who take a totally favorable view are forgetting the nature of
absolutism.
A
few senators showed some spirit, Cowell says, shouting that "senators
ought to be free to talk about the Republic," but they were a minority. He
shows Augustus to have been a hypocrite: "A close examination of the
reality behind this stock recital of his virtues, soon reveals elements of
exaggeration and falsity in so synthetic a beatitude, for it is not difficult
to paint another picture compounded out of the man's cruelty, vindictiveness
and hollowness, his hypocritical attempts to enforce high standards of conduct,
in sexual relations for example, to which he was not himself willing to
conform, and worst of all, of having set the Romans on the fatal path of no
return that was to lead them through military dictatorship into the foulest
form of arbitrary monarchical absolutism." Though the Senate was
strengthened, it was "mere stage property." Most senators were
habitually subservient.
In
my opinion, Cowell has the better of the argument. We can test the Augustan Age
by its fruits; we know what followed in the reigns of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius
and Nero. If the Augustan Age had been followed by a viable Roman community, we
could conclude that such strength had its origins under Augustus. Instead, Rome
receded into debauchery and a downhill slide that culminated in the Dark Ages.
There were many symptoms of a void: 200,000 people lived off the corn dole and
Rostovtzeff reports that the proletariat was "kept in good humour by
giving them... a constant supply of amusements and occasional doles of
money."13 Amazingly, a
law was thought necessary to require that each Roman raise a family, since the
birth rate was precipitously declining in the upper classes; and reference to
the growing "despair of ancient man" is reflected in Rostovtzeff's
statement that "the mental attitude of the directing classes had undergone
a complete change: men ceased to take an interest in the state and public
affairs... The idea of civic freedom... had become, in the minds of most men,
inseparable from the anarchy and confusion which were still so fresh in the
memory of the generation contemporary with Augustus... A dark shade of pessimism
covers all the thought and literary production of this period."
Ferguson
speaks of "the Golden Age of Latin literature" which "reached
its full development in the tranquillity of the Augustan Age;"14
this was the period of Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Livy. Rostovtzeff reports
"a vastly increased activity in all departments of economic and
intellectual life." But Cowell again places the time in perspective,
observing that "it is true that the Augustan Age boasts the imperishable
glory of Virgil, Livy, Horace and adornments such as Ovid, Tibullus and
Propertius. But Virgil and Horace were middle-aged at the Battle of Actium and
Livy was then already 28 years old. They, like all the greatest figures in
Roman literature, were Italians not Romans, and they were products of the dying
Republic rather than of the rising Empire." Tacitus said that after these
literary giants "a hush has come upon eloquence as indeed it has on the
world at large."15 The period from the death of Augustus to the
death of Marcus Aurelius is known no longer as a Golden Age, but as a
"Silver Age." Ferguson describes the decline, saying that
"compared with the creative vigor of the Golden Age, the literature of
this period seems thin and self-conscious, artificial and pedantic."
Tacitus lived in the late first century and early second century A.D. and was
the last great author. He was deeply alienated from the milieu in which he
lived.
Smith
points to at least one demographic basis for regeneration during the Augustan
period. Augustus had founded the new Roman state not on Rome alone, but on the
whole of Italy, thus broadening the base. Accordingly, "the Augustan
revolution represented the conquest by the politically unrepresented Italians
over the selfish political power-holders of Rome... The spiritual and moral
reformation at which Augustus aimed represented the attempt by the countryside
and towns to conquer Rome in that province too." A broadened
"positive" came in to forestall the void at the center.
Power and Decadence: The First Two Centuries
This
"positive" was not sufficient to place Rome on a permanently
satisfactory foundation. The history after Augustus is tragic, even though the
drowning civilization enjoyed a respite during the reigns of the "five
good emperors" in the second century, a respite that caused Gibbon to date
the decline from the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 A.D. After Augustus, Nero and Caligula rather than
Marcus Aurelius were most representative of the remaining centuries of the
Empire.
The
recitals of Tacitus, who is called "somewhat jaundiced" by Ferguson
but who is praised by Rostovtzeff, are worth noting. Tacitus writes of
the "profligacy of women" and tells of a law requiring that no noble
woman "should get money by prostitution." He says the emperor
Tiberius "feared freedom while he hated sycophancy" and rendered
speech "restricted and perilous." So servile were the senators that
Tiberius ''as often as he left the Senate-House used to exclaim in Greek, 'How
ready these men are to be slaves.'" The "dishonesty of contractors
and the negligence of officials" caused roads to become impassable.
Although the first years of Tiberius' reign had been mild, he became a
"cruel tyrant" in reaction to the intrigues of the praetorian
cohorts. Tacitus states as fact the surmise that Tiberius' son Drusus was
poisoned by Sejanus, the prefect of the praetorian guard. Summarizing, Tacitus
groans under the subject matter: "I have to present in succession the
merciless biddings of a tyrant, incessant prosecutions, faithless friendships,
the ruin of innocence... I am everywhere confronted by a wearisome monotony in
my subject matter." For page after page he tells of accusations,
executions and suicides, and relates that the emperor Claudius' own
"taster" poisoned him, that Nero visited brothels disguised as a
slave and staged orgiastic spectacles, at one time openly consummating marriage
with a man. To be sure, Tacitus does refer to the reigns of Nerva and Trajan as
"times when we may think what we please and express what we think,"
but he also complains of the emptiness of prevailing conversation, saying that
his contemporaries could think only of actors and gladiators. He speaks of the
"utter poverty of thought."
I
doubt if it is fair to put Tacitus down as "jaundiced"; his
alienation reacted against the "insanities" of his age. He was one of
the few vital men of his time. Roebuck gives too easy an explanation when he
attributes the virtually universal alienation of intellectuals from the society
of the Empire to the pro-Republican biases of their wealthy patrons. Such an
explanation fails to appreciate that sensitive men could feel a sincere
antipathy to the prevailing conditions.
It
is not just Tacitus' temperament that created the voids of the first two
centuries. Numerous barbarisms appeared: that it was the praetorian guard that
installed Claudius as emperor, that Nero committed suicide, that Seneca was
executed, that superstition ran rampant in the lower classes, that Caligula was
mentally deranged. Although Gibbon also speaks of the strong features, he
recognizes the void. The void continued long-existing weaknesses, but to Gibbon
it was just beginning: "This long peace, and the uniform government of the
Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The
minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was
extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated."16 He
continues to say that "the decline of genius was soon followed by the
corruption of taste" and that the "diminutive stature of mankind...
was daily sinking below the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed
peopled by a race of pigmies." Even though the Age of the Antonines
enjoyed good rulers, a shadow presaged the future: "The fatal moment was
perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would
abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the
benefit of their people." This occurred, in fact, when Marcus Aure1ius
selected his son Commodus as the next emperor.
Ortega
acknowledges that even "in the times of the Antonines the State overbears
society with its anti-vital supremacy. Society begins to be enslaved, to be
unable to live except in the service of the State." Rostovtzeff tells
that under the earlier Julian and Claudian dynasties the paranoia of the
emperors more than once caused the massacre of the leading members of the
nobility. "Thus one by one the noblest families vanished from the scene
forever." Families replacing these died out after two or three
generations, since the upper classes were unwilling to have children. At the
same time, the proletariat continued to grow. From all of this the result was,
according to Rostovtzeff, that "a stagnation is perceptible throughout the
empire, a paralysis even of the desire for gain."
During
these first two centuries a slow economic decline began. By the fourth century,
through the combined effects of technological regression, military disaster,
plagues and the growth of large estates, the open cities had shrunk to small,
walled towns. The urban society gave way to a vast rural community, setting the
stage for medieval life. "In spite of the increase of arable area,"
Rostovtzeff says, there was in the first two centuries "no improvement,
but rather a falling off, in agricultural skill." He tells that "in
mining and metallurgy the Romans did not improve upon the methods of the
Hellenistic Age, but even lost ground." In manufactures of all types
"the quality grows inferior: there is less both of mechanical skill and
beauty." Earlier discoveries fell into disuse. While Rostovtzeff assigns
this economic decline to a diffusion of industry arising out of increased local
self-sufficiency, it is still another manifestation of an even more pervasive
loss of vitality. Other authors sometimes attribute the decline to pestilence
and war. Certainly these were important contributing factors, but it is a
mistake to make them the primary explanations, since Rostovtzeff's observation
is to be remembered that "even before the time of war and pestilence in
the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we mark in the whole of intellectual life not
merely a pause but even a backward movement." In this case the sickness of
the mind cannot be explained by the sickness of the body.
Even
the political system rested on a void. There could be no assurance that the
succession of good emperors in the second century would continue. The string
ended when Marcus Aurelius named his son successor. Roebuck says that
"Commodus' reign is usually regarded as the turning point." There was
no orderly system for transferring power after his death. Gibbon writes of
forty years of tyranny after Aurelius. There was a thirteen year respite under
Severus Alexander, but this was followed by fifty years of anarchy during which
there were more than fifty rivals and twenty seven recognized emperors, most of
whom died violently.
Gibbon
describes Commodus’ way of life: "He valued nothing in sovereign power
except the unbounded license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were
spent in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women and as many boys, of every
rank and every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved
ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient historians
have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution, which scorned every
restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be easy to translate their too
faithful descriptions into the decency of modern language."
In
the third century, according to Rostovtzeff, "the last signs of civil
freedom disappeared. The state was governed by a bureaucratic swarm of imperial
officials who had graduated in the school of the army; and they included secret
police who took a leading part in terrorizing the subjects." The army was
the power behind the throne -- and it consisted of the most uncivilized
elements. "Emperors sought to buy the favor of the troops by lavish bribes
which ruined the treasury and doomed their successors who might be murdered if they
lacked the means of overbidding the men they succeeded," Cowell reports.
"The Roman armies were largely comprised of the dregs of the people and of
barbarians." At one time many worthwhile persons had been induced to join
the army to gain Roman citizenship, but when Caracalla extended universal
citizenship this inducement disappeared. Army recruitment was thereafter
"from among the more violent and uncivilized groups of the population or
outside the Empire altogether," according to Roebuck. One emperor
pragmatically spelled out the realities to his sons when he counseled them to
"be of one mind: enrich the soldiers: trouble about nothing else." As
both a consequence and a further cause of these developments, "the
officers, the last representatives of a higher culture, disappeared from the
army." The effect was that a significant social movement was taking place:
the "state, relying upon the army or, in other words, upon the lower
classes, defeated the upper classes and left them humiliated and
beggared." To Rostovtzeff this was "a fatal blow to the aristocratic
and urban civilization of the ancient world.”
Under
these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the old Principate, which had
retained the forms of a Republican constitution, even though hypocritically,
was replaced by an unabashedly oriental-style absolutism. "The reign of
the Syrian relatives of Severus began one of the saddest chapters in the
history of the empire," Rostovtzeff says. "Elagabal, or Heliogabalus,
as the Romans called him, was a religious fanatic who introduced into Rome the
manners and customs of his Syrian theocracy." Eventually the point was
reached at which "all who were admitted to the sacred presence had even to
fall on their faces and kiss the hem of the royal raiment." This was the
practice under Diocletian. “He wore a special costume for state
occasions," Roebuck says about him; "a jeweled diadem and dress of
purple with threads of gold." Cowell indicates some of the chants the
Senate had to sing to the emperor in the fifth century:
"Augustuses
of Augustuses, the greatest of Augustuses."
repeated eight times
"God
gave you to us! God gave you for us!”
repeated twenty-seven times
“Our
hope is in You, You are our salvation!"
repeated twenty-six times
There
was some spiritual reawakening near the end of the third century because of a
final willingness to defend the empire from the barbaric invaders, but the
basic trend continued afterwards, aided by untold disasters in the form of
famine, disease and invasion. Gibbon wisely ascribes the famine, though, to the
"rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present and
the hope of future harvests." The pestilence, in turn, followed the
famine.
The
Roman state had been keeping the barbarian invaders out for hundreds of years.
There had been an invasion of Gauls in 400 B.C. and in 111 B.C. "Numerous Celtic and Germanic peoples
had crossed the Rhine River." But where Rome had previously been able to
withstand them, it now could not. The sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D. was
due more to Roman decay than to external causes.
The
Middle Ages approached. Because vast areas were deserted, the emperor
Constantine issued laws in the fourth century "binding the agricultural
worker, and his children after him, to the land he worked." The same
happened with the artisan. Laws were issued "forcing the merchant or
artisan to continue in his occupation." The result was that "the
workers in each trade formed an hereditary caste." Learning and the arts
continued their decline. The despair became so overpowering that men lost faith
in reason, with the result that anti-rationalism and superstition became
rampant. Ortega observes that "from a certain height and a certain
distance the Cynic agitators and the Christian converts could be mistaken one
for the other." With the predominant philosophies counseling withdrawal,
it became a time similar in a sense to that described futuristically in Ayn
Rand's Atlas Shrugged. "To withdraw from public life to a serene
unruffled seclusion, avoiding excess in order to escape the pain when balance
was established, was the life to which (Epicureanism) exhorted men to
aspire," Smith tells us. Roebuck
says that "men tended to reject the rationality of Greco-Roman
civilization and moved into a world dominated by superstition and
religion." Rostovtzeff repeats this when he says that "the best
men... came to distrust reason; their ideals were trampled under foot; and they
either sank into the slough of a coarse materialism or sought salvation in
mystical religions."
So
we come to the end of six centuries of make-shift. The mos maiorum had
not possessed permanency, and nothing that succeeded it had established a truly
viable system. What is amazing is that with such a void at its center Rome was
able to survive as long as it did. We do not ordinarily think of Rome as having
fallen in the West until the last emperor was replaced by Odacer as the first
barbarian King of Italy in 476 A.D. In the East we consider Justinian in the
sixth century the last emperor, giving way then to the Byzantine Empire. But
all such classifications are arbitrary. These classifications are based
primarily on continued territorial sovereignty. Were criteria used that would
take into account the quality of life and of culture, we would wish to draw the
line a good deal earlier. It remains true that Rome required a long time to
die. Rostovtzeff explains best the dynamic of its continuation and death when
he writes that "the state, supporting itself upon the relics of past greatness,
went on existing just so long as its culture and organization were superior to
those of its enemies; when that superiority disappeared, new masters took
control of what had become a bloodless and effete organism. Any creative power
that remained turned away from this world and its demands and studied how to
know God to be united with Him."
I. Carl
Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times {New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1966), pp. 725, 436, 556, 485, 489, 488, 495, 504, 497, 467, 446, 507-8, 589,
695, 664, 682, 665, 683, 697, 449, 515, 666.
A plague continued for fifteen years during the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, and Roebuck, p. 664, reports an estimate of a million killed. Later
the Empire was hit by earthquakes and by still another plague, so that Roebuck
says, at p. 682, that "in the 270's, the population had been reduced by a
third."
2. Jose
Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.,
1962), pp. 129, 133.
3.
Theodore Mommsen, The History of Rome (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895), Vol. III, pp. 104, 126, 162-3, 204-5,
173, 163, 123, 298, 121, 112, 342, 324, 337-8, 343, 344, 357, 358, 360. At p.
324, Mommsen speaks of Tiberius Gracchus' reelection as a tribune as an
"unconstitutional prolongation."
4.
Polybius, The Histories of Polybius, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh
(London: Macmillan and Company, 1889), Vol. I, pp. 506-7, 466-8, 474, 506; Vol.
II, p. 454. The incorrect prediction I have referred to in the text appears in
Vol. I at p. 747: "Nay, even when these external alarms are past, and the
people are enjoying their good fortune and the fruits of their victories, and,
as usually happens, growing corrupted by flattery and idleness, show a tendency
to violence and arrogance, -- it is in these circumstances, more than ever,
that the constitution is seen to possess within itself the power of correcting
abuses. For when anyone of the three classes becomes puffed up, and manifests
an inclination to be contentious and unduly encroaching, the mutual
interdependency of all the three, and the possibility of the pretensions of
anyone being checked and thwarted by the others, must plainly check this
tendency: and so the proper equilibrium is maintained by the impulsiveness of
the one part being checked by its fear of the other...."
5. R.
E. Smith, The Failure of Roman Republic (Cambridge University Press,
1955), pp. 9, 24, 13, 126, 19, 25, 11, 25, 6, 61, 65, 8, 95-6, 19, 23, 13, 14,
126, 7, 5, 76, 152, 162, 163, 143, 137.
6.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (New York: Modern
Library), pp. 422, 414, 1019, 1007.
7. F.
R. Cowell, The Revolutions of Ancient Rome (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, 1963), pp. 20, 84, 99, 103-4, 171, 174, 177, 176, 182, 196, 193, 208.
As to the date upon which the Republic was established, Cowell speaks at p. 20
of "510-509 B.C. or considerably later as some scholars now maintain….”
8. W.
E. Heitland, The Roman Republic (Cambridge University Press, 1923), Vol.
II, pp. 220, 236, 240, 241, 243, 253, 222, 230, 233, 211, 224, 228, 224, 254.
9. John
Dickinson, Death of a Republic (New York: Macmillan Company, 1963), pp.
22, 18, 20.
10.
John Selby Watson, trans., Sal1ust, Florus and Velleius Paterculus
(London: Henry G. Bohn), pp. 444, 8.
11. In War
and Peace, Tolstoy departed from his novel several times to discuss his
fatalistic philosophy of history. It is not to be inferred from my comment in
the text that I fully endorse Tolstoy's view, since I am by no means a
fatalist; and yet Tolstoy's perception has some portion of the truth in it. It
emphasizes the underlying corpus of mankind, which we certainly know today to
be very relevant, and directs our attention to the massive changes that can
take place within the broad spectrum of life itself. Such a view is closely
related to the classical liberal "vitalist perspective," which sees
mankind as containing a great deal more than can easily be grasped by, say, a
socialist planner.
12.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, Inc. 1957); see especially
his description of modern man as a "spoiled child" on p. 98;
other references are to p. 121.
13. M.
Rostovtzeff, A History of the Ancient World (Oxford at the Clarendon
Press, 1928), Vol. II, pp. 97, 193, 290, 107, 193, 183, 198, 224, 213, 216, 293,
294, 296, 297, 299, 301, 241, 318, 306, 315, 366, 307, 323, 310, 362, 366.
14. Wallace K. Ferguson and Geoffrey Brunn, A Survey of European Civilization (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 3d ed., 1962),
pp. 73-4, 75-6, 82.
15. Tacitus, The Complete Works
of Tacitus, trans. A. J. Church and A. J. Brodribb (New York:
Modern Library, 1942), pp. 99, 100, 137, 119, 144, 147, 148, 163, 283, 298,
376, 420, 758, 761.
16. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Methuen & Co., 4th ed., 1906), Vol. I, pp. 58, 78, 152, 92, 281.