Posted on 10/24/2018 8:49:31 AM PDT by rey
Omnia Romae venalia sunt—all the Romans are for sale. This was the historian Sallust’s judgment on the Roman Republic’s moral climate in the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE as it careened through disintegrating norms of public behavior, faltering institutions, civil wars, and the rise of the empire of the Caesars. I fear the same judgment increasingly applies to our American Republic—that our political and social institutions risk a parallel descent into chaos and authoritarianism.
Sallust put his grim judgment in the mouth of Jugurtha, a North African king who resisted Rome at the end of the 2nd century BCE with guerrilla tactics and bribes to Roman leaders. The Jugurthine War, subject of one of Sallust’s two histories, lasted from 112-106 BCE and was one of a series of military adventures that saw Roman legions in near-constant action across the Mediterranean. The costs of these wars were borne by rank-and-file Roman citizens through taxes and open-ended military service (not to mention by the pillaged and enslaved local populations). The benefits accrued to victorious commanders, politicians sent to govern the new provinces, and their private-sector cronies; all had carte blanche to squeeze taxation and loot from the provincials.
A poor and stretching analysis, by an ex-CIA analyst.
Can America implode? Absolutely.
When nearly one half of the country do not see that we have a sovereign nation (or a Constitutional Republic), and the other half determined to maintain it the other way. Eventually things are going to heat up to boiling point.
Some other factors (and some listed in this article) may contribute to the fabric tearing apart, but fundamentally it comes down to the above two factions I mentioned.
>>>No. But the article isn’t talking about when Rome fell, it’s talking about when the republic fell. In other words, when the republican form of government was replaced by an all powerful Emperor. That happened in the 1st century BC, 500 or 600 years before the western Roman empire collapsed.<<<
I’ve thought about this a lot, too. The republic collapsed and was replaced by the permanent dictatorship under Augustus, who was by accounts conservative in Roman terms. Eventually the empire, a few duds as dictators, then the Pax Romana. We could see the same thing, perhaps. An interregnum of chaos, the installation of a dictatorial centralized government while still maintaining the illusion of local power, and a military presence that would crush opposition and lend itself to a few centuries of world peace. I’ve sometimes thought that something as awful as limited nuclear war would lead some Americans to say, “OK, you want to see bad ass? Here it is,” and then go full Roman on its enemies. I’m rambling. But Rome lasted for another 1,400 years following the death of the republic, too.
AD and BC if used to refer to Jesus are bad history - because nobody thinks Jesus was born in the year 1. It is a mistaken dating system created by a sixth century Byzantine named Dionysius Exiguus. The Common Era thing was created by a deeply religious Christian, the great scientist Johannes Kepler in 1615.
BCE instead of BC//////
I agree. It’s a big PC turnoff and detracts from the writing.
On the contrary, both Dionysius’ and Kepler’s dating relates to an historical event: the birth of Jesus. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was born exactly in Year I. What matters is what reference was used in the dating process.
No and I always found the romanticism of Rome so strange. The majority of residents were not citizens and many were slaves. It was a good try, but was far from what we have now in the modern era. Rome was finished as a republic some time before the murder of Julius. The Senate had become wholly corrupt.
Ok...so we might not either...
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