The Civil Wars Book

The collapse of the Roman republic is one of the most absorbing events in all of world history. Lately I have been somewhat fixated with it; this summer I finally have the long awaited leisure to pursue more in depth reading on the subject. There is a great wealth of historical writers who wrote about the events at issue: Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, Appian, Cassius Dio, Plutarch. There is an impressive roster of famous personalities who dominate this era: the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Sertorius, Lucullus, Crassus, Cato, Brutus, Cassius, Caesar, Marc Antony, Octavian, and a huge cast of lesser characters.

A great nation begins with an initial period of monarchy (Romulus and his six successor kings ruled from 753 to 509). After expelling the last king, a decision is reached that individual liberties are best preserved through the mechanism of a republican government, which then lasts over four hundred years. There follows a chaotic century of internecine violence, civil war, and bloody political upheaval from 133 B.C. (death of Tiberius Gracchus) to the Battle of Actium and the start of the Augustan principate / monarchy (31 B.C.).

How did it happen? When you look at the Roman constitution and its development, the manner in which it evolved and adapted itself over the centuries to new and changing circumstances, the Roman genius for political give and take, compromise, and careful deliberation -- all within a culture that revered tradition and the ancient customs of those who served the state in prior generations -- the persistent question that keeps surfacing is: how could this governmental system have broken down?

The fundamental political concept of checks and balances is drilled repeatedly into the heads of American h.s. students (unfortunately, little mention is made that the Framers were intimately familiar with classical history or that checks and balances were invented by the Romans). Those checks and balances which we revere -- which, admittedly, have been refined considerably with the benefit of historical hindsight -- failed the Romans. The republic was supposed to have endured. It did not, and gave way to monarchy and the loss of those precious freedoms that had been enjoyed for centuries.

There are various theories as to how it happened. A senate that had outlived its usefulness, a government designed to run a small city-state that was no longer up to the task of governing a vast and far flung empire; the influx into Rome of unemployed citizens whose agricultural work was overtaken by vast numbers of slaves; changes within the military that altered the rules of who served and caused soldiers to look to their commanders rather than the state for their personal fortunes; powerful warlords who manipulated military power to serve their own purposes; a clash between the so called populares and the optimates or senatorial class that was unable to adapt to changing circumstances and solve the social problems that plagued Rome; etc., etc.

My fascination with the breakdown of the Roman republic is not unrelated to my dismay both with the current dysfunction of our own federal government and the political chaos that has flared up in so many corners of the world. The fragility of political systems around the globe and the way in which a great nation such as Rome ultimately bowed its neck to accept the yoke of servitude are constant reminders of how the precious freedoms that we take for granted in America could be lost overnight. The great lesson from ancient Rome is very simple: nothing lasts forever. Our current decline -- the rampant greed, corruption and incompetence that mark so much of daily life in both public and private spheres -- is strikingly similar to the problems that arose in the late Roman republic. Economic forces and political shifts that were beyond the capable management of the senate and other institutions marked the fall of the republic. There is much to learn from what went wrong two millennia ago.