The Romans knew they would go the way of all great empires

[Viggen]

..this is a sentence from an interview by J. Rufus Fears the David Ross Boyd professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma on an interivew about democracy (regarding the current Egypt crisis)

 

.... the Romans learned from history. They knew they would go the way of all great empires and what mattered was the legacy that they left behind.

...did they know?

 

via NPR

[caldrail]

No, they didn't, and quite the reverse. The Romans began to believe they had a divine purpose in dominating the world before the reign of augustus. However, Polybius did discuss this sort of political aging back in 150BC and he does say that all empires fall by the wayside eventually. He describes the evolution of a society which compares very favourably with modern political science. Although Polybius comes across as a more enlightened commentator in that respect, even he believed that Rome was destined for great things in the future (which in a sense it was)

[Ursus]

There is that bit where Scipius watches the destruction of Carthage and supposedly has visions of Rome suffering the same fate.

 

But other than that I don't believe the primary sources suggest Romans could ever conceive that their empire would fall. And why should they? Persia was powerful enough to repel Roman invasions but not powerful enough to seriously challenge Roman territory. Until the time of the Hunnic migrations, the Germanic tribes were rarely more than a border nuisance. I think by the time of the late 3rd century they had been finally clued in that expansion was at an end, but total defeat seemed a remote choice.

 

The Empire was vast and productive. The enemies comparatively weak. Most of the western world worth conquering had already been conquered. They had every right to believe the empire would go on.

[Maladict]

Panta Rhei.

Everyone knows nothing lasts forever, but they usually don't imagine they'll live to see the end, and act accordingly.

Much like we do, actually. I don't really believe any society ever learned anything from history, not consciously at least.

[caldrail]

On the contrary. For instance, christianity has always used the concept that an imminent end-of-things is possible within the current lifespan. Some sects accentuate that aspect of theior belief more than others, but it's there, enshrined in their texts.

 

For the Romans, the idea that they were succesful and powerful mitigated against any doubts concerning survival. After the defeat of Carthage and their removal from the power struggle, what did the Romans have to fear? The victory in the Punic Wars really did mark a watershed in Roman self-esteem.

 

That usual quote of "The gods have given Rome an empire without frontiers, or without end" really does sum up that attitude. Size matters. Aside from the occaisional internal problem, there was a sense among Romans that they weren't likely to be touched by catastrophe, and in any case, the Romans usually regarded such things as acts of the gods and inherently exceptional.

[Melvadius]

I think if I had been sitting in one of his, apparently over-subscribed class lectures, I would have made an effort to ask the good Professor to cite precise sources for several of the opinions on Rome and Democeracy et al he scattered through this interview.

[GhostOfClayton]

If you take the situations at the end of the 1st century AD, then at the 2nd century, end of the 3rd , 4th and 5th, things are getting progressively worse, but (especially given the average lifespan) it could be argued that pretty much every citizen of the Roman Empire only ever saw a status quo, because the change was so slow. Even the large barbarian incursions were against the context of continual niggling away at the borders, and smaller incursions.

 

So the vast, vast majority of the population would be unaware of change in their lifetimes. The question then would be, how aware were they of former glories? Although histories were documented, with most of the population being only educated to a bisic level, that left a tiny proportion with access to the information (although it may have been a sort of common knowlege that in the dim and distant past, the Roman Empire was more glorious than now). Of that tiny proportion, a tiny proportion would be capable of extrapolating an end . . . and would they be listened to?

Edited February 7, 2011 by GhostOfClayton

[Kosmo]

The episode in Ammianus about the visit of Constantius in Rome in 357 (he was so full of admiration for Trajan

[Primus Pilus]

Consider today... there are many who believe that nations like China and India, etc. are on the rise whereas the USA is in decline. Conversely, there are people today who take a contrarian position and believe that the Chinese rise and its economy is a house of cards, and the USA can recover. There any number of positions in between

 

The truth is irrelevant here. The point is that much like modern people, the ancients have proven to have differences of opinion and belief systems on every possible point of interest. I believe that it is unquestionable that there were people in position of leadership who "knew" that Rome was failing, while there were also those who couldn't fathom the possibility.

 

I simply can't or won't believe that there was an institutional understanding that Rome would eventually fail, simply because others had. Even if there was, there is certainly no consensus to when such a failure might occur, or how, or why.

[Trajan]

The Romans believed that the gods had sent them to the world for the sole purpose of conquering everything. Possibly towards the end of the 4th century, it became conceivable that the empire would indeed end one day. But earlier, in the 1st and 2nd centuries, it would never have even crossed their minds that the empire would do anything save conquer the world.

[ummidia quadratilla]

I'm not sure that the Romans collectively thought that the empire would come to an end, but I'm sure there were individuals, in power and out, that had the imagination to see an end sometime in the distant future.

 

In response to Ursus' comment "I think by the time of the late 3rd century they had been finally clued in that expansion was at an end, but total defeat seemed a remote choice." I've just been reading Everitt's biography on Hadrian and it seems that Hadrian in the early second century made the concious decision to halt expansion and build boundaries around the empire in order to prevent a downfall. Of course, that didn't stop later emperors from trying.

 

I also was confused by Dr. Fears comment that democracy is not a value in the Middle East and then he goes on to say that "no people have ever had a true democracy who were not touched in some way by the genius of the Greeks." The Middle East was as touched by the Greeks as Europe (maybe more), so theoretically it should be a value there. It's not as if the West have had democracies throughout history since the Greeks.

[Guaporense]

Anything that has a beginning has an end. Therefore intelligent romans could notice that their empire would end someday. However, in the first and second centuries, this possibility was remote and only applied for a distant future, like in 200-300 years.

[Centurion-Macro]

Panta Rhei.

Everyone knows nothing lasts forever, but they usually don't imagine they'll live to see the end, and act accordingly.

Much like we do, actually. I don't really believe any society ever learned anything from history, not consciously at least.

I agree with this statement here. I guessed they must have known that at some time their empire would fall, but it would be long after their deaths - and so it would be not worth thinking about.

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

I wouldn't say for sure that they definately knew that they would go the way of the other great empires, in the back of their minds they may have probably considered the thought, but in the good old traditional Roman way they would have cast the thought aside as being inconcievable due to the fact that they were, in thier minds, the most powerful and all conquering force in the known world.

 

The romans were'nt know for their shy, modest and defeatest attitudes were they? To consider that their reign would eventually come to an end would have been considered a ridiculous notion to the Romans.

 

 

[caldrail]

Bear in mind that the Romans had lived through hundreds of years of bitter struggles for survival. At one point they had even considered giving up and starting a new city elsewhere. After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, they realised there were no more great empires to threaten them. They had, effectively, realised they were about to win that power struggle in the mediterranean. That was why they sought any excuse to finsh Carthage off once and for all, and why ambitious politicians with access to armed forces at their beck and call began to seek glory, wealth, and senatorial pats on the back, by extending Roman control at their own behest rather than the interests of the state.