One Opinion: Knowing Roman History Preserving America's Future

[guy]

 

This was an interesting article because it gives insight into the American founders' respect and reliance on ancient Rome for guidance and example:

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/17/why-knowing-roman-history-is-key-preserving-americas-future/

 

Quote

In addition to shaping America’s governing structures and virtues, Rome also shaped America’s expectations for its leaders and civic heroes. The best compliment an 18th-century statesman could receive was a comparison to a Roman. Abigail Adams called Elbridge Gerry, who was a leading revolutionary and later vice president under James Madison, a modern Cato. John Adams liked to think of himself as Cicero. The veneration of all things Roman helps explain why Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay used the shared pen name “Publius” for the Federalist Papers, honoring the founding Roman statesman Publicola.

This Roman influence was crucial, because a very different path presented itself at the time the Founders were designing the United States. The French Revolution took a different course than its American counterpart. It did not simply seek to rebalance power but rather to eradicate all existing power bases. The revolutionaries overthrew everything: the monarchy, the church, the nobility, property rights and most of the other things that had held the French people together for centuries. The result was total anarchy fueled by bloody purges of whoever happened to be on the wrong side of the revolution, which was constantly changing in the 1790s.

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited November 2, 2021 by guy

[caldrail]

I doubt we can make Roman history the saviour of America. As much as the Founding Fathers used classical principles to create their new constitution, America is a different society in a different geo-political situation. I would agree there are useful lessons from history, but only in generic terms. After all - Didn't Rome fall by the wayside?

[lothia]

That is true, Rome rotted away.  Take a week or so and read "Corruption and the Decline of Rome" by MacMullen.  You will see some parallels.

[caldrail]

Part of this issue is the current trend in the media which has lasted for a couple of decades now to highlight similarities between our time and the Roman era. That's all well and good, but it ignores the more important differences.

As much as Trump likes to praise his country and citizens for strength, success, and world respect (one has to recognise a certain degree of political spin in that), America is a - from our perspective at least - a deeply divided nation that is trying to on the one hand to promote devisive issues yet limit their division on society. One could say something similar about Britain I guess, but the issues are somewhat more polarised in America. Ethnic and cultural presence, historical identities, isolationism, and all the modern 'rights'. it is very notable that the American press still defines their civil war of the 19th century in terms of slavery which study reveals to be an issue that was not at the heart of many combatants, nor was Abraham Lincoln the freedom activist he's commonly portrayed as (which proves how successful political spin can be).

The issue of parallels however is more interesting because what we recognise is not necessarily situational but actually behavioural. Instinctively we tend to empathise, rightly or wrongly, with the mtives and actions of Romans, seeing these parallels not because of what they actually did or the circumstances that drove them to act, but instead the emotions and reactions familiar to us in our daily lives. Their emphasis was different. Their cultural boundaries also. But they were human beings, thus we recognise them.

[guy]

I don't enjoy modern politics and I tend to be more optimistic about the future than maybe I should.

British and American elites have long fretted that they, like the ancient Roman Republic before them, would soon face an inevitable collapse. 

British author Edward Gibbon, author of the six volume opus The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789), remarked to a friend in 1776, just before the American Revolution:

Quote

"The decline of the two empires, Roman and British, proceeds at an equal pace."

Maybe a tad premature?

 

One of my favorite anecdotes in history involves Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations:

 

Quote

 

In 1777, a young British nobleman named Mr. Sinclair rushed to Adam Smith with the news of the British General Burgoyne’s surrender to the patriots at Saratoga.

“The [British] nation must be ruined,” lamented Mr. Sinclair.

The unflappable Smith replied, "Be assured, my young friend, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation."

 

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited March 22, 2020 by guy