Why
do I keep coming back to the The History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while ruminating on current
events? I don’t know how many of you readers have actually read Gibbon – it’s
actually very lively reading – but I have, part at least. It is tough to get
through all six volumes. There are an awful lot of side journeys. When it was
first published people actually lined up to buy the next volume as it made its appearance
at the book sellers. The work is best known for its readability, its reliance
on original sources, and its frank (at that time) criticism of Christianity. In
light of today’s news it is just a little ironic that the first portion of this
landmark work appeared in 1776.
In
the classical era things tended to happen a bit more slowly than they do now.
It is said that Rome did not fall over night. Well, tell that to the members of
the six Roman legions settled in England for the past 425 years when the word
came in AD 410 from Emperor Honorius to pack up and get your asses back here to
Rome, we’ve got a problem with a fellow named Alaric, a regular barbarian. That
departure of the Roman army and much of the sophistication, technology, and
culture that went with them started little old England on a downward slide that
lasted a thousand years.
Honorius
holds the dubious distinction of being the worst emperor in all of Rome’s 800
year history. That might be due to the fact that being appointed emperor at the
age of two might not have been the best of ideas. At the outset he had the very
able help of his mentor, guardian, and father-in-law, General Stilicho, but he
managed to spoil that eventually by having him executed. Nothing however would
have affected the grand course of the changes that were in the works. The rot
had set in with the death of Marcus Aurelius over two hundred years earlier,
the last of the five good emperors (the Antonines), and the accession of
Commodus.
Many
of us have differing views about Rome. It did after all last for 800 years and
a major effort was made by Justinian long after their departure from England to
put it all back together. Justinian’s efforts were cut short by the Black
Plague and for the Western world the knowledge, administrative expertise, and
technology slipped away. Rome’s history is long and complex. There was a lot
that was amazing, good, and horribly evil about it but one would expect that
from such a long lived culture. Much of classical knowledge was rescued by the
Arab world. Eastern Europe and the Middle East became the cradle of civilized
human culture. The British Isles and Western Europe descended into small
fiefdoms populated by minor kings and medieval overlords holed up in their
castles and living primitive lives far far different from those enjoyed by the
average Roman citizen a thousand years earlier. One might say “yes, but what
about slaves? The Romans had slaves.” Yes they did, but so did everyone else.
Serfs in Russia and Peasants everywhere were nothing more than slaves, but in
Rome there was often a path to freedom and even substantial property ownership.
Cicero’s secretary, a slave, eventually owned a large estate and died in luxury
at the age of 99.
If
Seneca had practiced what he preached, the stoic way, instead of working hard
to accumulate a fortune estimated at 300,000,000 sesterces maybe Nero would
have listened to him. If Stoicism had succeeded and prevailed with its
egalitarian philosophical principles which extended to slaves Christianity may
not have gained a foothold. The death of Marcus Aurelius, a good emperor and the
most famous of the exponents of the stoic philosophy, was a catastrophe, a
major turning point in the history of the world.
What
does that have to do with now? I experienced my first shock with the brexit
vote in England. I had a whole string of arguments as to why this was a really
bad idea, and still think so, but upon reflection I understand the reasons
better now as to why it happened. At the time I thought: the European Union,
510 million souls, bigger than the United States, highly industrialized,
capable of becoming the world’s major power if they could overhaul a lot of
their laws and administrative procedures, a very worthy product and result of
the horrific sacrifice of World War II. I even rationalized it in a comparison
with the United States of America; forged from very disparate colonies; disparate
in size and fundamental interests and culture. I still believe there are fewer
differences between the countries of Europe than between many of the states of
the USA. The EU could have become a credible balance against the economic power
of Asia, India and Russia; could have fostered a more stable world and one
maybe a bit more acceptable to Americans. That will not happen. We may slip
back into isolationism and xenophobia. I hope not but it looks possible.
Mary
Ellen wrote a piece for the New York Times that explained very credibly in a
single short page what happened here on November the 8th. The Civil War
is not over (I never thought it was. Barbara and I were married in Charleston,
South Carolina). I saw and listened to a man who referred to his role in
founding Fox on PBS yesterday complaining that our news sources did not have
representatives of the silent majority on their staffs. He was visibly very
very angry and filled with hate. It boiled out of the TV screen. He said these newspapers
and TV networks needed right-to-lifers, climate change deniers, fundamentalist
Christians and the like on their staffs. Most of us may think the expression
“don’t confuse me with facts” is a sort of joke. It is not. One editorialist
wrote, “A party that can put Palin on the ballot as candidate for vice
president and elect Donald Trump is at war with reason.”
Members
of both parties have to admit that the Electoral College is a strange creation
and makes little sense. One very serious TV correspondent remarked that when a
foreigner asks him for an explanation of the system he is at a complete loss as
to how to explain it. It is odd that one vote in Wyoming is approximately equal
to 100 votes in California, Texas, or New York. A little party puzzle is
possible. Take the populations and the electoral votes for each state and
rearrange and juggle them and you can show the election of a president with 30%
of the votes – 70% to the loser.
Although
the world in AD 600 may have been mean and uncomfortable it did eventually
survive all the backsliding. The blossoming of art and science in the last few
centuries has been a wonder to behold. There is a darker side today. Denying
climate change can actually destroy the planet. Have a look at Venus. Our
planet is a rare example and is in what I like to call a ‘delicate balance.’
Most planets that we have managed to see close up or even around other stars
are not as lucky as ours. Just the immediate effects of our meddling are grim.
Read the recent news from Delhi or Beijing where wise people stay indoors and
nearly everyone has ‘air purifiers’ (if they can afford them). There are now 7,500,000,000 people in the world, 35 times as many as in 410 AD, and nearly all of them have access to and the ability to burn tons of fossil fuels each year. Although the new
international agreement on climate change mitigation has been ratified by over
100 nations including the USA we now have learned that the new administration intends to withdraw our signature.
Alaric
and his cohorts were after all people too, and those rich Romans were pretty
corrupt and deserved what they got. They no doubt didn’t think in exactly these
terms but they must have decided then that it is time that we Goths, Vandals, and
Visigoths get a shot at the good climate of southern Europe and some of that
stuff they’ve got stashed away. They weren’t terribly interested in plays,
poetry, books, and the like and partying for them was surely a more raucous
affair.
It
has been said that comparisons are odious so maybe we shouldn’t carry this too
far, but we should remember that there is an outside probability that the fate
of the planet is in the balance, completely aside from all the political and
social considerations.
