History Question: Rome vs USA - ...Setanta, you around?

Even though he lived 250 years before the fall of the Roman Empire, I think Commodus was the Roman equivalent of Bush. But maybe I'm wrong...

Is your name Setanta?

Re: History Question: Rome vs USA - ...Setanta, you around?


No, I'm someone..

bm... always like to hear what set has to say on history particularly...

Setanta will give the definitive answer as soon as he discovers this thread. I feel sure somehow.

(if he hasn't found it by the time I get home, I'll mmmmm give him a hint)

Yes, and he's someone who likes Setanta . . . or so it seems, at any event. (A reference to mon vieux ami Francis--i should have known that there'd be other replies between his and mine.)

The notion that one group of people, or one period of history, is the same as another is very popular. However, it generally involves the people in question having both a false image of themselves, and of the people or period in history which they claim to resemble.

One good example is being god's chosen people, and having a covenant with god. For obvious reasons, the "primitive" christians had this idea (primitive here means the earliest christians who were not yet associated with a firm orthodoxy, and didn't have a church hierarchy). Later, various Protestant groups came up with the same idea. The group Americans would be most likely to readily understand were the Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Company sent Puritans out under the governorship of John Winthrop to establish a "godly Republic in the Wilderness." That crapola the Republicans were so fond of in the Reagan/Pappy Bush era about a "shining city on the hill" is lifted wholesale from an address Winthrop made as they were approaching the coast of North America. The Puritans thought they had a special covenant with god, just as the Jews had had, and that the Jews' covenant had been voided by their failure to recognize "Jesus" as the savior; they believed that the torch had now passed to them, and that the covenant of god with mankind had devolved upon them.

The same thing goes for the comparisons to Rome. In fact, the earliest comparisons were not to decay and decline, but to virtue. In the early 18th century, the English began to compare their society and their Parliament to the Roman society and the Roman Senate. Their comparison was probably a little closer than the later American comparison (although all such comparisons are false), because the English did in fact have an oligarchic republic, with a Parliament which represented less than 2% of the adult male population (don't mention the wimmins, 'K?), just as the Roman Senate had only truly represented the class of Patres, or "Fathers," and hence the word patrician.

But the differences are stark. The Roman state had rid themselves of their "kings" (who were probably actually Tuscan [Estruscan] satraps, or client kings set over Rome to keep them in line) about 500 BCE. They replaced the king with two magistrates who exercised what was nearly royal autocratic power (they did not have the power of life and death, however), but they were elected and served for only a year. The English kings, of course, reigned for life, but they in fact exercised almost no real, effective power, and increasingly lost that little power they did exercise as the 18th century faded into the 19th Century.

But the idea of being a virtuous republic like the Roman Republic (before Caesar) was a popular notion. It entailed, of course, ignoring the great deal about the Romans which the English knew, and learned about, in that time period. Gibbon wrote his monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the 18th century, and that only increased the popularity of the image for the English (and once again, required that they ignore that the similarities were only notional, and the differences profound).

The early American republic cherished the same delusions. The old Roman state had an office which they called the Dictator. In the absence of the Consuls (who were often absent fighting Romes wars), in the event of an emergency, a Dictator could be appointed. The Dictator wielded an even greater power than the Consuls, able to judge cases without reference to the court system, and he possessed the power of life and death. When a Consul was in the city, he was accompanied by a body of men who roughly functioned as police, known as the lictors. They carried staves, and would literally beat off the crowd, if necessary. However, even that function became ritual, and one lictor would walk in front of the Consul carrying a bundle of staves tied in ribbons, which was the fasces. The fasces was a popular symbol in the early United States, and remains in use to this day. The "seal" of the Knights of Columbus contains a fasces. If you remember the old "Mercury" dimes, before the FDR dime came out, there was a fasces depicted on the reverse of that coin. There is a mistaken belief that this symbolized the power of life and death in the Roman state. That was only true for the Dictator. The Consuls could not have borne before them a fasces with an ax in the bundle, because they did not have the power of life and death. The Dictator, however, did have that power, and the lictor who preceded him into the Forum carried a fasces with a ceremonial ax in the bundle. Citizens who saw this knew that a Dictator had been appointed, even if they had not already learned it by some other means.

The office of Dictator was for emergencies only, and the Dictator was to lay down his power as soon as the emergency had passed. If the old Roman histories are correct, all Dictators in Roman history did just that, until the time of Sulla at the end of the second century BCE and the beginning of the first century BCE. Sulla was Dictator for ten years, and then retired, having slaughtered about 3000 influential men. The fear of him was so great, that after he retired, he lived in peace until he died of natural causes (or so the story goes). When Gaius Iulius Caesar took power, he did so under the auspices of the office of Dictator--Caesar had been born at the beginning the civil wars from which Sulla rose to power.

The most famous of the Dictators was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He was a young man at the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins, the old royal family of the Romans, and he came from an old and wealthy family. When he was approaching middle age, his nephew was accused of treason, and Cincinnatus stood surety for his nephew (basically, he bailed him on the value of his properties in the city). Well, his nephew was precisely the traitorous little **** he was accused of being, and Cincinnatus was beggared when the Roman state seized his extensive and rich properties in the city. The only property he had reserved was the ancestral home farm on the Janiculum Hill across the river from the city as it then existed. There he returned to the old ways of the Patrician class, and displaying the virtue of the Republic which few of the senatorial class actually practiced, he put his hand to the plow and got his living toiling in the sweat of his brow. This was to become a very powerful image throughout subsequent European and American history.

Cincinnatus was five times chosen Dictator, at least according to the historian Titus Livius (Livy). At the end of each emergency, he resigned the office of Dictator and returned to his farm and his humble existence. This became a part of the legend. At the end of the American Revolution, many of the officers of the Continental Line were dissatisfied, and with good reason, because of the treatment they had received from the Continental Congress, and the lack of honor in their own country now that the revolution was won. They formed a group which was the 18th century equivalent of a political action committee, which they called the Society of the Cincinnati. Their image was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus as the embattled and civically virtuous farmer. (Note that the Minutemen of the New England colonies also used an image of a man with his hand on the plow, and a musket in his other hand, answering his country's call.) Some authors continue to claim that Washington was the founder of the Cincinnati, and others claim (including the Society of the Cincinnati, which still exists, and has its own web site) that he was the first president of the Society. Both of the two greatest of Washington's modern biographers, Thomas Flexner and Douglas Southall Freeman deny this, and their account is that Washington refused to have anything to do with them. That would be more in line with the sentiments which Washington expressed so often publicly and privately, when he deplored "faction," what we would call political parties. One can allege that his attitude was naive, but it was based upon a "pure" interpretation of a patriotic republic, in which the citizen should work with all other citizens to achieve the common good, and therefore, "faction" would not be necessary. He also was scornful of the Society of the Cincinnati for the same reason, because his conception was that the citizen should gladly serve the Republic, without thought of reward or personal gain. The new settlement on the Ohio River had been named Fort Washington, and its founders had expected great things from the aid of their nation's hero. In disgust and anger at Washington's public refusal to have anything to do with them, they renamed their little town Cincinnati.

Look for the next post.

The modern image of Rome, however, is quite different than the older image which was popular in England and America in the 18th century. In Gibbon's history of the later Roman Empire, he came to the conclusion that the Empire "fell" because the Romans had lost their virtues, and had become debauched and corrupt. For that reason, Gibbon begins his account with the Antonines, and spends a good deal of time on lurid details of their corrupt and debased situation. However, he has a great deal of history to write, and for as much as he enjoyed bashing the Patrician class, he couldn't spend all his time on that, he had more than a thousand years of history to write.

The Antonines ruled the Empire near the end of the second century CE. The emperor to whom Francis referred, Commodus, was the last of the Antonines. Gibbon was, however, as are all historians, a prey to his own prejudices. Gibbon was a great scholar, who continues to enjoy a great reputation. I don't dispute that he was a great scholar. I will point out that his prejudices lead him to condemn the Roman society of which he wrote, and to ascribe the "fall" of the Roman Empire to the depravity of the senatorial class, and the loss of the old Republican virtues. Gibbon was a resolute Protestant, but he was also a great critic of organized religion. So, at the same time as he deplored the excesses of the Patrician class, he also mocked primitive christianity, and was even more critical of the organized Catholic and Orthodox churches which arose from the primitive church. He was so harsh about organized religion that his great work was banned in many places, and he was savagely attacked in public in his own lifetime. He was equally critical of the Jews, which passages have been branded as antisemitism.

What Gibbon was trying to do was write "honest" history, which would not be "polluted" by the church-inspired version of history. He largely succeeded, but he was unaware of and much influenced by his own "puritanical" attitudes. (He was no Puritan, and that's not what i'm saying, the Puritans were long gone in England when he was born--however, he did have many of the repressed obsessions which we associate, often wrongly, with the Puritans.)

Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 CE. This is usually referred to as "the fall" of the Roman Empire. That also requires having a selective historical ignorance. At the time the Goths sacked Rome, it was a sad shell of its former self. It was no longer even the capital of the Empire in the west. The affairs of governance in the western portion of the Empire (Constantine had divided the administrative functions of the Empire between the East at Constantinople and the West at Rome three generations earlier) were now directed from Ravenna, near the Adriatic Sea (between Italy and what was once, recently, Yugoslavia). Ravenna was surrounded by marshes, which made it much more militarily defensive than Rome.

In fact, the Goths under Alaric who attacked Rome were members of the Roman Empire, even though they had a grievance which lead them to invade Italy. The Magister Militum (roughly, supreme military commander) who opposed Alaric was Stilicho, who was himself half "barbarian," having been born in Germany, the son of a high-ranking Vandal and a Roman mother. Stilicho effectively dealt with Alaric, and kept him confined to the region south of Illyricum (roughly speaking, Illyricum corresponds to Yugoslavia--it was a bone of contention between the East and West because it was then the source of most military levies in the Empire, and the food to feed the armies). However, courtiers who resented Stilicho's power, and "pagans" who resented his fanatical christianity (he had burned the Sybilline books, the great works of Roman prophecy) plotted his downfall. By 408, he had actually become friends with and an ally of Alaric. But his enemies had grown powerful enough that he retired from public life at Ravenna. There he was arrested, and making no defense, he was executed. The Senate promptly and idiotically returned to Rome.

Alaric now had no one to restrain him, and faced no military opponent who could effectively oppose him. In 408, he invaded Italy, and imposed a ransom on the Senate of 4000 pound of gold. They paid up. The idiots made no effort to return to Ravenna and prepare for military action, so, in 409, Alaric besieged Rome for the second time. He negotiated a deal with the Senate to displace the Augustus in the West, Honorius. (Under the system of Constantine, there were two Augusti, roughly co-emperors, who each appointed a Caesar, who would be their successors. Had the system of Constantine been followed, it might have worked. Human nature being what it was, his bones were barely cold in the grave before the Augusti began plotting against one another; the prize was Illyricum.) Without going into details, he became disgusted with and got rid of his own puppet emperor, and then was swindled by the Senate, which had gotten a little courage from the plotting of a rival Goth. Finally, Alaric had had enough, and he marched to Rome and besieged it for the third time, breaking into the city on August 24, 410 CE. The accounts of christians historians, notoriously liars, are surprisingly positive, because, apparently, the Goths spared the christian churches, and those who sought refuge within. His Goths did not work much destruction on the city, either. After all, Alaric considered himself as Roman officer (technically true, at one time), and his people to be Roman foederati (a legal client tribe to be given land in exchange for military service--this was absolutely true, and the dithering and the swindles of the administrations, East and West, had created this situation). Alaric died the same year after marching into southern Italy. He intended to invade Africa, a potential source of grain and gold, but didn't live to accomplish his purpose. Many other Vandals and Visigoths, however, did successfully set up in North Africa.

See the next post.

So, the question becomes whether or not the Roman Empire "fell" in 410 CE, and what was the true cause of any collapse which could be alleged. Gibbon's prejudice, for all his attacks on organized christianity and Judaism, was essentially that of a repressed and repressive Protestant. He is responsible, more than anyone else, for the idea that Rome "fell" because they had become decadent, and therefore weak. Basically, he missed a good many things, partly because of his prejudices, but largely because much of what we now know was unknown to him. He did not understand consumer economies, and neither did the Romans. The entire history of the Roman Empire until the 5th century, and including the Republic before Sulla and Caesar, was characterized politically by the greed of the Patrician class, more than by any other single factor. The order of Plebs, the common people, constantly struggled against the senatorial class for land and for a livelihood. If Rome was bent on conquest, and a tribe or a region surrendered without the necessity of long and bloody war, they were accorded "Latin status," and admitted to the Empire. Latin status means that the common people (those who were free and not slave) were granted all the rights of Roman citizens, except the vote. If a tribe or region resisted more than required by honor, however, they were usually sold into slavery, and their land was seized by the Roman state. That land should, theoretically, have been distributed to all Roman citizens, or put up for auction. However, in practice, it would be engrossed by members of the senatorial class, who would then exploit it with slave labor. Almost all of the significant civil disturbances and civil wars in Roman history were "agrarian" struggles, in which the common people (usually hopelessly) fought the Senate for land. Sulla fought the Social War (while Gaius Iulius Caesar was still a boy) against the people of Italy outside of Latium (the region around Rome) on basically the same lines. The people of Italy outside of Latium were subject to the duties of a Roman citizen, but without the vote, had no say in how land was distributed, nor in the forms of governance. Sulla was then to fight successfully both in Italy, and elsewhere in the Empire, and to become Dictator in about 80 BCE, when Caesar was just a young man beginning his career. The details are not relevant here, but the effect is. Iulius Caesar was undoubtedly influenced by Sulla's example, in particular his successful appeals to the loyalty of the people. When Caesar came to fight Pompey for the control of the Empire, his success was attributable to the image of the successful general (and he was arguably even better than Sulla) and his popular measures with the people, such as the institution of public holidays with gladitorial games, and the distribution of free food and wine. This was eventually to be enshrined as panem et circenses, "bread and circuses." This had been done off and on from the late Republic, before Sulla. Under the emperors, it became a constant public dole. Sulla had wanted to execute Caesar along with the thousands of other members of old families whom he slaughter, but his family and friends successfully pleaded for his life. And Sulla warned them of Caesar's ambition and the danger to the Republic, even as he signed a pardon.

With land in the hands of the powerful senatorial class, and under the management of members of the class of Equites (meaning "knights," and referring to common people raised in status based upon their ability), huge slave-driven operations began, known as the latifundia. There, grain, olives (olive oil was an essential food staple), beef and grapes for wine were grown, and sold to enrich the Patricians who had gotten the free land and slaves from the conquests of the legions. They also set up slave-driven factories to make cloth, glass and pottery. This beggared small holders and small craftsmen who could not afford to compete, and they gravitated to Rome and other imperial cities where free grain was handed out, and the games were conducted to distract them. There, they could eke out their existence working on public building projects, where the government wisely did not trust slave labor for the skilled work.

For as long as the Empire expanded, the Patricians had new markets for the production of their huge slave farms and factories. Increasingly, however, they relied upon selling their products to the Empire itself, to support and supply the legions. In the era of the Antonines, when Gibbon takes up the tale, the Empire was slightly retrenched, but there was no handwriting yet on the wall, and no one who could have read it had there been. The Antonines ended with Commodus, who was succeeded by five emperors in a single year (two only actually were able to claim the office, and neither lasted more than a few months). These were succeeded by Septimius Severus, who ruled the Empire from 193 to 211 CE, and who pushed the empire to its greatest extent. As with all successful military emperors, he assured that the army got paid, and the did this by debasing the currency (meaning he mixed lead with the gold and silver, in order to mint more coins). This lead to run-away inflation, because the common man and woman aren't stupid, and if you debase the coinage, they are going to want more of it.

Gibbon accounts the Antonines to be the high point of the Emprie. But neither Gibbon, nor the Antonines themselves could see that the economy of the West was slowly collapsing. Increasingly the imperial administration was passing out food and staging public entertainments (eventually, there would be more than 100 days of public holiday each year) to keep the Roman citizens quiet, and garrisoning more and more heavily the regions of the Empire where poverty was creeping over everyone along with wide-spread public discontent and hopelessness. When Constantine finally made himself Emperor, and divided the Empire into two administrative districts, without knowing it, he effectively accelerated the economic collapse in the West, which now had no access to government contracts in the East, and he effectively inoculated the East against the excesses of the old Senate.

The Roman Empire in the west gradually crumbled under the weight of the foederati, the largely Germanic tribes who were admitted into the Empire on a promise of free land, with the requirement to provide military service. This had worked well for centuries, and there was no reason to mistrust it. Even more than a century after Alaric, the Roman general Aetius "federated" the Salian Franks and with their help, defeated the Huns in northern France. The usual contract was that the tribes would be given one third of the land in the region in which they were settled, and would then provide troops. After Caesar had conquered Gaul, and as the size and number of the legions grew (the classic legion was 4200 men--that grew to 6000 men under Caesar Augustus, and the number of legions almost tripled), the free men of Italy could no longer supply the necessary levies, and the legions were largely recruited in Gaul--basically, for the two centuries of the Empires greatest extent, they relied upon "French" heavy infantry.

The Goths came into the Roman Empire fleeing the pressure of the Huns to east. They were finally admitted, and federated in Dacia, which rougly corresponds to modern Romania, and parts of Hungary, Moldavia and the Ukraine. They were to change the character of the Roman armies by introducing the concept of heavy cavalry, which would dominate European warfare until the rise of firearms more than a thousand years later. Alaric and his Visigoths marched all over the Balkans and Italy because they claimed they had never been given their land, and Alaric was ambitious to become an important Roman officer like Stilicho. The Emperor Trajan, who was one of the "Five Good Emperors" before the rise of the Antonines, was born in "Spain." Septimius Severus was born in North Africa. As i pointed out, Stilicho, Emperor in all but name, was half a Vandal, born in Germany. Long before Alaric sacked Rome, the Empire had ceased to be strictly Roman.

J. B. Bury (d. 1927) was long considered the authority on the "barbarian" invasions of the Roman Empire. He puts the complete collapse of the imperial authority in the West with the coming of the Lombards in the sixth century. Not long after Aetius and the Franks defeated the Huns, the Lombards, a Germanic tribe who had taken over the valley of the upper Danube (roughly, western Austria), invaded Italy. They forced a federation agreement on the Empire (the western administration had collapsed completely by then, and Italy was being feebly and ineffectively administered by bureaucrats sent out from Constantinople) in which they were given two thirds of the land in northern Italy. The Lombard "King," Alboin, had defeated his neighbors in "Austria," and led a host of Lombards, Saxons and Bavarians, men, women and children, numbering as much as half a million people. The Byzantines (the Roman Empire in the East has become known as the Byzantine Empire, because Constantinople, the capital, was once the Greek city of Byzantium) controlled the sea, but they could do nothing on land against the Lombards and their allies. Thereafter, they gave up all pretense of holding the Empire together.

North Africa and Egypt had fallen the Visigoths and Vandals. The Vandals, Alans, Avars and Burgundians had taken what now is Spain. The Franks got Gaul for their troubles with the Huns (and hence, it become France), and now the Lombards took Italy. The Roman Empire still existed, but the realms of ancient glory in the west were all in the hands of barbarians.

Along with the economic reasons to which i have alluded, a strong case in modern times has been made for the effect of low-grade, chronic lead poisoning, because the Romans provided fresh water to all their cities, and used soft lead pipes to bring the water to the cities. Various other theories are also often advanced, most often by military history nutcases, who have all sorts of theories about why the Roman armies became a prey to superior force. Those theories ignore that the Empire in the East survived and managed to defend itself successfully for almost a thousand years after the "barbarian" invasions. The Roman Empire (retroactively called the Byzantine Empire--they called themselves Romans, however) did not finally fall until Constantine XI died at the head of troops defending Constantinople against Mehmed and the Osmanli Turks on the morning of May 29, 1453.

The Romans claimed that their city was founded on April 21, 752 BCE. Some form of the Roman Empire survived until Constantine died with his Life Guard in the Streets of Constantinople more than 2200 years later. To suggest that the empire collapsed due to internal decay is to reduce the complexities of history to a comic book tale.

When people advance this claim of the decay of the Roman Empire, and then try to compare it to the United States, the claim about decadence is predicated upon an assumption of initial republican virtue in both Rome and the United States. Anyone familiar in any detail with the history of Rome in the nearly 700 years before Sulla and Iulius Caesar, and anyone familiar in detail with the first century of the history of the United States is never going to believe that there was any noticeable virtue in either Rome or the United States from the beginning. To become decadent, you had to have been once much better than you are now. I see no evidence that that was ever true, either in Rome, or in the United States.

Thank you. I'm going to read it tonight with a cuppa tea.

And a grain of salt . . . it is just my opinion, although it is an informed opinion . . .

Setanta, I think the French would say "ce bon vieux Francis" or "mon vieil ami Francis".

Got any illustrations/pictures to go with your opinion/explanations? This is like a history book you wrote.

Cello, je lui sais trop gré de son amitié pour lui en tenir rigueur de si minimes écarts grammaticaux.. :wink:

Francis, t'as ben raison, mon pote.

Actually, Setanta, the thing that struck me was when I first read about the Romans being a virtuous republic. I have not read that before and would never have thought of them as being so. I look at them more as being army conquerors.

This is funny, Greenwitch! I was just thinking about this Rome-USA comparison. I decided I didn't really know enough about the fall of Rome. I do know they fell in part to decadence and also maybe to pollution (in a sense - lead pewter). I guess I should read up.

Thank you, Set.

The Romans considered themselves to have had a virtuous republic. Specifically, the members of the order of Patres (the patrician or senatorial order) had a mythos of the virtuous republican. That is why the story of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus was even more important to them than it was to the early Americans. Conquering one's neighbors was simply what people did in those days, if they could pull it off.

I mentioned earlier that the Romans had had "kings." Those "kings" were the seven "Tarquins." It is not certain that the Romans in fact had a dynasty of Tarquins. At the time that Rome arose, the dominant power in that part of Italy were the Tuscans, who called their "country" (no nationalism then in the modern sense) Etruria, and who are therefore often referred to as Etruscans. The dominant city state of southern Etruria was Tarquinia. Roman civic religious rites appear to have derived from Etruscan rites, particularly those celebrated in Tarquinia. The most likely explanation for the Tarquin "kings" is that they were, in fact, governors from Tarquinia, or Tuscan satraps paying tribute to Tarquinia. The last of the Tarquin "kings" was Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), and the Romans expelled him circa 500 BCE. The Tuscans of Etruria were never a united nation in the sense that we understand nation states. So, there was no concerted effort on the part of the Tuscans to bring the Romans to heel. The cities of Tarquinia and Veii attempted to restore Tarquinius Superbus to a throne in Rome, but eventually failed.

The Romans were forced to live a life of poverty and hard knocks until they could definitively assert their power in Latium. Even then, for almost two centuries, Tarquinia remained their chief rival and the Romans were negotiating a truce with them as late as the end of the fourth century BCE (circa 305 BCE). There was constant warfare and raiding between the Romans and the Tuscans, as well as many of Rome's other neighbors, even after the Tarquins had been expelled from Rome. Several of the main Roman historical myths relate to the long struggle for Roman independence, and then hegemony. The story of Horatio at the bridge, and of Muscius Scaevola (you can find both stories online) are typical historical myths, by which the Romans sought to maintain their pride under the weight of war and siege by the Tuscans. What seems most likely is that the Tarquinians and Veiians made war on Rome on behalf of Taquinius Superbus, and besieged the city. It was an humiliation to Roman pride, so they created the mythic historical episodes of which the stories of Horatio and Muscius Scaevola are two prominent examples. Historical myth is very common throughout the world, and often used to cover a multitude of sins.

The region of Latium was the home of several tribes, including the Latins, from whom the name of the dominant language was taken. The Latins and the Hernicans were the two most numerous tribes in the region, and they likely stood aside as the Romans fought the Tuscans. Later, they came under the hegemonic control of the Romans, and Latin and Hernican levies fought alongside Romans in every consular army. The term Latin rights refers to the extension of all the rights of a Roman citizen, except the vote, to the tribes of Latium.

The linguistic evidence is that tribesmen from a wide range of bronze age people settled Latium, and the Greeks were aware of the region of Latium at least as early as the 8th century BCE, if not earlier. The southern part f the peninsula was a region of Greek colony city states, which was sometimes referred to as Italia, and hence the place name Italy. The north central region was, as i've noted, Etruria, the home of the Tuscans (the name Tuscan is an ethnic and linguistic designatin). The Tuscans began creating city states about 300 years before the foundation of Rome. There is good evidence that they traded with the Greeks of Mycenae and with the Minoan civilization, and that might be the origin of petty Tuscan chieftans establishing cities. Etruria arose when a league of Tuscan cities was formed from the twelve principle cities.

When a city is successful, its population grows, and in ancient time, it would quickly outstrip the capacity of its home farms. Therefore, the reasonable solution, from the point of view of the leaders of a city state, would be the conquest of the neighboring region, to assure the necessary supply of food and other basic commodities, such as wool, wine, hardwoods, bronze, iron, etc. It was a natural progression from the point of view of the city state to establish hegemony over neighboring farmers and pastoralists, which means "conquering" the neighboring tribes (you don't want to slaughter very many of them, though, because that would be killing the goose that lays the golden egg).

If they won't come along peacefully, but you are able to defeat them militarily, then you would be likely to enslave them, to assure your supply of the foodstuffs and other commodities necessary to the support of your city state. The Tuscans did not need to conquer Latium for that reason, and there was no rival city state which then threatened them at the time the "League of Twelve Cities" was formed, and Etruria founded. But in the middle of the 8th century BCE, Rome was founded (despite the obviously mythic and lurid tales of the founding of the city, the general date of circa 750 BCE is reliable). This was city which threatened the security of southern Etruria, because it was a short two days march from Veii, and three or four at the most from Tarquinia, the principle city of the League.

Therefore, it would be natural for the Tuscans to lay Rome under tribute, and as it grew and became successful, and a commercial and political center for the tribes of Latium, to put a Tuscan governor in charge. I have absolutely no reliable historical evidence for this, but, as the early Roman history is legendary (i'll explain why shortly), i infer this from the attempt to make sense of the myths which comprise early Roman history.

Rome was in a strategic position, not simply militarily, but more important than that, it was in a commercially strategic position. It lay near the coast on the routes for trade between Italia and Etruria, and therefore the trade route from Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. From the Tuscan point of view, it had to be under Tuscan control. However, the tribes of Latium, being a mixed bunch descended from several sources, including aboriginal inhabitants living there before the arrival of the Tuscans in the north and the Greeks in the south, would naturally resent being laid under tribute, and would certainly resent being enslaved. It is likely that Rome was a foundation of the more ambitious members of those tribes who sought to create a civic center as a focus for their intention to maintain their independence from the Tuscans. The Greeks of Italia were no political or military threat, but the Tuscans were on their doorstep.

So, the constant theme of Roman history for the first four centuries was a struggle to escape Tuscan hegemony, and in order to accomplish that, to establish their own hegemony over the tribes of Latium, and their near neighbors, such as the Sabines (legendarily, the founders of Rome raided the Sabines for women), and a good deal of Roman religious practice and myth (that which was not derived from the Tuscans) comes from the Sabines. The Latins and Hernicans were resentful, and often rebelled and fought the Romans, but basically took the line of "the devil you know," preferring Roman hegemony to Tuscan hegemony or slavery. The Romans quickly recognized the importance of the Latins and Hernicans and Sabines to their own growing city state, and extended to them all the civil rights of the Romans with the exception of the vote. I won't go into the bizarre and shameful details of the Roman voting and political system here, but suffice it so say that the Latins and other tribesmen were not greatly deprived by not having the vote.

So, the timeline, roughly is the foundation of the city circa 750 BCE (in Ad Urbe Condite, "From the Foundation of the City," by Titus Livius, the date is given, I believe, as April, 754 BCE, after converting to our modern dating system--it was claimed to be April 21st or 22nd). The city was then claimed to have been ruled by a dynasty of kings called the Tarquins until the explulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, circa 500 BCE. The legendary history claims that there were seven Tarquin kings, but as that would give an average reign of 36 years, that is doubtful. As i have pointed out, it is more likely that the "kings" were governors placed over the city by the militarily more powerful Tuscans, or Etruscans, of Tarquinia. After the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was more or less constantly at war with the Etruscans, principally those from Veii, the nearest Etruscan city state, for the succeeding two centuries. In this war, the Latins and Hernicans were usually, more or less willing allies, but basically, the Romans had to rely on their own resources, and were frequently driven within their own walls. After the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, an Etruscan "king" (probably the commander of the Etruscan army sent to restore the Tarquins) named Lars Porsenna besieged the city from the Janiculum Hill across the river Tiber from the city. Lars Porsenna certainly did exist, and was very likely the ruler of the city of Clusium. Whether or not he was actually what we would call a king is doubtful, and not important. That the Romans and the Etruscans came quickly to a successful negotiation is certain, and one which did not restore the Tarquins. I suspect the war proved to be more difficult and costly than the Etruscans had thought it would, and that Lars ditched Tarquinius and came to terms which satisfied the Etruscan desire to neutralize Roman power without the necessity of a bloody assault of the city, which might have cost Lars more militarily than he was willing to pay a dangerous world. The fact that Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (the cognomen or "nickname" Cincinnatus means "the curly-haired one") was a young man of about 20 at that time, and had a home farm on the Janiculum Hill is good evidence that Lars did not conduct a long siege as the Roman legendary history suggests.

Thereafter, Rome was ruled by two Consuls as chief magistrates, and they were roughly "co-kings." They were elected (by the devious Roman system of voting by tribes) and served a term of one year. By early custom, a consul would not serve two consecutive terms, although he might serve as many terms as he could successfully stand for. This system broke down quickly, because Rome was so often at war, and the people tended to want to keep a successful general in the field. The idea was that one Consul would rule in the city while the other went into the field if war was in the offing, or if Rome were already at war. As the Romans were often fighting for years on end, and over an extensive territory, the office of Dictator was created to provide for authority in time of emergency. Originally conceived as a military leader to undertake the defense of the city in the event of the defeat of one or both of the consular armies, it quickly became an office resorted to in a variety of civic emergencies. Titus Livius tells us that Cincinnatus was once called to the office of Dictator when a plebeian speculator was hoarding the grain supply, and if true, it meant he was Dictator for a matter of hours one afternoon before surrendering the office and returning to his farm. Livy tells us Cincinnatus was Dictator five times.

Under the necessity of almost constant warfare, the Romans were obliged to live life in straightened circumstances. Therefore, the patrician matron would spin and weave her own wool cloth, and the Senator would plow the fields of his home farm when not upon his civic duties. This became the body of the myth of Roman virtue, and endured long after the members of the patrician class had become rich and lived a sybaritic life style.

I have found this image of the statue of Cincinnatus which is located in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio:



This is an excellent symbol both of the mythic image of the virtuous citizen the republic which was popular with the early Romans, and with the early Americans. Note that he holds the fasces in his right hand, and is offering it to the viewer, a symbol that he surrenders the absolute power when his services are no longer needed. George Washington is about the only man in modern history of whom i know who had the absolute confidence of his people, and stood at the head of a victorious army, who willingly surrendered his commission to the government of his nation. It is easy to see why early Americans wished to identify Washington with Cincinnatus. Note also that Cincinnatus has his left hand on the plow. This completes the image of republican virtue--he not only surrenders the absolute power when the emergency has passed, but he returns to the humble and virtuous role of a tiller of the soil.

Certainly Rome was a state which sought to conquer and dominate its neighbors, and ranged further and further afield. This was what city states did in those days, and what they have done in all places and times in world history. You see it in China, in India, in Mesopotamia, in pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru. What makes the Romans different was that schooled in a harsh environment, they became not only a disciplined people, but a ploddingly competent people, who were rarely brilliant, and as rarely mediocre or failures. They developed a tripartite civic system which saw every office in the city as having a function in the civic religion, a function in the governance of the city or the law courts, and a function in the army in the field. So, for example, never original architects, they were brilliant engineers, and the adopted and adapted the architecture of the Greeks, improving upon it the point that the created public works on a scale far beyond the imaginings of the Greeks.

The discipline and orderly organization of society and the army made the Romans irresistible for a thousand years. When Alaric and his Goths broke into the city in 410 CE, the Romans had already dominate their world for more than five times longer than the United States has existed. When the Romans were starting out, they had extended the Latin rights to the neighboring tribes as a very successful means of co-opting the blandishments of their enemies and neutralizing any resentments which might arise from the extension of their hegemony. Any tribe or city which surrendered to the Romans when summoned were automatically extended Latin rights, and were left unmolested in their lives and properties, required only to provide military levies and the cost of supporting the Roman armies which would faithfully protect them if they were at all able. Tribes or cities which resisted risked destruction and enslavement. Once again, this was nothing more than the ordinary facts of life two thousand years ago. The difference is the superior competence with which the Romans worked the game.

When Alaric and his Visigoths, or when any of the "barbarian" tribes were federated and allowed to settle in the confines of the empire, granted a portion of the public land in return for military levies, the Romans were only following time honored custom ratified by a thousand years of success. That the imperial authority in the West eventually crumbled away for a variety of reasons, but largely from economic ignorance and hebetude, is not evidence that the Romans had become decadent and were a pushover for barbarians from the howling outer darkness. The Germanic tribes who eventually engrossed the territory of the western portion of the empire and set up for petty kings had entered the empire and had been federated in the ordinary fashion which the Romans had employed successfully for so long. "Rome" never "fell"--it more or less staggered away, fell down, and couldn't get up any longer. Certainly the cherished myths of republican virtue so dear to the hearts of Romans were just that--myths. There was no more virtue in the early republic than there was in the principiate empire, and in fact, considerably less administrative competence in the republican empire than in the principiate empire, for all the republican Rome was far more competent than its neighbors.

Lest you attempt to suggest that the early American republic did not resemble Rome in that Rome was a conqueror, and the Americans were peaceful and democratic republicans, i would remind you of the failed attempt of the Americans to invade and occupy Canada in the War of 1812, the Creek War of 1813, the "Trial of Tears" which removed the Amerindians from the southeast United States, the occupation of Texas by white Protestant and slave-owning Americans before their successful revolution against the Mexican government and the Mexican war itself. The notion of civic virtue and empire building were not at all contradictory in the mind of the "movers and shakers" of the early American republic.

(EDIT: I didn't mention, as i promised, why early Roman history is legendary. In about 390 BCE, the Tuscans, desperate to put the Romans out of business, hired the Gauls of northern Italy to put paid to Roman ambition. The Gauls defeated the Romans in the field, and drove them within their walls. They then broke into the city, and plundered, murdered, raped, burned and generally did what successful conquerors of those days did in such a situation. Only the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill held out. After a few months, the Gauls moved off--probably suffering from camp diseases, and with nothing more to gain--and the Romans who had survived or fled returned to the city. The city had been so badly burned that almost no books remained. Within the temple of Jupiter, the linen rolls survived. These were scrolls upon which the Censors had traditionally recorded the civic business of the city--who was elected to which offices, the lustrums which counted and verified the tribes, the tribe being the basic political unit of the Roman state, and the occasions upon which the doors of the temple were shut. In time of peace, the doors of the temple were kept open. They were shut in time of war. The Sibylline Books also survived. Titus Livius, or Livy, used the linen rolls as well as copies of histories which do not now survive, in writing his monumental history, Ad Urbe Condite. Since most other records were destroyed in the sack of the city by the Gauls, the legends and myths of the early Romans took over as the history of the city, when no other accounts survived to contradict them or to call them into question.)

Thanks, set, brilliant as usual.



When seeingCincinnatus ... that always reminds at Latin classes in school: Livius, Ab urbe condita ... (liber III, 26 et sqq.: still a favourite for examinations, I just found out).

Thanks, Walter, for indirectly pointing out my consistent error. The book by Titus Livius is Ab urbe condita.