According to this article by Dani Di Placido on
Forbes.com, "
TikTok's 'Roman Empire' Meme, Explained," it is now fashionable, on Tik Tok, for women to "approach the men in their life and ask how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers who have never stepped foot in Italy casually admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform, with female creators often expressing complete bewilderment at the shared obsession."
Oh, how eccentric. The little dears!
I respectfully submit that TikTok is completely off base here. In fact, I believe that all Americans -- men, women, children, and TikTok influencers alike -- fail to think about the Roman Empire
enough.
I do not mean that we should all be fantasizing about gladiatorial combat or about gorging at Roman banquets on
parrot tongue stew or stuffed dormouse, although how you comport yourself in your spare time is generally none of my business.
No... I propose that we think more, and reflect deeply and urgently, about how the Roman Empire rose from the ruins of the Roman Republic in the last century before the Common Era.
Why is the fall of the Roman Republic important?
Well, until our own Republic was launched in the 18th Century, the Roman Republic was the largest, and longest-lived Republic the world had ever known. It lasted for several hundred years, if not exactly from 509 B.C. when, according to tradition, a group of Roman aristocrats, including Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius Poplicola, threw out the last Roman King, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus.
The names "Brutus" and "Publius" should be familiar to every American; indeed, the name of Brutus should be familiar to every educated person in the world: One of Lucius Junius Brutus' descendants, Marcus Junius Brutus, administered 'the most unkindest cut of all' to Gaius Julius Caesar. The assassination of Julius Caesar, on March 15, 44 B.C., was one of the final nails in the coffin of the Roman Republic (even though Brutus and his 'liberator' companions insisted -- and may have even believed -- that they were trying to
save the Republic).
There is so much cinematic drama and operatic intrigue in these long ago events that we tend to focus on the personalities and forget the reasons
why the Roman Republic failed. But these can be summarized fairly quickly:
Increasing income inequality and
intractable disputes about immigration, the assimilation of newcomers, the extension of citizenship, and voting rights.
Totally different from the problems faced by America in our time, right?
No... wait....
It is often said that the political factions of Late Republican Rome cannot be directly compared to our own, modern political parties. I'm not at all certain of this. Broadly speaking, the Roman factions in the last years of the Republic were the
optimates and the
populares.
This fellow, Marcus Portius Cato, or Cato the Younger, as he is better known, was an
optimate.
The
optimates were sometimes referred to (by themselves at least, and by later, sympathetic writers) as the
boni.
Roughly translated, that means 'the Good Guys.'
Subtle, right?
This contrasted them with
populares like Julius Caesar.
As a
populare, Julius was heir to the mantle of the Gracchi, the doomed brothers, assassinated by their political opponents during the course of their respective tribunates in 133 and 121 B.C., respectively. My old Roman History professor, Dr. George Szemler, at Loyola, used to liken the Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, to the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert. The Gracchi were serious land reformers, and they paid for it with their lives. The Social War, the various Civil Wars, the seven consulships of Marius, the constitutional reforms of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Cataline conspiracy, all came after the deaths of the Gracchi and before the rise of Julius Caesar (who claimed descent from the goddess Venus but, more practically, was Marius' nephew).
It became the custom, in those troubled years, to criminally prosecute one's political opponents. It was not enough to defeat someone; the defeated had to be convicted as well, and sent into exile. Bribery was a central component of the Roman electoral system. Politicians incurred enormous debts to get elected; the only way they could recover from electoral success was to receive a lucrative provincial governership at the end of one's term. What made a province lucrative was the revenue a proconsul might squeeze out of it for himself. Even then, this was understood as corruption. A fellow we lawyers know about, a
novus homo by the name of Marcus Tullius Cicero, developed a very good practice defending these corruption cases. He built his political career on it, too.
You can make the argument, in fact, that Julius Caesar would never have crossed the Rubicon but for the implacable determination of Cato the Younger to prosecute Casear for official corruption the moment he laid aside his
imperium.
The Senate (read: Cato) had planned to stick Caesar with a post-consular assignment to maintain "the woodlands and paths of Italy," but, during his first conulate in 59 B.C., Caesar got that assignment changed to the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul. The timely death of the governor of Transalpine Gaul gave Caesar the opportunity to grab a second province, and conduct the Gallic Wars (and even make a foray into Britain). Caesar managed to hold his partnership with his slightly older son-in-law, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, together long enough to get a second five-year term for his governorships (when Julia died, Pompey drifted toward Cato and the
boni) but, after 10 years away, Caesar expected to return to Rome for a second consulship.
The 10-year interval between consulships was prescribed under the Sullan constitutional reforms. Caesar had followed the constitution.
But, unlike in 60 B.C., when he gave up the possibility of a triumph in order to declare for the consulship in 59 B.C. (much to Cato's consternation), Caesar did not want to lay down his command in order to declare his candidacy this time. Others had been allowed this privilege (Pompey, for one). It took time to arrange a triumph, and the army had to be camped just outside Rome, waiting for the appointed day. Given the precedent, it seemed reasonable to expect that Caesar would be accommodated.
But Cato though differently.
Cato was not going to be frustrated this time... or so he thought. If Caesar wanted his triumph, he could not stand for counsel. If he gave up his triumph in order to enter the City (as the law required) and declare his candidacy in person, Cato could proceed with his long-planned prosecution. Either way, it would be the end of Caesar... except it wasn't.
While many historians today may see Cato as an unreasonably stubborn and obstinate obstructionist, and an actual cause of the Republic's downfall, Cato has, at many times, and in many places, been seen as the very personification of the old Roman Republican virtues. Less than a century after his suicide (he killed himself to avoid the indignity of receiving clemency from a victorious Julius Caesar), Virgil has Vulcan include an image of Cato "giving laws" amongst the "virtuous souls" on the shield he makes Aeneas (
The Aeneid, 8:784, Fagles trans. 2006).
Cato was very popular in the 18th Century, too. Joseph Addison's
Cato, A Tragedy, premiered in 1713, but it was still quite popular during the American Revolution. So popular, in fact, that George Washington had the play staged for his troops while they were in winter camp
in Valley Forge. Imagine: though his command was facing frostbite and starvation, Washington wanted his men to think of Rome. Of Roman civil war and Republican virtue and the dangers of tyranny and ambition. This is what TikTok would trivialize.
You no doubt learned in school that America has a written Constitution because Britain did not. And this is certainly true.
And also incomplete.
Hopefully, you also learned in school that America has a written Constitution because the Roman Republic did not. And our Founders were obsessed with preventing their new Republic from going down the path of faction and mob violence that ultimately destroyed Republican Rome. Rome was the only real-life template the Founders had as they shaped our Constitution and our Republic.
And that is why (in case you thought I'd forgotten about it) that every American should know the name of Publius Valerius Poplicola. As New York State debated whether to adopt the Constitution that came out of the Convention in 1787, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay published a series of essays supporting and explaining the proposed Constitution. Their
newspaper columns, which we now refer to as
The Federalist Papers, were published under the collective pen name "Publius." No educated reader in the 1780s would have failed to catch the reference to Publius Valerius Poplicola, one of the founders of the Roman Republic.
Our schools don't teach much about Rome these days. Julius Caesar is a cartoon image on a pizza box. And yet we are descending into an age of hyper-factionalism, with problems eerily similar to those that brought down the Roman Republic. Political mob violence, even civil war, don't seem as impossible here as they once were.
I think it was Mark Twain who said that history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
We'd all better think a lot more about Rome. And about how we can save our Republic, where Rome could not save its own.
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