I started pontificating on facebook and some of my fellow history buffs joined in. Your invited to join in as well.
Rob Cain:
The other day I was thinking of the end of the Roman Empire. A strange as it sounds…I get depressed when thinking of Rome falling. It then occurred to me, what about a podcast that talks about Rome Falling and a comparison of what it would be like for the U.S.? Don’t get me wrong…if you listen closely to my podcasts… I believe we are due for America’s GOLDEN AGE (like the Greeks), but what an interesting discussion it would make. Can we learn lessons of Rome’s fall for our own that may or may not come?
Joey Hill:
I think that like all things, whether we are heading for a Golden Age or not, America will reach its apex and fall, if not to rise again and again, much like the Western and Eastern Roman empire did before us. I too get depressed when think…ing of the fall of the Roman Empire and thinking of what it would be like for us as a country to go through that. I think we have a different mentality than the Romans under imperial rule at this time, but who knows what the future holds. Definiately a great podcast topic however. 
Love the most recent one, especially the speech given by the commander to his troops before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was wise, well thought out and truly moving to listen to. A wise commander indeed.
Rob Cain
If you really thnk about it, I mean REALLY think about it…we were not always on top. For much of our history the British took the lead and the U.S. turned out to be a pretty good place to live in just the same. I think the so called ‘fall’…if it comes or as you say ‘when’…the payment we will pay as a people is what scares me most. The question that would make a good podcast is what KIND of payment.
Joey Hill
Maybe loss of pride, loss of identity, loss of work ethic, you name it. Unless the payment is made over time to the point when we won’t even notice that our “fall” has even happened. I don’t know yet but I’ll have to chew on it I suppose. It’s depressing!
Bradley Holland
The fall will be soft and you wont know its happening or you wont be in a position where you have time to care. energeticly, the Franks, Saxons, and Germans carved out great Empires using the framework established by the Romans.
The West fell because of plague, depopulation and economic reasons. There were people waiting to fill the vacuum and they did so…
More recently the British Empire faded away….
The British empire still exists in spirit and culture with US inheriting its position but owing its origins to Britain as the founders of the United States did not spring forth from the soil like myrmidons but haled from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland in the main.
The laws and institutions of the US were moulded by people of British descent and the energy and ingenuity the American people were sparked by people emigrating from the British Empire looking to better themselves.
The US is Imperial in every sense of the word it has invaded and annexed it has maintained hegemony and client states it has colonised and expressed a manifest destiny.
The U.S. is the current inheritor to Rome’s legacy but time changes everything, and the torch will move on and a new region will take up the mantle.
Then again maybe you will have your Aurelian, so don’t write your selves off so early into your existence.
Rob Cain
Being the son of a English immigrant and a family that traces their family to the Isle of wight, with branches coming from Ireland, more than once growing up I felt the ‘touch’ of British Empire. My mother even came over when she was 15 (1930s) managed to retain a pro-empire attitude in her view of the world. You can translate this as pro-british if you want. I have visited Britian twice in my life, and my father was there in World War II. I still look to Britian with awe, admiration, sometimes guidance, and would in a ‘New York minute’ visit it again if given half the chance. I wonder upon that in some future time after the fall…there might be some post fall ‘yankee’ talking about the good old days under the ‘American Influence’ and visiting New York to walk the streets and remember when.
OK, a little dramatic.
Bradley Holland
Pax …Britannia was roughly 200 years long 1700ish to 1918ish. Before that it was the Spanish and Portuguese.
I will start to worry about the decline of the US in 150 years time.
That is why I don’t think the Western Empire went away entirely. Enough of its culture and tradition was preserved to enhance or burden the nations of Europe and later Europe’s colonies as they have adopted and adapted the “idea of Rome” and succeeded spectacularly like the US has or failed with unfathomable cost like Germany’s twice contested imperial dreams.
I’m Australian and no matter how different we claim we are from the British – our traditions and laws are British, they have just been shaped by our location and our environment. That is probably why you will find us the Canadians an the New Zealanders always willing to stand beside the US and the UK in a scrap or just being able to cooperate and get along, because we have a common shared heritage and a similar out look on the world.
Rob Cain has traveled extensively through Europe, Italy, and Egypt. He was formerly on active duty with the United States Army. He is a fan of history, and enjoys reading books on the history of Rome. He currently has a podcast presentation on itunes and hipcast. The blog is for the free and open discussion of Ancient Rome based on Mr. Cain's observations noted in his podcast. Most episodes start out with an original dramatic narration written by Mr. Cain. In the podcasts he will include his own unique commentary, and interviews with subject matter experts. Comments are welcome and will be highlighted on the show. 
Episode 10, “Nothing New Under the Sun. Get Over it”, features the book, “The Ancient Guide to Modern Life” written by author, comedian, and TV commentator Natalie Haynes.” Whether political, cultural, or social, there are endless parallels between the ancient and modern worlds. Whether it's the murder of Caesar or the political assassination of Thatcher; the narrative arc of the hit HBO series, The Wire, or that of Oedipus; the popular enthusiasm for the Emperor Titus or President Obama – over and over again we can be seen to be living very much like people did 2,000 or more years ago. It's time for us to re-examine the past. Our lives are infinitely richer if we take the time to look at what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta and Alexandria. 
This is a book with a serious point to make but the author isn't just a classicist but a comedian and broadcaster who has made television and radio documentaries about humor, education and Dorothy Parker. This is a book for us all, not for an elite.
I don’t believe we can compare Rome and the United Sates in a linear fashion. The influence of technology has dramatically shortened our time line in comparison to Rome. In ancient Rome, they had a lot more time on their hands, so to speak. Things move very quickly now.
We started as a colony of the British Empire and retained some of the traditions and customs from Britain. The British consequently adopted traditions and customs from the fallen Roman Empire, so in a very broad sense, we are the last of the Roman Empire’s ‘expansion’ (!). Since the current world is ‘settled’ it is only a matter of time that cultures and races move and resettle continents. One can witness that now in the U.S. which had been traditionally European in origin. The Hispanic population is exploding. Asian, Arabian and other cultures are also on the rise (hey…didn’t that happen to Rome also?).
I believe it will always be called the United Sates, and as we know it now, will exist in its current form for the next hundred years or more, but its’ cultural, political and social makeup will change; a ‘fall’ would be in the distant future and perhaps more of a transformation.
We’ve had our moments in wars for independence, two world wars and our own civil war as well as a host of smaller conflicts and we have achieved economic dominance, political influence, incredible technological, medical, architectural, and artistic accomplishments in a relatively short period of time, similar to ancient Rome in their day.
There was a number of times where it appeared that Rome was finished, yet they managed to reestablish control and dominance. Perhaps we are at a ‘breather’ where we will again forge again to new uncharted accomplishments.
I hope we are on a breather. I always believed that we quite possibly be due for an American Golden Age.
However, I constantly come back to the one incident in the past where pirates burned Ostia. DONT think of it as pirates…yoho ho ho and a bottle of rum. Think instead what it really is…an act of terror that changed what the Romans believed about themselves.
Can anyone say…9/11 in latin? Well start learning to, and read this article out of the New York Times.
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Op-Ed Contributor
Pirates of the Mediterranean
By ROBERT HARRIS
Kintbury, England
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”
Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.
“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.
In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.
It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.
It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.
The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”
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Well, what do you think? Is there an comparison. Can fear bring down an empire? Can fear being down a Republic?
What do you think?
Yes! First, great article. But yes, I have noticed the change also. The catch phrase “for National security” has all encompassing menace.
Our freedoms and rights have eroded. Some say it’s not to worry. If your an honest, law abiding, tax paying citizen life will go as usual, only criminals and terrorists have to worry. Really? It always starts small.
There are those that understand how much power they now have, and never would have had, if not for 9/11. The ability to look into anyone’s life with excruciating detail is intoxicating. People once joked about “I have a bomb in my bag”, no one took that seriously. Now that joke gets you an appointment with men in dark sunglasses and earpieces. Almost any reason now, for National security. Two magic words. Will people eventually fear saying anything remotely intimidating lest you get turned in by your neighbor?
Instill fear in the public. Remember the terrorist alert going to yellow or orange? People would get more nervous than yelling “tornado!” in a trailer park. Or how about the Super Bowl or Fourth Of July was a “prime” target for terrorists? Remember how quickly the Patriot Act got passed? Sure, terrorists are still around and will continue to be. And if we have an incident from a U.S. citizen, a homegrown terrorist, then more freedoms and liberties will most likely evaporate. What would happen if Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building now instead of then? The government can’t trust it’s citizens so it must keep an eye on every one. National security.
I have also noticed how the government has been leaning to eradicate “hate”, whether bona fide hate groups or hate inducing (actually political polarization, but they call hate) websites, newspaper, magazine, radio and television programs. Better to eradicate the first amendment than to spawn hate and civil unrest. And I guarantee that there’s a group somewhere in Washington figuring out how to avoid civil upheaval here at home a la Tunisia, Egypt, et al, should it ever occur. You know how mob thinking spreads. National security.
And what if something so insidious, so sinister happened that required immediate action but people were so fed up with the bickering and the lack of resolve of Congress that the people, out of sheer fear, said yes, give our commander in chief unlimited power to quell this threat. Just for a little while of course. Surely after the crisis he’ll be a good guy and relinquish it right?
Yes, the parallel to Rome is startling. That article does indeed create a seat-squirming uneasiness. We were proud to say “I’m an American” and like Rome, was a guarantee of safety almost anywhere in the world; now you better be very careful where you say that. Ask a Roman citizen if he thought the Republic would ever die and an Emperor would rule absolutely. He’d say (in Latin of course) “…not in a million years…”.
-”I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
- Thomas Jefferson
-”The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.
- Thomas Jefferson
Salve Roma libera!
I think fear can bring down an empire. And paradoxically, a lack of freedom can do it too.
Ancient Rome had slaves because it needed them. There were few labor saving devices, and the few that existed still needed constant human action and control. In order to have a viable slave system one needs inequality. One cannot afford to see slaves as human because if one did, one would begin to question one’s right to control large numbers of human beings. Having an easy way of noting slaves- by making them wear special clothing or jewelry, by enslaving people who are primarily within a certain color range or recognizable ethnic look or religious system- makes it easier to keep slaves from escaping, mixing too much with the larger society, or gaining large amounts of power.
The Romans were very good at this. The majority of their slaves were easily recognizable as foreigners- at first. Eventually they had to be made to wear certain signifiers, or to be branded or otherwise marked if they ran away. In the United States and the Caribbean the same thing happened, to the point where masters believed slaves were recognizable by skin color (which is why miscegenation was viewed with such horror). However, as labor-saving devices came into use, unambiguous slavery became less viable as a system. The markers, however, were and are still in place. We still associate brown skin with inferiority, with weakness, with idiocy, and with marginalization, even when the individuals who carry these markers are not related in any way to former American and Caribbean slaves.
What has happened because of this is that people whose cultural and social contributions could be used to improve the nation are instead rejected on a regular basis. It’s often assumed that they are traitors if they mention the oppression that happened in the past, or the oppression that goes on right now. They are often not given the education they need to succeed and contribute. And because of the mental and ethical laziness and laxity that goes along with the slaveowner mentality (why learn to think when your slave can do it for you, even though you tell yourself that you are ‘superior’ because you hold the whip), there’s no one to mind the store.
A Roman ‘labor saving device’ didn’t just do grunt work. ‘It’ taught children, did accounting, write letters, negotiated over grain with merchants. But when the ‘labor saving devices’ aren’t needed and so are left uneducated, and the general populace is uneducated too, then you have a problem. Our biggest crisis right now is that of wide-ranging stupidity. You can’t run an empire off of people who can’t find our major allies on a map. You can’t get things done when most people would rather not think, and don’t have to, or think only in terms of us (masters) and them (uppity slaves). Freedom isn’t just about the right or ability to go where one pleases. It’s about using that ability to become a better person. Without people striving to be better people in a world no longer needing so many human labor saving devices, but instead needing human computers, human engineers, and human inventors and dreamers, we all end up in what is now a supremely fucked up world.
Because of the insistence of seeing whole groups of people as non-humans or fellow travelers of non-humans, we are able to write off the people most likely to come up with the next big idea, or to keep that person from even coming into existence. The Romans may not have been deep thinkers, but they knew the Greeks and other peoples were, and gave them the right to worship and behave as they wished, so long as it didn’t work against imperial policy. Yet we live in a country where large groups of politicians, military leaders, and even teachers reject science, believe that certain people are inferior because of skin color or place of national origin, and work very heavily keep ideas from those people from being developed in any way, even though they have no ideas themselves.
Unless this changes, there will never be an American Empire. Empires are built on ideas, relative freedom, and on even the lowliest members believing they have a stake in that empire, because it benefits them and in turn values them on some level. There has to be an opportunity for people to feel they have a place of value and necessity, even if that place is fixed. Too many people in the US have essentially been told that they have no place at all, or that their place is in a prison, or as an illiterate living on the dole, or as an outsider because their religion (or lack of same) or sexual expression or gender or country of origin is evil.
Need to become a member of this web site, good submit. Thought it was with aol.