July 5, 2004
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Dr. Umberto Eco is one of the great minds of our time. He is an eminent classicist, a best-selling novelist, the world expert on the science of symbols and writes a weekly column in the Italian magazine L'espresso. He is, like most European intellectuals, a man of the Left, but of the dwindling breed of the sober and freedom-loving Left.
Recently, Dr. Eco wrote a column entitled "To appear more than to be," which highlighted the campaign advice given to Cicero in a letter written by his brother, Quintus Tullius. (A rudimentary translation is here.) The Roman's advice is astonishingly appropriate to modern American politics; the instruction to "never expose oneself on any political issue" immediately brings to mind the Invisible Man, John Kerry, as one watches his attempt to quietly flip-flop his way to the White House.
Eco does not see these correlations as coincidence. He reminds the reader that Cicero was running for consul – president – in the very last days of the Roman republic. For while Cicero claimed his consulship in 63 B.C., only 14 years later Julius Caesar would cross the Rubicon with his legions. And as the vision of America's Founding Fathers was directly inspired by the republican model of Rome's limited government, these correlations are hardly insignificant either.
Societies, like the individuals that comprise them, have a lifespan. There is nothing guaranteeing the perpetual existence of the American republic. Indeed, the Supreme Court has been diligent of late in demonstrating that the U.S. Constitution is nothing but a piece of paper devoid of power. It might behoove us, then, to know how long its predecessor lasted before the rule of law devolved completely into dictatorship and the rule of force.
The Roman republic was born following the rebellion that overthrew the last Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, in 509 B.C. Its republican system of limited democracy with limited suffrage began to die with the first consulship of Marius, in 107 B.C. Marius created legions loyal to him personally, violated Roman law by holding the consulship five consecutive times and ordered a series of bloody proscriptions that inspired his one-time lieutenant, Sulla, to wage Rome's first civil war against him. In 83 B.C., Sulla was victorious and became Rome's first extrasenatorial dictator. From republic to empire was a matter of 460 years, then, including the 58 years of violent transition.
The second great influence on the American republic, Athens, was rather shorter-lived, as it was only 185 years from the Cleisthenesian reforms of 507 B.C. to the Athenian Assembly's submission to Antipater in 322 B.C. Unlike the Roman model, Athenian democracy was brought down less by internal strife than by external empire building, which eventually resulted in its forced involvement in the Pan-Hellenic League of Corinth, which surrendered Athenian sovereignty to Philip of Macedon.
It has been 223 years since the Articles of Confederation founded the American republic. Already, our republic has surpassed Athens. Is it possible to hope that it will outlast the 460 years of Rome? The odds of success do not appear high. The social ills of illegitimacy, divorce and public homosexuality are already more reminiscent of the early empire than even the late republic. The politicians of both major parties run substance-free campaigns eerily reminiscent of those advised by Quintus Tullius, who prefigured Karl Rove and Dick Morris by two millennia.
And in Iraq, we are witnessing an attempt to build a Pax Americana in open imitation of the famous Pax Romana. What admirers of this effort tend to forget is that the Pax Romana, which is considered to have run from 27 B.C. to A.D. 180, was an imperial affair, beginning with Octavian's assumption of the title Imperator Caesar.
The laws of history are not as easily discerned as the laws of physics, but they are every bit as inexorable. Eco gives us one more reason to believe that we are living in the last days of the American republic as he closes his article with this ominous warning:
"... one cannot avoid the thought that Roman democracy had begun to die when its politicians understood that they no longer had to be serious about their principles but only needed to arrange to obtain the sympathies of those we might well call television viewers."
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Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist Convention, and has been down with Madden since 1992. His weekly column is syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Visit his web log, Vox Popoli, for daily commentary and responses to reader email.
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