Last year, a video in which women asked men how often they thought about the Roman Empire was popular on social networks. It turns out that the overwhelming answer was "quite a bit": many of the men surveyed claimed that the ancient empire crossed their mind every week, or even every day.
This did not surprise Mike Duncan, the host of the popular podcast History Rhyme, and probably neither Tom Holland (of the British historian, prim.), who wrote numerous bestsellers on the subject. Mary Bird certainly understands this modern fascination. Her study of ancient Rome - combined with an unpretentious style and assertive charisma - made her, in the words of one observer, "a national institution and without competition the world's most celebrated expert on ancient history".
Why is ancient Rome so attractive to modern audiences? As Bird explains, the Roman Republic laid the foundation for Western politics and culture. In addition, the history of Rome is so multifaceted that its elements can be disassembled, rearranged, and interpreted to fit any narrative or belief.
Rome was a key inspiration for modern liberal democracy. The thoughts and actions of the American "founding fathers" were steeped in Roman ideals, and the United States was presented as the new banner of republican freedom. But in their own special way, the Italian fascists - not least Mussolini himself - tried to present themselves as the full heirs of the Roman Empire.
Rome is also the story of a democratic republic that turns into an autocracy when it succumbs to collective frustration, political norms are violated, and there is a widespread desire for a leader who will rule with a firm hand. Donald Trump's critics know how to compare him to Julius Caesar, pointing to his demagoguery, insatiable desire for power, and willingness to break rules and norms. But similar comparisons are often made by his supporters on the extreme right, in an effort to portray him as some kind of great imperial conqueror.
Trump supporters also (wrongly) believe that immigration is what brought down the Roman Empire. More broadly, far-right supporters try to suggest that ancient Rome laid the foundation for "white culture." This helps explain the view of Daniel Padillo Peralta, professor of ancient history at Princeton University, that his field is inseparable from the worldview of white imperialism.
Bird in his book SPQR: History of Ancient Rome from 2016 (also published in Serbia, cf.) this mythology whiteness questions, pointing out that the story of the Roman Empire, ethnically diverse by nature, is actually "the history of people with different skin colors". Moreover, her book ends with Emperor Caracalla's decision to grant citizenship to all subjects of the empire. The old Roman aristocracy was left without the previous privileges because it did not want to share them with others.
Similarly, the history of Rome has become a model for those who dream of restoring the patriarchal order. Rome may have had its heroines, but they were typically mothers or wives of emperors. Ultimately, Rome was essentially a praetorian society that highly valued courage, honor and masculinity, or virtus. But at the same time, consensual homosexual sex was also legal, and Rome can be seen as an early source of legitimization of gay rights.
For Israelis, on the other hand, Rome represents something completely different: the narrative of the Roman Empire reminds them of the experience of exile, while at the same time it brings into focus the potentially catastrophic consequences of the inability to think in realistic terms. Let's take the example of the revolt - the last escalation in the Jewish-Roman wars - which was not raised against the Roman Empire in 132 AD by Simon bar Kohba, and which led to a catastrophic defeat and the complete destruction of Jewish life in Judea, whose name the emperor Hadrian then changed to Palestine .
And yet, as former Israeli military intelligence chief Yehoshaphat Harkabi wrote in his remarkable book The Bar Kokhba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Relations, Bar Kohba's "irresponsible act of collective suicide of the nation" instilled in the Jews "admiration for the rebellious spirit and heroism, independent of bearing responsibility for their consequences." Fortunately, David Ben-Gurion, the founder of modern Israel, had a different mindset: his reason was that you should never spite a superpower, or go to war with it, if you don't have another superpower on your side. Alas, today the Jewish messianic zealots in the Palestinian territories (renamed Judea and Samaria) are determined to repeat Bar Kochba's suicidal folly.
Rome is often invoked when describing American hegemony. Pax Romana - a kind of "golden age" of relative peace and prosperity based on the dominance of a powerful empire - served as a model for Pax americana, the period that occurred after the end of the Second World War. And just as the efforts to establish a "general peace" between the Greek city-states after the Peloponnesian War ultimately provided the ethical basis for Rome to take control, the constant wars in Europe ultimately forced the US to position itself as an external guarantor of security and order. . As if peace is often incompatible with full political freedom.
But now it seems like it is Pax americana on the decline - and that trend is fueling numerous speculations about what is seen as the imminent "decline" of the American "empire". The foundations of such a speculative view were laid back in the 18th century, when people like Edward Gibbon and Montesquieu wrote about the fate that befell the Roman Empire. Yet the US still has much to learn if it is to avoid decline and collapse itself.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that even hegemonic powers need some sense of proportion. Rome suffered from what Gibbon described as "the natural and inevitable effect of disproportionate size". In a similar way, America is also recognizable by the fact that it lacks appropriate humility, which was especially noticeable in the years after the end of the Cold War, when there was no one to question its hegemonic position. Therefore, she should make sure that her own hubris does not lead to her downfall.
Although historical comparisons can help our understanding of the present and the future, they do not offer us any guarantees. Even the so-called Thucydides trap - the supposedly inevitable collision between an established hegemon (like the US) and a rising power (like China) - should not be seen as some kind of iron law of history, if for no other reason than the unimaginably high price that such conflict nowadays had.
This brings us to a key difference between the West today and Rome at its height: while the Romans expected the future to be a repetition of their glorious past, a belief in progress and renewal has been fundamental to the Western worldview since the Enlightenment. Inspired by this faith, we are further able to apply the lessons of history and hope to avoid the worst mistakes of our ancestors.
The author is Vice President of the Toledo International Peace Center; he was the minister of foreign affairs of Israel
(Project Syndicate, 2024; prevod: radar.rs)
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