American Rubicon

Maxwell Schorer
Aug 25, 2017 · 6 min read

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom … he said:

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.

And when Polybius … asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human.

When Polybius recorded Scipio’s words in 146BC, the Roman Republic was the unquestioned superpower of the Mediterranean. Rome had conquered Carthage in North Africa, and within the next century, would finish incorporating the rest of the Mediterranean world along with modern day France into an empire that would last for centuries. Yet at this moment of triumph, Scipio wept; he knew one day that Rome would fall as well.

Polybius believed that Rome’s ascendancy could be attributed to its republican form of government, which brought unprecedented internal stability to the Roman state. But ironically, in the century after Polybius’s Histories, the Roman state would be anything but stable. Violence, assassinations, and civil war would engulf the Republic for decades until Augustus’s victory at the Battle of Actium in 31BC. His defeat of Marc Antony would mark an end of civil strife, but it also marked the beginning of monarchy. The Empire persisted, but the Republic was dead.

America’s position in 1991 as a stable republic and the world’s unquestioned superpower looked a lot like Rome in 146BC. Similarly, while America’s power and influence has remained externally dominant over the past couple decades, internally, America hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. When we dig into that internal dissension, three similarities with the Roman Republic before it’s collapse emerge:

#1: An economic and politic system that led to increasing wealth but greater inequality

As Rome’s empire expanded through the Mediterranean, so did inequality within its borders. The military and political system that prosecuted these wars directed most of the benefits towards the generals, i.e. the upper class, while leaving fewer spoils for the troops, i.e. the lower and middle class. The result was a system that steadily hollowed out small farms in favor of large estates worked by slaves and owned by a small group of wealthy elites.[1][2][3]

#2: The declining effectiveness of institutions to peaceably solve major problems.

Ancient Romans knew of these major internal issues, and in fact, most of the leading men of the Republic openly discussed and debated these topics. But nothing got done. Why? Because no Senator wanted to let anybody else get credit for solving these problems. When they couldn’t argue against needed reforms, oftentimes senators would resort to arcane procedures and parliamentary tricks to block or delay any meaningful legislation. The result was that the political process became feckless, inequality got worse, the middle class continued to deteriorate, and Romans started looking outside traditional institutions for help.

#3: The increasing reliance on strong men, not politics, to get things done

For centuries, a requirement for a citizen to serve in the Roman military was to own land. However, as the Roman middle class declined, so did the potential manpower pool for the military. Instead of pushing reforms to reverse this decline, eventually the property restriction was removed and the military started recruiting from the landless poor. The required length of service increased, which resulted in Roman armies steadily transforming from temporary citizen militias to permanent professional forces. These troops were poorly paid, though, so in order to increase enlistment, new recruits were promised a plot of land at the end of their service. However, it was often the case that the only way to get that land was to conquer it, which resulted in soldiers’ loyalties lying with their generals above all else. This meant that military forces looked to their leaders, not the state, for their well being, and near the end of the Republic, the only way to achieve meaningful reform was at the head of an army.

The Rubicon

The above issues came to a head in 49BC with Julius Caesar at the Rubicon river. After his conquests in modern-day France, Caesar had gained immense power, but his ascendancy threatened the Roman power structure. Caesar couldn’t reach an agreement with the Senate on how to return to Rome without leaving himself vulnerable to political retribution, and after several rounds of fruitless negotiations, he concluded that no peaceful solution was possible. Instead of leaving himself to the mercy of the Republic’s institutions, he decided to march on Rome to remove his enemies in the Senate from power. The Rubicon river marked the boundary of his command, and when he crossed it to invade Rome, he initiated a sequence of events that would lead to civil war, his assassination, and ultimately, the end of the Republic.

Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon is widely considered the moment Caesar killed the Republic and “crossing the Rubicon” has become synonymous with a decisive moment or to mark a point of no return. But I think that view is flawed. Caesar wasn’t negotiating with the Senate so much as he was negotiating with Pompey, a fellow general with his own army.[4] For decades, Rome wasn’t governed so much by institutions but by powerful generals at the head of large armies, who had the real power. The reality is that Caesar didn’t stab the Republic through the heart as much as he pulled the plug on its life support.

Institutional, Not Personal

This distinction — a personal decision vs chronic institutional failure — is relevant. One of the most common biases in western culture is the Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to explain people’s behaviors in terms of internal traits instead of environmental factors. It’d be one thing if Rome was peaceful and functional until Caesar suddenly plunged into open warfare, but that wasn’t the case at all. The decades before Caesar’s rise to power were marked by political assassinations, plots to overthrow the state, and even a previous civil war where a general marched on Rome and made himself dictator for life. And after Caesar’s death, civil warfare continued for over a decade.

This brings me to today. Our current discourse focuses heavily on individuals, and most of our ills are blamed on their failings. Yet these larger issues — inequality, loss of faith in and power of institutions, the increasing attractiveness of individual leaders — have spanned decades and administrations. However you feel about Trump or Obama (or Bernie or Cruz or Hillary), they’ve come to power in a specific environment, and by focusing on the individual, we’re ignoring the deeper issues in our country. Do I fully understand what’s happening? Not at all. But I’m confident when historians write about this period, they’re going to talk less about Trump’s tweeting and more about the massive technological, demographic, and geopolitical changes that are currently taking place. If we don’t start thinking about those, I worry America’s Rubicon isn’t far away.

Footnotes

[1] If you want to know how wealthy some of these Romans became, check out the Getty Villa. J. Paul Getty (who happened to be the world’s first billionaire) modeled it on the Villa of the Papyri which likely belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Never heard of that guy? That’s because in the larger context of Roman history, he wasn’t that powerful, wealthy, or important. Yet this villa was so opulent that the last major pet project of a 20th century billionaire was to simply copy this guy’s house. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Roman citizens were subsistence farmers.

[2] Adrian Goldsworthy, in his biography of Caesar, puts it as follows:

“In many respects it was a vicious cycle, as repeated wars in distant provinces took more citizen farmers away from their land and often left them and their families in penury, while the same conflicts further enriched the elite of society and provided them with the means to create more big latifundia [large agricultural estates manned by slaves].”

If you’re looking for a solid one-volume biography of Caesar, I highly recommend it.

[3] I should note that archaeological evidence to support the decline of small Italian farming estates is weak, and in fact, some evidence suggests a flourishing of small farms. The inequality narrative is the historical consensus, but maybe it’s fake news?

[4] I’m borrowing heavily from Mary Beard’s SPQR, where she makes a similar point. Her words: “What came to be seen as a war between liberty and one-man rule was really a war to choose between rival emperors.”

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