Posted on 10/03/2014 5:10:05 PM PDT by Vinylly
I was doing a Google Search on 'Why The Roman Empire Fell'. I was sincerely shocked at the reason. The United States is now in the same position as when the Roman Empire fell. History is repeating itself and very few people realize this.
Whatever it was the Roman Senate vetoed it 23 times until he was dead. For some reason they weren't able to exercise that same power over the first roman emperor.
“Augustus self-declared,...”
Not really. He NEVER called himself “Emperor” iirc.
The historian Werner Eck states:
The sum of his power derived first of all from various powers of office delegated to him by the Senate and people, secondly from his immense private fortune, and thirdly from numerous patron-client relationships he established with individuals and groups throughout the Empire. All of them taken together formed the basis of his auctoritas, which he himself emphasized as the foundation of his political actions.
“Have you ever read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire? If so, do you think it would be a good book for our older home schooled children?”
I have read it and it’s good, but not pithy in most places. I took it with me when I was deployed with DoD to an office job somewhere that I won’t mention. Suffice it to say, I had little else to do off duty, so it was great. Maybe not great reading at any other time for a modern reader, however educational.
People had more time to read when Gibbon was writing. A lot of late 18th Century and 19th Century writing was and is great, but moderns won’t sit still for it. For example, Sir Walter Scott wrote some great books that no one will touch today.
I would suggest taking a look at Plutarch. You can find various translations and collections of his lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but they are short enough and have a clear moral in them that they may be better suited for middle school and high school ages. My grand parents read them in high school, one read them in Latin in school, but I think English is good enough.
I use the latter definition I cited early. It is clear that Rome and Great Britain controlled masses of land by conquest way beyond their “normal” borders. And that a few people ruled those territories as well as the home country. That meets the definition of Empire I am using. The fact that some one calls themselves an emperor does not have to be included imo.
Narses, probably the greatest general ever who had no balls at all.
Oh, wait, you're not asking about the actual fall of the Roman Empire in 1453? You're asking about the non-event in 476 when the last Western Augustus retired to a villa near Naples, that Gibbon and the other "Enlightenment" historians trumped up as "the Fall of Rome" so they could dispossess the Christian Roman Empire with its capital moved to "New Rome" as Constantine the Great called it, Constantinople to everyone else, of its Romanity by inventing the fiction that it was a different "Byzantine" Empire, rather than the Roman Empire.
It's really hard for me to put much stock in trying to analyze deep social or political causes for the decision of the Eastern Augustus to stop having a Western counterpart and rule as sole Emperor.
Read a good history of the whole Roman Empire written by a competent "Byzantinist" who ignores Gibbons' propaganda, then circle back around and read Henri Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne, to fill in the history of the West from 476 through to when the West stopped even theoretically being in the Roman Empire because it set up its own parallel version under Charlemagne (which as Voltaire waggishly noted was neither Holy, nor Roman, or -- after Charlemagne's death -- and Empire).
Exactly!
I read some of John Adams’s papers on the Roman Republic which was very much an oligarchy long before the republic ended. The patrician ruling class served itself very well. The only sense of democracy I could see from both Gibbons and Adams was the power of the mob if it was assembled and directed to action by one or more patricians. Some patricians used the mob effectively to kill a rising and popular figure among the people. The mob turned against this popular hero when they manipulated by the patricians. Threw the poor fellow over a cliff and onto an infamous rock (name escapes me).
Bottom line however, except in the very earliest days of the republic, there was no democracy up to the end, west and east. Roosevelt get that wrong.
Oops - Roosevelt didn’t use the word democracy. My apologies Teddy.
I see Augustus was kicking back in the Palace and Livia said, hey, good news the senate just made you emperor. He didn’t want to be associated with anything like being a king. He just wanted the power.
You may also believe that all legislation starts in the congress because the constitution says so.
I apologize for being so literal. He didn’t run around calling himself emperor but he made al the power and political moves to be declared so.
Here’s more information:
By the year 13, Augustus boasted 21 occasions where his troops proclaimed “imperator” as his title after a successful battle.[157] This is well after the word was used only as a name for victorius general.
oops indeed.
Gibbons writes extensively about Byzantium, state and church. I haven't finished my version, but it is going beyond the fall of the western empire. Chapter 71 covers 1430 AD. Of course, there are many abridged versions that may end abruptly, but mine doesn't. What is it, stylish now to trash Gibbons? His history is not perfect but still a benchmark by which others are measured.
Are you referring to Reflections on the Causes of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Manby et al, 1759) by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu?
I did a study on this several years ago.
I was surprised at the similarities.
How about slavery?
It didn’t help stability of the Empire, in a cultural sense, when they didn’t have a believe in an Afterlife.
SO...they took what pleasures they could in their daily life (fornication, bribery, theft) in the form of anything that immediately feels good and yields immediate results.
Not a good recipe for long-term social stability, eh?
But the Romans and Byzantines did believe in an afterlife, so there is definitely more to their collapse. Some questions we can all ask ourselves: at what point do we become indifferent to the fate of the United States? At what point do we concern ourselves only with local preservation (ourselves, families, neighbors) to the exclusion of broader preservation (city, county, state, country)? At what point do we refuse to cooperate with the survival of the United States or do so minimally if compelled by force?
I think it was the Roman citizen that said it isn’t worth it anymore. Finding what drove them to that is the question that concerns me.
It is certain that the French corrected their mistakes and taught the rest of the world.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
'La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur.' - Auguste Escoffier
(Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
It is hard to read Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” without being frankly frightened by the parallels.
Absolutely.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.