Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us - NYT Opinion

[Pluvious]

Intriguing parallels...

He was a child of privilege turned demagogue, a man who blurred the boundaries of politics and spectacle and seemed to think himself a divinity beyond mortal rules. His tumultuous tenure lasted longer than anyone expected. Then along came a pestilence that seemed a sordid reflection of the ruler’s arrogance and ineptitude. The disease revealed and amplified social tensions that had festered under the surface and brought back whispers of civil war. The people could stand no more, and even the fainthearted Senate at last showed hopeful signs of courage.

With the scoundrel gone, power was entrusted to a senior senator whose respect for decency had come to seem like the most reassuring virtue. The ship of state was now to be steered by a safe pair of hands.

I am talking, of course, about the Roman emperor Commodus and his successor Pertinax. Son of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, Commodus ruled as sole emperor for 12 years (A.D. 180-192), his reign marred by perpetual scandal. The emperor had disturbingly little esteem for traditional decorum. To the delight of some and dismay of many, Commodus participated in the gladiatorial spectacles himself. We can only imagine what he would have done with Twitter.

So when a vicious pestilence reappeared with tremendous ferocity — at its peak, it was said to have killed as many as 2,000 Romans a day — the tensions boiled hotter. In the words of one contemporary senator, Commodus himself was a curse worse than any plague. The unseemly emperor was finally strangled in his bath by a wrestler, Narcissus, at the urging of a group of conspirators.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/opinion/ancient-rome-covid.html

[empedocles]

1. Love it. TY

'Love & Strife' - Empedocles

[TheRealNorth]

2. Commodus, as portrayed in the movie "Gladiator".....

Is probably close to what Trump would be like if he were a Roman Emperor.

[Bayard]

8. We need a Maximus

[aggiesal]

18. To defeat Gludeus Maximus? n/t

[Bayard]

23. To take out Commodus....

[aggiesal]

25. No we need to take out Gludeus Maximus (i.e. Pendejo45 (i.e. Hair Fuhrer)) n/t

[lagomorph777]

30. Is that why we named the Commode after him?

[paleotn]

3. One of the worst. Ironically, following the 5 good Emperors...

and possibly the best of all, his father Marcus Aurelius. Sometimes the nut falls way far from the tree.

[BComplex]

4. The unseemly emperor was finally strangled in his bath by a wrestler, Narcissus,

at the urging of a group of conspirators.

Narcissus - funny that.

[thucythucy]

7. I thought that too.

I wonder, what's Latin for "irony?

[DENVERPOPS]

17. Should we be afraid of a

Trumphumping Secret Service agent paying us a visit for daring mention the strangling of a former "R"esident?????? LOL

[anamnua]

5. More like Nero fiddling while Rome burns.NT.

[dalton99a]

6. Commodus also ordered the executions of senators

In 182 A.D., Commodus’ sister Lucilla organized an attempt on her brother’s life. Sources diverge on the origins of the conspiracy, with some claiming Lucilla was jealous of Commodus’ wife Crispina (incest between Commodus and Lucilla is suggested in Gladiator) while others maintain she saw the first warning signs of her brother’s mental instability.

Whatever its roots, the conspiracy failed and the incident aroused an insane paranoia in Commodus, who began seeing plots and treachery everywhere. He executed the two would-be assassins along with a group of prominent senators who were also allegedly involved while Lucilla was exiled to Capri before also being killed on her brother’s orders a year later.

The assassination attempt marked a turning point in Commodus’ reign, for “once [he had] tasted human blood, he became incapable of pity or remorse.” He began executing people without regard for rank, wealth, or sex. Anyone who caught the emperor’s attention risked also inadvertently invoking his wrath.

The emperor eventually decided to abandon “the reins of the empire” and chose to give “himself up to chariot-racing and licentiousness and performed scarcely any of the duties pertaining to his office.” He appointed a series of his favorites to manage the administration of his empire, each of whom seemed crueler and more incompetent than the last.

However, even these favorites were not safe from his fury. The first, Sextus Tigidius Perennis, Commodus put to death after becoming convinced he was conspiring against him. The second, the freeman Cleander, he allowed to be torn apart by a mob who were outraged at the freeman’s abuses.

Under Commodus, Rome had descended “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.” Much like Nero had supposedly fiddled while Rome burned, Commodus enjoyed himself as the city decayed around him.

....

[matt819]

9. My wife, who's much smarter than I am. . .

has been making these observations for several years and wondering when these views would make it into the mainstream. It certainly took long enough.

[soothsayer]

10. Commode-us. That's him!

[fleur-de-lisa]

27. He was obsessed with flushing multiple times.

It always made me wonder what the hell he was eating that required multiple flushes. Well, he can eat shit now.

[soothsayer]

28. Hahaha!

[nuxvomica]

11. Was the word for a toilet named after him?

Even if it wasn't, we should do that for his reincarnation.

[DetlefK]

12. Ancient Rome collapsed because of bad tax-policy, not because of political scandal:

The Roman Empire did not rely on taxes to pay its armies and infrastructure-projects. Instead, the Empire paid for these public expenses with the spoils of war the Roman Army had robbed from foreign countries.

Rome was controlled by a rich and politically well-connected upper class. Nobility in all but name. Contemporary authors note how tax-evasion had basically become a sport for them. At the same time, the economic crisis after the 3rd Punic War had driven many farmers into bankruptcy, creating a permanent economic under-class in roman society: the proletariate. (That's where the term comes from.)



In the end, Rome ran out of victims it could steal from.

* The kingdoms of the Middle-East were rich and would have been ideal victims, just like Egypt and Israel, but they were too strong and too far away to be conquered.

* South-Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and the likes, was inhabited by farmers mostly. There was nothing to steal from them.

* Germany? The german tribes of central and northern Germany were too poor to be worth conquering and Rome's occupying army in southern Germany had already had to entrench itself with forts against the ever-present threat of german raiders. Due to the thick german forests, any new aggression against the german tribes would have been an open invitation for decades of "jungle-warfare".

* The Scots? Too poor to be conquered as well, and in fact so dangerous that Rome had to build Hadrian's Wall just to keep the Scots from raiding territories in Rome-occupied England.



Eventually, Rome began running out of money. They could no longer afford the occupying armies and mercenaries that defended their borders and had to give up territory bit by bit. The Roman Empire split into the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, but that didn't help much. The Western Roman Empire shrunk and shrunk, running out of money, relying more and more on south-german chieftains and their mercenary-armies, because they couldn't afford their own army anymore.

In the end, when the Roman Empire had shrunk down to Rome itself, the german chieftains took over in a brief coup and the Western Roman Empire was gone.

[LisaM]

19. I am reading a book about this now and I agree.

What was fascinating to me was that the Roman Empire was essentially ended before the ruling classes realized it, in other words, there was a lag effect.

I see that now, with people refusing to see that much what we are seeing now was put into effect by Reagan. I can't get some of my younger friends to understand how harmful and dangerous he was to this country. They think I am obsessed about him (but having graduated from college when he was in office, I know first hand).

I have always thought Trump was an outcome of Reagan (and then GWB), not an aberration.

[drmeow]

26. I'm with you on Reagan

His first term started my junior year in HS and I already hated him (many of my high school friends gave me a hard time about him - at least on has repented).

Trump is absolutely the culmination of the path Reagan set the Republicans on. With Reagan they accepted that they could not win elections on their policies alone and started the extreme lies, propaganda, gerrymandering, and voter suppression which has continued today. It was and continues to be all in the service of the wealthy and built on the lies that 1) we're all just one break away from being rich, 2) the "other" is preventing that break, 3) high taxes on the rich will hurt us.

If we don't turn things around, historians will lay the roots of the destruction of the American experiment at Reagan's feet, more so than Nixon's.

[lagomorph777]

31. +1000 I'm from the same era; Trump was a hateful piece of shit.

He was just a lot smoother and smarter than Trump. He set us on a course to the present disaster.

[roamer65]

24. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire was successful.

The Byzantine Empire lasted almost 1000 years longer than the western half, until 1453.

That is why I am such a northern state separatist. Jettison the part dragging us down and become provinces of Canada.

Divorce works!

[Wawannabe]

13. Commodus 45!

Commodus = 45

Wow

[rampartc]

14. trump would be more like commodus if those pesky bone spurs

didn't keep him out of the arena.

i go with caligula as trump's role model.

[andym]

15. Actually, our warning from Rome came about 200 years before Commodus when they lost their republic

and instead became ruled by emperors. Once authoritarian leaders are possible in a state, then absolute power will corrupt some. A strong case can be made that the loss of the republic resulted from repeated violations of political norms in Rome.

Look at the links in this post:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016283087

[Mr.Bill]

16. Many people who are rich don't realize where their money came from.

It came from customers having extra money to spend.

[Hekate]

20. Very thoughtful. Thanks. nt

[BobTheSubgenius]

21. Excellent example!

And, in a pretty long stretch, it goes along with a Newsweek article published in the 70s. It was about the increasing trend of Americans building INCREDIBLY lavish bathrooms, and how that trend mirrored the latter days of the Roman Empire.

[UTUSN]

22. Yip, been watching scores of videos from The U. of YouTube about the Romans/Greeks/Egyptians and

they were all gobsmackingly amazing, and yes the Romans were incredibly effective in Ups and Downs. In years past it was frustrating how the Italians seemed to have a passivity about collaborating or being taken over by tyrants and malignant ideologies but i've come to think that it comes from having seen it all come and go over their thousands of years of history. Not just them, but their stuff is so documented.

Many of us draw parallels to HITLER's ilk (and get in trouble for it), but just about any current situation and bogeyman can be found in ancient history. Perhaps our trauma of the past five years can be healed by the Italian attitude that it's all been seen before and it's all passed on.

[WarGamer]

29. In fairness to Commodus... (lol)

But Rome had 7 Kings, 16 leaders of the Republic and 70+ Emperors.

Many, if not most... were just as bad as Commodus.