I read Gibbon’s work about 30 years ago. It was a long read. It was a ponderous read. Hard to keep track of the many, many Roman emperors, senators, and generals. With Latin names. There were undoubtedly many literary nuances in sentences and paragraphs that I could not afford the effort to grok. I had other books to read; I had another life. To put it bluntly, “Decline” was written in a style that would not be well read today.
But it was a history book that made history.
Despite my limited retention of the storyline (then and now), there were a couple of things that stuck out to me.
The decline of the Roman Empire was slow. Most people in this society would not have noticed the decline. Had they lived 70 years, they might have seen a little difference.
After the Visigoths gave Rome a surprise sacking in 410 A.D., the Roman army gathered itself and chased the Visigoths out. The citizens picked up the pieces and continued as they had before. Roman society had weakened to the point where a foreign nation could invade their capital. There was little introspection of why this happened or how to fix it.
The term “fall” is a misnomer. It implies a total loss of civil order. That loss really did not happen. Rome went from a unified empire to many smaller semiautonomous provinces and later autonomous states. During this transition, citizens paid more attention to local than to national politics. Rome had less and less influence in Gaul or Syria. These provinces were nominally Roman, and eventually weren’t really Roman anymore. As Roman influence diminished, these provinces still functioned with local governors. People adapted to new ways. Life was hard before; life was hard after.
The fall of Rome was more about political leaders in Rome no longer being able to govern faraway places.
Bread & circuses
The “bread & circuses” cliché is often mentioned in pop culture. There was even one Star Trek episode with that title. To summarize, Romans kept civil order by food and entertainment.
I can’t recall if Gibbon had anything to do with this quote. However, and despite all the archaeological evidence for the games at the stadia, Gibbon said maybe only 10% of Romans were fans of the games. This suggests the other 90% were placated by cheap food. The interconnectedness of the Roman Empire allowed food to be moved long distances in times of local harvest failures. Famines were less likely.
The fall of the USA
Gibbon published his book in 1776: the year the American colonies declared independence. Many commentators thought his book distracted the British from the trouble brewing in the colonies. Many readers at that time were wondering about the slow fall of the British Empire. And that is now history.
History has seen many slow falls: Abbasid/Umayyads, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mongol, Ottoman. China has had more rise/fall cycles than anyone else. Russia seems poised for a fall. Decades were required to weaken a strong nation. And strong nations eventually weaken. That is the history.
And most people going through historical changes do not see the new history that is coming to them.
Like the Romans, most Americans will live through the Decline and Fall of the American Empire. The result is that the USA will not be as influential in the world as it is today. This could be a good or bad thing. Regardless, Americans and the rest of the world will move on and adapt.
One good thing from the American decline is we — the people — just might be free of the myth of the indomitable American democracy. With this myth shattered, we just might, one day, even investigate and implement a new kind of democracy. A kinder, wiser democracy.
Or maybe we could build this democracy now before it becomes obvious.
Published on Medium 2024
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