My dad’s 1930’s schoolboy history books dwelt on Rome. My childhood memory of the texts might be wrong, but…
Seeing US politics, I am remembering an ancient Roman governor of Sicily, Gaius Verrus, a most despicable man.
I would invite you to think of Fred Flintstone’s world, for the Romans had a world like Fred’s, in a way, by doing the best they could with the technology they had. Such technology! Nobody in our world, until “recently,” could build a huge domed roof, complete with a sunlight portal at the top, without the whole edifice collapsing. And nobody else could transport water in an aqueduct for many miles.
When my dad was a boy, as his texts read, they were still using Roman roads: First the legionaries dug a wide trench, then rammed the earth, followed by bigger stones, then smaller stones, then gravel, then sand and then, as icing on the cake, paving stones—straight as an arrow through forests and swamps. “All roads lead to Rome,” they said.
After Rome fell, peasants, still using bricks like the ones featured in the two-millennia old Bible, believed the mossy old Roman bridges had been built by the devil… as nobody else had cement. Not until 70 years after Ben Franklin had wondered about electricity and wondered, too, if the American people were capable of governing themselves without a king. To the rest of the world, US democracy was a “noble experiment.” Remember?
In Rome, reservist-soldiers marched with a banner SPQR: senate and people make up the republic.
Republican Rome will remain a virtuous city of legend as long as history endures. Inspiring poems include the epic Horatius at the Bridge, which I read in Classics Comics, and Find A Way by John Sax: “…who says with Roman courage, ‘I’ll find a way, or make it!’”
In the full course of time “the eternal city” became not so inspiring. The decadent empire kept expanding, but from the very start it was merely running on momentum from the republic.
Rome went from a first-world republic to a third-world empire where senators were paper tigers next to a strong Caesar. How? Why did Romans choose to go to the dark side?
Partly because they went from a “city of laws” to a “city of men.” Cicero and Caesar, contemporaries of Verrus, served their country, but Gaius Verrus, despite having caused a stench over in Asia Minor, obtained the governorship of Sicily purely so he could enrich himself.
Verrus would say publicly, at parties, that in his first year of governorship, through corruption, he made enough to pay for the bribes he had needed to get the position, in his second year, he made enough to pay bribes to those who might try him, and in his third year he made a fortune for himself.
I guess such corruption was contagious, like when a corporation rots, and then produces silent cries of “Every man for himself!”
The most important legacy of the Romans is not their concrete edifices, nor their written laws, although such laws have served as a model for future makers of codes and constitutions. Their legacy is their lesson to us: Rome fell from virtue to decadence in almost a single generation.
The same Romans who, in a republic, saw Julius stabbed and Cicero exiled, lived to see the mob fleeing from freedom to hail a populist. Throwing themselves at the feet of a Caesar.
Down the years, down the centuries, the Roman people never again became fit for, deserving of, a republic… My dad knew about fascism. His peers said, as they levelled the homes of poor Berliners with bombing raids, and starved Tokyo children with a submarine blockade, “People get the government they deserve.”
Living in Canada, I can’t know America. I do know that a man of gold has increased his executive power through thwarting the Constitution by declaring nine separate emergencies in less than a year, as if the senators were paper tigers. I know that some Americans, including the House Speaker, believe everything the “American Caesar” says, hook, line and sinker. For example, “The election was stolen.” (This despite various vote recounts and court cases) And “They are eating the dogs.”
Maybe the problem of Americans is not an ignorance of science and critical thinking, but rather, their craving for the comfort of totally believing a leader, giving him not only totally immunity from criminal charges but total immunity from scientific scrutiny as well.
My aunts and uncles who served have all passed away. They won’t have to face finding out whether the work of many generations can, in a single generation, be undone. Forever.
… …
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Sean Crawford
Incorporated City of Camrose,
that blessedly still feels like a town,
December,
2025
~Regarding Roman roads, for space reasons I over-simplified. From this link, roads are in the fourth paragraph, starting “Not only did…’
~I’ve also oversimplified the time-frame of Roman decline. Part of the decline was when the rich began valuing extravagance, and showing off wealth to each other. Belief in Vice and virtue overlapped: Marcus Cicero and his family called themselves “old Romans” while the decadent modern types such as Julias Caesar, being in the majority, did not need a label.
Many fine stories take place at the time of the overlap, such as The Robe and perhaps that original Star Trek episode, Bread and Circuses.
~Part of America’s problem is doubling down on their faulty economy, being unwilling to reexamine or revise the Reaganomics they have believed in —for forty freaking years!— unwilling to compare and contrast it with the forty years my dad and I knew before Reagonomics. See my October 29 essay about US kings and camels.
~Here’s a “shorts” video about the equipment a legionary carried.
