The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) (11 page)
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Authors: Anthony Esolen
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Then a youth named Mucius, after telling his plan to the “Fathers,” that is the senators, sneaks over the walls and makes his way to the Etruscan camp, a dagger hidden beneath his cloak. There he sees a group of squadron leaders gathered around a man giving orders. He rushes the man and buries the dagger in his chest, killing him instantly. But it was Porsena’s secretary he slew, and not Porsena. At once he is bound and brought to the commander, who asks him what he was doing. His reply ought to be known by every American schoolboy—and once was known, by many:
“I am a Roman citizen,” he cried. “Men call me Gaius Mucius. I am your enemy, and as your enemy I would have slain you; I can die as resolutely as I could kill: both to do and to endure valiantly is the Roman way. Nor am I the only one to carry this resolution against you: behind me is a long line of men who are seeking the same honor. So if you think it worth your while, gird yourself for a long struggle, in which you will have to fight for your life from hour to hour with an armed foe always at your door. Such is the war we, the Roman youths, declare on you. Fear no serried ranks, no battle. It will be between yourself alone and a single enemy at a time” (Livy, 2.12). Porsena, enraged, ordered Mucius flung into the flames, but the Roman in scorn thrust his hand into the fire, saying, as it burned, “Look, see how cheaply we value our bodies, we whose eyes are fixed upon glory!” Moved by the lad’s nobility, Porsena set him free, unharmed. And ever after the good Romans honored Mucius with a jocular nickname, “Scaevola,” meaning “Lefty.” It became his family’s surname, one of the most highly esteemed in Rome.
The Romans could not have survived had they not fostered such manhood in their youths; the Etruscans were stronger than they were. But that was their ideal: scorn for pain, scorn for death, a determination to do what is right, a love for country, and a refusal to surrender.
That refusal is at the heart of the Roman success. The Romans did not produce a lot of military geniuses before Julius Caesar. They did not always have more efficient weaponry, or greater numbers of soldiers. What they did have was an uncompromising belief that the city must survive, and that surrender meant annihilation or servitude. Surrender was not an option.
So the Romans lost plenty of battles, but for many centuries did not lose a single war. Consider one of their worst military disasters, the battle of Lake Trasimene in the second Punic War.
8
The Carthaginian general Hannibal—perhaps the greatest military genius of all time—had ravaged Italy with his armies. One of the Roman consuls longed to engage Hannibal in a pitched battle once and for all. Against the judgment of his fellow consul, he allowed himself to be lured by Hannibal into a trap. The Carthaginian ordered his archers to attack the Romans and then to appear to be repulsed, retreating along the narrow shores of a twenty-mile long lake. They were bounded by water on the right and a mountain ridge on the left. When the Romans had been lured in far enough, Hannibal sent reserves from their ambush on the far side of the mountain round to press the enemy from the rear, while his “retreating” troops turned suddenly against their pursuers from the front. The Romans were caught in a vise. Both consuls died in the battle. Almost all who were not slaughtered on the shore drowned, or were cut down as they tried to swim to safety. According to Polybius, Rome lost 15,000 men on that day, one-quarter as many men as the United States lost during the entire Vietnam War. Even supposing the numbers to be exaggerated, it was a devastating loss.
8
The Carthaginian general Hannibal—perhaps the greatest military genius of all time—had ravaged Italy with his armies. One of the Roman consuls longed to engage Hannibal in a pitched battle once and for all. Against the judgment of his fellow consul, he allowed himself to be lured by Hannibal into a trap. The Carthaginian ordered his archers to attack the Romans and then to appear to be repulsed, retreating along the narrow shores of a twenty-mile long lake. They were bounded by water on the right and a mountain ridge on the left. When the Romans had been lured in far enough, Hannibal sent reserves from their ambush on the far side of the mountain round to press the enemy from the rear, while his “retreating” troops turned suddenly against their pursuers from the front. The Romans were caught in a vise. Both consuls died in the battle. Almost all who were not slaughtered on the shore drowned, or were cut down as they tried to swim to safety. According to Polybius, Rome lost 15,000 men on that day, one-quarter as many men as the United States lost during the entire Vietnam War. Even supposing the numbers to be exaggerated, it was a devastating loss.
What was the national reaction? The Romans saw immediately that it was a rash, foolish, glory-spurred, and un-Roman thing for the consul to do. Yet they gave him full military honors, because even a rash fool may die for his country and deserves his country’s gratitude. The Romans did not send ambassadors to dicker with Hannibal, brokering a truce from a position of weakness. They also did not back down.
They changed tactics.
No doubt they fought over it in the Senate, and it caused recriminations between two unquestionable patriots, Fabius and Scipio. But for the next two years, the Romans held their ground patiently. They were content to lose battles, so long as Rome herself remained untouched. They waited Hannibal out, harassing him, cutting off a platoon here and there, laying waste to the fields whose produce the Carthaginian would need to feed his armies. There were, at that time, no news reports friendly to the enemy, and no daily body count to dishearten morale. Quintus Fabius Maximus, nicknamed Cunctator or “The Delayer,” saved his nation without winning any important battles, buying Rome enough time to destroy Carthaginian enemies in Spain, and to send legions by sea to Carthage itself. That forced Hannibal to return to Africa, where the young Scipio handed him his only defeat in a pitched battle, at the desert sands outside of Zama, in 202 BC. Rome did not win that war because she was richer, or smarter, or mightier. Rome won because she would not lose.
9
They changed tactics.
No doubt they fought over it in the Senate, and it caused recriminations between two unquestionable patriots, Fabius and Scipio. But for the next two years, the Romans held their ground patiently. They were content to lose battles, so long as Rome herself remained untouched. They waited Hannibal out, harassing him, cutting off a platoon here and there, laying waste to the fields whose produce the Carthaginian would need to feed his armies. There were, at that time, no news reports friendly to the enemy, and no daily body count to dishearten morale. Quintus Fabius Maximus, nicknamed Cunctator or “The Delayer,” saved his nation without winning any important battles, buying Rome enough time to destroy Carthaginian enemies in Spain, and to send legions by sea to Carthage itself. That forced Hannibal to return to Africa, where the young Scipio handed him his only defeat in a pitched battle, at the desert sands outside of Zama, in 202 BC. Rome did not win that war because she was richer, or smarter, or mightier. Rome won because she would not lose.
9
If you stroll about the Roman Forum or her port of Ostia and look at the ruins, you will see a common inscription, “SPQR,” standing for
Senatus Populusque Romani,
or “The Roman Senate and People.” It’s a phrase that resonated in the hearts of the old Romans. Virgil uses it at a critical moment in his
Aeneid.
He has been describing Aeneas’ shield, which tells the future glories of Rome, leading up to the great victory memorialized in the center, the naval victory of Augustus over Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31 BC). Antony and Cleopatra have priestesses in their luxurious boats, shaking their tambourines in honor of the dog-headed god Anubis and other strange deities, while in the Roman ship, behind Augustus, are the Senate and the People of Rome, with their household gods and the great gods. The victory at Actium is thus a victory of Roman piety over the self-gratification and effeminacy symbolized by the debauched Antony and his entourage.
10
Senatus Populusque Romani,
or “The Roman Senate and People.” It’s a phrase that resonated in the hearts of the old Romans. Virgil uses it at a critical moment in his
Aeneid.
He has been describing Aeneas’ shield, which tells the future glories of Rome, leading up to the great victory memorialized in the center, the naval victory of Augustus over Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31 BC). Antony and Cleopatra have priestesses in their luxurious boats, shaking their tambourines in honor of the dog-headed god Anubis and other strange deities, while in the Roman ship, behind Augustus, are the Senate and the People of Rome, with their household gods and the great gods. The victory at Actium is thus a victory of Roman piety over the self-gratification and effeminacy symbolized by the debauched Antony and his entourage.
10
But why “The Senate and the People”? Why not just the Senate, or just the People? Here again we find the practical political wisdom of the Romans, emulated (after much healthy debate) by our Founders, and forgotten by us, their descendants. It is that the Senate and the People are not the same.
The Roman constitution was neither monarchical, aristocratic, nor democratic, but a fascinating and tangled combination of all three. The consuls had nearly unlimited authority in the battlefield, but there were two of them and their terms were short. The Senate, too, could restrain the military power of the consuls, because it was the Senate that voted appropriations for their campaigns, nor could any war succeed without the hearts and arms of the common people. Then at the end of their terms the consuls had to stand scrutiny for their comportment in office. In the last two hundred years of the Republic, the tribunes of the people (whose proposals in the popular assembly could not be vetoed by any consul) would lead the prosecution against corrupt executives. The Senate controlled the purse, foreign affairs, and the prosecution of crimes against the state, such as treason.
As for the people, they were eventually granted the authority to propose laws of their own, and they possessed a potent veto on the actions of the Senate. The Roman constitution compelled various elements in the society to depend upon one another; or, rather, taught by their piety and patriotism, the Romans resigned themselves to depend upon one another. Their constitution was more the
result
of their traditional virtues than the
cause
.
result
of their traditional virtues than the
cause
.
Polybius, a Greek, gives a short and admirable description of the moral value of the Roman system. It was not dreamed up by a philosopher, but was the result of centuries of compromise and of devotion to tradition. Even a true democracy, as described by Polybius, partakes of the nobility demanded by aristocracy and the obedience demanded by monarchy:
A state in which the mass of citizens is free to do whatever it pleases or takes into its head is not a democracy. But where it is both traditional and customary to reverence the gods, to care for our parents, to respect our elders, to obey the laws, and in such a community to ensure that the will of the majority prevails—this situation it is proper to describe as democracy.
The virtues of the Senate, meanwhile, were partly the result of its
distance
from the people. The people did not elect senators. Nobody elected senators; a senator is a former consul or other high officer. And senators (unless they disgraced themselves) served for life. They were therefore protected from the changes of mood that can sweep through a body politic. They felt those changes, and they dared not ignore them, but they need not act in haste. Indeed, their sluggishness to enact land reforms in the time of the Gracchi brothers (133–121), reserving huge tracts of conquered territory for themselves rather than relinquishing them to Rome and to the soldiers who had abandoned their farms to fight Rome’s wars, was decisive in the Republic’s slide into despotism and chaos, before Augustus and his reforms. But haste is usually more dangerous than caution, as there are many ways to get something wrong, and few ways, sometimes only one way, to get it right. Rome’s built-in conservatism generally served the state well. The senators did not have to worry about election, so they did not have to pander to the people. Our word “ambition” comes from the Latin
ambitio,
which literally meant “running around,” that is, scrambling for votes. It was a term of reproach. Most often the Senators resisted the people, until the people compelled them to yield to measures that the senators themselves confessed were just. If the senators were sometimes hard of hearing when the poor came to plead, their wealth enabled them, at least until the end of the Third Punic War, to resist the temptation to use state power to enrich themselves.
distance
from the people. The people did not elect senators. Nobody elected senators; a senator is a former consul or other high officer. And senators (unless they disgraced themselves) served for life. They were therefore protected from the changes of mood that can sweep through a body politic. They felt those changes, and they dared not ignore them, but they need not act in haste. Indeed, their sluggishness to enact land reforms in the time of the Gracchi brothers (133–121), reserving huge tracts of conquered territory for themselves rather than relinquishing them to Rome and to the soldiers who had abandoned their farms to fight Rome’s wars, was decisive in the Republic’s slide into despotism and chaos, before Augustus and his reforms. But haste is usually more dangerous than caution, as there are many ways to get something wrong, and few ways, sometimes only one way, to get it right. Rome’s built-in conservatism generally served the state well. The senators did not have to worry about election, so they did not have to pander to the people. Our word “ambition” comes from the Latin
ambitio,
which literally meant “running around,” that is, scrambling for votes. It was a term of reproach. Most often the Senators resisted the people, until the people compelled them to yield to measures that the senators themselves confessed were just. If the senators were sometimes hard of hearing when the poor came to plead, their wealth enabled them, at least until the end of the Third Punic War, to resist the temptation to use state power to enrich themselves.
An anecdote from the early Gallic Wars (ca. 386 BC) shows what virtues a patriotic Roman wanted to see in his senators. The Gauls had come pouring down from the Alps, attracted by the wealth and the warm climate of Italy, to storm the city. But Rome was undefended; the bulk of the army was stalled in northern Italy. The senators took the situation in hand. Rome must be saved. They ordered the few soldiers they had to take the women and children and the infirm to the citadel—a little walled city within the city—before the Gauls came. They themselves would remain in their homes, so as not to strain a tight food supply. The Gauls came, and found empty streets. Taken aback, they peered into the houses, where they saw, here and there, old men in togas and the purple stripe of the senatorial class, sitting at tables, waiting, “the robes and decorations august beyond reckoning, the majesty expressed in those grave, calm eyes like the majesty of gods” (Livy, 5.41). At last one soldier pulled a senator’s beard to see what would happen. When the old man cursed him and struck him, the spell was broken, and the massacre of the senators, who in noble scorn gave their lives for their people, was underway.
A Book You’re Not Supposed to ReadThe Inevitability of Patriarchy
by Stephen Goldberg; New York: William Morrow, 1974.It’s not about Western civilization, or religion, or literature, or politics. All this book does is to claim that not one instance of genuine matriarchy has ever been discovered—and then it shows why that is not surprising, given our hormonal makeup. Recommended for all students whose professors deride Greece or Rome for their patriarchy, without ever suggesting an historically or anthropologically feasible alternative. One might as well take leave of the whole human race.
I’m not implying that the senate was filled with heroes. Roman political history is marked by the conflict between the classes, the slow squeezing by the plebeians of political rights from the patricians, and, later, the securing by the poor of something like lawful treatment from the rich. But for five hundred years the Romans never collapsed into civil war or civic degeneration. The patricians agreed, grudgingly, to have the laws written down, as a protection for all: hence the famous Twelve Tables (450). They agreed, in the Lex Canuleia (445), to allow patricians and plebeians to marry. They finally agreed to open up the consulate to plebeians, to limit the acreage of public land a man might hold, and to temper their measures for exacting payment from debtors (367). They bowed to the office of the tribunes, and conceded that the person of a tribune should be held sacrosanct. But, with all their faults, they acted as a healthy check upon the passions of the people. Unlike Athens, Rome could not slide into mob rule. There were too many senators in the way.
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