<<...
>>> delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU 03/07/01 01:45PM >>>
>From: Seth Ackerman <SAckerman at FAIR.org>
> Brad DeLong wrote:
>
>> Of course not. The trope of decline and decadence is an old one.
More
>> than two millennia ago Roman aristocrats complained about the times
>> and the customs: how shocking it was that children no longer
>> respected their elders, that everyone was worshipping foreign goods,
>> and that a slave girl cost more than a sword.
>.
>Yeah, and then Rome fell.
>
>Seth
Not for another 600 years (if you count the end of the Western Empire) or another 1600 years (if you count the end of the Eastern Empire).
Now I would agree that it is sad when people can't date the fall of Rome or the rise of the Han dynasty to within 500 years.
(((((((((
CB: Well, the Republic fell, and the Empire was established. Is that what you see happening in the U.S. ? The fall of the Republic and initiation of the Empire ? What are your res gestae, divi Delong ?
...>>
As I remember my reading (it's been a long time), you are conflating the long slow decline of the Empire with the metamorphosis of the Republic into the Empire. I think Gibbon's history captured our imaginations so that the ugly history of the Republic is confounded with the ugly history of the Empire.
The Republic suffered about 200 years of repeated civil wars, proscriptions and exiles before Augustus put an end to the Republic. IMHO, Lilly Ross Taylor has it right, it was the internecine wars for the loot of the Republic's empire that resulted in the military dictatorship we know as the Empire. I strongly recommend her book _Party Politics in the Age of Caesar_, if anybody is interested in late Republic history and politics. In my own words, the Republic acquired an empire willy-nilly, and the de facto empire made the Republic impossible. IMO, the Romans never did work out how to run an empire -- the military dictatorship was a faute de mieux.
So, it's hard to say exactly when the Republic ceased and the Empire began. I said Augustus, but perhaps it was Sulla, maybe? Marcus? The Gracchi brothers (that's my bet)? The Republic and the Empire overlapped for a long time, which is probably the fairest way of putting it.
-- John K. Taber