ON EARTH, GOD HAS PLACED NO MORE THAN TWO POWERS, AND AS THERE IS IN HEAVEN BUT ONE GOD, SO IS THERE HERE ONE POPE AND ONE EMPEROR. DIVINE PROVIDENCE HAS SPECIALLY APPOINTED THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO PREVENT THE CONTINUANCE OF SCHISM IN THE CHURCH.
—Frederick I, Holy Roman emperor
THE FIVE MARKS OF THE ROMAN DECAYING CULTURE: CONCERN WITH DISPLAYING AFFLUENCE INSTEAD OF BUILDING WEALTH; OBSESSION WITH SEX AND PERVERSIONS OF SEX; ART BECOMES FREAKISH AND SENSATIONALISTIC INSTEAD OF CREATIVE AND ORIGINAL; WIDENING DISPARITY BETWEEN VERY RICH AND VERY POOR; INCREASED DEMAND TO LIVE OFF THE STATE.
—Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
So much has been written by credentialed historians about the Roman Empires—one “holy” and the other not so holy—that there is little use in repeating their work here, except to say two things.
One, that these two empires do not fit Glubb’s average of 250 years, and two, that they do fit the pattern of decadence leading to decline.
Historian Joshua J. Mark writes, “The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar1 became the first emperor of Rome (31 BCE). The empire ended in the West when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic king Odoacer (476 CE). In the East, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. The influence of the Roman Empire on Western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of Western culture.”2
Rome’s influence on the modern world has been substantial. That influence includes language development, architecture, religion (though also some pagan varieties, as well as the notion that the emperor was a god), law, philosophy, and even forms of government, such as the Roman Senate.
When I was in high school, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was the gold standard for research. It dominated school libraries and home bookcases throughout much of America. It still exists online and provides an excellent summary of the empire’s history. I will not quote it at length here but instead call attention to the Imperium Christianum, or Christian Empire, which essentially turned the Christian church into an official state church. Imagine going to church on a Sunday morning where your pastor leads prayers and liturgies aimed at the president and the nation and suggesting that when the nation (empire) ends, Christ will return and establish the kingdom of God. It was a fusion—or a political alchemy—involving two kingdoms, a merger that could never work and still doesn’t function properly to the benefit of the church or the state. The temptation, then and now, is for the church to believe it needs an alliance with the state, either to benefit from favoritism (this is forbidden in the US Constitution) or to gain a sense of self-satisfaction, even superiority, as when fans of sports teams hold up foam fingers that say, “We’re number one!” (Pride is forbidden in Scripture; it always goes before a fall, with both empires and individuals.)
THE AGE OF PIONEERS
“Big trees from little acorns grow” is a familiar saying that applies to plants as well as vast empires.
Little is known about the planting of the Roman seed. Most historians, after arguments about Rome’s origins, now agree that the city was founded in 753 BCE and that the republic began in 509 BCE, following the overthrow of the last of its seven kings, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. Don’t you love the name, especially the Superbus part? These guys had a highly inflated view of themselves.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, tradition teaches that the first six kings were benevolent rulers, but Lucius was a tyrant and was deposed by a popular uprising.3 He would not be the last tyrant.
Most empires expand by forcibly seizing and occupying others’ lands. Rome was no exception. As the end of the fifth century BCE neared, the expansion of Rome began. Population growth was a contributor, but so was war. The first wars were fought against a nearby town called Fidenae and against the important Etruscan city of Veii.
CAMEO: Augustus Caesar
The Roman Empire had seven emperors. Many people incorrectly believe Julius Caesar was the first. He was not. Julius Caesar never held the title of emperor. He was granted the title dictator by the Roman Senate because he held supreme military and political power.
Caesar’s nephew and heir Augustus Caesar (or Caesar Augustus, as Luke calls him in his account of the birth of Jesus) was declared Rome’s first emperor. The reason? He had destroyed Rome’s enemies and brought stability to the growing empire. It was reason enough for the Senate to heap lavish praise on him and grant him a title that six of his successors would also bear.
Bragging like a modern politician, Augustus Caesar said of his accomplishments, “I found Rome a city of clay, but I left it a city of marble.” In his forty-five-year reign, Augustus is credited with:
• significant legal reforms
• securing the empire’s borders
• establishing Rome as a great political and cultural power
• initiating the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity
Dreams of a greater empire were thwarted when a Gallic tribe descended through the Po River Valley and sacked Rome in 390 BCE. The tribesmen left after being paid a ransom in gold, but it took forty years of intense fighting in Latium and Etruria before Rome’s power was restored and its expansion continued.
Following its victory in the Latin War (340–338 BCE), Rome assumed mastery of central Italy, spending the next ten years advancing its frontier by conquest and colonization. In less than fifty years and after three more wars, Rome dominated all of Italy. It was only the beginning. Remember, the Roman Republic was the entity that grew the city of Rome and prevented it from becoming just another city-state. The republic quickly evolved into an empire after the civil war that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar.
As I mentioned at the opening of this chapter, the trajectory of the Roman Empire does not fit Sir John Glubb’s pattern as neatly as the trajectories of other empires do. In the next section, we will examine the ages of intellect and commerce together (skipping the age of affluence), with knowledge that affluence was increasing among Rome’s upper class.
THE AGES OF INTELLECT AND COMMERCE
Visitors to archaeological sites in Israel (especially Masada in the Negev Desert) have seen the beautiful mosaic tiles Romans built for their baths and for their beauty. What would you expect from an eternal city? They built things to last, and many of their structures have lasted far longer than what passes for quality materials in today’s throwaway culture. Experts say it is all in the concrete, which differs from that of our time and is far weaker than ours, but for some reason Roman structures endured for two thousand years. Some speculate it has something to do with volcanic ash, but whatever the reason, it is remarkable that such famous structures have endured for more than two millennia, with little preservation effort until the modern era. Renato Perucchio, a mechanical engineer at the University of Rochester in New York, believes, “These really large projects could only be done with the appropriate bureaucracy, with the proper organization that the Roman Empire would provide.”4
The Romans built vast highways long before America’s interstate system or Germany’s Autobahn, not only shortening the time needed to transport humans on horseback and in chariots and wagons but also speeding up delivery of food, wine, and other necessities. The Romans created the Amazon.com of their day!
Despite the efficiency of some—but not all—roads, other means of transporting goods were used, sometimes at lesser cost and greater efficiency. It all depended on how fast one wanted things delivered. (“Do you want it overnight, second-day air, or the cheapest way?” today’s post office clerk asks.)
We moderns can choose between land, sea, and air for delivery of packages and goods. The Romans used land, rivers, and the sea, but the means were considered as modern at the time as ours are now. All three methods of transportation grew significantly in the first and second centuries CE and helped spur Rome’s economic growth as well as its social, political, and military reach. Romans used their transportation innovations to ship goods both interregionally and internationally, applying both state control and a free market to manage and encourage a robust export trade.
Though trade contributed mightily to Rome’s wealth, much of which was used to subsidize its growing army and their campaigns, there was a snobbery about it among the elites. Commerce and manufacturing, notes the Ancient History Encyclopedia, were regarded as less-than-noble pursuits if one happened to be well off: “However, those rich enough to invest often overcame their scruples and employed slaves, freedmen, and agents . . . to manage their business affairs and reap the often-vast rewards of commercial activity.”5
Ah yes, overcoming scruples. See, there really is nothing new under the sun.
THE AGE OF DECADENCE AND DECLINE
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” as the familiar saying goes. Neither was it destroyed in a day.
As mentioned earlier, one can put on a toga or a business suit and still behave the same under certain conditions. Rome was like that. For two millennia, a city called Baia was what we might refer to today as the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.
Baia was a resort town not far from Naples. It featured spas and pools tiled with mosaics. One resident commissioned a nymphaeum, a private grotto surrounded by marble statues and dedicated to earthly pleasures. One doesn’t need to have much of an imagination to know what that must have been like.
According to the BBC, Baia was chosen as a retreat for many of Rome’s great minds, including the famous orator Cicero, the poet Virgil, and the naturalist Pliny.
Tales of intrigue flowed from Baia. There were rumors that Cleopatra escaped in her boat from Baia after Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 BCE. Also, rumor was that Julia Agrippina plotted to kill her husband, Claudius, while in Baia so her son, Nero, could become the next Roman emperor.6
In addition to the decadence that swept over the Roman Empire, two other factors contributed to its decline and fall: overexpansion—biting off more than it could digest—and overspending. See what I mean about nothing changing?
At the apex of its power and influence, Rome consumed territory that extended from the Atlantic Ocean in the West to the Euphrates River in today’s Middle East. Acquiring such territory was hard enough. Keeping it was even more difficult. The logistics were impossible. While Rome had a good road system, communication over so vast a space was increasingly difficult. The defense of its frontiers became very challenging too. Local rebels and attackers from without saw opportunity to challenge the empire’s power and eventually its existence.
The emperor Hadrian was forced in the second century to build his famous wall in Britain in order to keep Rome’s enemies out. (Does anyone else see parallels with other walls—from China’s Great Wall to the Berlin Wall to a wall in Israel to the wall President Trump wants built on America’s southern border? Not all have the same purposes, but walls throughout history have been used for good and for evil.)
As increasing amounts of money were inevitably provided to the military in an effort to hold on to power and to keep the empire’s machinery functioning, a greater price was paid for ignoring the empire’s civil infrastructure, and it began to fall into disrepair. Citizens don’t like roads that are not kept up—streets unplowed during snowstorms, potholes unfilled.
Rome is a perfect example when it comes to unchangeable human nature. As Israel’s King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (5:10).
It is the same with empires when it comes to conquests and land. And it is the same with elites, who are never satisfied with what they have but constantly want more to satisfy their egos and sense of self-worth.
In the city of Rome and surrounding areas, common people suffered from living in a nation whose ruling class cared more about what was over the next horizon than what was on the people’s supper table. The gap between the standard of living of average people and that of the aristocracy grew wider. (Sound familiar?) As would occur centuries later in Africa, Britain, and America, slavery contributed much to the Roman economy, but the working classes received little. Unrest and revolution followed, put down by military force. It was during this period that Rome made the transition from a republic to an empire.
No single event caused Rome’s collapse, but a series of bad decisions and a refusal to learn from history were all contributing factors. The decline took roughly three hundred years.
Historians have selected 410 CE as one significant date. That was when the Visigoth king named Alaric sacked the city. This was followed by the deposing of the last Roman emperor by the German chieftain Odoacer in 476 CE and the demise of Justinian I, who in 565 CE was the last Roman emperor to reconquer the western half of the empire that was supposed to be eternal.7
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ROME?
According to Edward Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part because of the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. (Does anyone else see a parallel with our modern day?) Gibbon started an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the empire.
It took Gibbon six volumes to explain the history of Rome’s decline and fall, but one paragraph pretty much summarizes why it destroyed itself.
The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.8
Have we learned those lessons from history? It would not appear so. Might we repeat Rome’s mistakes? What evidence is there that nations and empires that take paths similar to Rome’s (and those of other empires mentioned in this book) have been able to save themselves from the ash heap of history?
Rome had it all for a time, but only for a time. While some beautiful art and impressive architecture remain, much of the Eternal City lies in ruins. The prison in which the apostle Paul and possibly Peter were held is a hole in the ground next to the destroyed Roman Forum. It could be argued that what came out of that prison is eternal, while the empire that was going to last forever did not live up to its billing.
CAMEO: Nero
While no single person can be blamed for the fall of Rome, one person is perhaps best known to students of ancient history.
Most of us are familiar with the saying, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” It suggests a lack of character and care for the people over whom this Roman emperor presided. His fourteen-year reign (54–68 CE) might be considered the showcase of Roman decadence, as well as a model of self-indulgent leadership. The fiddling quote is no exaggeration. He threw lavish parties even as Rome burned, plunging the empire into economic chaos from which it never recovered. It’s no wonder, then, that upon learning of Nero’s suicide, citizens ran through the streets celebrating rather than grieving.
Rome did burn, literally and metaphorically, and while Nero doesn’t get all of the blame, he was part of a whole line of emperors who made significant contributions to its demise.