Many articles in the media examine contemporary American issues and compare them to the problems that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. But before the rise of the Empire, a time of one-man rule and limited freedoms, there was the Roman Republic...

Many articles in the media examine contemporary American issues and compare them to the problems that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. But before the rise of the Empire, a time of one-man rule and limited freedoms, there was the Roman Republic ' 500 years of free elections, civil liberties, and conquering armies. Pearson shows that in fact it was the Republic that was destroyed, and the implications are alarming for Americans today. At first the successful armies brought wealth and glory; then the Republican institutions began to groan under the strain of running an empire. There were feuds, then riots, then civil wars, and the Republic was gone. During this turbulent period some of the most famous people in ancient history vied for power and glory ' Caesar, Cleopatra, Cicero, and Octavian, Caesar's nephew, who became Augustus, Rome's first Emperor. The fall of the Roman Empire was caused by a dramatic loss of economic and military power and it led to barbarian invasions ' a problem that may be starting to affect the United States, but it is hard to visualize the US being formally invaded and occupied by foreign enemies. However, the fall of the Roman Republic led to a severe loss of political and social freedoms at home ' a trend that is already underway in America and that is a threat to our basic values as a people. With US forces occupying Iraq and fierce debates over which civil liberties must be restricted in order to prosecute a never-ending war on terrorism, now is a good time to look into the historical mirror and examine the perils for democratic institutions when republics acquire empires.

Rome: The Growth of an Underclass The instability brewing in the countryside compounded the chaotic growth of Rome, the political capital and economic hub of Italy. A significant number of displaced farmers moved to Rome where they lived on handouts and part-time jobs. Former soldiers took up residence in the city, as did thousands of freed slaves. Those slaves who had practiced a trade in their homeland became craftsmen, traders, and shopkeepers (tabernarii). The rich, who mainly lived on the Palatine hill, were heavy consumers of all types of consumer goods and services, many of which could be satisfied by workers in the city. The city was known for manufacturing a variety of products including clothing, jars and bowls, locks, keys, heavy ploughs, yokes, and baskets.[1] In spite of this bustling economic activity, there was not enough work for the people who poured into the city; in this period before the industrial revolution, there were no large factories to absorb the labor of thousands of unskilled migrant workers. Vast slum neighborhoods sprang up to house the new urban poor.[2] The city had no urban planning or publicly provided housing, so the poor were crammed into dirty, unhealthy tenement buildings called insulae (literally: islands) that frequently fell down or burned.[3] Marcus Crassus, one of the wealthiest men in Rome in the 1st century, enhanced his wealth by creating a private fire department. When an insula caught fire, his fire wagons would show up and, for a significant fee, put out the fire. If the owner could not pay for the service, Crassus offered to buy the site from the hapless owner at a price that steadily declined as more and more of the building was consumed in the flames. A large, unemployed underclass developed that made the city dangerous and created an unruly social world. Many people in the city struggled to pay for food on a daily basis; when there was a bad harvest in Sicily or an economic downturn, hunger became a burning political issue. We have one demographic gauge for the scale of the problem. In 58 BCE, Rome had grown to somewhere between 750,000 and one million people. That year more than 320,000 hungry people, 32 to 40 per cent of the population depending on which total is used, participated in the free corn ration implemented by the radical Tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher.[4] In a city with 500,000 residents in 140 BCE, a similar ratio of hungry people would mean 150,000 to 200,000 individuals living on the edge of starvation. There were no social services or public programs for the poor. In general, a new phenomenon in the ancient world was forming: a proletariat. Inequality in America It would be foolish to think of inequality in America today as being comparable to the situation that developed in Republican Rome. The standard of living is much higher for the average person in the United States and there is a social safety net that takes care of many people. However, an interesting parallel is occurring in the distribution of wealth as the American empire grows and becomes a more dominant aspect of American life. The first period of the American empire, from the Spanish American War up through the Vietnam War, brought rising prosperity for the average citizen. This mirrors the experience of the Roman Republic during the 4th and 3rd centuries. The Progressive Era and then the Roaring Twenties gradually increased the income of many sectors of the urban population. The Great Depression was an enormous setback, but after World War II, there was a 25-year period of growth that lifted incomes at every level of society.[5] The spread of unions, the growth of Social Security and later Medicare and Medicaid, the use of policies like the minimum wage to ensure the bottom fifth of the population shared in economic growth, the rapid increase in professional jobs, and the slow improvement in civil rights for African-Americans all created an unprecedented level of material prosperity for the average person. The most visible feature of this economic expansion was the explosive growth of suburban America where millions of people were able to own their own homes for the first time. Economic growth was stimulated by a combination of factors. The low gas prices secured by American oil corporations made it inexpensive to operate the millions of autos being produced by thousands of well-paid union workers and mid-level auto executives. The rise of the automobile made it possible to build those new suburbs and stimulated public investment in highways, streets, and bridges.[6] Government spending for a permanent military establishment operated as an engine of growth; research, production, and deployment of thousands of nuclear missiles, airplanes, and submarines provided good jobs for thousands of well-paid workers in California, Texas, and other Sunbelt states. Consumers outside of the Soviet-Chinese bloc were eager to buy sophisticated products from American factories. This was the era when Ã??'Made in JapanÃ??' was shorthand for cheap, flimsy products, a political and cultural put-down as rooted in imperial dominance as Sardi venales in Rome. The economics of the American empire began to change in the late 1960s. Military spending during the Vietnam War, combined with increased social spending on the Ã??'Great Society,Ã??' touched off a steady rise in inflation. The resurgence of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan posed greater competition for American exporters and led to a rapid decline in the US trade surplus. Then, in 1974, came the first oil price shocks and the creation of OPEC. During President CarterÃ??'s term Ã??'stagflation,Ã??' a combination of inflation and stagnant growth entered our vocabulary. Automakers grappled with lagging auto sales as a result of high gasoline prices and inexpensive, high quality Japanese cars. Elected in reaction to CarterÃ??'s economic failures, President Reagan reversed earlier trends by curtailing social service spending, cracking down on unions, opposing civil rights measures, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and blocking increases in the minimum wage. Since the early 1970s, inequality has grown slowly but surely, accelerating during periods of recession, with the entire populationÃ??'s real income growing only during the boom years of the late 1990s.[7] This income stagnation has affected even affluent white-collar professionals and managers. Between 1972 and 2001, the real wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of income distribution only rose 34 percent, barely one percent per year.[8] By contrast, households at the 99th percentile of income distribution (in 2005 this corresponded to an income of $402,306) enjoyed an increase of 87 percent between 1972 and 2001; households with incomes in the 99.99th percentile (over $6 million) had a rise in income of 497 percent between 1972 and 2001. Since 2001, the gap between the top one percent of the population and everyone else continued to grow. For example, between 2003 and 2004, real average income for the top one percent of households grew by nearly 17% while the remaining 99% of the population averaged a gain of less than three percent before inflation.[9] Much of this startling gain was due to the unprecedented salaries, bonuses, and stock options collected by top corporate executives. In a related statistic, the top one percent of households received 57.5 percent of all income from dividends and capital gains in 2003, a significant increase from 53.4 percent just a year earlier. An interesting historical note is that, in 2004, Ã??'the top one percent [of households] held a bigger share of total income than at any time since 1929.Ã??'[10] There is also a stark echo of statistics quoted earlier about the Roman Republic. In 2006, the average US army private made $25,000 a year while the average CEO of a defense firm made $7.7 million.[11] David Lesar, CEO of Halliburton, was paid a total of $79.8 million, about $16 million per year, from 2002 to 2006.[12] The growth of a new group of super rich people would not be notable if the rest of America was also prospering. However, the cumulative effect of decades of income stagnation is beginning to place painful stresses on American families. At the bottom of the income pyramid, the number of Americans without health coverage went up by 1.3 million in 2005, with a record 46.6 million people facing financial disaster whenever a major illness or injury occurred.[13] One measure of the impact of not having health coverage is that almost half of all personal bankruptcies in the US are now the result of medical debts. In the area of wages, the federal minimum wage, which directly benefits 6.5 million workers, was increased in 1997 (to $5.15 per hour) and then lost about 20 percent of its value until it was increased by the new Democratic Congress in 2007. By way of contrast, the top rate for the estate tax (affecting only 8,200 very large estates) has been reduced every year since 2002.[14] Ã??'¦ While we might search the Internet each day for the latest trend, real changes in the tide of human affairs often require a decade or even a generation to take hold. In 63 BCE, Cicero was the senior consul of the Roman Republic, chief spokesman for the nobility and an orator who could sway the minds of juries and crowds. A generation later, in 43 BCE, he was a hunted man, proscribed by Antony and Octavian while the Republic collapsed into monarchy. In 1774, Louis XVI, at the age of 20, became the King of France, the exalted ruler of the largest and most powerful country in continental Europe, rivaled only by the English Empire. A generation later, in 1793, he was found guilty of treason and executed by the revolutionary National Convention. In 1900, Queen Victoria presided over a lavish centennial celebration, secure in the notion that the sun never set on the British Empire. A generation later, in 1926, a few years after the First World War left two and a half million young Englishmen dead or wounded, the country was paralyzed by a general strike. Two million workers from the coal, railroad, printing, docks, and steel industries defied the government for nine days, a sign of EnglandÃ??'s declining economic vitality and a harbinger of her inability to hold together the worldÃ??'s largest empire. These sharp changes of fortune in seemingly invincible nations lead us to the question, where will the United States be in 20 years? What kind of country will todayÃ??'s young adults and school children live in? The dire examples in the previous paragraph ring a bell with us because people in this country are concerned and pessimistic about the future. Since Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans in September of 2005, between 60 and 70 percent of the people responding to the Newsweek poll question, Ã??'Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?Ã??' have said they are dissatisfied.[15] The Gallup poll has tracked similar findings of unhappiness. We should not be surprised that the percentage of Americans who are dissatisfied went up after Katrina. For many people, the events surrounding the disaster were a clear signal that first, global warming will mean more than extra time at the swimming pool, and second, that the Bush administrationÃ??'s failures in Iraq might be as deep and long lasting as the bungled response to the plight of New Orleans. The concern is not just about the severity of these problems but the deep roots they have in the American way of life and the American empire. Global warming is just one threat to the energy intensive, petroleum based economy that is the dominant feature of American life. The prosperity and long-term growth of the US economy has been based on inexpensive oil since Theodore Roosevelt was president. At the beginning of the 20th century, booming domestic oil production fueled the initial wave of automobile, steel, and rubber industry growth that made the United States the largest economy in the world by the 1920s. After the Second World War, as US production peaked, inexpensive foreign oil became essential to the energy intensive growth symbolized by the development of suburbs, strip malls, and inter-state highways. Because of this domestic demand for inexpensive fuel, a powerful dimension of the American quest for empire since the 1940s has been the desire to secure long-term control over supplies of oil. The search for oil brought United States corporate and political leaders to the Middle East. AmericaÃ??'s relationships with Arab nations have always been based on our preoccupation with securing inexpensive supplies of oil for the US economy. As we have seen, the quest for cheap oil eventually led to the invasion of Iraq. This bold attempt to make the one last, great source of oil a reliable part of the American empire has failed. That failure has both driven up the price of oil and called into question the United StatesÃ??' ability to secure inexpensive oil in the future. The Roots of Terrorism Less obvious to most Americans is the way in which roping oil-producing Arab nations and pulling them into the empire has alienated large segments of the Moslem world and spawned the al-Qaeda terrorist movement. The claim that America is the object of terrorist attacks because Osama bin Laden and his allies hate American freedoms and the American way of life is wrong. As a former CIA analyst puts it, Ã??'There is no record of a Muslim leader urging his brethren to wage jihad to destroy participatory democracy, the National Association of Credit Unions, or the coed Ivy League universities.Ã??'[16] He goes on to say: The focused and lethal threat posed to US national security arises not from Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible perception that the things they most love and value Ã??' God, Islam, their brethren, and Muslim lands Ã??' are being attacked by America. What we as a nation do, then, is the key causal factor in our confrontation with Islam.[17] [1]  Scullard, Roman World, p. 352 [2]  Meir, Caesar, p. 30 [3]  Holland, Rubicon, p. 16 [4]  Fergus Millar, Ã??'A Critique of the Cambridge History of the Roman Republic,Ã??' in Journal of Roman Studies, V.85, 1995, p. 240 [5]  Teresa Tritch, Ã??'The Rise of the Super Rich,Ã??' The New York Times, 7.19.06; available from http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/62/21309; accessed 25 July 2007 [6]  Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966, pp. 218-224 [7]  Tritch, Ã??'Super Rich,Ã??' 7.19.06 [8]  Paul Krugman, Ã??'Graduates versus Oligarchs,Ã??' The New York Times, 2.27.06; available from http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/48/17995; accessed 25 July 2007 [9]  Tritch, Ã??'Super Rich,Ã??' 7.19.06 [10]  Tritch, Ã??'Super Rich,Ã??' 7.19.06 [11]  Derrick Jackson, Ã??'Soldiers die, CEOs prosper,Ã??' Boston Globe, 8.30.06 [12]  Michael Brush, Ã??'War Means a Windfall for CEOs,Ã??' MSN Money, 9.19.07; available from http://article.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/WarMeansAWindfallForCEOs.aspx; accessed 20 September 2007 [13]  Lou Dobbs, Ã??'Are You a Casualty of the Class War?,Ã??' CNN, 10.4.06; available from http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/03/Dobbs.Oct4/index.html; accessed 25 July 2007 [14]  Aviva Aron-Dine, Ã??'Since Last Minimum Wage Increase, Congress has Reduced Estate Tax Burdens Eight Times,Ã??' Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8.30.06; available from http://www.cbpp.org/8-2-06tax2.pdf; accessed 25 July 2007 [15]  PollingReport.com, Ã??'Direction of the Country,Ã??' available from www.pollingreport.com/right.htm; accessed 5 July 2007 [16]  Scheuer, Michael, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, (Wash. D.C., BrasseyÃ??'s, Inc., 2004) p. 9, originally published as writing by Ã??'Anonymous.Ã??' [17]  Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, p. 9

Perils of Empire: The Roman Republic and the American Republic 3 Introduction: Empires and Political Freedom 8 The Invasion of I

Perils of Empire: The Roman Republic and the American Republic 3 Introduction: Empires and Political Freedom 8 The Invasion of Iraq 9 Stages of the Roman Republic 11 Outlines of the American Empire 12 On the Use of Historical Dates 13 Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Empire 13 Chapter 1: Birth of a Republic 14 The Historical Record 17 The Etruscans: Rome Ruled by Kings 18 The Etruscan Royalty 22 New Social Groups and the Tyranny of Kings 23 In Pursuit of Liberty: The Creation of Republican Institutions 26 Chapter 2: Military Glory and the Course of Honor 29 Political Offices in the Roman Republic: The Consuls 29 Roman Political Officials: The Praetor and Legal Rights 33 Quaestors and the Administration of the State 37 The Cursus Honorum 39 The Electoral Caldron 40 The Clientela System 41 The Influence of Small Farmers 42 Military Glory & Political Achievement 42 Chapter 3: The Struggle of the Orders and the Rise of the Nobility 43 Creating the Centuriate Assembly: The Census 44 Patricians versus Plebeians 47 The Sack of Rome 49 Defensive Imperialism and the Bush Doctrine 50 The Struggle of the Orders 51 Creation of the Nobility 54 Deference and the Roman Political Culture 54 Inequality, Dignitas, and Liberty 55 The Roman Senate 56 Chapter 4: The New Roman Legion and the Conquest of Italy 58 The Conquest of Campania and the Defeat of the Latin League 62 The Second and Third Wars with the Samnites 67 Rapid Growth and Social Change 69 Taming the Plebeian Assembly 71 Rome and America: Expansion and Social Reform 72 Chapter 5: The Republic Acquires an Empire 73 Pyrrhic Victories and the Conquest of southern Italy 74 Expanding Republics: America and Rome 76 The First Punic War 77 The Social Order of the Middle Republic 80 Religion and the State 82 Policing and the City of Rome 84 Chapter 6: Origins of the American Empire 88 The Desire for Markets 90 Naval Power and Trade 92 AmericaÃ??'s Destiny 94 The Spanish American War 96 The Open Door Policy 100 The Bi-Partisan Empire 102 The Strategy of Openness 105 Chapter 7: The Open Empire 106 The Cold War 107 The Rise of Oil in the Politics of Empire 112 The Muscle behind the Drive for Openness 114 Globalization: The Next Stage of the Open Door Policy 115 Chapter 8: The Price of Empire 121 The Riches of Empire 122 Consequences of Wealth 123 Crisis on the Land 125 Rome: The Growth of an Underclass 126 Inequality in America 127 The Military-Industrial Complex 131 Electoral Corruption and Roman Politics 132 Money and American Politics 135 Chapter 9: Spain: Guerrilla War and Political Dissent 137 The Fiery War 138 A Massacre in Spain and a new Imperial War 140 The Rise of Viriathus 141 Social Conflict and Political Power 142 The Shadow of Honor 143 Defeat and a Widening War 144 Deepening Conflict in Rome and Spain 147 Defeat and Division 149 Turning Point: 134 B.C.E. 150 Chapter 10: The Brothers Gracchi and the Limits of Reform 152 Land Reform and Political Power 154 The Reform Coalition of Gaius Gracchus 159 The Nobility Strikes Back 161 The Populares Movement 163 The Empire under Attack and the Rise of Marius 164 Chapter 11. Clash of the Titans 167 SullaÃ??'s Revenge 168 A Decade of Conflict 170 Pompey and Cicero Triumphant 173 The Consulship of Julius Caesar 178 The Descent into Monarchy 181 Chapter 12: The American Empire at War 184 Rise of the Neo-Conservatives 185 September 11 and The Bush Doctrine 187 Iraq and the American Empire 191 The Promise of Iraqi Oil 194 Expanding the Network of Military Bases 196 Conclusion: Breaking the Bonds of Empire 200 The Roots of Terrorism 201 Are You an Enemy Combatant? 203 The Perils of Empire 205

As we strive to create a better world, we should draw strength and resolution by remembering the sad fate of the citizens of the Roman Republic. Their libertas was washed away in a swirl of cataclysmic events ' but we do not have to follow their path of imperial misadventure. It is our turn to challenge history, and the future is unwritten. When we do save the Republic, when we do restore balance to an unstable world, somewhere in the mists of time, their spirits will be cheering for us....

As we strive to create a better world, we should draw strength and resolution by remembering the sad fate of the citizens of the Roman Republic. Their libertas was washed away in a swirl of cataclysmic events ' but we do not have to follow their path of imperial misadventure. It is our turn to challenge history, and the future is unwritten. When we do save the Republic, when we do restore balance to an unstable world, somewhere in the mists of time, their spirits will be cheering for us. Synopsis of Perils of Empire The first section describes the Early Republic, from 510 B.C.E. to 365 B.C.E., the period when the Romans overthrew their foreign-imposed king and began creating a unique combination of political institutions including free elections, civil liberties, a citizens army, and a complex legal system. Discussions about these institutions include evaluating similarities between Roman and American political values and practices. This first Republic influenced the founding generation of the American Republic, men who read Latin and knew a great deal about the Roman Republic's leaders and political ideas. The second section covers the Middle Republic, from 365 to 146 B.C.E. During this period the city's political institutions flourished. The Senate, composed of senior leaders of the aristocracy, dominated the city's elections and foreign policies. After taking over Italy, the Roman Republics citizen army conquered Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria. While the expanding empire brought great wealth and culture into the city, it also led to great inequalities and social unrest. The Romans suddenly found themselves entangled in a series of wars to preserve the newly won empire. Most strikingly, the guerilla war in Spain, like the war in Vietnam, led to draft dodging and open conflict between the city's residents and the Senate. This section ends with an historical discussion of American foreign policy and proposes a way of thinking about today's American empire, an empire of military bases and oil rights, not colonies. The final section covers the Late Republic, from 146 B.C.E. to 31 B.C.E., when a series of attempts at reform led to bloody conflicts. An endless series of revolts against the empire set up an on-going clash between reformers and those who wanted to preserve the city's traditional distribution of wealth and power. During the final stages of the Republic Caesar, Cicero, Cato, and Cleopatra vied for power. The book explains why Caesar led his army against the Senate and examines the collapse of the Republic. This section ends with a discussion of the War on Terrorism, its roots in the American empire, and the threat the empire poses to our basic liberties.