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The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome

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The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome” by Edward J. Watts explores Rome’s decline over 2200 years. Blaming individuals for sparking decline, it remains a cautionary tale.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 8, 2023

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The speaker discusses the motivations behind their book, focusing on the use of decline as a political tool by politicians throughout history. They argue that claims of societal decline are often used to justify disruptive actions and to blame particular groups for social issues. The narrative of decline is shown to be prevalent in Roman history, where figures like Cato the Elder leveraged moral arguments to gain political power, despite the fact that Rome was experiencing growth and recovery.

The speaker highlights that Roman politicians have a longstanding tradition of invoking decline to rally support or justify shifts in political structure, as seen with Augustus and Justinian. Over time, the concept of Roman decline shifted from a call for renewal to a cautionary metaphor in modern discussions, often employed by politicians to garner support for policies that may otherwise be viewed unfavorably.

The key takeaway is that when decline is cited in political discourse, it often signals an impending justification for actions that could disrupt society, urging listeners to examine the underlying intentions and proposed solutions that follow the rhetoric of decline.

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The thing that prompted me to write the book was,

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watching how ideas of decline have been particularly used

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as motivating factors by politicians in, in recent years.

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Um, and particularly politicians who wanna disrupt the way

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that societies have been functioning,

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and in many cases, blame other people for, problems

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and take policy actions

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and other sorts of actions

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that they direct against those people who they blame

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for causing issues in their society.

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And so, decline, as I saw it, became a, a weapon

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that people would use to destabilize the rules

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around the world in which they lived.

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I think what's so surprising to me is how profound

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and pronounced and widespread these claims

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of decline are across Roman history.

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Um, I mean, you see it at the very

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beginning of Roman literature.

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They're already making fun of people for claiming

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that Romans in decline

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and something radical needs to be done to fix it.

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And so it wasn't actually hard

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to find these examples at all.

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Um, as someone who reads

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and teaches across all of Roman history,

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they just jump out at you.

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You remember where you see them

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because they happen all the time.

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I think the central argument of the book is that Rome

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and Romans believed that they were always in decline.

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Um, but when we think of Rome, we think of the decline

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and fall of the Roman Empire

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to Romans decline was basically the beginning

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of a different sort of sentence.

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It wasn't decline in fall, it was decline in renewal.

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Uh, and so the ideas of Roman decline were introduced

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basically as a motivating tool to get people to agree

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to do things they otherwise wouldn't do.

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Um, Roman politicians who introduced the idea of decline,

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do it because they want

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to disrupt the way the society works,

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and they want to create victims who

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otherwise would be protected by the rights

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and laws of, Roman society.

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I think there are a few really good examples.

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Um, I think, the, one of the best is one

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of the very first ones that I use in the book.

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Um, this is a figure named Cato the Elder.

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And, in the aftermath

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of the Roman victory in the second Punic war over Hannibal,

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what we see is that the Roman state,

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the Roman Republic at that point was growing very quickly.

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Its, its economy was being revolutionized.

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Um, the amount of territory it controlled was,

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was much, much larger.

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People were becoming richer,

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and the society was recovering from the devastation of,

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you know, the better part of 20 years of warfare.

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And yet, Cato the elder ran

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as a politician who was denouncing Roman decline

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in this moment, when by any reasonable standard,

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you would look at it and say,

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the Roman State is doing better.

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Roman society is doing better.

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Roman incomes are doing better.

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Everything seems to be doing better.

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Uh, and what Cato used this to do was to say,

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look like maybe materially you're doing better.

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Maybe politically you're doing better,

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but morally you're doing worse.

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And he used the moral

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Argument about decline

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to then target his political opponents,

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once he won election on the basis of this campaign

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to reverse Roman moral decline.

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Um, and so what Cato shows is even in a moment

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where it doesn't look like anything bad really is happening,

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this argument can still resonate

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and it can still be used as a weapon.

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What Cato managed to do with this is he, he won election

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to an office called Censor, that he used to expel some

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of his opponents from the Roman Senate.

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Um, one of them he expelled in large part

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because he saw him kissing his wife

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to passionately in public in Rome, right?

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Which is not an offense

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that anybody would be particularly concerned about

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unless you're harping on moral decline.

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And then this looks like a horrible thing that just,

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reinforces what Cato's been saying.

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Uh, and so, you know, so

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what you see is this becomes a weapon to make kind of

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a whole bunch of problems for people

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who are not really doing anything in a moment

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that's not particularly problematic.

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But what Cato understood was the people around him

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felt disoriented

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because Roman society was changing so quickly

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that they didn't understand the rules,

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and they didn't understand their place in it,

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and they didn't understand

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how things fit together in a world

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that was rapidly becoming something quite different

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from where they had grown up.

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And so, a Cato was able to do is to, to give them a way

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to feel comfortable with their discomfort,

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to give them a mechanism to make them, understand

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that the discomfort was something that was legitimate and,

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and it was being caused by people.

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And Cato could fix this

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and bring them back to a world that, was more similar

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to one that they, they felt they knew in Rome.

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Um, when politicians wanted to do that,

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they had a already made narrative, right?

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This narrative declined was always there.

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So, you know, Cato is doing this in the second century.

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BC Augustus uses this

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to justify the transition from a Roman Republic

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to a Roman empire.

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Um, the Emper Justinian 500 years

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after Augustus uses this as an excuse to invade Italy.

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Um, and re-con it from a, a group that saw themselves

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as Romans, but that, you know, Justinian did not,

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Charlemagne uses this as a war, war justification

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to begin a campaign against the Eastern Roman Empire

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based in Constantinople.

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This was always there.

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Um, and so I think a,

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a skillful politician not only manufactures particular ways

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to appeal to popular sensibilities,

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but they also understand what's already there.

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So they don't have to manufacture it.

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They can just tap into something,

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that's much more longstanding and much more powerful

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because people have, in a sense, been brought up

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to always think this way.

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So the Roman state ends in 1453 ad,

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and at that point, this idea of, of Roman restoration,

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more or less goes away.

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And by the 18th century when Edward Gibbon writes his famous

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decline in fall of the Roman Empire,

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you have a new sentence.

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It's not Rome declines and recovers.

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It's Rome declines and falls.

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And so instead of being a, a call to arms

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to fix Rome in society, Rome becomes a metaphor that points

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to, the inherent problems if you don't fix

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your current society.

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And so, in the modern world, this is kind of,

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metastasized from a Roman illness

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that affected only Romans living in a Roman state

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to an illness that affects everybody

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because Rome now becomes a metaphor.

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Um, and it's a metaphor that says

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that whatever's bothering you on this particular day,

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if we don't fix it, we can end up like Rome.

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We can fall like Rome

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because the decline we can see right now.

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We know where this goes because of the example of Rome.

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Um, and so what this means is anybody now can use a Roman

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metaphor, to try to call attention to something

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that's bothering them on a particular day.

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Um, and you know,

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and this is why you see politicians across the world doing

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this, the biggest thing I hope readers take away is every

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time someone is talking about decline, pay attention to

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what they wanna do to fix it.

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Because the rhetoric of decline is used to justify something

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that's gonna disrupt society in a way that

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otherwise wouldn't be possible.

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It's creating an emergency

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and the need to respond to that emergency is so urgent

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and so profound.

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The things you otherwise wouldn't be willing to do,

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suddenly you're willing to consider.

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And so the rhetoric of decline should be a warning when

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somebody is using this, they want you to a sense

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or agree to do something you

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otherwise wouldn't be comfortable doing.

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Um, they're creating an emergency that may or may not exist.

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Um, and they want you to agree with them

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and to empower them to do something

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that under ordinary circumstances

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you wouldn't be comfortable with.

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So if you see decline, pay attention to the second part

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of the sentence because there's probably something following

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it that you're not gonna like.

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