Michael
Jan 21st 2010, 12:37 PM
How Rome got it wrong
A failed empire offers lessons for modern times
Of course, the comparisons of the Roman Empire to societies that followed it are often strained, and not only by empire’s detractors. The US founding fathers consciously modelled Washington’s neoclassical architecture on the Roman template. (The name “Capitol” relates to the Latin Capitolium, a temple of Jupiter at Rome on the Capitoline Hill.) Hitler’s star architect, Albert Speer, did the same for The Third Reich. Benito Mussolini was of a similar mindset, hoping to raise his elfin stature through a resurgent homeland, with fascist architecture drawing on his ancestors’ architectural glories.
Article (http://www.commonground.ca/iss/214/cg214_olson.shtml)
Here's a particularly interesting passage...
Author Ronald Wright identifies another surprising source for Roman decline in his book, A Short History of Progress. The empire’s foreign conquests made great wealth for its soldiers of fortune, who returned home looking for a little conspicuous consumption. The result was a land boom anywhere within the range of the capital. The peasants were driven out onto unsuitable land, with a resulting exhaustion of the soil.
“Family farms could not compete against big estates using slave labour; they went bankrupt or were forced to sell out, and their young men joined the legions,” Wright notes. In a spiralling series of negative feedback loops, public land quickly passed into private hands and by time of Claudius, 200,000 Roman families were on the dole, living off the emperor’s handouts of free wheat. This was part of the “bread and circuses” to keep the restless mob fat and happy.
Bread and circuses. Why does that expression seem so familiar and contemporary rather than some tidbit of forgotten Roman history?
Anyway, I've often pointed out that the fastest rising category on the Forbes 500 list is "government contracting". This does not bode well at all.
A failed empire offers lessons for modern times
Of course, the comparisons of the Roman Empire to societies that followed it are often strained, and not only by empire’s detractors. The US founding fathers consciously modelled Washington’s neoclassical architecture on the Roman template. (The name “Capitol” relates to the Latin Capitolium, a temple of Jupiter at Rome on the Capitoline Hill.) Hitler’s star architect, Albert Speer, did the same for The Third Reich. Benito Mussolini was of a similar mindset, hoping to raise his elfin stature through a resurgent homeland, with fascist architecture drawing on his ancestors’ architectural glories.
Article (http://www.commonground.ca/iss/214/cg214_olson.shtml)
Here's a particularly interesting passage...
Author Ronald Wright identifies another surprising source for Roman decline in his book, A Short History of Progress. The empire’s foreign conquests made great wealth for its soldiers of fortune, who returned home looking for a little conspicuous consumption. The result was a land boom anywhere within the range of the capital. The peasants were driven out onto unsuitable land, with a resulting exhaustion of the soil.
“Family farms could not compete against big estates using slave labour; they went bankrupt or were forced to sell out, and their young men joined the legions,” Wright notes. In a spiralling series of negative feedback loops, public land quickly passed into private hands and by time of Claudius, 200,000 Roman families were on the dole, living off the emperor’s handouts of free wheat. This was part of the “bread and circuses” to keep the restless mob fat and happy.
Bread and circuses. Why does that expression seem so familiar and contemporary rather than some tidbit of forgotten Roman history?
Anyway, I've often pointed out that the fastest rising category on the Forbes 500 list is "government contracting". This does not bode well at all.