As we all know, history repeats itself. And historians have been repeating that history repeats itself ever since Classical times.
For Roman historians like Livy, history was chock-full of exempla, showing what true tyranny looks like, how freedom is won, and what it takes to sustain a decent political system.
History is no dry chronicle of dates and events: we should learn from it about human heroism and triumph, as well as idiocy and wickedness, and then practice what we’ve learned.
Tarquin and Lucretia by Peter Paul ReubensÂ
This theme is at the heart of this book by Jamie Gianoutsos, an intellectually demanding but thrilling overview of how Rome faced the same problems as we do, dealt with them (or failed to), and inspired later rulers, from the Italian Renaissance to America’s Founding Fathers.
The latter were so obsessed with Rome they created Senators and diplomatic Consuls, and even now, Washington’s political centre brims with ‘Corinthian columns and toga-styled statues’.
E schewing straight narrative, the book examines key themes: liberty and slavery, women and the republic, tyranny and lust.
The Roman republic was born out of a horrific rape, and they never forgot it. The last tyrant-king was Tarquinius Superbus, whose son raped the virtuous Lucretia, another man’s wife.
Before stabbing herself to death, Lucretia cried out of for vengeance, whereupon her cousin snapped at her mourners to ‘Trade your tears for marching. Act like men!’ (Very Roman!)
The corrupt last kings of Rome were duly chased from the city, and Rome became a proud republic – until Augustus, and the return of the emperors.
For the freedom-loving Romans of the old republic then, those who lorded it over the people without their consent were symbolically rapists. An extraordinary and disturbing image, but one that inspired the American republicans fighting British rule in the 18th century.
They castigated Britain for ravishing the virgin land of America, and when opposing one of Britain’s Coercive Acts, in 1774, a shocking cartoon was published showing prime minister Lord North forcible pouring the hated and heavily-taxed British tea down the throat of a Native American girl. Ferocious political propaganda – and it worked.
The Romans saw there were three forms of government, all of which have a dark shadow: monarchy, which can degenerate into tyranny; aristocracy, literally ‘rule by the best,’ which can become a corrupt, self-serving elite or oligarchy; and democracy, which can become mob rule by an ignorant, bullying majority. In fact some, like the historian Tacitus, believed that all three are bound to deteriorate into their shadow versions.
Democracies always turn self-indulgent until the Strong Man rises to impose law and order, and the cycle begins again.
Roman historian Livy warned about certain societies which appear to be ‘in love with death both individual and collective’, and are doomed to be replaced.
There’s a riveting chapter on the connection between democracy and free speech: one cannot exist without the other.
After the rise of the emperors, books were burned and writers like poor old Ovid, the poet, were exiled to the Black Sea coast.
Under the stern but freedom-loving old Roman republic, freedom of speech was protected to the hilt: all speech, without qualification. There was no State police force, the author reminds us, nor censors. Even plain invective and abuse were fine: Cicero once called an opponent in a law court a ‘b*****d’. No one objected. Deeds might be illegal, but mere words could never be.
This example inspired the republicans of 17th-century England, like the poet John Milton, who insisted that ‘for the truth to be reached, all opinions must be voiced freely’.
It also gave rise to the first recognisable newspapers, and a type denigrated as ‘this moth-eating crew of newsmongers’ – perhaps the first (but not the last) insult slung at that wretched tribe, journalists. But newspapers became essential in informing the people.
O ver in America a century later, Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and James Madison privately discussed ‘false facts’ – what we would now call fake news or misinformation. In the name of freedom, they defended the right to publish even these.
In 1798 the States passed a Sedition Act, which condemned anyone who dared ‘write, print, utter or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writings against the government’. Jefferson was horrified, and the Act expired in 1801. Falsehoods and malice were seen as the price you paid for freedom.
In Rome’s Long Shadow shows how today’s troublesome issues were long-since debated, though not solved, by some of the most brilliant historical figures.
