Only barely so, and not for lack of trying, and Rome still had massive and frequent civil wars both in the late Republic as well as throughout the imperial period.
Republican Rome stretched from Spain to the Nile River in the south and Syria in the East. Over 350,000 (and quite possibly a lot more) Roman soldiers, out of a population estimated to be around 60,000,000 (most of whom were not citizens), fought at just the Battle of Actium at the end of the Republican era.
In a pre-industrial era with a pre-industrial economy.
The American Civil War had more soldiers, yes, and proportionally more with regards to population--but also had an economy that could support it. And it happened once. Not "every few years for centuries on end". Roman civil wars were titanic and they went on for decades. (The third century CE is referred to as an ongoing crisis for a reason.)
As for the rest--the differences between the Western Roman Empire and the East are so significant that even if you happen to be right (and you might be, I don't find it credible myself) it strikes me as it'll be by accident.
Myths aside, we don't really know anything about the founding of Rome. But it's clear that (like the United States), Rome was originally a "frontier" place, situated at the intersection of several older groups of Italic peoples.
> it didn't have a civil war at the scale of america
The Social War would certainly beg to differ - a war fought over who got to be full-fledged members of the Roman community.
> it didn't have WMDs, fighter jets, interlinked supply chains and the internet.
One of the most stunning features of the late Roman Republic (and subsequent Empire) is the degree to which trans-Mediterranean trade takes off in the second century B.C.E. after the Roman defeat of Carthage. By the standards of the ancient world, the late Roman Republic was incredibly interconnected.
I'm not trying to argue that the parallel totally fits or that the outcome will be the same. But I think there are more similarities here than you give credit for.
History is path-dependent and all stories are retro-actively told. There are a lot of cases where it depends on the people in the room, or the sentiment of the people in the room that day, or even something so random as taking a wrong turn and coming across a group of anarchists ready to throw some bombs (WW1). When looking at Rome, it's better to draw broad parallels with little weight.
But at the same time, the network of defense agreements led to a rise of regional power blocs (increasing polarization). The Anglo-German arms race led to a surplus of military, and an increasing rift between the German and the British bloc. The Russo-Japanese war caused a shift of Russian interests to the Balkans, which also mattered to Austria (sort-of part of the German bloc). The insults of 1870 and the Marocco crisis led to a deepening rift between Germany and France.
The Italo-Libyan war exposed that the Ottoman empire was extremely shaky, further stoking interests in colonial expansion. Which promptly happened with the Balkan Wars.
Those anarchists with bombs were the particular match to a powder keg sitting around. Chances are there would've been a different match on a different day, had this not happened.
Maybe there still would've been a small path away from the conflagration if the assasination and consequences hadn't happened. But each previous event narrowed that path.
History may be path-dependent, but there are some paths that are narrowing down the options you can consequently take. The same holds for Rome - the actions taken increasingly narrowed down the possible ways forward. (And that, I'd argue, are the main lessons to draw from any collapse - what actions narrowed the solution space, which ones broadened it)
I agree, it's imprudent to try and draw direct parallels between the US and any other historical empire, including Rome.
That said, we can learn much from history. And in the US and Europe, we can learn even more from the history of the "West."
As Eugen Weber[0] put it[1]:
...But where should we start? Perhaps the first
thing to ask is what the scope of a series on the
history of Western Civilization should be?
And the best way to think of it is that we are going
back to the old country. We're going back to where
many of our ancestors came from. To see where their
stories came from, and their memories and their
habits and the way they are, which has made us the
way we are.
This is what history is about. Where we come from.
What lies behind the way we live and act and think.
How our institutions, our religions, our laws were
made.
Understanding the thoughts, fears, triumphs and failures of our forbears is an important window on our human nature and the things that have driven us since time immemorial, and continues to drive us to this day.
Whether it's the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and the many civilizations of the Levant/Fertile Crescent as well as Rome, the Abrahamic[2] religions and the thinkers/ideas of the ensuing millenia, they all have something important to teach us about the world we live in now. They did, after all, birth many of our core beliefs, ideas and institutions.
While it's generally not productive to point at specific issues and exclaim "This is just like Rome!" or something similar, understanding the culture and practices of our ancestors can give us insight into our current world.
But that's not enough. While human nature is human nature which hasn't really changed in a couple hundred thousand years, times do change.
And when they do, we need to, as Lincoln pointed out[3]:
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the
stormy present. The occasion is piled high with
difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act
anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we
shall save our country.
As we are keenly reminded by Paul M.M. Cooper and his Fall of Civilizations[4] podcast.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber
[1] https://archive.org/details/western-tradition-01-the-dawn-of... (timecode: 06:35)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions
[3] http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congres...
[4] https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
Edit: Fixed formatting/transcription issues.
Apparently, I'm on a tour of "old saws," so here's another one:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him
drink.
You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can't make
him think.
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana#Vol._I,_Reaso...
I think if one[2] of you could just a bit more explicitly acknowledge that you are not saying "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!" but only "there are quite a few parallels here, here, and there, so it might well behoove us to keep an eye on this, this, and that"; and/or the other could apply this more charitable reading -- which seems to be the precise point they're arguing -- to what the first is saying, then it looks to me like there really isn't any (or at least, not much) actual disagreement between you at all. Or is it just me that's totally misreading one or both of you?
Hey BTW, thanks for that second more caustic formulation of the saying; hadn't seen that one before. I may, when sufficiently exasperated, use it in future... But there is actually a bit of optimism to it: While you can't cure stupidity, you may be able to at least alleviate ignorance -- one issue and one fool at a time. (After the fool in question has been led to knowledge on issue X, he won't need to think about it for himself any more; while still in general a fool, hopefully he won't, armed with newfound knowledge as he now is, act like one on this issue in the future.)
__
[1]: Not being an American, "America is going to fall...!" doesn't have the same direct relevance for me, but I can see the same parallels being applied to other realms -- and AFAIK, they have been used like that about lots of nations, since about forever.
[2]: nobody9999? Not sure; possibly getting who is on which side of the argument mixed up since I see only the comment I'm directly replying to on this input screen. Could be the other way around.
Good call. I have no issue with edgyquant.
They said:
For sure I’m not saying there aren’t lessons, just
that the type of people who cherry pick a few
examples and take them as given proof of some
historical trend aren’t likely to find these lessons.
>I think if one[2] of you could just a bit more explicitly acknowledge that you are not saying "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!" but only "there are quite a few parallels here, here, and there, so it might well behoove us to keep an eye on this, this, and that"; and/or the other could apply this more charitable reading -- which seems to be the precise point they're arguing -- to what the first is saying, then it looks to me like there really isn't any (or at least, not much) actual disagreement between you at all. Or is it just me that's totally misreading one or both of you?
Unless I missed something, neither edgyquant nor I asserted anything even close to "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!"
If I read them correctly, edgyquant pretty directly dismissed such "reasoning," and I never even approached saying anything close.
But you're right. Edgyquant and I seem to be (mostly) in agreement.
What's more, I didn't get the sense from edgyquant that they thought we were in conflict, nor did I contradict anything they said. Rather, I elucidated why I thought that history was valuable.
Perhaps edgyquant got a different vibe. I don't know. Perhaps they can chime in.
The founding of Rome involved one brother killing the other over a hill… and if you don’t think they had large scale civil war, you simply haven’t read Roman history
Roman history, particularly pre-imperial, does show a lot of "why exactly will they not just die?", but some level of resilience in large Mediterranean powers of antiquity was pretty common. (Carthage took two wars and decades to lose the Punic Wars.)
An interesting aside, the civil war being referenced was actually over a question of Roman citizenship, which used to only apply to people in the city. For quite some time, the (now-)Italian peninsula was under Roman control, but its inhabitants were given a sub-citizen status with much lesser rights. The civil war established that citizenship could be offered to a much wider area.
...Ahem.
(It is not a pleasant period of history to read about.)
And what is that? India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), China, Russia, and all the Gulf States, are also xenophobic and racist and have high levels of income inequality. Most countries are xenophobic and racist by American standards—if they lack income inequality it’s because everyone is equally poor. So what’s the common thread?
If these things are rampant, but on the decline, it's not the same thing. If they were more or less in check, but are now running wild through the decaying empire, that's the signal.
Again, my opinions are totally my own (and maybe somewhat overstated here) and don't reflect OP at all. Just a thought.
Tolerance and permissiveness seem to be rising since then as far as I can see. Although you may be referring to the troubling rise in policies of institutional racism like race discrimination in university admissions, which I agree is one obvious thing that seems to be going backwards in recent times.
Even Obama was a right wing xenophobic racist nazi for suggesting the border should be secure, deporting illegal immigrants, separated and caged children. Not to mention all the other horrible stuff like claiming that marriage was between a man and a woman.
So yes I think I'm on good grounds to believe xenophobia and racism has been decreasing even within the past decade.
Obama absolutely would be called a racist xenophobe today based on his stated policies of border control, his mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and instances of separating immigrant children from their families. That is how far the window has shifted on this topic. Birthright citizenship doesn't change that.
So that's how far the window has shifted on the subject in a few short years. Therefore I think it is quite reasonable to question the allegation that racism and xenophobia is getting worse.
Western Rome also lost huge ability to project power when it fell and decomposed into its constituent states. Whereas as recently as the reign of Diocletian Rome was projecting power well into Germania proper by the end of the 4th century Rome couldn't even defend its own borders. The equivalent for the US would be China/Russia wantonly attacking American client states (Germany, France, Israel, Taiwan) without fear of retaliation.
During the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056), they were arguably still the dominant power. Arab-Byzantine Wars lasted for 500 years and involved the entire Mediterranean. The Byzantine Italy existed until 1071.
Even after, the Komnenian Restoration (12th century) revived the Empire to some extent in financial, cultural, and territorial form.
Sure, they weren’t as powerful as the Roman Empire at its peak, but still could project plenty of power after mid-600s.
Very different things.
The highlighting of divisions - imaginary or real rarely helps and almost always makes things worse.
There's a reason retaliation in soccer is an automatic red card. It's not that the retaliation isn't warranted; it's because it typically is.
It’s like when people say that the British created the tensions between Muslims and Hindus on the subcontinent. That overlooks the millennia of Muslim invasions and rule by sultanates (the process by which I came to have an Arabic surname despite being born 8,000 miles from the Middle East).
Regarding machetes, just shows you don't need firearms for a massacre.
Things are a lot more fragile and unstable than people realize so it's important to zoom out and look at all these issues in aggregate in order to formulate effective plans for revitalizing decaying democratic institutions so that we can properly deal with the inevitable shocks that cause the decline and collapse of nations.
Also, why does the tech community have an obsession with Rome?
The question isn't why are we obsessed with Rome. It's why not.
This question comes across as a bit sneering (more so one of its answers), but I'll say general intellectualism. This is what the orange site is about after all.
See a defence of the classics here: https://acoup.blog/2021/09/10/meet-a-historian-michael-taylo... - The blog ACOUP is probably better than the submission, so I'll agree with your first point.
You could make a case for Chinese history being equally rich, if not more. But note that the language and cultural barrier would be greater for most people on this site. Its relevance for the shaping of the "Western" world would be less relevant. The amount of study material and analysis in the English language would be less. But if there were decent enough articles on it, it would result in a flood of submissions to this site.
American centric negativity combined with self aggrandizing projection.
The comparisons to Rome are the new JavaScript frameworks of HN.
Rome was bloodily founded, with the forced subjugation of other nations and peoples across what is now Italy.
The correlation seems less about the fall to ruin, but that that somewhere like the US would fall into a dictatorship and has many ingredients as Julius Caesar served to claim emperor. I would also add a hefty amount of backwards looking rhetoric also to the mix - things were better, more moral in the past; or we must address sins of the past. Putin has been using similar rhetoric to Caesar swapping the Ukraine for the Celts.
I recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History on the Celtic Holocaust that poses that the whole expansion and annihilation of the Celts was a money making scheme by Julius Caesar to grasp power.
(But that's not to diminish that Julius Caesar was a bad dude.)
And it's not like it's something completely out of the question - there was literally a coup attempt to circumvent election results (which are already gerrymandered to hell) a year ago.
I can agree that income inequality, racism and xenophobia are symptoms of an underlying disease but even if America has the same disease as the Rome, this is a different host with different strength, weaknesses and immune system. Rome wasn't found upon rebellion, it didn't have a civil war at the scale of america andnit didn't have WMDs, fighter jets, interlinked supply chains and the internet. It could be worse or better or a seasonal bug.
You should also understand that the eastern Roman empire lasted up until only a few hundred years ago. And it was no joke. It took over a millenium for Rome to fall. Constantinope fell on 1453, columbus discovered america on 1492. If Rome is strictly western Rome then the equivalent would be America losing global influence and military power but still remaining relatively prosperous and strong with perhaps few states splintering.
Different variable, different input, similar symptomps but likely different output imo.
You know what parallel scares me? Rwanda.