| THE HISTORY LESSON By Greg Kay |
| "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Rome was the most powerful empire that the world had ever known. It had the highest standard of living ever seen until that time, and for a very long time after. Few could stand before her, as she carried out her great mission of bringing Roman ways to the world and getting rich in the process. To keep those riches, she had to be secure, and to be secure; she had to expand her influence. Every war fought by Rome was a defensive war, never an aggressive one. An enemy along a border, or an ally�s border, or even a border where a Roman or an ally might someday have reason to be, was an intolerable threat to the peace so highly valued by the Roman people, and had to be dealt with decisively. As the burgeoning empire continued the expansion of its influence throughout most of the known world, the capitol of Rome itself rapidly became, quite literally, the center of the universe for the people living at that time. As the saying went, �All roads lead to Rome�; and the roads were not only physical and political, but financial as well. The wealth of the world poured into it, and, protected by various taxes and tariffs to help the industries and farms of the heart of the empire continue to thrive, businessmen became rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Seeing the incredible wealth flaunted before them daily, the working men of Rome, who helped their employers build their fortunes, quite naturally had no desire to live like a tribesman in a mud hut while a citizen of this rich, advanced civilization, and organized to demand better wages, working conditions, and shorter hours, which they obtained. It made a small dent in their bosses� profits, but under the system then in force, it was simply part of the cost of doing business. Everyone was making money and were, by and large, content with the system. As the empire continued to spread, however, it overextended itself, and the Roman government weighed the international pressures of alliances, influences, and diplomacy against the concerns of its own people and, having made itself the quintessential internationalist of its day, the domestic issues were found wanting. The allies and provinces of Rome demanded to be able to have an open market into the only place that had money to buy their goods, or else they �couldn�t afford� to maintain the friendly and secure areas around the fringes of the empire that were necessary for the Roman sense of national security. The entire empire was converted into a virtual free trade zone. The consequences were disastrous. Businesses that had been doing well suddenly found themselves competing directly with barbarous foreign countries working their cheap labor under primitive conditions. In order to compete, some would move their operations to those places, while others began getting rid of Roman workers and replacing them with low-cost foreign slaves. Laws were proposed to prevent this and to break up huge monopolistic holdings, but the powerful business leaders and their lobbies, backed up by the unscrupulous senators and labor leaders whom they had bought and paid for, prevented the legislation from being passed. The working class was faced with total economic collapse and reduction to third world standards themselves, and frustrated, angry, and crowded into their mean tenements, they became a powder keg, ready to explode at the slightest provocation against government, business, or even each other in wave after wave of riots that tore at the great city. The government was now constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, since it had removed an entire class of taxpayers from the rolls. The money to replace it, to pay for the far-flung Legions maintaining their security, had to come from somewhere, so the taxes on business were raised once again, much to the chagrin of the wealthy. Seeing that their program was a total failure, yet not willing to further alienate their foreign partners or the businessmen who were once again becoming rich enough to be influential, the government decided that, instead of fixing the problem, they would instead compound it. They did this by establishing �the dole�, whereby the government would make up the difference in the wages that the Roman workers ought to be making. Predictably, this handout (Paid for yet another raising of taxes on the wealthy, with full support of the former workers who were not only now not taxpayers themselves, but blamed the wealthy businesses, with some justification, for a portion of their plight.) ultimately corrupted most of those who received it. Many of the former workers stopped working all together, and instead lived on their welfare supplement, leaving them a still dangerous band of highly disgruntled potential troublemakers, only now they had no pride and a lot of time on their hands. As freeborn Roman citizens, they also had a lot of votes, something not inconsiderable in a republic. Again, something had to be done and, in predictable fashion, the bureaucracy compounded the problem once more. They gave the masses their bread to satisfy their stomachs; now they decided to keep them constantly entertained in order to fill their boredom and satiate their seething passions. Soon, a constant stream of circuses, pageants, and races became the order of the day, to keep the idle mob pacified. New spectacles were added as novelty dulled, until no form of entertainment was too base, too degrading, too bloody, or too filthy for public display, provided it kept the masses happy and thus allowed the government to operate without their �interference�. What had once been proud and productive citizens of the most powerful empire that the world had ever known had become the ubiquitous �mob�, a mindless mass driven only by their own passions, whose votes were for sale, not to the politician with principles, but to the one who would promise the most bread for shiftless bellies, and the best show to occupy their jaded sensibilities. Rich and poor alike were drawn into the cycle of personal degeneration by a constant diet of perverse entertainment. The wealthy could afford to indulge their own participation in some of the less dangerous sexual and gluttonous activities, while the poor, as they�re wont, imitated them as best they could, or indulged vicariously as a nation of spectators at the arenas. The Roman entertainment industry eventually became one-third of the gross national product of the empire. To stir the pot even further, Rome itself was suffering an occupation. Before long, foreigners with no respect for what little Roman culture that was left began to fill the city. Citizens found themselves being shouldered aside in their own streets by barbarian tribesmen from beyond every fringe of the empire. The classical languages of Latin and Greek fought for survival against the babbling cacophony of a hundred strange tongues. Meanwhile, the Empire was in trouble on the foreign front. Having extended the benefits of Roman civilization to the ends of the earth at the point of a legionnaire�s gladius, they were dumbfounded to find that many of the people out there still not only didn�t appreciate what they had to offer, but actually resented it. Pictish warriors and Irish and Saxon sea raiders harried Roman Britain, while Gauls and Germans spilled from their misty forests in regular rebellion to disturb the �Pax Romana�. Arab bandits, Jewish Zealots, and Persian nobility threatened from the east and South, while bands of Vandals, Allens, Huns, and steppe peoples cast thoughtful eyes upon the Roman border, and had the temerity to ask the blasphemous question, �What�s so great about Rome anyway?� Many inside the empire were beginning to ask that very same question, and were starting to break the rules and upset the social order. The now-permanently disgruntled mob saw no need to submit to the low pay, harsh discipline, and risk of the Legions in defense of the government that they knew to be corrupt and subconsciously resented for making them likewise, and the armies filled up with barbarians from outside, of highly questionable loyalty, to whom even conditions of the Legion was a large step up. The resented foreigners from the conquered provinces who filled the sweatshops had little reason to love Rome, and much reason to despise her. Even �good�, upper-class Romans were asking uncomfortable questions as to the morality of the violent entertainment, of bribery and corruption in high places, of gladiators and charioteers making incomes several times those of the few uncorrupted generals and politicians still struggling to hold the empire together, and even of the degeneracy of the sexual mores, not only of society at large, but of that society�s leaders. Now, as if that were not enough, rebels and bandits were cropping up in the chaos with increasing frequency, and the recently formed but rapidly growing �unpatriotic� sect called �Christians� were causing no end of problems and threatened the whole structure of the empire by their steadfast refusal, despite the most �enthusiastic� persuasions to the contrary, to demonstrate their loyalty by saluting the Eagle Standards of Rome and by sacrificing to the emperor. An emperor he was, for Rome was no longer a Republic. Due to the endless chain of crisis�s within and without, the Senate would regularly place dictatorial powers in the hands of Caesar, leaving him unaccountable to the long-accepted standards of Roman law and justice. To be answerable to none but himself corrupts the very best, and it was far from the very best that wore the purple � instead, a procession of sadistic megalomaniacs and perverted degenerates took the throne, only to be replaced, usually by assassination, by another even worse. But Roman life blithely went on; emperors rose and fell, politicians schemed, generals bickered, thousands died in the wars, bits of empire crumbled away - most importantly, though, business made money, even if taxed more than usual, and the mob was fed and entertained, so life in Rome was good; why it was the greatest country in the world. Everybody knew that. Then, one day, there came a knocking at the gates� (Originally published in The Southern Party News, 2 Febuary, 2002) HOME ~ EDITORIAL CONTENTS |
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