Historiai

This is an article about how the American Republic has already fallen. Not that it will fall, but that it already has. I understand that this may be interpreted as some as hysterical, radical or doomsaying. It is not intended as such. I write this with no intended pessimism, and I do not feel particularly morose. I also do not identify with any political ideology in any meaningful way, so this should not be read as being in any way partisan. I write this simply from the stance of an interested student of history who feels that this is a subject worthy of commentary and that I find intriguing. Please try to read it in that spirit.

The fall of the Roman Republic is a difficult event to quantify. Attempting to judge what caused the fall is inextricably tied to the question of when it fell, which is not an easy question to answer. Imagine, if you will, that rather than talking about a political institution, we are talking about a war and trying to determine when it was lost. Take World War 2 for example, when did the Axis powers lose the war? Semantically, we would say 2^nd September 1945 when Japan signed the surrender documents. Hirohito announced that Japan would surrender on 15^th Augustus 1945 though, so surely that was effectively the end of the war. But the first atomic bomb was dropped on the 6^th and once this happened, Japan’s surrender was inevitable, so the war was lost by that point. When Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7^th, Japan’s defeat was inevitable through, so perhaps that’s a better date. Strong arguments could be made for 11^th December 1941 when the Americans joined the allies, or the 22^nd June 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, two evens which both arguably put the Axis powers on an inevitable path to defeat. It could even be argued that the war was lost from October 1940 when it became clear that Germany would not be able to invade the U.K., or even more dramatically, that the war could never have been won by the Axis and was effectively lost from the start. I’m not giving any preference to any of these dates by the way, I’m just highlighting how easily dating can vary depending on how we interpret the question. These same kinds of problems emerge when we attempt to establish when the Roman Republic fell.

Res Publica, the root of our word Republic, was a somewhat vague concept meaning “the thing of the people”. It didn’t carry the same connotations of a political system that the modern word “Republic” has, though there were of course traditions and customs that were part of the general idea of Res Publica. But this vagueness means that we find Rome being called Res Publica even in the 7^th century AD (History of the Lombards, 4.36). If we were to be semantic it could be argued that the Roman Res Publica only ended when the Byzantine Empire did. This seems to deliberately miss the intended meaning of the question though, so let’s try to find another date.

27BCE is a tempting date, because this is when Augustus was conferred all the powers that effectively made him Emperor.  Augustus may have just been an anomaly though, so perhaps 14AD is a better date because that is when Augustus died and, crucially, managed to pass on his powers to his chosen heir, Tiberius, thus cementing the fact that power in Rome would be effectively hereditary. These work from a perspective of political definition as in, the structure of power during Augustus’ reign shifted from power derived from elected representatives of the people with various assemblies checking power, to power being focused in the hands of one man. However, they again seem almost too technical. Augustus seems more to be the nail in the coffin, but it is surely the case that Augustus could not have become Emperor unless the Republic had already fallen. Again, we seem to need an earlier date.

49BCE, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon is a popular suggestion. Here we have a man who used military force to seize control of the Roman government and had himself proclaimed dictator. This is a clear violation of any reasonable definition of a “Republic” and so perhaps this is the better date. But Caesar was not the first man to do this. Sulla, in 82BCE, marched on Rome and seized power by force and proclaimed himself Dictator. The Republic had been violated, it’s processes flagrantly disregarded, and its constitution adjusted by one man. 82BCE is certainly the most compelling date so far: it was a clear moment where the constitution of the Republic was fundamentally broken. Once again though, I feel like we have a similar problem as we did with Augustus: how could Sulla have done this if the Republic was intact? The taking of government by force surely does not precede the fall of a constitution, it is symptomatic of one that has already fallen.

What we need to do is point to try and identify the moment when the Roman Republic’s constitution was broken beyond repair. We have seen that by 88BCE, it was already shattered so such an extent that Sulla could seize power by force, so we need to look back and consider other examples of the Roman constitution being abused. 205BCE is interesting, because this is when Scipio Africanus was first made Consul, despite being underage, and demanded the province of Africa, threatening to bypass the Senate if this was not allowed. This event is, in my opinion, rather underappreciated in discussions of when the Republic fell as it is a clear example of an individual strong arming the constitution and the constitution buckling in the face of it. The reason it is not given a lot of weight though is probably because this happened in war time and was clearly an extraordinary measure. After the Second Punic War, the Roman Republic seems to have continued to function healthily enough: the growing influence of the Scipii were challenged via proper legal channels and the Scipii effectively took the hit, paying any fines that they were charged with. They remained popular of course, and many of their allies won Consular elections, but a group being popular and influential is not, in and of itself, a death knell for a Republic. The Republic appears to have been functioning properly at the start of the 2^nd century BCE, so we know that event that led to the fall of the Roman Republic occurred sometime in the 2^nd Century BCE sometime after about 170BCE.

We now come to the event which, in my opinion, should be considered the fall of the Roman Republic. Some reading this may well have guessed what that was, but to those who don’t, it was the life and death of Tiberius Gracchus. In order to try and force through much needed land reform, Gracchus used unconstitutional and illegal means. Again, we see the Republic bending here just as it with Scipio. The crucial difference here though is that Tiberius Gracchus was murdered by Nascia, a political rival, for his actions. That is when the Republic broke.

Republic’s, by their nature, are slow moving creatures. The various checks and balances and obstacles put in place to attempt to stop any one man getting too much power mean that progress is slow. For those who want to see immediate change, as Tiberius did, it may seem that the only way to effect that change is to bypass these elements. For some, such as Nascia, the most effective way to implement desired changes is political violence. Both methods, bypassing the constitution and political violence, are effective means of forcing immediate changes in a Republic. However, they also break the rules of the game. Once it has been shown that these kinds of drastic measures can work, they will be taken further and further by others.

We see this in Rome. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus was the first time in the history of the Republic that a high-ranking politician was killed by a political rival. In the decades that followed, political violence became a norm of Roman politics. In 121BCE, Tiberius’ brother Gaius would also be murdered, and Glaucia, Memmius and Saturnius were all killed in 100BCE by each other’s rival factions. Marius and Sulla took political violence to its natural and logical conclusion in the First Roman Civil War, and Sulla used the Dictatorship to purge his political opponents. In 63BCE Cataline attempted to use force to overthrow the Consuls, and Cicero had all the conspirators illegally executed. You then have the rise of the gangs of Clodius and Milo who carved a bloody path in Rome before Clodius himself was murdered, the civil war and assassination of Caesar, and finally the last Roman Civil War and the appointment of Augustus as Emperor.

The point of all of this is to show that Republic’s are fragile and that once a downward trend has been established, it is almost impossible to recover from. The United States is currently presided over by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, a private individual, has been given extraordinary and unratified power and influence in the government. It is this that is the most concerning aspect of Trump’s presidency: it has now been established that it is acceptable in the American Republic to anoint significant powers to an unelected citizen with no official oversight. The seizing of the Capitol on January 6^th 2021 has shown that it is viable for a defeated candidate to use political violence to potentially overthrow an election. I fear that people often do not quite grasp just how close to disaster the Republic was on that day. The rioters were quite literally minutes and metres away from some of the most important politicians in America. What do we think would have happened if they had managed to get their hands on Pence or Pelosi? Maybe nothing, but maybe something. Mobs are wild things that empower people to do things they never usually would. The mass pardoning of those involved in the attack is a tacit acknowledgement that political violence is not only possible in the U.S.A., but can even be effectively unpunished. These things will now be utilised by Republican and Democrats alike, they are now part of the system of how American politics work.

Let’s keep following it back. Biden’s pardoning of his son and others follows in a now established trend that the judicial system of the USA can be bypassed by the President. Trump’s first campaign run has shown that a candidate can ignore political norms and traditions, bringing a level of vitriol previously unheard of. You can go back even further, Nixon introduced the idea of Presidential corruption on a whole new level, and Clinton established a norm of the President being able to lie, blatantly and provably, to the American people.

Let us again think of the Roman Republic for a moment. We have seen how the use of illegal means or political violence leads to more of the same, but why is this? It’s because once someone like Clodius uses street gangs, the response to that will be proportional, i.e. Milo creating his own gangs. The Democrat’s response to Trump will similarly be proportional. I would bet money that, if not at the next election the one after, the primary Democratic candidate will be one who, like Trump, is willing to continue bending the constitution to force through what they think is right. Because Trump has bypassed so much Republican tradition in order to quickly make the changes he desires, a Democratic president will likely wish to undo many of these things, and they will want to do so quickly. And to do things quickly, they will use the same means, meaning taking unconstitutional measures.

The American Republic has failed. When this happened is not clear, perhaps it was Trump, perhaps it was Clinton, Nixon, or any other number of possibilities. History will establish the answer to that question in time. But the death spiral has been in motion for a while now and is past the point of recovery.