The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The history of a dangerous idea

REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK

Edward J Watts, Professor of History at San Diego University, is not a fan of politicians who claim that society is rotten and only they can make it better. This claim, however, is nothing new: the Romans were doing it all the time. In his stimulating new book The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome, Professor Watts sets out to delineate what he calls ‘the history of a dangerous idea’.

He begins in Rome in the 2nd century BC. Hannibal had been finally defeated, Rome was expanding, winning all its wars, and money, loot, and slaves were pouring in; Italy was being transformed. Cato did not approve. Cato was an old-fashioned curmudgeon who denounced modern behaviour and said that society must get back to old-fashioned morality. His attack stirred up opposition, notably from Scipio, the dynamic young general who had finally led the defeat of Hannibal and the Carthaginians. But Cato’s attacks led to disunity and Scipio’s grandson, Tiberius Gracchus, was appalled by the gulf between the rich and the poor, famously complaining that the small farmers had been displaced and that the countryside was full of big estates.

Professor Watts points out that archaeology does not altogether back this up: this was a period when Italian agriculture was surging ahead, and the countryside appears to have been full of thriving middle-sized farms. But the propaganda on both sides led to fear, fear led to violence, and Gracchus was assassinated in a violent brawl. This in turn contributed to the downfall of Roman politics in the 1st century BC, when Marius and Sulla aroused the masses, and Julius Caesar, who tried to make himself dictator, was murdered.