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Excellent post by Dr. Bernard Finel<\/strong>:<\/p>\n The Fall of the Roman Republic: Lessons for David Petraeus and America<\/a><\/p>\n The problems facing the Roman Republic in the 1st<\/sup> Century BC were obvious for several generations before they resulted in the final crisis that lead to imperial rule.\u00a0 There were a large number of proposed solutions, some more fanciful than others, but it was precisely the apparent inability of the state to address problems that everyone recognized existed that destroyed the existing institutions. At the core, the Roman Republic faced two problems.<\/strong><\/p>\n First, the growth of Roman power and the acquisition of an empire stressed the existing structure for managing provinces.\u00a0 The lack of a well developed colonial bureaucracy combined with the practice of annually appointing new provincial governors from the ranks of recent senior magistrates created massive instability.\u00a0 Significant elements of provincial administration – notably tax collection – were outsourced to private companies, and provincial governors saw their postings as an opportunity for self-enrichment, which was both a cause and consequence of the increasing cost of running for political office.\u00a0 The result was endemic corruption in Rome, and frequent instability in provinces as a consequence of the rapacious practices of tax farmers and governors.\u00a0 Particularly in the more recently acquired provinces in and around Anatolia and the Levant, this instability led to revolts and opportunities for external actors to weaken Roman control.<\/strong><\/p>\n Second, for a variety of reasons that economic historians continue to debate, there was increasing income inequality in Rome, and worse, the gradual impoverishment and ultimately virtual elimination of small-hold farmers that had traditionally formed the backbone of both the Roman citizenry and military.\u00a0 The result was the rise of an urban poor, increasingly dependent on the largess of the state, more prone to violence, and ultimately more loyal to patrons than to the state as a whole.\u00a0 Part of this was also a consequence of empire.\u00a0 Military victories brought slaves to Rome, which were increasingly used to farm the large estates of aristocrats, raising land prices and lowering food costs in a way that made small farming unsustainable.<\/strong><\/p>\n These problems were recognized early.\u00a0 In 133 BC, Tiberius Gracchus sought to implement land reform from his position as Tribune in order to address the twin issues of the disappearing free rural peasantry and the resultant lack of citizens eligible for military service.\u00a0 His efforts threatened the position of the aristocratic elites, and in the end he was murdered.\u00a0 Ten year later his younger brother suffered the same fate under similar circumstances.\u00a0 At the time of the Cimbrian War (113-101 BC), the threat of foreign invasion by Germanic tribes forced Gaius Marius to replace the traditional Roman Army soldiered by land-owning citizens with one built around landless volunteers for whom military service was a career and who owed loyalty primarily to the general paying the bills rather than the state.\u00a0 Marius’ legions defeated the Germans, but a new instability had been introduced into the Roman state due to the tendency of these new volunteer forces to be loyal to personal patrons rather than state institutions.\u00a0 This instability manifested itself in the increasing role of popular generals in Roman politics, including several willing to implicitly or explicitly threaten civil war to get what they wanted.\u00a0 Marius himself marched on Rome, as did Lucius Cornelius Sulla twice, and Lucius Cornelius Cinna.\u00a0 Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) took over this father’s client army on his death and became a key power broker in his twenties and without having held elected office. By the time the of the First Triumvirate in 59BC, the Roman state had been grappling with these basic, interlocking economic, political, military challenges for 70 years without any systematic solution.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Finel sees 21st century AD\u00a0America as having some analogous political and structural\u00a0difficulties to 1st century BC Rome:<\/p>\n ….The Roman system had, in short, even more veto points than the current American system, and they were even more arbitrary – though the U.S. Senate practice of anonymous holds comes close.<\/strong><\/p>\n The point is not to suggest that Rome and the United States are in identical positions.\u00a0 Rather, that there are similar structural problems.\u00a0 In the United States today there are durable public policy problems that everyone agrees are indeed problems – deficits and debt, the entitlements crisis, lack of infrastructure investment, educational shortcomings, the erosion of U.S. manufacturing and the challenge of international competitiveness.\u00a0 But we can’t do anything about them because there is a rump of opposition to any structural reforms, not always from Republicans, and a large number of veto points.<\/strong><\/p>\n Another structural similarity is that the one – or at least most – effective institution in the country is the military. \u00a0In the 1st<\/sup> Century BC, the Romans fought at least five civil wars (as many as seven depending on how one chooses to count), and yet was able to expand their colonial empire.\u00a0 Their Army was occasionally bested in battles, but never in this period in a war.\u00a0 Over time, Roman politics came to be dominated by successful generals, and men without a martial record often sought to establish one even later in life.<\/strong><\/p>\n It was in this context of persistent structural problems, a dysfunctional political system riddled with veto points, and a highly effective and respected military that the Roman Republic collapsed.\u00a0 But before it collapsed, it was given one last opportunity to save itself.\u00a0 This occurred with the formation of the First Triumvirate in 59 BC.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I suggest that you read Dr. Finel’s post in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n A few comments on my part….<\/p>\n A commendable summarizing of the Late Republic’s dysfunction on Dr. Finel’s part. For those readers\u00a0interested in the subject, I’d recommend Tom Holland’s \u00a0<\/strong>Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic<\/strong><\/a> A minor quibble is that\u00a0Finel left out Sulla’s<\/strong> <\/a>brutal attempt to “re-set” the political system, decrease public corruption\u00a0and “restore” many older political\u00a0customs by scraping away more recent innovations involving tribunican office by the fiat of\u00a0breaking Roman tradition and launching a murderous purge to kill off and thoroughly terrorize those members of the senatorial elite\u00a0who would object to his\u00a0version of political reform.\u00a0Sulla’s bloody precedent\u00a0made future recourse to violence more likely after Sulla passed from the political scene. Caesar<\/strong> consciously used Sulla’s memory as a foil, making great political show of his\u00a0generous treatment of beaten opponents, ultimately to his cost. I agree with Finel that Cato the Younger<\/strong>\u00a0was a fanatical ass who more than any other figure\u00a0precipitated the destruction of the Republic with his uncompromising\u00a0determination to destroy Julius Caesar personally\u00a0– even if he had to violate the unwritten rules of Roman politics to do so. Ironically, despite the extremism of\u00a0his ulta-Optimate stance, Cato was popular with the plebians, maybe “highly respected” is a better description,\u00a0because his fanaticism about adhering to\u00a0Roman traditions was authentic. Moreover, unlike most politicians of the time\u00a0Cato wasn’t looting everything in the provinces that wasn’t nailed down and lived an anarchronistically\u00a0ascetic lifestyle for a nobleman.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=zenpundit-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400078970\")
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\nI would add that the rapaciousness of the tax-farming in the provinces was due in part to Roman patricians\u00a0delegating that perk to Rome’s Italian Allies, making the Italians the junior partners in Roman imperialism much the same way\u00a0lower and middle colonial officials and military officers\u00a0of colonial armies in\u00a0the British Empire in the in 17th-19th century were frequently\u00a0drawn from the Scottish, Welsh and Anglo-Irish gentry and “respectable” English freeholding yeomanry. It gave these ambitious folk\u00a0a stake in the system and kept the door ajar to their possible\u00a0entry into the ruling class ( the Romans eventually had to yield citizenship to the Italians, though the pedigree of one’s citizenship remained an important part of a politician’s auctoritas<\/a>).<\/p>\n