I was a little under the weather a few days ago--just enough to take the edge off. Sometimes the internet (by which I mean being sucked into the ADHD maelstrom of social media or the news) is the wrong kind of distraction. Instead, I ended up going down a different (albeit rather more focused) rabbit-hole: Roman history of the classical period.
Dennis is fascinated by Roman history. But, then, he's more or less the military historian of the household. And, let's call a spade a shovel here--the Roman empire was basically organised around conquest more than trade.
A lot of noise is made about the proverbial bread and circuses (particularly by the libertarian right) being the eventual downfall of Roman civilsation. That's far, far too facile. Bread and circuses? Really? When the military and the government come to operate hand-in-glove? And the military largely consists of large private armies loyal to a single leader? And the empire has to invade new territories to pay off the soldiers recruited after conquering those soldiers' territory?
That's basically a Ponzi scheme--with all the hallmarks of a tin-pot dictatorship besides. We all know how those schemes--and sometimes even the dictators-- eventually end. (Shocking precisely no one, Rome once had four Caesars in a single year.)
Plus, Rome's dependence on slavery--on average, one in three residents was a slave--gave little incentive for advancing technology. Plus, the slave trade was one of the more lucrative aspects of war-mongering. Which, of course left even less incentive for inventing labour-saving devices.
Now. I'm not saying that Dennis isn't correct. The Romans were straight-up fascinating. Most notably for their organisational skills. (To me, the obsessive organisation of the Roman armies is far more interesting than tactics, battles or campaigns. Making vs. breaking and all that...)
After all, it's not like war-mongering made them unique in the ancient Western world (or probably any other place and time in human history, really). Neither did slavery: Romans were rank amateurs compared to, say, Spartans Nor did religion--theirs was a mongrel mish-mash based somewhat on the cosmology borrowed from Greece, but with plenty of Etruscan leftovers and cults imported from as far afield as Persia (modern Iran). (And that doesn't even count those pesky mono-theists like the Hebrews and Christians who showed up in the middle of the story.) Culture? Nope--classical Rome had a decided inferiority complex: "Real" intellectualism came from (or imitated) Greece.
But nonetheless, time has been kind to the Roman legacy in the Western world. Take away the letters "J," "K," "U," and "W," and you have the Latin alphabet. (Mercifully, however, their numbering system has largely been left by the wayside in favour of the more sensible Arabic one. Want to know why Star Wars takes place "a long time ago"? Because they're using Roman numerals for the episode numbers. Just sayin'.) Until a couple of centuries ago, their language was still the lingua franca of the educated elite. Five modern languages are derived from Latin: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. (And let's not forget that roughly one in three English words derives from French.) The Western calendar (with some corrections and innovations like the leap year) is largely their legacy.
Part of that is, of course, the legacy of Empire--particularly one that stretched from the middle of the U.K. to Istanbul. Flexibility in adapting to local customs and politics is a virtue, but flexibility in language and standards (e.g. measurements, dates) is the short road to administrative suicide. On the flip side, in a world where people are used to squabbling with their nearest neighbours from time immemorial, adopting the systems of the Empire means that no one actually has to compromise. (Human beings are awesome, amirite? [eyeroll])
In a milieu where even the longest-lived empires (e.g. the classical Greeks) didn't survive much more than a few hundred years, the Romans--despite the serious flaws in their civilisation--could hold out for roughly a millennium.
And yet today, "organisational skills" is such a throwaway term--the kind of fluff one puts on a resume or emphasises in an interview as part of the ritualised employment dance. As a liberal arts graduate, I've had a quarter-century to shake my head over how "communication skills" are treated much the same way--universally demanded, but rarely valued. It was only after reflecting on the classical Romans that I realised that talent in organisation falls into the same category.
In that light, I suppose it comes as no surprise (in an age of rock star CEOs) that we all know who Julius Caesar is, but take for granted the much larger legacy of often anonymous census-takers, accountants, lawyers, tribunes, consuls, engineers, scribes, et. al. who gave cohesiveness to what otherwise might have been a flash in the pan based on a handful of military victories.
