This section could also be called "Aristotle's contribution to Roman thought," through its adaptation of Cicero, and also "Rome's contribution to political thought" in the form of its ideals of republican government and citizen participation.

Plato's political philosophy was largely deductive and, although he made references to conditions in the city-states of Greece and recent events in Greek politics his discussion revolved largely around his contemplation of "ideal types" that were rather remote from an un-ideal reality. Aristotle, by contrast was more inductive and empirical in his approach. He compared and contrasted over 150 different political systems found among the Greek city-states and then, inductively, separated them into different categories of constitutional systems (or regime types). If one took Plato's line of reasoning presented in the Republic seriously or if one tried to follow the example of Socrates presented in the Apology you would most likely end up becoming a non-political, contemplative recluse. Aristotle, by contrast, regarded politics as necessary and even as an honorable occupation, since it helped human beings to find their fulfillment as essentially social beings. The Romans, who were neither contemplative nor reclusive, found Aristotelian thought more to their liking than Platonic thought and their main political writers, who also happened to be practicing politicians, adopted elements of Aristotle's thought in order to analyze the Roman political system and its special problems.

Although Americans like to think of their country as part of a "new world" free from the corruptions of the semi-feudal, monarchical, corrupt Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a nation Americans have tended to show a fascination with ancient Rome. If you visit Washington D.C., you see most of the older public buildings in the capital built according to the styles of Roman architecture; the Capitol building itself, the Supreme Court building, the White House, and the principal offices of the Treasury, State Department, and other important offices all share this romanesque style. Certain symbols, such as the bald eagle on the Great Seal and on our currency, and the fasces that flank the podium of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and which also form part of the arm-rests of the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, are also Roman in origin. During the time of public debate on the merits of the proposed Constitution of 1787 many of those writing in favor of, or against, ratification, often used as pen-names the names of famous Roman statesmen and orators: James Madison signed his Federalist Papers with the name "Publius," while others used the pen-names "Cato," or "Brutus." Why this American fascination and identification with Rome?

Part of the answer may be that even in the eighteenth century many Americans believed that the United States in the New World would eventually became the counterpart of what Rome had become in the Old World; a great republic and possibly another great empire. Another explanation is that Americans, with their own preference for pragmatic practicality over pure theory, could identify more with the ancient Romans than with either the Greeks or other later European civilizations. Although the Greeks pioneered original break-throughs in geometry, mathematics, philosophy, aesthetics and politics, they failed to create a lasting unified Greek state or to translate fully their ideas into practice. When the Romans eventually absorbed the former Greek city-states into their own empire they preserved and transformed the ideas and inventions of the Greeks into more practical and permanent Romanized forms. To give an example, the ancient Athenians had built the Parthenon, the temple to their patron, the goddess of wisdom, Athena Parthena, which was counted among the Seven Wonders of the World. However Athens had a very primitive water distribution and sewage system: women had to carry jugs of water great distances from wells up the dry hills of Athens. The lack of a good sewer system made Athens subject to numerous outbreaks of cholera. By contrast few Roman cities, including Rome itself, had temples or other public buildings that matched the beauty of the Parthenon but nearly all of them had aqueduct and reservoir systems, and pipe-distribution systems, that provided ample supplies of water to all districts of their cities. Likewise Rome and most other large Roman cities and towns had well-constructed sewer systems that insured public hygiene. Accordingly Americans have tended to admire the prudence, practicality, power and near-permanence of the Roman Empire.

Two Schools of Thought: Stoics and Hedonists

Similarly it fell to Rome to preserve and transform into practical forms, the political legacy of Greece. While the Romans were not original thinkers they were great adapters of the ideas of others. There were few individual philosophers following Plato and Aristotle who equalled them in prominence but instead two major schools of political thought developed. One grouping of philosophers were essentially non-political, or even anti-political, and included the Hedonists (also called Epicureans) and the Cynics. The Hedonists saw individual happiness as the only good and tended to shun public life as futile or bothersome. Today we still use the term "hedonist" to describe people whose only concern is to have fun and who do not care about their personal or public responsibilities. The other major school were the Stoics who believed that the highest good was to be found in service to the community or in public office and who believed that individual appetites and desires that did not help the public good should be controlled, disciplined, or suppressed. Today we also still use the term "stoic" to refer to people who appear to remain indifferent to their own pain or personal misfortunes.

The Stoic philosophy is very much in line with the Aristotelian idea that man's true happiness is found in social life and that the best good is not merely a personal, or selfish, good but what is also good for the entire community. While the democratic Greek city-states produced ideas of constitutional rule, the rule of law, and the rights of citizens that were very precious these city-states themselves were too unstable internally or too vulnerable to outside invaders, such as Alexander the Great, to be able to preserve these political ideals. Rome succeeded not only in turning the petty city-states of Italy, Sicily and Greece into a stable world-empire but also succeeded in preserving these Greek political forms and ideals into more stable and lasting, if slightly altered, Roman forms.

The Stoics developed a concept of a universal "natural law" which has developed into the modern concept of the "rights of man," or "human rights." The Romans succeeded in creating their own constitutional law and also promoted the rule of law throughout their territories, even in countries where there had been no centralized government or rule of law. The Romans also had very detailed prescriptions of the rights of citizens and particularly the right of trial by jury. In order to administer their cities, colonies, and provinces the Romans developed a form of professional public administration. The organization of the Roman Army influenced the organization of the Empire which later influenced Church and bureaucratic organization in Medieval and modern Europe. The Roman concept of "jus gentium," - the "law of nations" - initiated the beginnings of the idea of an "international law." The impact of Roman jurisprudence on both domestic and international law is reflected in the large number of Latin technical terms and expressions that are part of the everyday language of jurists and diplomats, e.g. "res judicata," for the essential ruling or finding of a court; "dicta," for the other portions of a judicial opinion; "stare decisis," for the doctrine of the rule of court precedents; "pacta sunt servanda," for the ideal that treaties must have the status of binding laws among nations.

Today although we seldom think of "Stoicism" or "Hedonism" as explicit political philosophies it still appears that most normative theories of politics [those which try to identify and advocate certain theories of a political good to be achieved] fall into one of two groupings: 1) those that teach that the highest good of politics is to achieve some "public interest," or "community good," and 2) those that teach that the real object of government and political right is to define and protect the rights of individuals. Controversies over the relative rights of the community and public interest over those of individual rights and liberties continue to form the substance of much of the public debates under way in today's United States, e.g. Consider the different ways in which the debate over national health care has been framed: Is it the duty of the national government to set up a national health insurance program to assure equal access and coverage of all citizens, or instead is it the right and obligation of individual citizens to make arrangements for their own health care and pensions for retirement or disability? What side you take on such issue will reflect to what degree you would fit either into the "Stoic" camp or the "Hedonist" camp.

Cicero: Stoic Philosopher and Theorist of Roman Republicanism

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman lawyer and politician who won fame for his defense of the Roman Republic against certain conspirators who tried to turn Rome into a dictatorship. In his later career, however, Cicero failed to prevent Julius Caesar from imposing his own dictatorship on Rome, which marked the end of the democratic forms of government in Rome and began its transformation into a tyranny headed by the Roman Emperor. During Caesar's dictatorship Cicero was forced into retirement during which he wrote many political works, including On the Commonwealth, On Oratory, and his On the Laws. On the Commonwealth is his work of political theory in which he uses both the Aristotelian and Stoic approaches to explain the forms of government developed by the Romans as well as to put forward his own political theory. Rather than attempting to prescribe what an imaginary ideal city-state should be like, Cicero developed his ideal in order to show that the Roman Republic had in fact been what he considered to be the best possible form of government.

A Summary of Cicero's Ideal Commonwealth: The "Composite Republic"

Like Aristotle, Cicero believed that there were three primary true forms of government, namely, monarchy, aristocracy, and the constitutional state [or "polity"]. He also believed each true form has its corresponding perversion which arises when those who rule no longer have regard for the public good over their own good. Unlike Aristotle, however, Cicero did not consider any of the three true forms to be truly good in themselves. Each of them was defective simply because each was politically unstable: there was nothing in any of them to prevent itself from becoming transformed into its corresponding perverted form. Cicero prescribed instead, a composite form of government in which there would be a monarchical principle, an aristocratic principle, and a democratic principle. He referred to this as the Res Publica, literally "the People's Thing," which has been more idiomatically been translated by others as "the Commonwealth," or better yet, the "composite republic." Cicero identified the monarchical principle in the "composite republic" with the executive officers of the Roman Republic, who were known as consuls. The aristocratic principle he identified with the Senate of Rome, a body that exercised both legislative and judicial functions. The democratic principle he identified with the officials known as tribunes and the popular representative bodies referred to as "committees" (comitia) in ancient Rome. In effect Cicero was arguing for something like a separation and sharing of powers. Rather than being a political visionary or revolutionary Cicero was acting more as a political conservative arguing for the preservation of the Roman Republic against the ambitions of such men as Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, and Octavian [=Augustus Caesar] who each sought to transform Rome into their personal empire.

Cicero failed to prevent the collapse of the Roman Republic and himself was murdered by followers of Mark Anthony.

Question: If the Roman Empire was so Wonderful, Why Did it Fall?

Rome "fell" in two ways:

First, failing to preserve itself as a Republic having constitutional rule and a limited form of popular representation, Rome turned into a monarchy, called an "Empire," in which the forms, but not the substance, of the old Republican traditions were maintained. Although the Roman Emperors were in fact absolute monarchs they never called themselves "kings," because monarchy was so detested during the Roman Republic. Instead each one called himself the Imperator, a Roman title that originally meant "Commander in Chief of the Army" but which eventually came to mean something like a "super-king." This transformation of Rome from a constitutional state into a tyranny occurred over several years ending about 40 b.c.e.

The second fall of Rome was the military and civil collapse of the Roman Empire which occurred five centuries later in the Western Roman Empire. The final remnant of the Eastern Roman Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 c.e.

Since Americans tend to see themselves as a sort of "New Rome" in the New World it is only the failure of the Roman Republic that concerns us here rather than the eventual collapse of her Empire. One reason that the Republic failed was that although the ordinary Roman citizens were allowed to vote, the only elections in which they could vote were those actually held within the City of Rome. In other words a Roman citizen living in Spain would have to travel all the way back to Italy and Rome in order to cast a ballot. As Rome conquered and subdued more countries in Italy and elsewhere her main means for ensuring peace and stability in these conquered lands was to settle them with plenty of Roman colonists. Most of these colonists were landless and poorer Romans who were willing to work hard to make a new life for themselves in the colonies. Unfortunately by default this meant that Rome itself was increasingly drained of its more productive middle class citizens and soon turned into a city composed of two classes: the super-rich senatorial and equestrian orders, or "patricians," and an unemployed under-class known as the "plebeians."

Beginning about 100 b.c.e. many unscrupulous patricians began to buy the votes of the increasing unemployed underclass of plebeians by turning Rome into a sort of welfare state: Candidates for tribune or consul would promise the plebeians free entertainments and free bread, which was called panem et circenses, literally, "bread and circuses."⁽¹⁾ While welfare states today must be supported by taxation or borrowing of funds the Roman welfare state was funded by the conquest of other territories, the enslavement of captured nations, and the ruthless exaction of taxes from conquered territories. Some scholars believe that it was the expenses and logistical difficulties involved in maintaining the resulting Roman Empire that caused it to collapse economically from within. The actual death of the Republic was due to the corruption of the democratic element of the Roman Republic into a mobocracy that in turn surrendered all power to Julius Caesar and his successors in order to ensure the continuation of the panem et circenses.

Another possible cause blamed for the collapse of the Roman state was its dependency on slavery. Although much of the resources for running the Roman "Panem Et Circenses" welfare state came from the severe taxation of her subject peoples another essential resource came in the form of direct labor stolen from the conquered peoples through their enslavement. While the personal household slaves of Roman families worked either as household servants or field-workers the greater number of slaves were state property who were worked to death building highways, aqueducts, public buildings, draining marshes and swamps, working in remote quarries and mines, or as galley-slaves in military or civilian ships. Most of these were underfed, brutalized and were literally worked to death. To continue running this slave economy meant Rome had to acquire new sources of slaves, that is, to conquer more areas not yet under Roman rule but most of the available lands were conquered by the third century c.e. Another use for these hapless state-owned slaves, as well as condemned criminals, was to provide the Roman mobs with amusement through the spectacle of human slaughter in forcing condemned slaves or prisoners to fight each other in gladiatorial contests, or in feeding them alive to lions, tigers and bears. Needless to say this devaluation of human life, dignity, liberty and equality created an atmosphere in which the Republican ideals of justice, liberty, and equality could not long survive. Nor is it surprising that the later Roman Emperors came to despise their fellow-Romans and to regard them as little better than their personal slaves whose lives, liberties and fortunes could be extinguished as easily as were those of non-Roman slaves at the hands of their Roman masters.

	
Review Terms

Polity
Commonwealth
Republic
composite republic

1. The term was coined by the Roman writer, Juvenal, "The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things--bread and circuses!" from Satires, I, l.30 Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis].