Are We Rome?

by Cullen Murphy

  Milo Minderbinder’s remark: Heller, Catch-22, p. 269.

  gone to private contractors: The amount of public money awarded to private contractors in Iraq may never be known with any certainty. The agency that exercises oversight over spending by private contractors in Iraq, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has been ordered to shut down operations by October 1, 2007, under the terms of legislation signed into law by President Bush in October 2006.

  88 the number excludes another 100,000: Renae Merle, “Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq,” Washington Post, December 5, 2006.

  Others, like Triple Canopy: Daniel Bergner, “The Other Army,” New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2005.

  89 Vegetius described the real-world calamities: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, p. 51.

  raises all the same concerns: Andrew F. Krepinevich, “The Thin Green Line,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 2004.

  a former counterterrorism chief . . . addressed a meeting: Kelly Kennedy, “Firm Offers Itself as Army for Hire,” Army Times, April 10, 2006.

  3. THE FIXERS

  91 “Four or five men get together”: Quoted in MacMullen, Corruption, p. 147.

  “Corruption charges”: Syriana. Screenplay by Steven Gaghan; based on the book See No Evil, by Robert Baer. Warner Brothers Pictures, 2005, p. 93.

  old medical museum: The museum is located at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, in the Borgo Santo Spirito. (The words “in Sassia” refer to the fact that the original structure, built in the eighth century catered to Saxon pilgrims in Rome.)

  92 Pliny’s life was enviable: Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, pp. 69–82. See also Fred S. Dunham, “The Younger Pliny,” Classical Journal 40, no. 7 (April 1945), pp. 417–426; Graves H. Thompson, “Pliny’s ‘Want of Humor,’” Classical Journal 37, no. 4 (January 1942), pp. 201–209; and John Newbold Hough, “A Few Inefficiencies in Roman Provincial Administration,” Classical Journal 35, no. 1 (October 1939), pp. 17–26.

  one kind of letter stands out: Pliny, Letters, vol. 2, pp. 183, 197, 207, 311, 313.

  93 “When I was seriously ill”: Ibid., p. 173.

  “Your kindness, noble emperor”: Ibid., p. 171.

  94 A notable proportion: G.E.M. De Ste. Croix, “Suffragium: From Vote to Patronage,” British Journal of Sociology 5, no. 1 (March 1954), pp. 33–48.

  The very term “letters of recommendation”: Hannah M. Cotton, “Mirificum Genus Commendationis: Cicero and the Latin Letter of Recommendation,” American Journal of Philology 106, no. 3 (Autumn 1985), pp. 328–334.

  the consummate courtier: C. R. Haines, “Fronto,” Classical Review 34, no. 1–2 (February-March, 1920), pp. 14–18.

  That his letters . . . survive at all: Champlin, Fronto, p. 3.

  glimpses of daily life: Haines, Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, p. 15.

  95 as the editor . . . points out: C. R. Haines, “Fronto,” Classical Review 34, no.1–2 (February-March 1920), pp. 14–18.

  “If you love me”: Fronto, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 175.

  “The bearer, his relative and namesake”: Libanius, Autobiography, vol. 2, p. 19.

  96 “that cloud of Zeus”: Scott Bradbury, “A Sophistic Prefect: Anatolius of Berytus in the Letters of Libanius,” Classical Philology 95, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 172–186.

  the history of a single Latin term: G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, “Suffragium: From Vote to Patronage,” British Journal of Sociology 5, no. 1 (March 1954), pp. 33–48. See also Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 391–394.

  98 “the diverting of governmental force”: MacMullen, Corruption, p. 123.

  99 “From the parasite do-nothing”: Carcopino, Daily Life, p. 171.

  100 stock targets: Damon, Mask of the Parasite, provides numerous examples; see, for instance, pp. 105–191.

  its way of conducting foreign affairs: Cunliffe, Greeks, Romans & Barbarians, pp. 177–184; Lintott, Imperium Romanum, pp. 168–174.

  The longtime Saudi ambassador: Robert Baer, “The Fall of the House of Saud,” Atlantic Monthly, May 2003.

  class stratification . . . was extreme: MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, pp. 88–89.

  the nation’s worsening income inequality: Isaac Shapiro, “New IRS Data Show Income Inequality Is Again on the Rise,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 17, 2005.

  The latest data: Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt, “Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity,” New York Times, August 28, 2006.

  on the order of 5,000 or 10,000 to one: Schiavone, End of the Past, p. 71.

  101 the sumptuous horti: John R. Patterson, “The City of Rome: From Republic to Empire,” Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992), pp. 186–215; Favro, Urban Image of Augustan Rome, pp. 177–180.

  Agrippa in a single year: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 49.43.

  a man of real substance: Sogno, Q. Aurelius Symmachus, passim; Barrow, Prefect and Emperor, p. 14; J. A. McGeachy Jr., “The Editing of the Letters of Symmachus,” Classical Philology 44, no. 4 (October 1949), pp. 222–229.

  Elsewhere he complains: Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 21.

  Symmachus notes that twenty-nine Saxon captives: J. A. McGeachy, Jr., “The Editing of the Letters of Symmachus,” Classical Philology 44, no. 4 (October 1949), pp. 222–229.

  102 O’Hara’s fictional Gibbsville: Benjamin and Christina Schwarz, “John O’Hara’s Protectorate,” Atlantic Monthly, March 2000. On the importance of the curial class, see MacMullen, Corruption, p. 44.

  “did not work for the common benefit”: Diane Favro, “‘Pater Urbis’: Augustus as City Father of Rome,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 51, no. 1 (March 1992), pp. 61–84.

  103 “genial, oily”: MacMullen, Corruption, p. 126.

  “Thank you for those fieldfares”: Ibid., p. 126.

  “an arbata of olives”: Ibid.

  “The Gentleman who will have the Honour”: Willcox, ed., Papers of Benjamin Franklin, pp. 499–500.

  104 “This political operation”: Andrew Ferguson, “A Lobbyist’s Progress,” Weekly Standard, December 20, 2004. A complete compilation of the Jack Abramoff e-mails, released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, can be found at indian.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Investigations.

  “Our friend . . . asked”: Ferguson, “A Lobbyist’s Progress,” Weekly Standard, December 20, 2004.

  “Da man!”: Michael Crowley, “A Lobbyist in Full,” New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2005.

  What accounts for this change?: MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 122–170.

  A bronze plaque: Ibid., p. 151.

  105 the Republican contribution hierarchy: Thomas B. Edsall, Sarah Cohen, and James V. Grimaldi, “Pioneers Fill War Chest, Then Capitalize,” Washington Post, May 16, 2004.

  emperors are standing athwart the tide: MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 149–156.

  “Orders have to be followed”: Ibid., p. 172.

  106 “His abilities were not inadequate”: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 1, p. 881. Other accounts of the Lepcis episode can be found in Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 100–104; MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 154–155, 179–180, 193–194; and Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, 28.6.

  107 “the rigid impartiality of Palladius”: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 1, p. 881.

  108 made the military no larger: MacMullen, Corruption, pp. 172–177, 183–185.

  The precise definition of “feudalism”: F. L. Ganshof, Feudalism, p. xv.

  For a recent perspective on medieval tendencies in the modern world, see John Rapley, “The New Middle Ages,” Foreign Affairs (May-June 2006).

  109 still includes influence peddling and bribery: “Talking Points Memo Document Collection,” February 18, 2006 (www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/cunningham/); Thomas Frank, “What Is K Street’s Project?” New York Times, August 19, 2006.

  incompetent cronies: “Welcome to the Hackocracy,” New Republic, October 17,
2005.

  110 Privatization along these lines: Guttman and Willner, Shadow Government, p. xiii.

  111 a presidential commission on privatization: Linowes, Privatization, p. 1.

  “We would do well”: Harlan Cleveland, quoted in Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing Government, pp. 39–40.

  crossing from the temporal realm: Saritha Rai, “Short on Priests, U.S. Catholics Outsource Prayers to Indian Clergy,” New York Times, June 13, 2004.

  “While all professions”: Huntington, Soldier and the State, pp. 14–15.

  112 virtually nonexistent: Ramsay MacMullen, “Personal Power in the Roman Empire,” American Journal of Philology 107, no. 4 (Winter 1986), 512–524.

  Private security is a major growth industry: Paul Parfomak, Guarding America: Security Guards and U.S. Critical Infrastructure Protection, Congressional Research Service, November 12, 2004; Clifford D. Shearing and Philip C. Stenning, “Private Security: Issues for Social Control,” Social Problems 30, no. 5 (June 1983), pp. 493–506.

  buy themselves some private arbitration: Editorial, “‘Rent-a-Judge’ Good for Taxpayers,” Rocky Mountain News, July 28, 2005; Martin Kasindorf, “Rent-a-Judges Forced Out of California Courts,” USA Today, April 25, 2003; Ted Gest and Steve L. Hawkins, “Slug It Out in the Privacy of Your Own Courtroom,” U.S. News & World Report, December 5, 1988; Richard Lacayo, “Tell It to the Rent-a-Judge,” Time, August 29, 1988.

  turn the prison industry over to the private sector: Eric Schlosser, “The Prison-Industrial Complex,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1998.

  Entrepreneurs known as “bed-brokers”: Ibid.; Rena Singer, “View and Space Lousy, but the Realty Sells,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 7, 1997; Robert Bryce, “Texas Locks Up Market in Spare Jail Beds,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1995.

  In Rome, private companies sprang up: Schiavone, End of the Past, pp. 121–122.

  113 state support is diminishing: Sam Dillon, “At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization,” New York Times, October 16, 2005.

  “slow slide”: Ibid.

  BankAmerica Dean: Washburn, University, Inc., p. 5.

  Most of the funding: Ibid., p. xv

  Ken Lay Center: Ibid., p. xv

  114 “Kmart’s attitude has always been”: Ibid., p. 5.

  Meat inspection is done largely: Melody Petersen and Christopher Drew, “The Slaughterhouse Gamble,” New York Times, October 10, 2003.

  Americans were up in arms: Simon Romero and Heather Timmons, “A Ship Already Sailed,” New York Times, February 24, 2006.

  proposals to privatize Social Security: Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Progressive Dementia,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2005.

  the new Medicare prescription-drug plan: Milt Freudenheim, “Medicare Drug Plan Feeds More Profitable Managed Care,” New York Times, March 31, 2006; Milt Freudenheim, “A Windfall from Shifts to Medicare,” New York Times, July 18, 2006; Alan Sager and Deborah Socollar, “How Much Would Drug Makers’ Profits Rise Under a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit?” Boston University School of Public Health, April 2004.

  government by user fee: Paul Starr and Ross Corson, “Who Will Have the Numbers? The Rise of the Statistical Services Industry and the Politics of Public Data,” in Alonso and Starr, Politics of Numbers, pp. 415–447

  115 The vaults of the Smithsonian were once open: Edward Wyatt, “Smithsonian-Showtime TV Deal Raises Concerns, New York Times, March 31, 2006.

  “optioned America’s attic”: Edward Wyatt, “Smithsonian Agreement Angers Filmmakers,” New York Times, April 1, 2006.

  selling off public assets: Dennis Cauchon, “States to Sell or Lease Assets,” USA Today, June 8, 2006.

  tax collection . . . by casinos: Dirk Johnson, “Gambling’s Spread: Gold Rush or Fool’s Gold,” New York Times, October 6, 1991; Michael de-Courcy Hinds, “Riverboat Casinos Seek a Home in Pennsylvania,” New York Times, April 7, 1994; Leslie Eaton, “Tax Revenues Are a Windfall For Louisiana,” New York Times, June 26, 2006.

  pay the IRS with credit cards: Background information is available from the IRS at www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=101316,00.html.

  official interrogations . . . have been outsourced: Doug Struck, “Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says,” Washington Post, September 19, 2006; Alan Cowell, “British Role in U.S. Policy on Detainees Raises Storm,” New York Times, January 20, 2006; Ian Fisher, “Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces,” New York Times, December 1, 2005.

  sale of naming rights: Anne Schwartz, “Naming For Dollars,” Gothamgazette.com, May 13, 2002; see also the Web site Namingrightsonline.com.

  116 the Department of the Interior has proposed: Mark Clayton, “America’s National Parks: No Longer Ad-Free Zones?” Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 2006.

  “privatization rate”: Cullen Murphy, “Feudal Gestures,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2003.

  On paper the federal work force: Light, True Size of Government, pp. 1–6.

  117 “Contractors have become so big”: Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport,” The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.

  Caesar had such a person: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 108–110.

  Halliburton itself used subsidiaries: Colum Lynch, “Firm’s Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said,” Washington Post, June 23, 2001; Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport,” The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.

  overcharged the government: Jane Mayer, “Contract Sport,” The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.

  bribes-and-contracts conspiracy: James Glanz, “Wide Plot Seen in Guilty Plea in Iraq Project,” New York Times, February 2, 2006.

  118 a scathing report: James Glanz, “Iraq Rebuilding Badly Hobbled, U.S. Report Finds,” New York Times, January 24, 2006; James Glanz, “Idle Contractors Add Millions to Rebuilding,” New York Times, October 25, 2006.

  “spy drain”: Walter Pincus, “Increase in Contracting Intelligence Jobs Raises Concerns,” Washington Post, March 20, 2006.

  at least ninety former top officials: Eric Lipton, “High Contractor Pay Lures Counterterrorism Officials,” New York Times, June 18, 2006.

  “Everyone I knew”: Robert Baer, Blow the House Down, p. 88.

  The company that fits this profile: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, “The $8 Billion Shadow,” Vanity Fair, February 2007; Shane Harris, “A Stealth Company,’” National Journal, July 8, 2006.

  119 “We used to joke”: Shane Harris, “A Stealth Company,’” National Journal, July 8, 2006.

  turning the job of border police over to multinational contractors: Eric Lipton, “Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control,” New York Times, May 18, 2006.

  4. THE OUTSIDERS

  121 “When given the German command”: Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, quoted in Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p 94.

  “What struck me most about the palace”: Diamond, Squandered Victory, p. 298.

  122 “The dismal tract”: Tacitus, Annals, 1.61.

  “Let us be soon gone”: Quoted in Clunn, Quest for the Lost Roman Legions, p. xxxviii.

  123 The great physician: Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, p. 60.

  a British officer stationed in Germany: Clunn, Quest for the Lost Roman Legions, pp. 1–85; Wells, Battle That Stopped Rome, pp. 37–55.

  124 “somewhat ponderous”: Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, quoted in Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p. 94.

  that the Germans were manageable: In addition to Clunn, comprehensive accounts of the Teutoburg Forest disaster include Wells, Battle That Stopped Rome; Williams, Romans and Barbarians, pp. 65–115; and Delbruck, Barbarian Invasions, pp. 69–148. See also Fergus M. Bordewich, “The Ambush That Changed History,” Smithsonian, September 2005.

  “maximum ferocity”: Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, quoted in Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p. 94.

  125 “having a hard time of it”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.20.1–2.

  “While the Romans were in such difficulties”: Ibid., 56.20.
4.

  a computer game: www.3dgamers.com/games/rome/.

  126 feelings of omnipotence: Wells, Battle That Stopped Rome, p. 216. inflamed by omens: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.24.1–5.

  Augustus disbanded the German cavalry: Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, “The Deified Augustus,” 23, 25, 49.

  127 An enormous monument to Arminius: Clunn, Quest for the Lost Roman Legions, pp. 341–344.

  “Underestimation of space”: Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p. 86.

  “Romans simply could not believe”: Wells, Battle That Stopped Rome, p. 216.

  “would not have been receptive”: Ibid.

  128 hitting his head against a door: Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, “The Deified Augustus,” 23.

  Right after the campy bath scene: Alison Futrell, “Seeing Red: Spartacus as Domestic Economist,” in Joshel, Malamud, and McGuire, Imperial Projections, pp. 77–118.

  “We’re an empire now”: Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

  symbols . . . like the well-known fasces: Anthony J. Marshall, “Symbols and Showmanship in Roman Public Life: The Fasces,” Phoenix 38, no. 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 120–141.

  129 “a portable kit”: Ibid.

  “almost never cautious”: Goldsworthy, Roman Army at War, p. 286.

  “the old aggressive culture”: Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, p. 221.

  that same Crassus: Plutarch, Lives, vol. 3, pp. 315–437.

  “desiring for his part”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 40.12.1.

  130 “poured molten gold into his mouth”: Ibid., 40.27.2–3.

  conduct a mock parade: Plutarch, Lives, vol. 3, p. 399.

  the disaster at Cannae: Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, p. 200.

  “advanced so far”: Polybius, Histories, 3.107–118.

  131 “Nor did the Romans entirely learn their lesson”: Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, p. 202.

  The emperor would have none of it: Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, 31.12.3; Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, p. 306.

  As the chronicler Josephus wrote: Quoted in Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, p. 307.

  “All the Roman commanders”: Macdowall, Adrianople, p. 88.