Are We Rome?

by Cullen Murphy

  132 The battle was joined: Much about the battle remains confusing. See Delbruck, Barbarian Invasions, pp. 269–284; Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates, pp. 1–42; Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 529–532; Ferrill, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 59–64; Lendon, Soldiers & Ghosts, pp. 305–309; Macdowall, Adrianople, passim.

  “except the one at Cannae”: Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, p. 31.14.19.

  “Citty upon a Hill”: John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630), in Gunn, ed., Early American Writing, p. 11.

  “thought of themselves not as a single ethnic group”: Gary B. Miles, “Roman and Modern Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 4 (October 1990), pp. 629–659.

  granted Roman citizenship: Potter, Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 138–139.

  the dress of faraway peoples: Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 21;

  Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, p. 221.

  133 a new picture of “Betty Crocker”: Rochelle L. Stanfield, “Blending of America,” National Journal, September 13, 1997.

  Think schematically: An economic version of the cultural idea is advanced in Cunliffe, Greeks, Romans, & Barbarians, p. 3.

  the word “barbarians”: Ferris, Enemies of Rome, p. 4.

  One way of translating it: John E. Coleman, “Ancient Greek Ethnocentrism,” in Coleman and Walz, eds., Greeks and Barbarians, p. 178.

  an anonymous writer in the fourth century: Thompson, Roman Reformer, p. 113.

  “May Jesus protect the world”: Ferrill, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 91.

  134 “Their decisions were based”: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 70.

  “The Romans acquired information”: Hagith S. Sivan, review of Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Antiquity, by A. D. Lee, Speculum 71, no. 4 (October 1996), pp. 973–975.

  it’s fascinating to watch as the Romans: Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 145–158.

  The overland trip: Fergus Millar, “Emperors, Frontiers, and Foreign Relations, 31 B.C. to A.D. 378,” Britannia 13 (1982), pp. 1–23.

  135 American intelligence often suffers: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, pp. 267–272.

  Romans who affected Greek ways: Joseph Ward Swain, “The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History Under the Roman Empire,” Classical Philology 35, no. 1 (January 1940), pp. 1–21.

  Other groups fared less well: Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, pp. 65–67.

  The Egyptians: Dorothy J. Thompson, “Egypt and Parthia Through Roman Eyes,” Classical Review 39, no. 1 (1989), pp. 86–87.

  Jews were regarded: Jerry L. Daniel, “Anti-Semitism in the Hellenic-Roman Period,” Journal of Biblical Literature 98, no. 1 (March 1979), pp. 45–65; Fergus Millar, “Last Year in Jerusalem: Monuments of the Jewish War in Rome,” in Edmondson, Mason, and Rives, eds., Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, pp. 101–128.

  136 “A German is not”: Tacitus, Germania, 14.

  Cicero was quick to point out: Quoted in Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, p. 2.

  You can’t miss an echo: John Hendren, “General’s Speeches Broke Pentagon Rules,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2004; editorial, “A General’s Religious War,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 2004.

  137 Strabo and Plutarch: Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, pp. 201–206.

  “on some of these subject nations”: Appian, Roman History, Preface, 7.

  the world’s lingua franca: Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, p. 84.

  138 America has confronted the hostility: See, for instance. Fareed Zakaria, “The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?” Newsweek, October 15, 2001; Michael Kamber, “Why They Hate Us,” Village Voice, October 16, 2001; Jonathan Tepperman, “The Anti-Anti-Americans,” New York Times, December 12, 2004; Ivan Eland, “It’s What We Do,” American Prospect, January 2006.

  Europeans are considerably more likely: “America’s Image Slips, but Allies Share U.S. Concerns over Iran, Hamas,” Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2006).

  “acid reflux”: Margaret Drabble, “I Loathe America, and What It Has Done to the Rest of the World,” Daily Telegraph, August 5, 2003.

  Harold Nicolson told a friend: Patten, Cousins and Strangers, p. 4.

  “vassals and tributaries”: Brzezinski, Grand Chessboard, p. 6.

  139 Opinion surveys show: “America’s Image Slips, but Allies Share U.S. Concerns over Iran, Hamas,” Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2006).

  a columnist in our stalwart ally Britain: Charlie Brooker, “Dumb Show,” The Guardian, October 23, 2004.

  publicly degrading the captured leaders: Michael Vlahos, “The Weakness of Empire,” American Conservative, May 22, 2006.

  The story is told: The king was Antiochus IV of Syria. Eliot Cohen, “History and the Hyperpower,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2004; Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 213. See also Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, p. 171.

  140 Polybius . . . refers to the Romans: Craige Champion, “Romans as Barbaroi: Three Polybian Speeches and the Politics of Cultural Indeterminacy,” Classical Philology 95 (October 2000), pp. 425–444.

  the annual Teamsters convention: Margaret Malamud and Donald T. MacGuire, Jr., “Living Like Romans in Las Vegas,” in Joshel, Malamud, and McGuire, eds., Imperial Projections, p. 256.

  one wealthy Roman: Balsdon, Romans & Aliens, p. 177.

  The Greek philosopher Demonax: Ibid., p. 178.

  141 “It was possible for an American”: Quoted in Stanley Meisler, “A Nation of No-Nothings,” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1990.

  Lynne Cheney wondered aloud: Remarks at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, October 5, 2001; office of Lynne Cheney, the White House.

  cannot name the ocean: Asia in the Schools: Preparing Young Americans for Today’s Interconnected World (New York: Asia Society, 2001).

  can’t locate Iran or Iraq: National Geographic/Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey (Washington, DC: National Geographic Education Foundation, 2002).

  “stubborn monolingualism”: Securing America’s Future: Global Education for a Global Age (Washington, DC: NAFSA: Association of International Educators, 2003).

  to get from Japan to Australia: National Geographic/Roper Public Affairs, 2006 Geographic Literacy Study (Washington, DC: National Geographic Education Foundation, 2006).

  142 severe restrictions on foreign students: Burton Bollag, “College Officials Report Frustrations with Homeland-Security Agents,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 17, 2005.

  applications have slipped sharply: Sam Dillon, “U.S. Slips in Attracting the World’s Best Students,” New York Times, December 21, 2004.

  three minutes to the genocide in Darfur: Sherry Ricchiardi, “Déjà Vu,” American Journalism Review, February/March 2005.

  “I once asked an American general”: H.D.S. Greenway, “Heeding British Ghosts,” Boston Globe, June 6, 2006.

  so-called “black budget”: Scott Shane, “Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence,” New York Times, November 8, 2005.

  143 “Sterling exceptions aside”: Edward G. Shirley [Reuel Marc Gerecht], “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” Atlantic Monthly, February 1998.

  “moral barrier” . . . “information barrier”: A. Alfoldi, “The Moral Barrier on Rhine and Danube,” Congress of Roman Frontier Studies (Durham, 1952), pp. 1–16; Fergus Millar, “Emperors, Frontiers, and Foreign Relations, 31 B.C. to A.D. 378,” Britannia 13 (1982), pp. 1–23.

  “an ideology of the foreigner”: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 76.

  “reality-based community”: Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

  the motivations of his main character: Greene, Quiet American, p. 13.

  144 two basic components of the American stance: Hartz, Liberal Tradition in America, pp. 285–286.

  145 “We came in peace”: Godwin, Apollo 11, p. 11.

  Romans sought “symbolic d
eference”: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 162.

  laid down a single criterion: Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 76.

  “needs to clearly and publicly express”: Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti, “Bush Said to Be Frustrated by Level of Public Support in Iraq,” New York Times, August 16, 2006.

  a fictitious ethnic group: “American Notes: Ethnicity,” Time, January 20, 1992; American Jewish Committee.

  146 The “just like us” argument: Benjamin Schwarz, “The Diversity Myth,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1995.

  sameness of popular commerce and culture: Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, pp. 17–18, 83–84.

  most of the wealth, creativity, and entrepreneurship: Richard Florida, “The World Is Spiky,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2005.

  Roman Empire . . . urbanized and spiky: Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 1021–1022.

  “a sharp cultural cleavage”: Ibid., p. 995

  147 “The empire was ruled”: Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, p. 14.

  148 he was routinely referred to in the press: See, for instance, Steve and Cokie Roberts, “Political Interests Blind Bush to Military Disaster,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 11, 2004; Asia Aydintasbas, “Turning Friend into Foe in Baghdad,” New York Times, May 22, 2004.

  Prior to taking up his post: Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 4.

  translators, scarce at the outset: Katherine McIntire Peters, “Lost in Translation,” Government Executive, May 2002; Hendrik Hertzberg, “Studies Say,” New Yorker, December 18, 2006; Renee Merle, “First Ears, Then Hearts and Minds,” Washington Post, November 2, 2006.

  “From inside the palace”: Diamond, Squandered Victory, p. 92.

  “Mission Accomplished” action figure: Ibid., p. 75.

  “fractal set of hierarchies”: Maier, Among Empires, pp. 60–61.

  to create an embryonic version: Peter Galbraith, “The Mess,” New York Review of Books, March 9, 2006.

  “I hoped that these sessions would evolve”: Bremer, My Year in Iraq, p. 63.

  a traffic code: William Langewiesche, “Welcome to the Green Zone,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2004. See also Peter Galbraith, “The Mess,” New York Review of Books, March 9, 2006. Diamond, Squandered Victory, provides personal details on American operations inside the Green Zone. The best book-length treatment of the subject is Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

  One Iraqi employed in the Green Zone: Muean Aljabiry, “How Do You Say Clueless?” Washington Post, March 19, 2006.

  150 fiasco in Somalia: Craig Timberg, “Mistaken Entry into Clan Dispute Led to U.S. Black Eye in Somalia,” Washington Post, July 2, 2006.

  “demonstrations of will”: Charles Krauthammer, “The Bush Doctrine,” Time, March 5, 2001.

  151 trained and armed Muslim warriors: Mary Anne Weaver, “Blowback,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1996.

  encouraged . . . to start growing flowers: Christopher S. Wren, “U.S. Saves on Flowers from Andes,” New York Times, February 17, 1997; Anthony DePalma, “In Trade Issue, the Pressure Is on Flowers,” New York Times, January 24, 2002.

  giving rise to . . . Korean words: Yongshik Bong, “Yongmi: Pragmatic Anti-Americanism in South Korea,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 10, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2004), pp. 153–165.

  area codes: Ariana Eonjung Cha, “Baghdad’s U.S. Zone a Stand-in for Home,” Washington Post, December 6, 2003; Robin Roberts, “One Year Later,” Good Morning America, ABC News, March 11, 2004; William Langewiesche, “Welcome to the Green Zone,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2004.

  5. THE BORDERS

  152 “The barbarians were adapting themselves”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.18.2.

  “Ai pledch aliyens”: Editorial, “People Power,” New York Times, April 12, 2006.

  the great stonework fortification: Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 25–43; Burton, Hadrian’s Wall Path, pp. 16–23.

  153 “The hard road goes on and on”: Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill, p. 146.

  154 ordnance map reveals: Ordnance Survey/OL43: Hadrian’s Wall, 2005.

  155 did their own heavy lifting: Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 66–79.

  nineteenth-century calculation: Ibid., pp. 82–83.

  the total population: Goodman, Roman World, 44 B.C.–A.D. 180, p. 159.

  157 “A border . . . is where you draw a line”: Dennis West and Joan M. West, “Borders and Boundaries: An Interview with John Sayles,” Cineaste 22, no. 3 (Summer 1996).

  not the exterior but the interior: Charles S. Maier, “An American Empire?” Harvard, November/December 2002.

  158 DNA . . . could someday mark a political border: Peter Prengaman, “DNA Testing More Common Among Immigrants,” Associated Press, July 27, 2006.

  159 experts have been gathering regularly: The proceedings of the Limes Congresses are published in British Archaeological Reports, Oxford (www.archaeopress.com).

  “in a fit of absence of mind”: Seeley, Expansion of England, quoted in Owen Chadwick, “Historian of Empire,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 4 (1981), pp. 877–880.

  Tiberius once urged his stepson: Tacitus, Annals, 2.26.

  160 Trajan . . . built an arched span: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 68.13.1–2.

  the earthen Antonine Wall: Breeze and Dobson, Hadrian’s Wall, pp. 88–116.

  for one fifty-mile stretch: Olwen Brogan, “An Introduction to the Roman Land Frontier in Germany,” Greece & Rome 3, no. 7 (October 1933), pp. 22–30; Peter S. Wells, “The Limes and Hadrian’s Wall,” Expedition 47, no. 1, pp. 18–24.

  walls and trenches in the middle of nowhere: Williams, Reach of Rome, pp. 115–155.

  transport planes . . . fly into Rasheed: GlobalSecurity.org.

  161 “All along the borders”: Cambridge Ancient History 11, p. 82.

  another authority referred to the line: Andreas Alfoldi, “The Moral Barrier on Rhine and Danube,” in Birley, ed., Congress, pp. 1–16.

  “There was no Roman historian”: Ibid.

  Domitian, after wiping out one tribe: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 135.

  enlisted prominent architects: Linda Hales, “At the Borders, Creative Crossings,” Washington Post, July 29, 2006.

  162 territorial flux has been the norm: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, pp. 1–2; International Boundary Research Unit, University of Durham (www.dur.ac.uk/ibru/).

  Why did the frontiers stop where they did?: John Cecil Mann, “The Frontiers of the Principate,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt 2, no. 1 (1974).

  Augustus wrote out instructions: Tacitus, Annals, 1.11; Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, pp. 90–91.

  “the view of a weary . . . old man”: John Cecil Mann, “The Frontiers of the Principate,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt 2, no. 1 (1974).

  the warning recalls the farewell addresses: Commager, Documents of American History, pp. 174, 653.

  163 none that announced the edge of the imperium itself: Isaac, Limits of Empire, pp. 395–398.

  borders were established . . . for different reasons: Whittaker, Frontiers of

  the Roman Empire, pp. 8–9, 85–97.

  Plenty of emperors after Augustus: Ibid., p. 8.

  164 “shall we go on conferring our Civilization?”: Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” in Zwick, Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire, pp. 22–39.

  sales of salsa: Michael J. Weiss, “The Salsa Sectors,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1997.

  you really would see something: MacMullen, Romanization, pp. 124–137; Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 44–45.

  165 something akin to dog tags: Davies, Service in the Roman Army, p. 164.

  some 20,000 identical statues: MacMullen, Romanization, p. 129.

  after a coup dislodged one barbarian: Tacitus, Annals, 2.62.

  stout, swift horses . . . frozen remains: John W. Eadie, “The Development of Roman Mailed Cavalry,” Journal of Roman Studies 57, no. 1/2 (1967), pp. 161–173.

  Map the places where Roman artifacts have been found: Whitt
aker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 98–131; Cunliffe, Greeks, Romans & Barbarians, pp. 171–192.

  166 German gets its word: Williams, Romans and Barbarians, pp. 75, 77. only word left by the Visigoths: Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 125.

  barbarians were fast learners: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 118.

  Attila employed several Latin secretaries: Thompson, Huns, pp. 139–140.

  The one eyewitness account: Ibid., pp. 122–123.

  clamp down on trade: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 119; Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 89.

  channel commerce . . . weren’t passports: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, pp. 204–205; Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 121.

  167 “undramatic adjustments”: Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, p. 4. somewhat Romanized barbarians: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, pp. 130, 204–208.

  It has been said of Kipling: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 2.

  168 his family . . . exemplifies how quickly: Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 38; Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 209.

  Think of Stilicho . . . Alaric himself had once served Rome: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, pp. 212–213; Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates, pp. 183–223.

  comes from maps in textbooks . . . a sense of unstoppable power: Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306.

  169 a long reflection about the 1992 Los Angeles riots: Jack Miles, “Blacks vs. Browns,” Atlantic Monthly, October 1992.

  usually with time to recover . . . Some cities: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, pp. 50–57.

  not above picking fights: John F. Drinkwater, “‘The Germanic Threat on the Rhine Frontier’: A Romano-Gallic Artefact?” in Mathisen and Sivan, eds., Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, pp. 20–30.

  “the chance to show their mettle”: Linda Feldmann, “Presidencies Hewn by War,” Christian Science Monitor, March 21, 2003.

  170 “carelessly transmitted numerals”: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 53.

  cautions against the traditional rhetoric: Ibid., p. 54. Goffart, in Barbarians and Romans, also resists the “vocabulary of floods, waves, and other vivid images” (p. 4).