Are We Rome?

by Cullen Murphy

  “probably . . . wrong to estimate”: Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306.

  the actual fighting force in each instance: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 212.

  invasions should be seen . . . as individual events: Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306.

  fragmented and fractious: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 212–213.

  If there was a tipping point: Peter Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” English Historical Review 110, no. 435 (February 1995), pp. 4–41; Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306.

  171 “no major defeat was suffered by the Roman army”: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 52; Peter Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” English Historical Review 110, no. 435 (February 1995), pp. 4–41.

  “concessions to barbarians were safer”: Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, p. 34.

  It meant giving up the revenues: Peter Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” English Historical Review 110, no. 435 (February 1995), pp. 4–41.

  “What we call the Fall of the Western Roman Empire”: Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, p. 35.

  172 environmentalists lament that the river: Richard Bernstein, “No Longer Europe’s Sewer, but Not the Rhine of Yore,” New York Times, April 21, 2006.

  174 “There was a strong feeling that federal agencies”: William Finnegan, “The Terrorism Beat,” The New Yorker, July 25, 2005.

  175 Chinese ownership of an important American energy company: Alexei Barrionuevo, “Foreign Suitors Nothing New in U.S. Oil Patch,” New York Times, July 1, 2005.

  176 not hard to envision how a modern Asian catalyst: One plausible scenario is described in James Fallows, “Countdown to a Meltdown,” Atlantic Monthly, July-August 2005.

  the biography of a counterfeit Prada handbag: Moises Naim, “It’s Not About Maps,” Washington Post (“Outlook”), May 28, 2006.

  177 our Rhine and Danube frontier . . . running nearly 2,000 miles: Angie C. Marek, “Border Wars,” U.S. News & World Report, November 28, 2005.

  178 “the largest between any two contiguous countries”: Quoted in Fareed Zakaria, “To Become an American,” Newsweek, April 10, 2006.

  “potentially explosive . . . revolution like no other”: Hanson, Mexifornia, pp. 17, 142.

  Immigrants are choosing new destinations: William H. Frey, Diversity Spreads Out: Metropolitan Shifts in Hispanic, Asian, and Black Populations Since 2000 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006); Rick Lyman, “New U.S. Immigrants Fan Out Across Nation,” New York Times, August 15, 2006.

  179 “The Roman empire of the fourth century”: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 203.

  “Let the prisoners pick the fruits”: Quoted in David Brooks, “Scuttling Toward Sanity,” New York Times, April 6, 2006.

  Louisiana’s “rent a convict” practice: Adam Nossiter, “With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates,” New York Times, July 5, 2006.

  a Spanish-language recording: David Montgomery, “An Anthem’s Discordant Notes,” Washington Post, April 28, 2006.

  “The images that sprang into my mind”: Roger Hernandez, “Anthem Top Topic So Far for Readers,” El Paso Times, August 22, 2006.

  180 capable of supplying . . . bean-and-beef burritos: P. W. Singer, “A Run for the Border,” Washington Post (“Outlook”), July 9, 2006.

  built and operated by private corporate security forces: Spencer Hsu and John Pomfret, “Technology Has Uneven Record on Securing Border,” Washington Post, May 21, 2006.

  barbarians being slaughtered . . . barbarians being welcomed: Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 204.

  campaign film . . . waves a small Mexican flag: Richard Rodriguez, “What a Wall Can’t Stop,” Washington Post, May 28, 2006.

  181 “We’ve done open arms”: Siobhan Gorman, “Immigration: The Endless Flood,” National Journal, February 7, 2004.

  “millions of barbarians had been pacified”: Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306. See also Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers, p. 202.

  182 half . . . would die before achieving that goal: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 86.

  accommodate the waves of immigration: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Office of Immigration Statistics, United States Department of Homeland Security, September 2003.

  In the earliest days of Ellis Island: Michael Powell, “U.S. Immigration Debate Is a Road Well Traveled,” Washington Post, May 8, 2006.

  radio stations are going bilingual . . . Hispanic high school graduates prefer English: Richard Cohen, “My History of English-Only,” Washington Post, May 30, 2006; Joel Kotkin, “The Multiculturalism of the Streets,” American Interest, Spring 2006; Martin Miller, “It’s Pure Spanglish at This L.A. Radio Station,” Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2005.

  183 “If you ask a second-generation American Muslim”: Quoted in James Fallows, “Declaring Victory,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2006.

  rates of intermarriage: Joel Kotkin, “The Multiculturalism of the Streets,” American Interest, Spring 2006.

  Population projections suggest: James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston, “The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration” (Washington, DC: National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, 1997).

  “how it will affect . . . Miss America”: Siobhan Gorman, “Immigration: The Endless Flood,” National Journal, February 7, 2004.

  Another analyst, who studies the “great immigrant portals”: Joel Kotkin, “The Multiculturalism of the Streets,” American Interest, Spring 2006.

  thousands . . . united to say these words: Editorial, “People Power,” New York Times, April 12, 2006.

  184 a masterly and influential study: The reference is to Brown’s World of Late Antiquity.

  left its mark on him: Peter L. Brown, “The World of Late Antiquity Revisited,” Symbolae Osloenses 72 (1997), pp. 5–30.

  “without invoking an intervening catastrophe”: Peter L. Brown, “The World of Late Antiquity Revisited,” Symbolae Osloenses 72 (1997), pp. 5–30.

  EPILOGUE: THERE ONCE WAS A GREAT CITY

  185 “One thought alone”: Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 131.

  capital . . . moved there from Rome: Ferrill, Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 99. Also Lewis, Dante, pp. 190–191.

  187 “extreme recalcitrance of the evidence”: Ramsay MacMullen, “Roman Elite Motivation: Three Questions,” Past and Present 88 (1980), pp. 3–16.

  Nero, famous for playing the cithara: C. E. Manning, “Acting and Nero’s Conception of the Principate,” Greece & Rome 22, no. 2 (October 1975), pp. 164–175; Holland, Nero, p. 70; Goodman, Roman World, pp. 4–9.

  What we know about Romulus Augustulus is this: Geoffrey Nathan, “The Last Emperor: The Fate of Romulus Augustulus,” Classica et Mediaevalia 43 (1992), pp. 261–271; Ralph W. Mathisen and Geoffrey Nathan, “Romulus Augustulus (475–476 A.D.)—Two Views,” De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors, www.roman-emperors.org/. See also Bury, Invasion of Europe, pp. 166–183; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 2, pp. 342–344.

  188 seems to have left Ravenna . . . given a pension: Geoffrey Nathan, “The Last Emperor: The Fate of Romulus Augustulus,” Classica et Mediaevalia 43 (1992), pp. 261–271.

  The most obvious route: T. Ashby and R.A.L. Fell, “The Via Flaminia,” Journal of Roman Studies 11 (1921), pp. 125–190; Chevalier, Roman Roads, pp. 131–139.

  That whole stretch of the Italian shore: For a memorable evocation of this region, see Robert Harris’s historical novel Pompeii. For resort life specifically, see Perrottet, Pagan Holiday, pp
. 63–90.

  the truly rich were known: Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, p. 141. Hadrian died somewhere on this hillside: Danziger and Purcell, Hadrian’s Empire, p. 283.

  has described the estate of Lucullus: Plutarch, Lives, vol. 2, pp. 602–603.

  Romulus Augustulus apparently passed his days: Geoffrey Nathan, “The Last Emperor: The Fate of Romulus Augustulus,” Classica et Mediaevalia 43 (1992), pp. 261–271.

  189 Odoacer was not so fortunate: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 2, pp. 452453.

  Others made the sensible point: Richard Parker, “Inside the ‘Collapsing’ Soviet Economy,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1990.

  190 “no proof that any important skills . . . were lost”: Lynn White Jr., “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 15, no. 2 (April 1940), pp. 141–159.

  191 “After the initial shock of barbarian incursions”: Gary B. Miles, “Roman and Modern Imperialism: A Reassessment,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 4, (October 1990), pp. 629–659.

  A senate composed of aristocrats: Lancon, Rome in Late Antiquity pp. 48–53.

  a general subsidence in well-being over time: Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome, pp. 104–120.

  “empire without end”: Virgil, Aeneid, 1.279.

  Virgil was speaking of Troy: Ibid., 2.363.

  “translation of empire”: Nordholt, Myth of the West, pp. 2, 6, 190–207.

  192 “The world’s scepter passed”: Ibid., p. 202.

  Charles Darwin joined in: Ibid., p. 196.

  “There is the moral of all human tales”: Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in Major Works, p. 179.

  193 its official two-tier system: Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp. 516–522; Gary B. Miles, “Roman and Modern Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 4 (October 1990), pp. 629–659; Ramsay MacMullen, “Personal Power in the Roman Empire,” American Journal of Philology 107, no. 4 (Winter 1986), pp. 512–524.

  “Nothing is more unfair than equality”: Quoted in Robert J. Antonio, “The Contradiction of Domination and Production in Bureaucracy: The Contribution of Organizational Efficiency to the Decline of the Roman Empire,” American Sociological Review 44, no. 6 (December 1979), pp. 895–912.

  194 the rich got their way in the manner of warlords: MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, pp. 8, 42, 112.

  Rome ran on slaves: W. V. Harris, “On War and Greed in the Second Century B.C.,” American Historical Review 76, no. 5 (December 1971), pp. 1371–1385; Schiavone, End of the Past, pp. 120–122.

  may have made up half the total population: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, p. 153.

  a prominent politician . . . killed by one of his slaves: Pliny, Natural History, 10.16; Tacitus, Annals, 14.40.

  195 “It is true that, because of this”: Schiavone, End of the Past, p. 111.

  “the tranquil and prosperous state of the empire”: Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 1, p. 50.

  196 imagines the journey his poem will take: Ovid, Tristia, 1.1.1–2.

  on the second floor: Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, “The Deified Augustus,” 72; Nunzio Giustozzi, “Apollo in the House of Augustus: Living with the God,” in La Regina, ed., Archaeological Guide to Rome, pp. 58–59.

  The Domus Flavia sprawls nearby: La Regina, ed., Archaeological Guide to Rome, pp. 48–76.

  198 made a start on each one: Some of what follows grew out of conversations over more than a decade with my colleague Robert D. Kaplan.

  199 “If U.S. metropolitan areas were countries”: Richard Florida, “The World Is Spiky,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2005.

  200 of the world’s hundred largest “economies”: Robert D. Kaplan, “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” Atlantic Monthly, December 1997.

  201 “Herein lies one of the curses of empire”: Eliot Cohen, “History and the Hyperpower,” Foreign Affairs, July 2004.

  Nero was castigated: Everett L. Wheeler, “Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy, Part I,” Journal of Military History 57, no. 1 (January 1993), pp. 7–41.

  empires . . . decline when they cease to expand: Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 6.18.

  a lot of academic theorizing: For a brief survey, see Emily S. Rosenberg, “Bursting America’s Imperial Bubble,” Chronicle Review, November 3, 2006.

  “Species, people, firms, governments”: Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail, p. 221.

  202 “We may say that Symmachus and his friends”: Barrow, Prefect and Emperor, p. 14.

  In the realm of foreign policy alone this could mean: Robert Kagan, quoted in Charles William Maynes, “The Perils of (and for) an Imperial America,” Foreign Policy, no. 111 (Summer 1998), pp. 36–48.

  the more powerful America becomes: Niebuhr, Irony of American History, p. 74.

  203 “An empire remains powerful”: Quoted in Anthony Pagden, “The Problems of Superpower,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2004.

  204 “Empire-builders yearn for stability”: Charles S. Maier, “An American Empire?” Harvard, November/December 2002.

  program of national service: Many proposals have been put forward over the years. See, for instance, Charles Moskos and Paul Glastris, “Now Do You Believe We Need a Draft?” Washington Monthly, November 2001.

  205 “ruthlessly extracted”: Luttwak, Grand Strategy, p. 130.

  Rome’s elites were deeply satisfied: Schiavone, End of the Past, pp. 3–15, 175–203.

  206 “We have long since”: Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline, 52.11.

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