The Terrorist Attack that Brought Down the Roman Republic

From "the more things change, the more things remain the same" file, or as an old teacher used to quote: "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9), comes this....

If you watched the latest Star Wars movies (filmed in part in Italy no less), the galactic Empire is so obviously modeled after the Roman Empire that the Roman-styled buildings used in the movies seem overkill. Both empires had their starts as republics (essentially representative democracies), and both republics fell when the people, in their fear, ceded sweeping power to the executive branch. And just as Rome's emperors promised to return power to the people (and never did), so too did our good Senator Palpatine, aka, Galactic Emperor. (See Wikipedia: "The early Julio-Claudian emperors maintained that the res publica still existed under the protection of their extraordinary powers and would eventually return to its republican form.")

Power, once ceded, like water spilt, rarely returns to its former place. Thankfully, all that could never happen in the U.S. Or could it? (Read this recent report.)

Anyway, getting back to that real republic and empire (not the galatic one), there's a wonderful Op-Ed by Robert Harris in the New York Times this weekend, that notes that the decline of the Roman republic began with a terrorist attack. Some excerpts from the article:

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. [Hmmm, wasn't a senator kidnapped in Star Wars Episode III?]

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Harris goes on to describe the terrorist then as terrorist non-state actors, capable to spread incredible fear among a people who were not accustomed to being attacked on their own soil (like Al Qaeda). He also notes the check and balances of the Roman republic and the remarkable liberty people had under it. All that changed after the attack at Ostia...

Mr. Harris continues:

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius [by the way, this is the annoying Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars], to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

.... Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power.

Harris opines: By the oldest trick in the political book -- the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” -- powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

....

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

[The passage of the law] was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar “the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate” was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul....

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. [Sound familiar?] In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, ....

Caesar crossed the Rubicon (a river in northern Italy, which generals were not permitted to cross with a standing army), and plunged republican Rome into a civil war, from which he would become the first of a series of emperors. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" today refers to any people committing themselves irrevocably to a course of action.

Of course the terrorists didn't destroy the Roman republic, the overreaction of the people to the terrorists destroyed the republic. And that full quote in Ecclesiastes 1:9, you ask? "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

I rate the article an A- on my rating system:
A = Must read, educational, informative.
B = Should read for more informative details
C = Take it or leave it. I've summarized the main points
D = No need to read.
F = It's so bad, you SHOULD read it.