A brisk, eye-opening account of the Roman Republic's fall from democracy to dictatorship and the uncanny parallels to our own perilous political moment?an engaging and learned cautionary tale.
It can happen to us. But it doesn't have to.
The Roman Republic, like the American one, was founded on the overthrow of a king. It was a system based in the rule of law, with separation of powers among governing bodies, and the right of legal recourse for its citizens. By the time the emperor Augustus came along in 27 BCE, the Republic was ravaged by decades of vicious partisanship, political violence, and the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of very few. With citizens weary and afraid, Augustus took the opportunity to dismantle the Republic while pretending to restore it.
The Senate and the people of Rome let it happen. They let Augustus accumulate domestic powers that no one person had ever been allowed to wield. They stood by as he exacted retribution upon his enemies, rewrote history, and fashioned an image of himself that had little connection to reality. Romans looked the other way as Augustus manipulated elections, chose his own successor, and founded a monarchic dynasty that would last for more than a millennium.
Americans can and must learn from the Romans' mistakes. This book offers the tools Americans need to recognize the Augustan methods Donald Trump is already employing and urges them to respond in ways the Romans did not. It considers the damage done to the Roman Republic before Augustus (close calls and returns to 'normal' without addressing root causes of disruption, increasing violence in politics, extraordinary wealth of few alongside the precarity of many) and missed opportunities for repair and rebuilding. With hope bolstered by her ironic and quippy sense of civic practicality, Michelle Berenfeld proposes that Rome's slide into dictatorship was not inevitable and neither is ours. This book asks Americans not to fall for Augustus's story nor the one being unspooled for us now, reminding us that the U.S. founding fathers saw Augustus and Rome as a cautionary tale and urging us to imagine a different path.
