The Secret Builder of Civilization

Nations can grow and strengthen or they can decline and fall. While this fact is clear, it is often difficult to determine whether a nation is slipping into the void or marching on to glory. The nations of the world today are split between those people who think that their nation is growing into new horizons, and those who think that their nation is shrinking into the grave. Both groups of people make their claims based on what they think builds a society and what destroys it.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56 AD -117 AD) was a senator of Rome and a historian of some repute. He, in his era, was living under a new Rome; an Imperial Rome, recently morphed from it's former Republic. Tacitus upon observing his conditions thought that Rome was en route to the tomb, as do many suspect of their own nations today. Tacitus put forward several arguments that Rome was decaying and he gave the reasons why, which can be found in his historical work The Annals. 

He listed such problems as political corruption and instability, repeated economic crisis, and rebellion among the legions, among others. Why, was there so much skullduggery, loose money, and tumult? Tacitus suggested that it was due to the departure from the old roman disciplines and morals. In the days of Tacitus, emperors supreme, Julius and Augustus Caesar were what all politicians aspired to with infinite ambition; thusly cultivating general corruption and instability as evil and conspiring men fought for the ultimate diadem.  The economy of Rome fell to shambles for many reasons, namely that the citizens of Rome and the adjacent provinces became slavish and wanted masters to protect them, feed them, and tell the what to do. That kind of person spends flippantly and earns little, which, as I'm sure you'd agree would land a person and a state in a world of hurt. Lastly Roman legions became weakened because of two reasons: the extra burdens cast upon them by politicians and citizens to maintain their boisterous lifestyles, and that they forgot their ancient disciplines thus becoming more timid  and weak fighters.  

This evil state of affairs at the time of Tacitus is a grim spectacle when contrasted against a time when a Republican Rome was on the rise. Prior to such degraded conditions, politicians were like Brutus the Elder, who overthrew the corrupt monarchy and helped found the Republic; or like Cincinnatus, who for a brief time took control of Rome to repel invaders, and afterwords restored Rome to the people although he could of stayed in power. Compare the degenerate individuals of Imperial Rome with the well knit, wise, independent patriots of Republican Rome: One was addicted to bread and circuses, the other to hard work and virtue (not much of comparison when the two are complete opposites!) Meanwhile Roman influence grew vast and stretched over civilized europe on the backs of well paid, sufficiently supplied, superbly disciplined legionaries. And poor Tacitus was left to muse: "How few were left who had seen the republic! Thus the State had been revolutionised, and there was not a vestige left of the old sound morality."

Leastways those were the conclusions of Tacitus, but the common claim today is that Rome fell because of external influences, and not because it was the moral failure of the Roman. Those in the tradition of Marx point to class warfare, for example. Meanwhile others claim that the Roman was moral, but the leadership was not. Still others pin the fall of Rome to freak occurrences in nature: climate change, lead leaking into their water, drought and famine. Critics of Christianity blame the Christians for perverting the Romans from their ancestral ways. And lastly the rise of other nations. 

The shallow observers of Rome give these reasons and some might even go so deep as to place blame upon the government, economy, and military but they peruse the quandary no further. No one places the blame accurately; the blame for Rome's fall is the Roman. Logical? It should be. If the Roman was responsible for the name "Rome" and the reputation of "Rome" and constituted "Rome," then it must of been an internal, innate change in what it meant to be a Roman; flattery notwithstanding. 

What of the nations of today? Do we fully grasp the magnitude of our positions? We teeter on the brink of intellectual and cultural failure because none of us can remotely understand the structure of real righteous power! We blame other nations for our economic failures! What are we Mercantilists? If our economies are failing it is because WE are failing. Like the late Romans, we are no longer independent land owners and business owners, we prefer to have the "security" of a job working for the "upperclass" and the government! And what of our politics? Is the US president our father? Is the state our nanny? Do we do chores for them and in return we get a weekly allowance? If we do, we are surfs. If we don't we are Roman Republicans. 

Some look at our respective nations and say that because are economies are tightly regulated, and our governments are enlightened, and our people are free to be degenerate and amoral, that civilization is advancing. Rome didn't advance. We won't. 

Restoring the old republics and building a golden age, all rests on you; you are the secret builder of civilization!