The Roman Way to Trash a Republic

Michelle Berenfeld: “In about 80 years, roughly the same length of time between the end of World War II and now, the Roman Republic was transformed into a dictatorship. If you had told a Roman senator at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. that his grandchildren would willingly hand over governance to a monarch, he would not have believed you. Like the American one, the Roman Republic was founded on the rejection of a king. Rome had a representative government that, though flawed, was based on the rule of law, with freedom of speech and rights to legal recourse for its citizens.”

“The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years, about twice as long as Americans have had theirs. As was surely true for the Romans, most Americans can hardly imagine that their system of self-government might break and be replaced by an imperial dynasty. That is why considering what undid the Roman Republic is useful today—if we can learn from the Romans’ mistakes.”