Rome and Us #1: Governance

While reading Mary Beard’s SPQR on ancient Rome, I was struck by how almost all of Rome’s problems and solutions to the problem called governance are still there even today. In 2,000 years, have we solved and improved nothing?

 

Within 2 centuries of its founding, Rome had (unbelievably) gotten rid of not just a particular king, but the very idea of a king itself. Monarchy was replaced by “liberty” and the “free Republic of Rome”. Here’s how Rome defined a Republic:

“Two central tenets of Republican government were that office holding should always be temporary and that, except in emergencies when one man might need to take control for a short while, power should always be shared.”

The dislike towards the idea of a king was deeply entrenched:

“To be accused of wanting to be rex (king) was a political death sentence for any Roman; and no Roman emperor would ever countenance being called a king, even though some cynical observers wondered what the difference was.”

Even Julius Caesar was wary of wearing the crown for this very reason. Though he did test the public’s reaction via an orchestrated public event where Mark Antony offered him the crown which Caesar then magnanimously refused. Not once, but thrice, as Antony said in the famous Shakespeare speech:

“I thrice presented him (Caesar) a kingly crown,

Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?”

 

Limited terms of power, power sharing mechanisms, and talking as if one didn’t care for power while doing everything to get it. It was true in Rome; and just as true in every modern country today…

 

Over time, power sharing arrangements evolved, with plebeians (commoners) getting more of it from the patricians (rich elite), which “effectively rewrote the political power structure of the city”. Most Western democracies evolved the same way, except they did it thousands of years after Rome.

 

Even back then, Rome had its share of debates on the role of the elected representative, a question we ask today as well:

“Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters, bound to follow the will of the electorate? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise their judgment in the changing circumstances of government?”

 

When it came to the masses who could vote, Romans had the same concern that we have today, that the masses only seemed to understand and care about “bread and circuses”, so should they really have a say in who governs at all?

 

And yet, despite its flaws and problems, the Roman political system was stable:

“There is no sign at all that the character of the ruler affected the basic template of government at home or abroad in any significant way. If Gaius or Nero or Domitian really were as irresponsible, sadistic and mad as they are painted, it made little or no difference to how Roman politics and empire worked behind the headline anecdotes.”

Things hardly seem to change no matter who is in power, even today.

 

Are all these similarities between ancient Rome and us on all aspects of governance a sign that there’s no better solution to the problem called governance? Is this the best system possible? Have we max’ed out?

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