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Imagine a world in which political norms have broken down. Senators use bad faith arguments to block the government from getting anything done. An autocrat rigs elections and gives himself complete control over the government. Even stranger, many voters subscribe to the autocrat's personality cult and agree that he should have absolute control.

Welcome to Rome in the first century B.C.E. The republic that had existed for over 400 years had finally hit a crisis it couldn't overcome. Rome itself wouldn't fall, but during this period it lost its republic forever.

The man who played the biggest role in disrupting Rome's republic was Augustus Caesar, who made himself the first emperor of Rome in 27 B.C.E. By that point, the republic's political norms had been breaking down for about a century, and Augustus was in a position to take advantage of that.

Before that century, "there had been a really long period where the republic functioned," says Edward J. Watts, author of the new book Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. Political norms were heeded; and when the government ran into a new problem, it would amend itself to keep working. For over 300 years, the republic operated this way. There was no political violence, land theft or capital punishment because those went against the political norms Rome had established.

Then, in 133 B.C.E., Rome experienced its first political murder in the history of the republic. Senators were angry that Tiberius Gracchus, an elected official who had tried to redistribute land to the poor, was seeking a second term as tribune of the plebs. During a fight that broke out between Tiberius's followers and opponents, senators beat him to death with wooden chairs and helped murder nearly 300 of his followers.

Political violence increased in the 80s B.C.E. when political factions started stealing people's land and killing their enemies. In 44, senators murdered Augustus' great-uncle Julius Caesar after he unconstitutionally named himself dictator for life.

Non-violent political dysfunction increased during this time, too. During the 60s B.C.E., a senator named Cato the Younger had constantly and unnecessarily used procedural delays to block the senate from voting on legislation he did not like for years. Other senators went along with this because they considered Cato a moral leader.

In 59 B.C.E., one of the consuls working with Cato even tried to shut down all public business for the entire year by declaring each day of the year a religious holiday. (In the Roman Republic, saying the gods were angry was an acceptable reason to declare a holiday and postpone voting.)

So why didn't anyone step in to punish these politicians for their antics? "If you believe your republic will last forever, then doing things like not holding a vote on something essential for three years-you don't see the problem in that, necessarily," Watts suggests.

As Rome grew, it periodically amended its republic to keep it functioning. However, by the time of Cato the Younger, the republic had functioned so well for so long that a lot of people took its ability to survive for granted. And by the time Augustus took power, most people didn't remember a time before political violence, land theft and government dysfunction were the norm.

Augustus realized that his subjects were traumatized by the status quo. His winning tactic was to "promise that the rule of law would return-and that no one would be executed for no reason and no one's property would be stolen," says Watts. "There were a lot of people who were willing to accept that in exchange for the right to have what we would see as political freedom."

In other words, a lot of Romans were okay with Augustus assuming supreme control as long as he kept the peace-never mind that he had actually contributed to the violence and property thefts he now claimed only he could fix. Five years into his rule, Augustus bragged: "I freed all people from the fear and danger they experienced using my own funds."

In addition to Augustus' position as emperor, he also served as one of two consuls. The position of consul was technically the highest elected office in Rome, but under Augustus the elections weren't free and he "won" every year. Free Roman men could still vote for other elected officials (as opposed to free women and slaves, who couldn't vote), but there was a catch.

"No one really could run if [Augustus] didn't approve of them," Watts says. "So it wasn't possible really to run as a candidate who opposed Augustus."

Historians like Watts are still surprised-and unsettled-by the longevity of the Roman state following its massive governmental collapse. "It could have been and probably should have been much, much worse for the Romans than it actually was to lose their republic," says Watts.

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How Rome Destroyed Its Own Republic | HISTORY

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Augustus told Romans he was the only one who could save Rome. And they believed him.

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Imperial Expansion and Moral Decline in the Roman Republic

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Imperial Expansion and Moral Decline in the Roman Republic

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Mos Maiorum: What led to the Fall of the Roman Republic?

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Mos Maiorum: What led to the Fall of the Roman Republic?

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Mos Maiorum: What led to the fall of the Roman Republic?

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How the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire

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Pompey vs Caesar

The middle years of the first century BC were marked by violence in the city, and fighting between gangs supporting rival politicians and political programmes.

The two protagonists were Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ('Pompey the Great', as he was called, after Alexander the Great) and Julius Caesar. Originally allies, they became bitter enemies. Both had conquered vast tracts of territory: Pompey in what is now Turkey, Caesar in France.

Caesar promoted radical policies in the spirit of Tiberius Gracchus; Pompey had the support of the traditionalists.

Historians in both the ancient and modern world have devoted enormous energy to tracking the precise stages by which these two men came head-to-head in civil war. For much of this period we can actually follow the daily course of events thanks to the surviving letters of a contemporary politician, Marcus Tullius Cicero.

But the fact is that, given the power each had accrued and their entrenched opposition, war between them was almost inevitable. It broke out in 49 BC. By the end of 48 BC, Pompey was dead (beheaded as he tried to land in Egypt) and Caesar was left - to all intents and purposes - as the first emperor of Rome.

But not in name. Using the old title of 'dictator', he notoriously received the kind of honours that were usually reserved for the gods. He also embarked on another programme of reform including such radical measures as the cancellation of debts and the settlement of landless veteran soldiers.

He did not, however, have long to effect change (perhaps his most lasting innovation was his reform of the calendar and the introduction of the system of 'leap years' that we still use today). For in 44 BC he too was murdered by a posse of senators, in the name of 'liberty'.

Not much 'liberty' was to follow. Instead there was another decade of civil war as Caesar's supporters first of all battled it out with his assassins, and when they had been finished off, fought among themselves.

There was no other major player left when in 31 BC Octavian (Caesar's nephew and adopted son) defeated Antony at a naval battle near Actium in northern Greece.

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The middle years of the first century BC were marked by violence in the city, and fighting between gangs supporting rival politicians and political programmes. The two protagonists were Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ('Pompey the Great', as he was called, after Alexander the Great) and Julius Caesar. Originally allies, they became bitter enemies.

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What America Can Learn from the Fall of the Roman Republic

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What America Can Learn from the Fall of the Roman Republic

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If you were a Roman citizen around, say, 200 BC, you probably would have assumed Rome was going to last forever.

At the time, Rome was the greatest republic in human history, and its institutions had proven resilient through invasions and all kinds of disasters. But the foundations of Rome started to weaken less than a century later, and by 27 BC the republic had collapsed entirely.

The story of Rome's fall is both complicated and relatively straightforward: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citizens lost faith in the system altogether and gradually fell into the arms of tyrants and demagogues.

If all of that sounds familiar, well, that's because the parallels to our current political moment are striking. Edward Watts, a historian at the University of California San Diego, has just published a new book titled Mortal Republic that carefully lays out what went wrong in ancient Rome - and how the lessons of its decline might help save fledgling republics like the United States today.

I spoke to Watts about those lessons and why he thinks the American republic, along with several others, are in danger of going the way of ancient Rome. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

Why write a book about Rome's decline now?

Edward Watts

When I started teaching Roman history, the main questions from students were always about comparing the end of the Roman empire with the state of the American empire, and this was usually tied to the Iraq War.

In the past 10 years, those sorts of questions have died down. Now students are interested in Rome as a republic, and whether the American republic is collapsing in the same way. They see lots of parallels there, especially in how the two systems are structured.

Sean Illing

Tell me about some of those parallels, the ones you think are most relevant.

Edward Watts

First, we have to remember that the US is a representative democracy. We tend to drop the representative part when we're talking about what political system we live under, but that's actually quite important. This is not a direct democracy, and Rome was not a direct democracy either.

What you have in both cases is a system where people are chosen by the voters to make decisions, and then there's a period of time when they make those decisions, and then they're held accountable for how those decisions turned out.

But the representatives are making the choices - and people have noticed that that works fine until those representatives either stop making principled decisions or become paralyzed by the vicissitudes of popular opinion.

Both of those things started to happen when Rome began to decline, and both of those things are happening in the US right now.

"But it's up to Americans, just like it was up to voters in Rome, to defend our institutions"

Sean Illing

Rome didn't have to fail; it failed because Romans foolishly believed Rome would last forever. What could they have done differently, and when could they have done it?

Edward Watts

They could've recognized what their system was designed to do, which was produce compromise and consensus. Ultimately, it's better to make no decision than to make a bad decision. What the Romans failed to appreciate was that their processes were slow and deliberative for very good reasons: that's how representative systems avoid disaster, how you get people to the table to work out compromises.

For 300 years, this system worked quite well in Rome, but for the past century or so of its existence these tools of deliberation were used not to facilitate compromise but to obstruct and punish political enemies and basically prevent anything from happening. That destroyed the goodwill within the system and really poisoned it in the minds of the voters.

Sean Illing

Well that sounds familiar!

Edward Watts

Indeed.

Sean Illing

Shortly after Donald Trump's election, I wrote about Plato's warning about the decline of democracy. Basically, he believed that democracies fall into tyranny when too much freedom leads to disorder and citizens choose the stability of autocracy over the chaos of democracy.

This is what happened in Rome. Do you believe the same thing is happening right now?

Edward Watts

I think that we're in the early stages of a process that could lead to that. The point at which Romans were willing to make that trade occurred after almost 150 years of political dysfunction, but it also occurred after a generation of really brutal civil war.

And the process that started that was one of economic inequality and the inability and unwillingness of the people vested in the upper, successful parts of the Roman state to address that economic inequality.

But as people's needs were not being addressed for decades, the tensions heightened to the point where violence started breaking out. And once violence starts to break out, it's very difficult for a republic to regain control of itself.

It's easy to see how the US and other established republics could be in the beginning states of a similar process. I don't think we're there quite yet, but there are reasons for genuine concern.

Sean Illing

The inequality problem is maybe the most striking for me. What you saw in Rome, and what you see quite clearly today, is the wealthy undermining the very system that made them wealthy, and a total failure to see how ruinous that is in the long term.

Edward Watts

Yeah, it's a real problem today, and it was a real problem in Rome. There's a pivotal period in Rome, around the middle part of the 2nd century BC, in which there's an economic revolution that displaces a lot of people who had belonged to a hereditary aristocracy and moves them off the top economic rungs of the state.

At the same time, it's creating economic conditions that prompt people in the middle to basically become very frustrated that their economic prospects are not increasing either. And what ends up happening is the people who win from this economic revolution try to preserve their gains through just about any means they can, and that includes gross political obstructionism, the rigging of elections, and a total unwillingness to compromise.

This kickstarts a death spiral that ultimately undoes the Roman system from within - and we'd do well to learn from it. Because the story of Rome shows that once you reach that breaking point, that point of no return, you cannot unwind the clock.

Sean Illing

Why couldn't the Roman system respond to these disastrous trends quickly enough? What short-circuited in their process?

Edward Watts

There are signs that the system was trying to respond to this new economic reality between 140 and 130 BC. There are efforts to reform the electoral process so that it's harder to buy votes and rig elections. But the reforms only go halfway because they're undermined by entrenched interests, and so the decline just continues apace.

Sean Illing

You spend a lot of time mapping the decline of norms and political customs in Rome. Was this the result of Roman politicians elevating their own self-interest over the good of the republic, or was it something deeper happening in the culture?

Edward Watts

I think the erosion of norms really starts when Roman politicians convince themselves that their personal ambitions and the good of the republic are one and the same. In other words, they started acting in their own self-interest but deluded themselves into thinking that it was really for the betterment of Rome.

The other thing you see is that Roman politicians, much like American politicians today, started to believe that all they needed was 51 percent of the people to support them, and that the other 49 percent didn't matter. But that's not how the Roman system was supposed to work, and it's not how the US system is supposed to work.

Representative democracies are designed to cool down the passions of a pure democracy and find representatives who can think more long-term and craft policies that solve problems in ways that also have broad support.

"The story of Rome shows that once you reach that breaking point, that point of no return, you cannot unwind the clock"

Sean Illing

The thing that worries me the most is the loss of faith in public institutions, something that occurred in Rome and in many ways signaled the beginning of the end. It's hard to look at the American political landscape and not see something similar afoot.

Edward Watts

I think that's definitely a way to read the political moment in the United States right now, where people who need things from the system and from the government are not getting them, whether it's healthcare or job training or economic opportunities or infrastructure. You see this in the late Roman republic too - it simply got too big and lacked the infrastructure to support its population.

What the Roman story shows is that in a republic that's old, where people have a lot of faith in that republican system, people like Donald Trump pop up every generation or so when things reach a tipping point. You have these cycles where the system reboots, and people are shocked by what happened, and they step back and allow things to fall back into some sort of normal rhythm before they get frustrated again.

And I think this is the cycle that is perhaps most scary. If the decline of a republic is something that doesn't take five years, but instead takes 50 years, or 70 years, or 120 years, Trump is likely not the last of these kinds of figures.

Sean Illing

The title of your book is a reminder that all political systems are finite and will, eventually, die. Rome lasted centuries before it ultimately imploded. How worried are you about the trajectory of the American republic?

Edward Watts

I'm extremely worried. But I still believe our decline is reversible. I trust that enough people recognize that it's better to have a dysfunctional republic than to have nothing at all. And in Rome, you do have these moments of retrenchment, where people step back and say this is quite bad, this is too much, we have to pull back.

But it's up to Americans, just like it was up to voters in Rome, to defend our institutions and to punish people who are misusing the tools that are supposed to make it strong to instead undermine it. No one else will do it on their behalf.

So I think it's by no means a foregone conclusion. History doesn't work that way. And there have been moments where the US looked to be in grave trouble and managed to bounce back. But we have to be really vigilant and defend the integrity of the republic, and defend the integrity of our system, and punish those who abuse our institutions and violate our norms.

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What America can learn from the fall of the Roman republic

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If you were a Roman citizen around, say, 200 BC, you probably would have assumed Rome was going to last forever. At the time, Rome was the greatest republic in human history, and its institutions had proven resilient through invasions and all kinds of disasters.

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Lessons in the Decline of Democracy from the Ruined Roman Republic

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Lessons in the Decline of Democracy from the Ruined Roman Republic

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A new book argues that violent rhetoric and disregard for political norms was the beginning of Rome's end

smithsonianmag.com

The U.S. Constitution owes a huge debt to ancient Rome. The Founding Fathers were well-versed in Greek and Roman History. Leaders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison read the historian Polybius, who laid out one of the clearest descriptions of the Roman Republic's constitution, where representatives of various factions and social classes checked the power of the elites and the power of the mob. It's not surprising that in the United States' nascent years, comparisons to ancient Rome were common. And to this day, Rome, whose 482-year-long Republic, bookended by several hundred years of monarchy and 1,500 years of imperial rule, is still the longest the world has seen.

Aspects of our modern politics reminded University of California San Diego historian Edward Watts of the last century of the Roman Republic, roughly 130 B.C. to 27 B.C. That's why he took a fresh look at the period in his new book Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. Watts chronicles the ways the republic, with a population once devoted to national service and personal honor, was torn to shreds by growing wealth inequality, partisan gridlock, political violence and pandering politicians, and argues that the people of Rome chose to let their democracy die by not protecting their political institutions, eventually turning to the perceived stability of an emperor instead of facing the continued violence of an unstable and degraded republic. Political messaging during the 2018 midterm elections hinged on many of these exact topics.

Though he does not directly compare and contrast Rome with the United States, Watts says that what took place in Rome is a lesson for all modern republics. "Above all else, the Roman Republic teaches the citizens of its modern descendants the incredible dangers that come along with condoning political obstruction and courting political violence," he writes. "Roman history could not more clearly show that, when citizens look away as their leaders engage in these corrosive behaviors, their republic is in mortal danger."

Historians are cautious when trying to apply lessons from one unique culture to another, and the differences between the modern United States and Rome are immense. Rome was an Iron-Age city-state with a government-sponsored religion that at times made decisions by looking at the entrails of sheep. Romans had a rigid class system, relied on slave labor and had a tolerance for everyday violence that is genuinely horrifying. Then again, other aspects of the Roman Republic feel rather familiar.

The Roman people's strong sense of patriotism was unique in the Mediterranean world. Like the United States after World War II, Rome, after winning the Second Punic War in 201 B.C. (the one with Hannibal and the elephants), became the world's hegemon, which lead to a massive increase in their military spending, a baby boom, and gave rise to a class of super-wealthy elites that were able to use their money to influence politics and push their own agendas. Those similarities make comparisons worthwhile, even if the togas, gladiator battles and appetite for dormice seem completely foreign.

Cullen Murphy, whose 2005 book makes a more head-on comparison between the fall of the Roman Empire and the U.S., argues that the changes in politics and society in Rome stemmed from one source: its growing complexity. Rome, during the Republic and Empire, had increasing and evolving responsibilities around the Mediterranean which its government constantly struggled to manage. Those challenges forced changes throughout the economy and society, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In general terms, he sees many of the same struggles in recent U.S. history.

"I think the U.S. is experiencing this same situation-we've never quite recovered from our victory in World War II, which left us with the world on our shoulders; and the implications of that responsibility have skewed things in every part of our society and economy, and put our old political (and other) structures under enormous strain," he says. "New sources of power and new forms of administration and management fill the gap-and create unease and sometimes also injustice, and at the same time create vast new sectors of wealth."

Those types of social and economic changes also rattled the Roman Republic, leading to the moment in 130 B.C. when politics turned violent. The introduction of a secret ballot meant Roman politicians and political factions couldn't keep tabs on (or bribe) individual voters. Instead, politicians had to build political brands that appealed to the masses, leading to something akin to modern American campaigning with big promises and populist language aimed at the poor and middle class.

Reforms to the military also meant that service was no longer reserved for the elite, who for centuries used their privilege to demonstrate their loyalty to Rome. For poorer soldiers, however, service became a path to riches. They began to count on the loot, bonuses and gifts of land they received from their often-wealthy commanders meaning that over time the loyalty of the Roman legions shifted from the empire to their generals. These changes set the stage for a new type of politics, one where whipping up the resentments of the lower classes and threatening political enemies with semi-private armies became the norm.

These trends first came to a head in 134 B.C. when Tiberius Gracchus, an elected tribune of the people, proposed a land reform bill that would benefit poorer and middle-class Romans. The way Gracchus went about his reform, however, was an affront to the norms and traditions of the Republic. He brought his law before the Plebeian Assembly without the thumbs-up of the Senate. When his fellow tribune Marcus Octavius threatened to veto the bill, which was his right, Gracchus manipulated the rules to have him stripped of his office. There were other incidents as well, but the most concerning aspect of Gracchus was his fiery, populist language, which whipped his supporters to the edge of political violence. As his power grew, Gracchus began moving through the streets surrounded by a mob of frenzied supporters, a kind of personal militia not seen in Rome before.

Rumors spread that Gracchus was angling to become a king or dictator, and some in the Senate felt they needed to act. When Gracchus stood for a second term as tribune, which was not illegal but broke another norm, a group of Senators and their supporters beat Gracchus and 300 of his followers to death.

It was just the beginning. Over the next century, Tiberius's brother Gaius Gracchus would come into conflict with the Senate after a similar populist confrontation. The commander Sulla would march legions loyal to him on Rome itself and battle his political rival Marius, the first time Roman troops fought one another. He would then execute and punish his political enemies. In the following generation Pompey and Caesar would settle their political scores using Roman legions, Octavian and Marc Antony would field an army against the Senate before finally battling one another bringing almost 500 years of the Republic to a bloody (and confusing) conclusion.

Watts argues that while the Senate ordered his murder, it was Tiberius Gracchus who let the genie out of the bottle. "What he has to bear responsibility for is he starts using this really aggressive and threatening language and threatening postures. He never resorts to violence, but there's always this implicit threat. 'If not for me, things would get out of control.' And that is different, that was never done before. What he introduces is this political tool of intimidation and threats of violence. Later thinkers say once it's there, even if others choose not to use it, it's there forever."

While life in Rome, with gladiator battles, crucifixions and endless war was violent, for centuries Romans took pride in their republican system and political violence was taboo. "The Republic was free of political violence for the better part of 300 years. People who are politically engaged are not killing each other and they're not threatening to kill each other. When they disagree with each other they use political means that were created by the republic for dealing with political conflict," says Watts. "If you lose one of those conflicts, you don't die and you don't lose your property and you aren't sent away. You just lose face and move on. In that sense, this is a remarkably successful system for encouraging compromise and encouraging consensus building and creating mechanisms whereby political conflicts will be decided peacefully."

So what does the story of the Roman Republic mean for the United States? The comparison is not perfect. The U.S. has had its share of political violence over the centuries and has more or less recovered. Politicians used to regularly duel one another (See the Hamilton soundtrack, song 15), and in the run-up to the Civil War, the ultimate act of political violence, there was the raid on Harper's Ferry, Bleeding Kansas, and the near murder of Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber. Joanne B. Freeman, author of Field of Blood, a history of violence in Congress before the Civil War, tells Anna Diamond at Smithsonian she found at least 70 incidents of fighting among legislators, including a mass brawl in the House, though they often tried to paper over the conflicts. "It's all hidden between the lines in the Congressional record; it might say "the conversation became unpleasantly personal." That meant duel challenges, shoving, pulling guns and knives."

The better comparison, surprisingly, applies to post-WWII America. Despite periods where the U.S. political system and established political norms have been tested and stretched-the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, Watergate, the Iraq War-partisan violence or attempts to subvert the system have been rare. But recent events, like changes to filibuster rules and other procedures in Congress as well as increasingly heated political rhetoric give Watts pause. "It is profoundly dangerous when a politician takes a step to undercut or ignore a political norm, it's extremely dangerous whenever anyone introduces violent rhetoric or actual violence into a republican system that's designed to promote compromise and consensus building."

The solution to keeping a republic healthy, if Rome can truly be a guide, is for the citizens to reject any attempts to alter these norms he says. "I think the lesson I take away most profoundly from spending so much time with these materials is basically, yes, we do need to assign blame to politicians and individuals who take a shortsighted view of the health of a republic in order to try to pursue their own personal objectives or specific short-term political advantages."

The example of the Roman Republic shows the result of not policing those norms and keeping violence in check is the potential loss of democracy. "No republic is eternal," Watts writes. "It lives only as long as its citizens want it. And, in both the 21stcentury A.D. and the first century B.C., when a republic fails to work as intended, its citizens are capable of choosing the stability of autocratic rule over the chaos of a broken republic."

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Lessons in the Decline of Democracy From the Ruined Roman Republic

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smithsonianmag.com The U.S. Constitution owes a huge debt to ancient Rome. The Founding Fathers were well-versed in Greek and Roman History. Leaders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison read the historian Polybius, who laid out one of the clearest descriptions of the Roman Republic's constitution, where representatives of various factions and social classes checked the power of the elites and the power of the mob.

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Live Science: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome's Government

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Live Science: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome's Government

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Roman Republic: The rise and fall of ancient Rome’s government

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In theory, the Roman Republic was designed to represent both wealthy and poor citizens, but the reality was quite different.