Adam Griffin
   Staff Writer

There is an oft-repeated phrase that “Rome did not fall in a day,” in fact, Rome was falling for hundreds of years. But the roots of this decline can be traced to the collapse of their republican form of government that traded stable institutions for imperial glory; suffice it to say, this trade marked the beginning of Rome’s long road to division and collapse.

One of the principal Roman statesmen at the time of the Republic’s collapse was Marcus Tullius Cicero, a devout republican who fought to preserve the republic long after its collapse appeared inevitable. Cicero was an active senator, lawyer, orator and a prolific writer who railed against those who were seeking self-aggrandizement and power for themselves at the expense of the Republic.

       To historical onlookers and even to men of Cicero’s day, the Roman Republic seems to be on the inevitable course towards collapse. And yet, men like Cicero were willing to give their lives to protect, preserve and defend an idea of what they believed Rome to be—the idea of the Republic burned in their breasts. If such an ideal could drive men to put their lives on the line, then there must have been something about the Roman Republic that many felt worth saving.

The relevant questions to this discussion from the fall of the Roman Republic are, what is “the Republic” in roman and transcendent terms? Why did the republic fail? Why was it worth being saved in the eyes of men like Cicero? And what can modern America learn from the lessons of the Roman Republic.

Respublica, in Latin, means property of the people. In contrast to the ancient’s conception of the three simple forms of government: monarchy, rule by one; aristocracy, rule by the best or the few; and democracy, rule by the many, mass or mob.

None of these forms were ideal because they could degenerate into tyranny, oligarchy or mob rule respectfully. The Republic was to be a mixture of these three simple forms of government into a constitutionally balanced state that hoped to blend the best of each form without any parts of their degenerate forms.

Cicero wrote extensively on the Republic and even published a book on the topic. As a practical politician, Cicero recognized the elements of each form of government in Rome’s constitutional system, but he also saw it represented in segments of the people. He saw radical elements of each pulling the republic from its strength, wisdom and popular support into a discordant state of tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule.

While men like Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, and others pushed their programs by force of their military power and glory, Cicero saw as unbalancing the monarchical element of the government towards tyranny.

The Optimates, or those people strongly attached to the traditional power and rule of the Senate, the group to which Cicero most closely associated, appeared rigid and inflexible to Cicero. Their inability to work together and compromise with other elements of Roman society were giving off the appearance that they were only defenders of their own power without care for the other parts of the society.

Then there was the mass of people, usually recognized in their representation by Tribunes of the Plebes. Cicero feared this element being led into passion or prejudice in moments of crisis by either of the top factions, especially by men like Caesar who were spurring them to military action or violence. The divide between these factions in Roman Republican society and the crises that flowed from the divide created such extreme pressure on their republic that it eventually gave way to the control of a strong-man, dictatorial type in the first Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus.

The Republic was valued by many and heralded as one of the golden ages in human governance by men of the Renaissance, Enlightenment and even used as a principal template by the American Founders when they created the American Constitutional Republic.

As previously stated, the Republic is considered a superior form of government because it mixes and balances the simple forms of government to get out of them the strength and honor of monarchy, the wisdom, reason and discretion of aristocracy and the popular support, will and involvement of the people through democracy.

Cicero’s dream was the “concordia ordinum” or harmony of the orders. He believed that there was a way to blend the interests of the major divides in Roman society so that each sector could get what it wants by working together.

America is often paralleled with the fall of Rome, both republic and empire. Rome obtained its Empire during the republican phase rather than under its actual empire. The infrastructure of their republican government was not fit for managing a far flung empire as the American republic is not fit to manage the land of an empire—republican America is not designed to be the police of the world nor can it be done with long-term stability. Cicero’s Concordia Ordinum that was unachieved in the last days of the Roman Republic needs to be strived for in modern America.

Given the divisiveness of this current presidential race, the hostility between political parties, races, pet projects and political issues; Americans need to come together around a set of principles that govern the mechanistic workings of their constitutional republic to find a common set of answers to the problems that the people all recognize us to be facing.

Rome did not fall in a day. It took hundreds of years of divisiveness, unanswered crises, unsolved problems, discordant days of debate and paralysis of the republic’s best men bent on personal power rather than the common good to finally break the well-founded Roman Republic and later Empire.

Americans need to ask themselves the hard questions that we avoid and find common ground on which to solve these problems. The forces that would tear our Republic apart are the same forces that tore apart the Roman Republic. Those forces pull us into democrats and republicans, black, white, brown, conservatives and liberals—those forces make us into the one, the many and the few rather than making us out of many one America.