After my last video “The Roman Empire had to Fall, Here is why”, I got a ton of comments that claimed that the same symptoms of a dying Empire can be found in the United States of America. So I decided to have a better look at it and find some similarities between the late Roman Empire and the USA. The USA indeed holds all cards of an Imperium, no nation on Earth has held so much power in their hands since the days of Rome. I think that for that reason it is fair to look at some resemblances between the United States of America and the Roman Empire; weaknesses and strengths both nations share.
The video is supposed to be neither flattering nor demeaning towards America, I will try to be objective as possible, so if you hold grudge against the USA or Rome, please try to contain it.
A great way to spoil a family reunion is to bring up politics to the table. In the USA you wouldn’t really feel comfortable if some started talking about Civil Rights and BLM or Freedom of Speech during a Thanksgiving dinner.
In the Late Roman Empire you would cause the same awkward moment if you suddenly started talking about the Consubstantiality of Jesus Christ. The controversial relationship between the son - Jesus Christ and the Father – God, the long-lasting question of whether they were equal or if the son was subordinate of the father sparked many confrontations.
According to Arianism, Christ was consubstantial with God the Father since both the Father and the Son were made of the essence but not of the same essence. Nicene Creed believed that the Father and the Son are equal, which is a stance that Christianity takes today. It might seem marginal to you today but a great Greek teacher Libanius complained how he couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread in Constantinople without a baker asking him what he thinks about Christ's substance.
In the same way, you in the USA wouldn’t really go to a Black Lives Matter meeting and scream the you know what word, in the Roman Empire after 325 you wouldn’t go to an Arian neighborhood in Constantinople and scream: 'the Father and the Son are equal' (because you would fucking die).
Pay attention next time when you attend a Christian mass and you cite the Nicene creed. True God from True God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Those are fucking fight words, excuse me!
Those words used to so do much triggering during holy masses in the late Roman Empire, that rarely any Christian mass ended without violent outbursts between Arians and Nicaeans. But there is one controversy shared by both the USA and the Roman Empire.
Abortions.
In the US there are two equally large groups of people that are in a long-lasting dispute over when should it be legal for a woman to have an abortion. So-called supporters of the pro-choice movement support a woman’s right to have an abortion even if she is more than 20 weeks pregnant. Their opponents, pro-life supporters, would limit it to a week 5 or a total ban.
Ancient Romans did not really bother with the question of when. Infanticide was, unfortunately, a very common process back then, especially for little baby girls. How expendable they were for the Roman families underlines one infamous ancient Roman letter from a husband to his wife: "If you have a Son, keep it. If it's a daughter, throw it out'.
It is the only way to explain why the percentage of Roman women was as low as 40 % in the general population.
But how was it specifically with abortions? Abortions were very common in Rome, but don´t get fooled. The fact that Romans were so quick in killing born and unborn kids wasn't a sign of being 'woman rights defenders' as pro-choice supporters are labeled today, the matter of abortion and infanticide was entirely in hands of fathers and husbands, Roman women had absolutely no rights here.
It is also the reason why Christianity spread so quickly especially among women because Christianity forbade any abortions and infanticides and protected women in this struggle against their fathers and husbands.
A little bit ironic to see how Christians are labeled as backward for their stance on abortions today but were blamed for being too progressive in the 4th century.
Another dispute resonating in the US society… Statues removal.
There was a spontaneous outburst of statues removal in the Roman Empire upon the death of a tyrant-Emperor, but usually not on a massive scale. To match such immense barbarism that happens in the USA, we need to go further in Roman history to the Byzantine Empire, a Greek/Roman rump state stat survived the collapse of Rome in the fifth century.
Even though Byzantines fought bravely against numerous enemies, their Empire dwindled under countless attacks and in the 8th century a group of fanatics saw the clear reason behind Byzantine misfortunes.
Pictures.
The fanatics, who called themselves Iconoclasts – picture destroyers – were responsible for two destructive waves of atrocities until they were finally put out during the 9th century. But unfortunately, before that happened, hundreds of churches had been burned down, many mosaics and pictures had been destroyed and countless statues had been torn down and lost.
The failure to win the Vietnam War as well as the war in Afghanistan was in an incapability to understand the local customs of their enemies. The American government did not understand the tribal structure of Afghanistan, that do not follows the same concept of Westphalian sovereignty of modern countries, as well as Vietnamese anger towards their corrupted government, that was supported by the USA against the communist north.
This was and is something that both nations– the US and Rome – share - a certain level of ignorance in international relations. The failure of common Americans to know basic European geography, as well as some facts about the peoples in the Middle East that Americans fight against is comparable to Romans and their lack of knowledge about countless barbaric tribes they fought against.
Even remarkable Roman historians like Tacitus, Suetonius, or Ammianus constantly miscalled various peoples in their books: Persians are called Parthians in the 4th century, even though Parthia had been already conquered by Sassanid Persia. 3rd century Goths are called Scythians who had ceased to exist way back in the 3rd century BC How Romans were clueless in terms of naming their opponents is summarized in the word “Germans” even though those tribes had hardly anything in common. Both nations were also plagued by how incapable they turned out to be in conquering much smaller enemies, showing clear signs of limitations of their Empires.
While common Americans failed to understand why is it important to have their troops fighting in such distant countries like Vietnam and Afghanistan, common Romans were also opposed to the idea of conquering Caledonia (Scotland) and Germania, countries with zero economical potential.
The USA and the late Roman Empire had the hard power – a superior and numerous army - to destroy their enemies, but lacked the soft power – support of its own citizens – to actually get things done. The USA had to pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam because of the same reasons.Tiberius left Germania unconquered, Domitian called Agricola off his successful Caledonian campaign, and Hadrian abandoned Mesopotamia – these wars were unattainable and unprofitable.
While (even though) the U.S. army is the most powerful army today, , spending more on its military than China, India, Russia UK, Germany and others COMBINED it still manages to keep its army expenditures at around 20 % of its federal budget. While the Late Roman Empire spent as much as 60 % of its budget to maintain its half a million army running.
Both armies – the US and the late Roman – are and were however also very ineffective in terms of achieving long-term goals. Romans lost between 300 thousand soldiers in the Second Punic War against Hannibal in the 2nd century BC, that’s 1/3 of all adult male population and roughly 5 % of its total population that was around 6 million at the time.
And here is my theory: Rome’s way to glory wasn’t paved by victories but rather by the number of casualties they were willing to sacrifice for the dominance. Romans lost many battles against Samnites but eventually, they subjugated them. Cimbrian War in the 1st century BC were one disastrous battle after another for the Roman Republic, but they won the war anyway.
If you were to fight in that time period against Romans, no matter if you defeated them in one battle or two battles, odds were you will eventually lose anyway. The greatness of Rome was achieved only through sacrifice and Romans knew that because they were willing to lose an infinite amount of battles to achieve an ultimate victory.
Now let's look at the late Roman Empire, between 300 and 476, how many great battles were lost by Romans? Roman casualties in the Battle of Adrianople in 378 against Visigoths would be like Wednesday for a Punic Wars Romans. Even though the Empire in the 5th century had ten times larger population than during the Second Punic War- it didn’t matter, any loss was totally unacceptable and the Roman armies were too precious to be lost.
While the sacking of Rome by Gauls in the 4th century BC gave Romans the necessary kick to continue fighting, late Romans were left devastated when Rome was sacked twice 800 years later and focused rather on “whose fault it is”.
The USA faces a similar problem. Could you imagine a battle with 20 000 dead American soldiers would be considered as a victory today? But that is the number of casualties in the Battle of Okinawa. This three months lasting battle against Japan in 1945 has more American blood on its hands than Iraq and Afghanistan's decades'-lasting campaigns combined. But the Pacific battle is still considered to be one of the greatest U.S. victories ever.
Focus on casualties rather than on targets is what limits and limited the U.S. and Roman armies. CGP Grey has a very nice video describing challenges every statesman needs to face in order to stay in power.
"The individuals needed to make the necessary things happen are the king's keys to power."
"All the changes you wish to make are but thoughts in your head if the keys will not follow your commands."
The USA faces a similar problem as the late Roman Emperors did – all of the state's funds end up eaten by their keys that keep them in power. The U.S. politicians spend all their funds and effort on mobilizing their keys/ voters because the specific U.S. voting system gives privilege to a handful of states and voting districts while kind of ignoring the rest.
They put emphasis only on their keys/ voters that can vote them in or out, and that causes that the U.S. politicians do not reach across the aisle to the opposing party to solve the real issues of the American Empire that require a bipartisan effort.
This was also the reason for the downfall of the Roman Empire – the Late Roman Emperors didn’t give a damn about making better lives for anyone, with the only exception and those were legions because they were the only authority to make and unmake them. The only time late Roman Emperors showed any interest in the lives of common people was through meaningless and empty gestures, through the only propaganda machine that was at their disposal.
Coins.
Today’s politians have a wide variety of different types of media to spread their message, but Roman Emperors had to rely mostly on coins. Putting your face on a coin, usually with a super serious face to let everyone in the Empire know how seriously you are taking the situation, while your head is surrounded by simple and shallow mottos as: unity, eternal peace, indulging times.
Those coins couldn’t impress any Roman citizen, who just saw less and less valuable coins with different Emperors spiting the same cliché mottos. Imperial propaganda had very little effect on Romans who started to value less and less they can live in the Empire. Roman Empire was very diverse, thousands of different speaking cultures and religions dwelled within and since Emperors had almost no funds at their disposal (because almost all of them were spent on legions), the only way to win the hearts and minds of Roman citizens for the Imperium was through cheap and shallow mottos that promoted inclusivity in the Empire.
It started with Constitition Antoniniana that granted Roman citizenship to every free Roman citizen, efficiently making Roman citizenship worthless. This caused Romans to stop caring about the Roman privilege they had and they became invested more in hating other Romans than their enemies. Christians against Pagans, province citizens against Italians, European soldiers against Eastern legions, Latin speaking Romans against Greeks.
Christians cheered when the last pagan Emperor Julian was killed by Persians, while Pagans applauded Visigoths when they sacked Rome in the new Christian Empire. It became more important to defeat your opponent within the realm than defeating the true enemies waiting outside.
There is seemingly a little resemblance between an ancient agrarian Imperium and a modern economic superpower but there are some similarities.
The Roman state in the 3rd century was plagued by hyperinflation that caused a downfall of its monetary system.
Both systems believed that their economic problems can be solved by printing/minting more money.
"There is enough cash in the financial system."
"and there is an infinite amount of cash in the Federal Reserve. "
"Fair to say you simply flooded the system with money"
"Yes. We did. That's another way to think about it."
"We did"
"Where does it come from? Do you just print it?"
"We print it digitally"
This is an exact copy of monetary policies of 3rd century Roman Emperors who started solving their economic problems by decreasing the amount of precious metals in their coins, especially in silver ones.
The Roman people who noticed that the silver on coins can be easily wiped off just by rubbing it, started hoarding the “good” coins and kept only the “bad” ones in circulation to which Roman state answered by further flooding the system with more bad coins and eventually they caused a collapse of the whole Roman financial system.
So these are the resemblances I personally see between the Late Roman Empire and the USA. What do you think, did I nail it or fail it?
If I got something wrong or you see it differently please let me know how you see it.
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