In academia in recent decades, the term ‘reception’ has been used to refer to post-classical interpretations of classical antiquity (Martindale, p. 1-2). This essay will be an examination of some ‘receptions’ of ancient Rome. I’m not an expert on ancient Rome but I’ve cobbled together a number of sources on the subject. I cover quite a few different topics, and the section on the Nazis at the end is a bit of a detour, but I hope I’ve managed to tie it all together well enough. I’ve decided to use formal referencing, with author’s surname referenced in-text and a bibliography at the end.
PART 1-REPUBLICAN VERSUS IMPERIAL ROME
A major theme in receptions of ancient Rome has been taking inspiration particularly from the Republican era, while viewing the later imperial era as in some sense declined (the imperial era here means when Rome was ruled by emperors rather than by Republican institutions like the Senate. It doesn’t mean when Rome had an empire-Roman expansion began under the Republic). In Burke’s study of the popularity of ancient historians between 1450 and 1700, he notes that Roman historians such as Plutarch or Livy were often viewed as being an important part of a ‘moral education’ (Burke, p. 142). Elyot recommended that English children be taught Livy, so that they might learn how Rome, ‘by prowess and virtue’, came to dominate the world (ibid, p. 147). Later, during the British empire, the republican heroes of Livy would be staples in the education of the British ruling class (Joshel, McGuire, and Malamud, p. 12). Imperial-era Rome, by contrast, was a source not of identification but of differentiation, with the ‘decadence’ of this era providing a picture of a bad empire (as distinguished from a good empire such as the British one) (ibid). The novels of Robert Graves, which were the inspiration for the famous BBC series I, Claudius, criticize this aspect of British imperial education when he has Claudius doubt the veracity of the ‘heroic legends of ancient Rome…related by Livy’ (Joshel, I, Claudius, p. 123-124). Yet Graves himself reproduces this celebration of republican Rome, presenting Claudius favourably as a republican at heart who ultimately hopes to restore the Republic through his son (ibid, p. 122-123).
The reading of Roman historians has also at times been regarded as subversive, or, from the other point of view, as having revolutionary potential. In the English context, we can see in the writings of Edmund Bolton in the 17th century a perception that ‘popular’ ideas of government posed a threat to monarchy, and that these ideas gained authority from ancient texts, particularly Tacitus (Osmond, p. 603-604). Thomas Hobbes saw the origins of the English Civil War partly in the reading of ancient Greek and Roman authors (ibid). Similarly, Arthur Quiller-Couch argued that the French Revolution was ‘made…very largely by a simple translation of Plutarch’s lives’ (Martindale, p. 10-11). One example of Roman influence on the French Revolution is the Revolutionary identification with the figure of Brutus, described in Baxter’s paper ‘Violence, Virtue, and Politics in the Visual Culture of the French Revolution’. ‘Brutus’ as a revolutionary symbol conflated two separate figures from Roman history: the possibly mythical Lucius Brutus who helped to found the original Roman Republic, and Marcus Brutus, considered a descendant of Lucius, who participated in the assassination of Julius Caesar in an attempt to preserve the Republic (Baxter, p. 52). During the French Revolution towns were renamed Brutus, children were named Brutus, and altars to Brutus were erected in churches (ibid, p. 51)
An interesting aspect of the Brutus myth during the French Revolution is how Brutus represented conflicts between republic and family, between ‘stoic masculinity and the affective bonds of home and community’ (ibid, p. 54-55). This particularly applies to the first Brutus, who, after founding the Republic and expelling Rome’s royal family, later had his own sons killed for conspiring with the vanquished royals (ibid, p. 52). It also, however, applies to the Brutus who killed Caesar, because Caesar was rumoured to be his father (ibid). In both cases, Brutus represents a willingness to do anything to defend the Republic, including killing one’s own family. Jacques Louis-David’s 1789 painting, showing Lucius Brutus’s reaction to his dead sons, approves of his stoicism, while Brutus’s horrified wives and daughters are shown to be unable to sustain the burden of civic responsibility (ibid, pp. 56-57). Baxter describes the painting as presenting ‘complicit and weak female members of the family’, in contrast to Brutus’s ‘masculine allegiance to the state’ (ibid, p. 58). However, the lionisation of Brutus did not last long; the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, which followed the Brutus model of stoic ruthlessness in defence of the Republic, was ultimately rejected (ibid, pp. 64-68). The French constitution of 1795 celebrated the family, saying that ‘no one is a good citizen if he is not a good son, good father, good husband’ (ibid, p. 68). This was an acknowledgement that you cannot, following the model of Brutus, ‘keep killing fathers and sons’; that the zealotry embodied by this model was a destructive and destabilizing force (ibid, p. 64).
THE DECLINE OF REPUBLICAN ROME
We can now examine in more detail the narratives of the fall of the Roman Republic. Some such narratives focus on a decline in morality, while others focus on economic changes which occurred alongside the expansion of the Roman state. The latter kind of narrative is explained here by the highly respected scholar ‘Nemets’ (43 minutes to 46 minutes). In brief, the expansion of the empire saw the immiseration of yeoman farmers, who were increasingly replaced by massive farms worked by slaves acquired through conquest. This undermined the social basis for the republic, which was the independent farmer-citizen. The Gracchi brothers were notable figures who recognized this and pushed for land redistribution. Towards the end of the 2nd C BC, Gaius Marius opened up the legions to non-landowners, so that the military was no longer made up of yeoman volunteers, but was more professional. This led to soldiers becoming loyal to particular generals, ultimately leading to the rise of figures such as Caesar who ushered in one-man rule, replacing the old republican system.
Similar accounts can be found in McCormick’s paper on Machiavelli and the Gracchi brothers, and McInnis’s paper on how American textbooks in the 19th century dealt with the Gracchi. McCormick rejects the idea (propagated for instance by followers of Leo Strauss) that Machiavelli regarded the Roman nobility as being driven by glory and honour (McCormick, pp. 302-303). In fact, according to McCormick, Machiavelli believed that during the expansion of the empire the nobility were too greedy, and the extreme wealth inequality they created caused the end of the Republic (ibid, p. 303). Machiavelli said that ‘well-ordered republics must keep the public rich and citizens poor’, that is, there should be a degree of wealth equality, and, per McCormick, he regarded the sort of land reform proposed by the Gracchi Brothers as sound (ibid). McInnis’s paper explains how, in the 19th C United States, these struggles over land reform were argued to be emblematic of the dangers which poverty and landlessness posed to a republic. A senator from Missouri, to take one example, invoked the Gracchi to argue that small farmers were the most loyal and dedicated citizens (McInnis, p. 27). A common view at this time was that the concentration of wealth was detrimental to a Republic, which required independent, land-owning citizens (ibid, p. 33).
In this narrative, the explanation for the decline is essentially wealth inequality, with the argument being that the key to a healthy republic is a significant body of independent landowners. However, a more ‘conservative’ perspective is that, rather than fighting against forces that would inevitably end up destroying the Republic, the likes of the Gracchi brothers were themselves the cause of the Republic’s demise. This view is articulated by Cicero, for instance (McCormick, p. 298). McInnis notes that, before around 1830, American textbooks didn’t tend to cover the Gracchi Brothers, and ‘emphasised the role of self-interest and a loss of personal virtue when Roman decline’ (ibid, p. 30-31). Such textbooks rarely had a negative view of Roman elites, and sometimes even legitimized the elites’ dominant position by attributing Rome’s fall to foreigners/the increasing inclusion in politics of people who were unworthy. Benjamin Tucker argued that the extension of citizenship to a larger, more diverse body of people decreased the virtue of the Romans (ibid, p. 31). Tucker also noted that ‘profusion and extravagance began to prevail as soon as precious metals were introduced in abundance’ after the destruction of Carthage (ibid). Another author says that with the introduction of luxury the Romans lost ‘their native energy of character’, and ‘sunk into a state of indolence and effeminacy’ (ibid, p. 32). We can see here that the more conservative/elitist and the more ‘populist’ perspectives on the decline of the Roman Republic share some affinity; there is a shared idea that increasing wealth in some sense sapped the Republic’s vitality. But ‘textbook authors before 1830…link Rome’s decline to consumerism and selfishness rather than to conflict between classes’, which is the key difference between the two perspectives (ibid). According to McInnis, modern historians, while not taking the conservative perspective, don’t portray the Gracchi as simply heroic champions of the poor, like many 19th century American authors did. They tend to have a more nuanced view in which Roman elites may have had good reason to suspect that the Gracchi were trying to seize power for themselves (ibid, p. 27, 36-37).
The decline of the Roman Republic, then can and has been used to support relatively ‘populist’/redistributionist positions, but has also been couched in more conservative terms, as involving a loss of virtue. Because of this, some academics have criticised ‘decline’ discourses, both as they appear in ancient Roman texts, and as they have been reproduced in modern times. We can look here at two papers by Sandra Joshel, one covering an original ancient Roman source, and the other covering a modern reception.
TACITUS’S MESSALINA
In ancient Roman sources, one focus of the decline narrative was the changing role of women, with women in the imperial era regarded as neglecting their traditional roles and causing, or at least reflecting, a breakdown in society. Joshel talks about this in the context of Tacitus’s depiction of Messalina, wife of the emperor Claudius (Joshel, Tacitus’s Messalina). Joshel notes that the figure of Messalina serves a particular literary role in Tacitus’s discourse of empire. ‘Drawing on a commonplace of Roman moral rhetoric that associates uncontrolled female sexuality with chaos, Tacitus creates an adulterous wife whose desire creates disorder in the family, household, and social hierarchy’ (ibid, p. 60). Tacitus connects disorder within the imperial household to disorder in the empire as a whole, using similar words to describe women such as Messalina, and Parthian princes causing problems on the frontier (ibid, p. 70-71). Joshel notes that in Tacitus’s work we see a distinction between corrupted women such as Messalina, and the German women who remain loyal wives, conforming more to the old Roman virtues than do contemporary Roman women (ibid, p. 68-70). Tacitus describes a severe marriage code among the Germans, where adultery is punished heavily. Control of their women contributes to the manliness and courage that makes Germans formidable in war. Messalina, by contrast, represents a corrupt imperial era, where women are out of male control, and are empowered to enact their destructive desires (ibid). In Tacitus’s narrative, Claudius is shown to be controlled by those who he should be controlling; both his wives and the freed slaves he relies on (ibid, p. 56-57).
Joshel makes a comparison between the conservative anxieties represented by the likes of Tacitus, and Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the ‘deterritorialisation’ of the modern era, when industrial capitalism loosened traditional political and social structures in Europe (ibid, p. 76). In the case of imperial Rome, there was a continual pushing out of the boundaries separating Roman and non-Roman, with both the expansion of the empire and the Romanising of its provinces weakening old geographical distinctions (ibid, p. 75-76). ‘In Tacitus’s account of Messalina, empire is mapped on the uncontained, overflowing body of a woman. Its lack of limits echoes the extension of the geographic boundaries of the empire’ (ibid, p. 76). This evokes the idea, mentioned earlier, which associated Roman decline with the expansion of citizenship to a larger, more diverse group of people.
Interestingly, this sort of perspective, in which the danger of the feminine lies in its potential for undermining the family and promoting chaos, is almost the precise opposite of the perspective described earlier in discussing the lionisation of Brutus during the French Revolution. In that case, the danger represented by women was that they were too wedded to family, and were therefore potentially a conservative, counter-revolutionary force because they were unable to dedicate themselves to a cause such as that of the Republic.
Joshel argues that Tacitus’s discourse of empire, in which uncontrolled women represent a danger, has been reproduced in more modern times. According to Joshel, Charlotte Bronte’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’, often seen as a feminist text, actually contains a defence of empire (ibid, p. 50). In this reading, the novel contrasts ‘the morally healthy empire of the present, associated with the civilizing mission in India’, and the ‘corrupt empire of the past, associated with the plantation system in the West Indies (ibid). While Jane belongs to the moral empire, Bertha Mason, the insane wife of Edward Rochester, is associated with the corrupt empire of the past. Mason is a ‘creole’, a derogatory for term sugar planters in the West Indies, seen as a decadent class (the term does not denote mixed ancestry here) (ibid, p. 50-51). Mason is referred to as an ‘Indian Messalina’, thus explicitly invoking the wife of Claudius (ibid). Thus, Joshel says, ‘more than 20 centuries of repetition of imperial discourse shape Bertha Mason’, associating unconstrained women with bad, corrupted empires (ibid, p. 78).
I, CLAUDIUS
In her article ‘I, Claudius: Projection and Imperial Soap Opera’, Joshel writes about similar themes which appear in a more recent reception of ancient Rome. The BBC television series I, Claudius ran in the 1970s, and depicts the affairs of the Roman imperial household during the reigns of the first 4 emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Cagilula, and Claudius. In the novels by Robert Graves which the series is based on, according to Joshel, we can already see this ancient Roman discourse in which unchaste wives are symptomatic of a corrupted imperial Rome. Unchastity is associated with empire: ‘one can no more reintroduce republican government at this stage than one can reimpose primitive feelings of chastity on modern wives and husbands’ (Joshel, I, Claudius, p. 123). Weak men allow for women such as Messalina, or Augustus’s husband Livia, to wreak havoc. (ibid). However, Joshel argues that the BBC series goes even further than the original novels in creating such an impression. While Graves dedicates a significant amount of space to details of imperial administration and so on, the TV series ‘boils Graves’s story down to its domestic bare bones, focusing almost exclusively on the relations and struggles among members of the imperial family’ (ibid, p. 141-42). Scandalous episodes such as Caligula’s incest with his sister, which are only briefly referred to in Graves, are portrayed in detail in the TV series. This, according to Joshel, eliminates the critique of empire which can be seen in Graves’s novels, leaving only a picture of family corruption. In ‘domesticating’ empire in this way, empire and its disintegration are projected onto the family, and in particular women out of male control are seen as posing a threat not just to the patriarchal order within the family, but to the state as a whole (ibid, p. 143). For Joshel, this supported contemporary arguments from the New Right about the decline of the patriarchal family leading to national disorder (ibid).
Such a perspective would have had resonance both in 1970s Britain, but also in the US, where I, Claudius was aired as well. American audiences could have identified with the depiction of imperial chaos and out of control women. The challenging of traditional values by feminism, the civil rights movement, and the counter-culture was occurring alongside the failures of the Vietnam War, with the fall of Saigon in 1975 in particular showing the limits of American power (ibid, pp. 127-128). There were also various corruption scandals including Watergate (ibid). There seemed to be a coming apart of masculine authority at home, and American power abroad, and in the Right’s view the challenging of the traditional order by women, young people, and blacks had resulted in an emasculation which weakened the American state (ibid). In the 1972 election Nixon successfully cast George McGovern as the candidate of 3 As-abortion, acid, and amnesty for draft resisters-thus associating women’s control over reproduction, drugs/student culture, and American military failure (ibid, p. 129). At one point in I, Claudius, Augustus declares ‘I’m supposed to rule an empire, and I can’t even rule my own family’, and indeed the series portrays him as ultimately being controlled by (and finally poisoned by) his wife Livia (ibid, p. 144). The audience can read Livia, Messalina, and other bad women as evoking the dangers of feminists who, in the imagination of the New Right, threatened home and nation (ibid, p. 146). As Augustus dies, poisoned by Livia, she scolds him for not listening to her more often, saying ‘because I am a woman, you pushed me into the background’ (ibid, p. 147).
To connect all of this back to the distinction between a more virtuous Republican era and a corrupt Imperial era, we can note that, according to Joshel, I, Claudius associates good empire particularly with republican men, and bad empire with imperial women (ibid, pp. 147-50). Though neither actually restored the Republic while in power, Augustus and Claudius (two of the more admirable characters in the show) are portrayed as Republicans at heart. It is implied that Augustus would relinquish his own supreme power if not for Livia, who disdains republicanism as an ‘infantile disorder’. In her quest to put her son Tiberius on the throne, she destroys many good men, ultimately leaving Rome in the hands of two tyrants: Tiberius and then Caligula.
Thus, for Joshel, I, Claudius reproduces the narrative, seen in the likes of Tacitus, in which unconstrained women were a chaotic force and responsible for Roman decline.
OTHER DECLINE NARRATIVES
We can briefly mention some other narratives of Roman decline. Firstly, it can be noted that the fall of the Roman Republic did not actually mean a loss of Roman power; in fact, the territory controlled by Rome reached its largest extent during the reign of Trajan, long after the end of the Republican period (Southern, p. 14-16). For the likes of historian Edward Gibbon, the reason why the Roman empire ultimately did collapse in the 4th and 5th centuries AD was the influence of Christianity, which was, among other things, an insufficiently martial religion. In Gibbon’s view ‘the conversion of Rome to Christianity fostered a dangerous pacifism that drained the Empire of military vitality’ (Dunstan, p. 522) Writing in 1908, when he was still an anti-clerical socialist, Mussolini echoed this view that the negative influence of Christianity (and the Jews) was to blame for the fall of the Roman empire (Nelis, p. 397). Mussolini also later wrote about the decline of Rome in racial terms, saying ‘it is not the change in political forms, from republican to monarchic, which indicates the beginning of Rome’s decadence, but the corruption of dominant races in too much…contact with inferior peoples’ (ibid, p. 397-398). It has in fact been argued that both the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks were quite Nordic in blood, but that over time this Nordic blood was diluted as a result of migration from around the empire (Sims, ‘What Race Were the Greeks and Romans?’).
PART 2-ROME AS THE ENEMY IN GENERAL
So far, we have looked at narratives about Rome which contrast the earlier Republican period favourably with a later, corrupted, imperial period (although of course the papers by Joshel are highly critical of this narrative). We can now examine some receptions which are critical of the Roman empire in general.
1-SPARTACUS AND THE SOCIALIST/ANTI-IMPERIALIST VIEW
An interesting case study here is the story of Spartacus, famously presented in the 1960 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. This is the subject of Futrell’s paper ‘Seeing Red: Spartacus as Domestic Economist’. While during the Enlightenment Spartacus was drawn upon to support critiques of the ancien regime, and he was often portrayed as a nationalist hero in the 19th century, from the later 19th century Spartacus was also connected to the growing workers’ movement (Futrell, p. 84-89). Marx praised Spartacus as ‘the most excellent fellow in the whole history of antiquity’, and the ‘Spartakusbund’, an offshoot of the German SPD headed by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, was named after Spartacus (ibid, p. 89-90). The 1960 film is recognized as an answer to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which pressured Hollywood to exclude people suspected of communist sympathies from working on movies (Burton et al, p. 1, Marquis). Spartacus was the film which broke this ‘blacklist’ with its acknowledgement of Dalton Trumbo, one of the ‘Holywood 10’ targeted by the HUAC, as a screenwriter (Futrell, p. 77, Marquis). The film is a tribute to the struggle against oppression, and it has been argued that this theme of the struggle of the oppressed is a specifically Jewish theme, reflecting the fact that most of the key figures in producing the film had Eastern European Jewish roots (Burton et al, p. 2). The film invokes fascism and the Holocaust, for instance after the final battle scene when the rebels and their families are shown slaughtered, heaped upon each other (ibid, p. 6). In the end, after he kills Antoninus in a forced fight to the death, Spartacus declares that Antoninus ‘will return and he will be millions’, suggesting that the oppressed will ultimately rise up and overthrow tyranny, whether that of fascist Europe, the HUAC, or the racism of America (ibid, p. 7).
Despite this strong theme of resistance against oppression. Futrell argues that the 1960 film ‘domesticates’ the Spartacus story, diffusing its revolutionary quality (ibid, p. 98-99). The film was based on a novel by Howard Fast, a communist, in which the Roman system is rejected very explicitly on anti-capitalist grounds, but the film avoids such explicitly leftist stances, preferring to focus on relations between individuals (ibid, p. 79, 90-94). In this reading, what is promoted in the film is not so much the levelling of unequal power relations, but more the establishing of ‘natural’ man at the head of a family/gender hierarchy (ibid, p. 79). For instance, the love between Spartacus and his wife Varinia is portrayed as involving submission-‘forbid me ever to leave you’ (ibid, p. 103-104). Moreover, the Romans are portrayed as sexually deviant in contrast to the moral rebels, as seen in Crassus’s refusal to ‘categorise desire in a system of ethics’, justifying homosexuality as just another kind of sexual taste (ibid, p. 105-106). These conservative, patriarchal values promoted by the film, for Futrell, ‘[distract] the contemporary audience from the unsettling radicalism of the ancient rebel’ (ibid, p. 79).
Though Futrell draws a contrast between the original novel by Fast and the ‘domesticated’ film, she also notes that, even in Fast’s novel, Spartacus’s rebels represent patriarchal values. The rebels exemplify ‘home and family and honour and virtue’, in contrast to the debauched Romans (ibid, p. 94). While the slaves only have sex within marriage, Roman women are promiscuous (ibid, p. 95). Varinia is contrasted to Roman women by the fact that she is not a whore but a wife, ‘a mother not of death but of life’, representing the life and freedom waiting in humanity’s future (ibid).
We can see, then, that there is not necessarily a clear distinction between ‘conservative’ depictions of imperial Rome as in some sense morally declined, and 19th and 20th century socialist/anti-imperial critiques centred on figures like Spartacus. The Spartacus film and the novel on which it was based both contrast a debauched, degenerate, Rome with a virtuous and arguably traditionalist/patriarchal rebel community. The socialist activist Cyrenus Osborn Ward, in the late 19th century, saw the Roman ruling class as wallowing in ‘inebriate and lascivious beastliness’, in contrast to ancient rebels whom he gave Christian overtones (ibid, p. 89).
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON’S ‘THE EBB-TIDE’
Another example of Rome being drawn upon to make a critique of empire and ‘oppression’ is Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel ‘The Ebb-Tide’. This is the focus of Largeaud-Ortega’s paper on ‘How Literature May Make or Mar Empires’. Stevenson saw Rome as the foundation of Western civilisation, and ‘The Ebb-Tide’ can be seen as a mirror of the Aeneid, Virgil’s famous text about the Roman empire (Largeaud-Ortega, p. 561-562). Herrick, the main character in the novel, is an Englishman in a Pacific which has come under the control of European imperialism.
Discoverers of the South Seas often saw their journeys in light of those of Aeneas (ibid, p. 567-568). Tahiti was frequently seen as a mythical place, a ‘golden age’ regained. ‘While physically sailing forth through the seas, the scholars in Bougainville’s expedition mentally sailed back through centuries’ (ibid, p. 568). Tahitians were seen as embodying ‘pristine simplicity’. Stevenson presents a different view, showing the negative effects of white hegemony in the Pacific. ‘The Ebb-Tide’ echoes the Aeneid, only to turn it on its head and criticize imperialism, which brought disease, forced labour, alcohol, etc. (ibid, p. 572, 582). Whereas the imperialist Aeneas is fulfilling the commands of heaven-Virgil repeatedly insists that he is an instrument of the Gods-Herrick, who expresses his disapproval of imperialism, asserts atheism and free will (ibid, p. 586-587). ‘There no longer is any such thing as an absolute decree of a manifest destiny from above that empires shall thrive’ (ibid, p. 587). This is a kind of prefiguring of 20th century existentialism (ibid). When Herrick realizes the illegitimacy of imperialism, he opts for suicide, perhaps signifying that Western presence must be wiped out from the Pacific (ibid). However, he realizes that he is not able to commit suicide, and must go back into the world to live without illusion and hope-this anticipates the existentialist absurd hero of Camus (ibid, p. 587-588). Herrick’s burden is not Kipling’s ‘The White Man’, but rather Camus’s Sisyphus; he fights for personal development, not Empire, having liberated himself from all father figures (ibid, p. 588-589). ‘Unlike the horror of imperial wars in Virgil’s epic, which is a temporary evil necessary to achieve permanent peace and spiritual harmony in Italy, the murderous chaos described by Stevenson spells the demise of a whole people, with no perspective of a restored order’ (ibid, p. 589).
Thus, Stevenson’s novel, drawing upon Roman literature, is a harsh indictment of Western imperialism. A right-wing reading of the novel might, rather than seeing Herrick’s point of view as positive and progressive, see it as a symptom of Western decline, with the loss of the faith and self-confidence represented by the Aeneid being a bad thing (note here especially Herrick’s consideration of committing suicide).
(Although I couldn’t find a good way to fit it into this essay, Rudd’s paper ‘The Idea of Empire in the Aeneid’ is another interesting source on the relation between the Aeneid and Roman imperialism)
ASTERIX AND THE NATIONALIST OPPOSITION TO ROME
The Roman empire has also been opposed from nationalist perspectives, with the Asterix comics being a good example of this. In the comics, Asterix and his village, assisted by a magic potion which gives them superhuman strength, are a holdout against complete Roman control of Gaul (modern-day France). Again, we can arguably connect this nationalist opposition to Rome with other types of opposition to Rome. The contrast drawn between the simplicity of Gaulish village life and the complex, wealthy Roman society overlaps with both the more traditionalist and the more populist or socialist critiques of imperial Rome which we have looked at. One example of this is the book Obelix and Co., in which the Romans manage to undermine the solidarity of Asterix’s village by introducing a capitalist economy which fosters competition between the villagers.
In line with the view of imperial Rome becoming increasingly decadent, there is a scene in Obelix and Co. in which Roman politicians are shown to have gotten fat and lazy. Caesar addresses one of them, saying ‘you were a brave, athletic young tribune…and now look at you…see what all your gold, your villas, your orgies have made of you! You’re decadent!’
Caesar aims to make Asterix’s Gauls similarly decadent, robbed of their vigour, by introducing Roman money into the village.
PART 3-DEFENCES OF THE EMPIRE
Having covered a number of negative receptions of imperial-era Rome (and some distinct but overlapping receptions of the empire in general), we can look at what could be called a revisionist view in which these negative receptions are questioned. The first thing to mention here is the argument that our perception of imperial Rome has largely been shaped by elite historians, who had a grudge against the emperors for having wrested power away from the Senate. In the case of the late Republic, Beard points out that the works of Cicero are very dominant among the surviving sources, making it difficult for historians not to see the world through his conservative viewpoint in which radical politicians are would-be tyrants (Beard, p. 98-100). In reality, Beard suggests, while many among the senatorial elite may have, for instance, felt threatened by the power of Caesar, Caesar’s reforms, such as corn distribution and settlements for the poor overseas, were popular (ibid, p. 98-99). While emperors such as Caligula and Nero have gone down in history as madmen, this could again be partly due to the bias of hostile elite historians (see Beard’s chapters on Caligula and Nero). The famous case of Caligula making his horse a Senator, for example, could be read as a joke satirizing the ambitions of the Roman aristocracy, with their pursuit of luxury and empty honours (ibid, p. 135). Though archaeological and eyewitness evidence may provide some confirmation for the idea of Caligula being extravagant, there isn’t necessarily strong evidence for the more extreme depictions of him (ibid, p. 137-138).
According to Harvey, the show I, Claudius, and the Robert Graves novels on which it was based, both push a distorted aristocratic perspective, drawn from historians such as Tacitus (Harvey 1979, p. 13). This recalls what Joshel said about I, Claudius and other modern receptions of Rome reproducing this elite perspective. Harvey goes on to argue that the early Roman emperors offered stability and economic development to the Mediterranean world, and that many of the scandalous stories about them came from a bitter aristocracy who had not reconciled themselves to a loss of power (Harvey 1979, p. 13). In this instance, the anti-imperial perspective is cast not only as that of the conservative elite, but also (at least in Graves’s adoption of it) as having an element of unrealistic idealism, putting republican ideals over the relative stability which the Julio-Claudian dynasty actually offered (ibid). Here we can mention comments made by George Orwell on Rudyard Kipling’s identification with the British ruling class. Orwell notes that people who are actually in power have to face the question of ‘in such and such circumstances, what should you do?’ (Orwell). By contrast, an opposition party is not obliged to take responsibility for any real decisions. Orwell favourably contrasted people like Kipling, who had to actually imagine ‘what action and responsibility are like’, with an intellectual class who only served to criticize; ‘a permanent and pensioned opposition’ (ibid). Thus, the ‘revisionist’ position which I have been sketching could itself be interpreted as quite a rightist/conservative viewpoint.
We can also mention here Beard’s chapter on the Asterix comics, in which she notes that the highly critical interpretation of Roman history offered by Asterix (and the socialist receptions of Spartacus covered earlier) has fallen out of fashion in recent decades. Instead of Roman rule over the northern provinces being characterized as extremely heavy-handed, with natives offered the choice of complete Romanisation or violent resistance (the latter option represented by Asterix), there is an acknowledgement that the Romans couldn’t actually impose the kind of direct control imagined by the Asterix model (Beard, p. 278-279). In this view, provided that they paid their taxes and didn’t openly rebel, subjects of the Roman empire were largely allowed to live their lives as they had before (ibid).
PART 4-NAZI RECEPTIONS OF ROME
A final case I’d like to mention is German receptions of ancient Rome, particularly during the Nazi era. Tacitus’s book ‘Germania’, in which he gave a description of Germanic tribes around 100 AD, has long been drawn upon by German nationalists (Krebs, Introduction). As we saw earlier, Tacitus praised the moral virtue of the Germans, in contrast to the Romans who had been corrupted by wealth. Montesquieu drew inspiration from Tacitus’s description of the Germans, and came up with a climate-based explanation for why Germans, and other northern peoples, were particularly courageous and moral (Krebs, Chapter 6). According to Montesquieu, the cold air of the north ‘caused higher blood circulation and greater, albeit impulsive, strength’. (ibid). So how was ancient Rome, this civilisation to the south which was more developed but sometimes seen as less virtuous than Germany, received by the Nazis?
We can begin addressing Nazi receptions of ancient Rome by talking a bit about the Nazi relationship to history and time. According to Christopher Clark, the Nazis had a conception of time which was distinct from the progressive view of history represented by both the Soviet Russian and Fascist Italian regimes (Clark, p. 172-173). For both the Soviet and Fascist regimes, the party represented the culmination of a history of progress (ibid, p. 172-173). The Nazi regime, on the other hand, rejected this progressive history, instead preferring to emphasise an immortal German character which ‘transcends the centuries’ (ibid, p. 173-174). Though the Nazi regime did in some ways align itself with themes of modernization and industrial progress, this was in the context of a non-linear temporality (ibid, p. 185-186). National socialism, rather than locating itself within history, ‘articulated its ultimate and defining aims in terms of an ahistorical, racial continuum-time’ (ibid, p. 186).
Griffin has made a somewhat similar argument in explaining why the Nazis were so appealing. He argues that, in a disorienting period when the old, Christian, civilisation seemed to be ending, the Nazis offered the salvation of being ‘airlifted from a doomed historical era into a new one full of hope’ (Griffin, p. 44). The Nazis offered the prospect of standing outside of time, which can be referred to as ‘ecstatic’; when Levi-Strauss spoke of myth and music as ‘machines for the suppression of time’ he was referring to two techniques for achieving this ecstasy (ibid, p. 45). Collective ritual experience is a way of achieving this ecstasy, which we can see for instance in pre-modern societies (ibid). The Nazis offered something similar; ‘Nazism represented an extraordinary synergy of archaic psychology and ritual behaviour with modern technology and state power’ (ibid, p. 46-47). Nazi demonstrations were transcendent experiences where individuals experienced something higher-this phenomenon is evidenced by a significant amount of testimony (ibid, p. 47-48). The French Ambassador to Germany, speaking about the 1937 Nuremberg Rally, referred to ‘the romantic excitement and mystic ecstasy which has overtaken them like a holy rapture’ (ibid, p. 48).
How, then, did ancient Rome fit into the Nazi conception of history? This was a matter of some debate within the party. Hitler, in Mein Kampf and elsewhere, actually distanced himself from some of the more enthusiastic advocates of Germanic prehistory, such as Heinrich Himmler (Krebs, Chapter 8). Hitler commented that Germans were living in ‘mud huts’ while the Romans were erecting great buildings (Clark, p. 176). Hitler’s view was that the Third Reich was designed to ‘re-enact’ the achievements of the Roman empire, which is reflected in preference for neo-classical architecture (ibid). In this, he differed from those who celebrated Germanic opposition to Rome.
We can see a somewhat similar dynamic in how Hitler and the Nazis related to the figure of Charlemagne. Like with the earlier Roman empire, there were those who viewed Charlemagne’s conquests negatively. Alfred Rosenberg, who disliked Christianity, doubted Charlemagne’s Germanic blood, and portrayed him as having massacred the racially pure Saxons of Widekund (De Wever, p. 377). Again, Himmler took this viewpoint, but Hitler did not, calling Charlemagne one of the greatest figures in world history, for unifying the German tribes (ibid, p. 377-378). Hitler is recorded as saying that, without violence, Charlemagne could never have brought the tribes together, and therefore disagreeing with the perspective that attacked Charlemagne as a slaughterer of the Saxons (ibid, p. 379-381). Hitler imagines that in the future some ‘idiot’ might describe him as ‘butcher of the Ostmark’ because he did not tolerate any opposition to the incorporation of Austria into Germany (ibid). Thinking about this remark in particular, we can connect Hitler’s pro-imperial position to the view described earlier in which critics of the Roman empire were seen as idealists, unable to take responsibility for the realities of wielding power. Though some within the Nazi party scorned Rome and preferred to emphasise ancient Germany, Hitler seems to have identified with the imperial principle represented by Rome, and aimed to emulate its greatness.
Overall, then, we can see that ancient Rome has been received in a variety of different ways, from being an example of moral decline, to an oppressive empire, to a positive model of empire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baxter, D 2006, ‘Two Brutuses: Violence, Virtue, and Politics in the Visual Culture of the French Revolution’, Eighteenth Century Life, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 51-77
Beard, M 2013, Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations, Profile Books, London
Burke, P 1966, ‘A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians, 1450-1700’, History and Theory, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 135-152
Burton, M 2008, ‘Performances of Jewish Identity: Spartacus’, Shofar, vo. 27, no. 1, pp. 1-11
Clark, C 2015, ‘Time of the Nazis: Past and Present in the Third Reich’, Geschicte and Gesellschaft, vol 25, pp. 156-187
De Wever, B 2014, ‘Charlemagne in the Third Reich’, in B De Wever, D Callebaut, and H van Cuyck (eds.) The Legacy of Charlemagne, Province of East-Flanders, Ghent, pp. 377-382
Dunstan, W 2011, Ancient Rome, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham
Futrell, A 2001, ‘Seeing Red: Spartacus as Domestic Economist’, in S Joshel, D McGuire, and M Malamud (eds.) Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 77-111
Griffin, R 1999, ‘Party Time: The Temporal Revolution of the Third Reich’, History Today, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 43-49
Harvey, P 1979, ‘Tacitus’s Last Work: Historiography Aspects of Robert Graves’, The Classical Outlook, vol 57, no. 1, pp. 11-13
Joshel, S 1995, ‘Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus’s Messalina’, Signs, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 50-82
Joshel, S 2001, ‘I, Claudius: Projection and Imperial Soap Opera’, in S Joshel, D McGuire, and M Malamud (eds.) Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 119-154
Joshel, S, Malamud, M, and Wyke, M 2001, ‘Introduction’, in S Joshel, D McGuire, and M Malamud (eds.) Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 1-22
Krebs, C 2011, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich, W. W Norton and Company, New York
Largeaud-Ortega, S 2013, ‘Stevenson’s The Ebb-Tide, or Virgil’s Aeneid Revisited: How Literature May Make or Mar Empires’, Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 561-593
Martindale, C 2006, ‘Introduction: Thinking Through Reception’, in C Martindale and RF Thomas (eds.), Classics and the Uses of Reception, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, pp. 1-13
Marquis, C 2015, ‘Inspiring ‘Trumbo’ Exposes Anti-Semitism of Hollywood Blacklist’, St. Louis Jewish Light
McCormick, J 2009, ‘Machiavelli and the Gracchi: Prudence, Violence, and Redistribution’, Global Crime, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 289-305
McInnis, E 2015, ‘The Antebellum American Textbook Authors’ Populist History of Roman Land Reform and the Gracchi Brothers’, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 25-50
Nelis, J. T. 2007, ‘Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of Romanita’, The Classical World, vol. 100, no. 4, pp. 391-415
Orwell, G 1936, ‘Rudyard Kipling’, Horizon
Osmond, PJ 2020, ‘In Defense of Tiberius: Edmund Bolton, Tacitean Scholarship, and Early Stuart Politics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 3, pp. 591-613
Sims, J 2010, ‘What Race Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans’, The Unz Review
Southern, P 2001, The Roman Empire From Severus to Constantine, Routledge
Journal of Winthropian Thought 
Leave a comment