The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire

 

 Jeffrey St. Clair>>

While contemplating the incipient collapse of our Republic from an inside job, I dipped back into the six-volume edition of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that Alexander Cockburn gave me as a Christmas present years ago. Gibbon’s prose style is ornate, featuring wide-ranging and winding sentences that often end abruptly, like a dagger plunging. It takes some pages–and there are entire mountain ranges of them–to get used to his baroque rhetorical rhythm. Still, once you do, the book really picks up steam and roars along through decade after decade of unrivaled imperial villainy, personal cupidity and political turpitude.

Like a historical geologist, Gibbon pinpoints the first major seismic fault triggering the fall of the Empire during the reign of Commodus, the sadistic son of the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose Mediations are much promoted (though little practiced) by today’s TechBros. Through much of Commodus’s reign, the man by his side was the conniving Cleander, who became chamberlain of the Empire and commander of Commodius personal death squad, the Praetorian Guard. Here’s Gibbon’s acute (and very timely for our own perilous predicament) assessment of how the Commodus/Cleander partnership worked:

" [Cleander] entered the palace, rendered himself useful to his master’s passions, and rapidly ascended to the most exalted station which a subject could enjoy. His influence over the mind of Commodus was much greater than that of his predecessor [Perennis, who Cleander had killed], for Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue which could inspire the emperor with envy or distrust. Avarice was the reigning passion of his soul, and the great principle of his administration. The rank of consul, of patrician, of senator, was exposed to public sale, and it would have been considered as disaffection if anyone had refused to purchase these empty and disgraceful honors with the greatest part of his fortune. In the lucrative provincial employments the minister shared with the governor the spoils of the people. The execution of the laws was venal and arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain not only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the witnesses and the judge.”"

Sound familiar?

Cleander, like Elon Musk, was not a natural-born citizen of the Empire. He came to Rome from Phyrgia, orchestrated hundreds of killings to demonstrate his loyalty, and made a bundle as the hatchet man and chief extortionist for the Emperor until he briefly eclipsed Commodus’s glittering raiment and lost his head for this hubristic transgression.

It was comforting to learn that I’m not the only former punk who found solace in Gibbon’s sprawling work. So did Iggy Pop, who wrote a piece for Classics Ireland about why he spent so many nights on the road reading the Decline and Fall:

" In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude.

Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters – Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando – with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental. I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs," personalities, and values played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters.