Free The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) by Anthony Esolen Page B
Authors: Anthony Esolen
the senatorial class, sitting at tables, waiting, “the robes and decorations august beyond reckoning, the majesty expressed in those grave, calm eyes like the majesty of gods” (Livy, 5.41). At last one soldier pulled a senator’s beard to see what would happen. When the old man cursed him and struck him, the spell was broken, and the massacre of the senators, who in noble scorn gave their lives for their people, was underway.
A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read
The Inevitability of Patriarchy by Stephen Goldberg; New York: William Morrow, 1974.
It’s not about Western civilization, or religion, or literature, or politics. All this book does is to claim that not one instance of genuine matriarchy has ever been discovered—and then it shows why that is not surprising, given our hormonal makeup. Recommended for all students whose professors deride Greece or Rome for their patriarchy, without ever suggesting an historically or anthropologically feasible alternative. One might as well take leave of the whole human race.
I’m not implying that the senate was filled with heroes. Roman political history is marked by the conflict between the classes, the slow squeezing by the plebeians of political rights from the patricians, and, later, the securing by the poor of something like lawful treatment from the rich. But for five hundred years the Romans never collapsed into civil war or civic degeneration. The patricians agreed, grudgingly, to have the laws written down, as a protection for all: hence the famous Twelve Tables (450). They agreed, in the Lex Canuleia (445), to allow patricians and plebeians to marry. They finally agreed to open up the consulate to plebeians, to limit the acreage of public land a man might hold, and to temper their measures for exacting payment from debtors (367). They bowed to the office of the tribunes, and conceded that the person of a tribune should be held sacrosanct. But, with all their faults, they acted as a healthy check upon the passions of the people. Unlike Athens, Rome could not slide into mob rule. There were too many senators in the way.
Another anecdote will illustrate the point. 11 The plebeians had been stoked to rebellion by their tribunes, just when Rome was vulnerable to the Volscians, their rivals in central Italy. Then Menenius Agrippa, a shrewd and eloquent senator, rose to settle them down. He compared the state to a body, with the rich—who seem to produce nothing, but consume everything—as the belly, without which the other members of the body could receive no nourishment. It’s a metaphor that reflects poorly upon the rich, but the people are swayed by it. They do not erupt in violence. Such scenes are repeated again and again in the histories that helped fashion the Roman imagination. We see it in Virgil’s famous simile, comparing Neptune’s calming the raging sea with the calming of the people by one man, one leader, marked by piety:
And just as, often, when a crowd of people is rocked by a rebellion, and the rabble rage in their minds, and firebrands and stones fly fast—for fury finds its weapons—if, by chance, they see a man remarkable for righteousness and service, they are silent and stand attentively; and he controls their passion by his words and cools their spirits: so all the clamor of the sea subsided. ( Aeneid, 1.209–217)
The point is that republican Rome survived. Neither the Etruscans, nor the Gauls, nor her Italian rivals, nor Hannibal, nor even her own strife between the classes, brought her down, until her victories and her wealth corrupted her, requiring an Augustus to set things in order again. Roman commitment to tradition provided a check on the power both of the wealthy and of the mob. Rome retained a dread of both tyranny and untempered democracy, and the bastion against both was that fatherly virtue of piety. The American Founders took the lesson, modeling their state not after
A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read
The Inevitability of Patriarchy by Stephen Goldberg; New York: William Morrow, 1974.
It’s not about Western civilization, or religion, or literature, or politics. All this book does is to claim that not one instance of genuine matriarchy has ever been discovered—and then it shows why that is not surprising, given our hormonal makeup. Recommended for all students whose professors deride Greece or Rome for their patriarchy, without ever suggesting an historically or anthropologically feasible alternative. One might as well take leave of the whole human race.
I’m not implying that the senate was filled with heroes. Roman political history is marked by the conflict between the classes, the slow squeezing by the plebeians of political rights from the patricians, and, later, the securing by the poor of something like lawful treatment from the rich. But for five hundred years the Romans never collapsed into civil war or civic degeneration. The patricians agreed, grudgingly, to have the laws written down, as a protection for all: hence the famous Twelve Tables (450). They agreed, in the Lex Canuleia (445), to allow patricians and plebeians to marry. They finally agreed to open up the consulate to plebeians, to limit the acreage of public land a man might hold, and to temper their measures for exacting payment from debtors (367). They bowed to the office of the tribunes, and conceded that the person of a tribune should be held sacrosanct. But, with all their faults, they acted as a healthy check upon the passions of the people. Unlike Athens, Rome could not slide into mob rule. There were too many senators in the way.
Another anecdote will illustrate the point. 11 The plebeians had been stoked to rebellion by their tribunes, just when Rome was vulnerable to the Volscians, their rivals in central Italy. Then Menenius Agrippa, a shrewd and eloquent senator, rose to settle them down. He compared the state to a body, with the rich—who seem to produce nothing, but consume everything—as the belly, without which the other members of the body could receive no nourishment. It’s a metaphor that reflects poorly upon the rich, but the people are swayed by it. They do not erupt in violence. Such scenes are repeated again and again in the histories that helped fashion the Roman imagination. We see it in Virgil’s famous simile, comparing Neptune’s calming the raging sea with the calming of the people by one man, one leader, marked by piety:
And just as, often, when a crowd of people is rocked by a rebellion, and the rabble rage in their minds, and firebrands and stones fly fast—for fury finds its weapons—if, by chance, they see a man remarkable for righteousness and service, they are silent and stand attentively; and he controls their passion by his words and cools their spirits: so all the clamor of the sea subsided. ( Aeneid, 1.209–217)
The point is that republican Rome survived. Neither the Etruscans, nor the Gauls, nor her Italian rivals, nor Hannibal, nor even her own strife between the classes, brought her down, until her victories and her wealth corrupted her, requiring an Augustus to set things in order again. Roman commitment to tradition provided a check on the power both of the wealthy and of the mob. Rome retained a dread of both tyranny and untempered democracy, and the bastion against both was that fatherly virtue of piety. The American Founders took the lesson, modeling their state not after
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