Read Online The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) by Anthony Esolen - Free Book Online
Authors: Anthony Esolen
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West, and another fifteen hundred years in the East. It did so, unquestionably, with a lot of civil strife, but, during the centuries of the Republic, without any full-scale civil war , such as convulsed France twice in one century, England under Charles I, Spain under Franco, the United States in the War Between the States, and ancient Athens. It did so even though the geographical position of Rome made it vulnerable to attacks from north and south, and from the sea. Why?
Father knows best
One reason was that they understood the truth of a proverb that now we can only snicker at: father knows best.
We can’t underestimate the importance of the father and the family in the Roman mind. When the great national poet Virgil wrote to legitimize the rule of Augustus—the first Roman ruler to be called “emperor,” and the reinventor of Roman government after the Republic collapsed—he compared his saving his country from civil war to its founding by the legendary Aeneas, a refugee from Troy. But Aeneas is no swaggering warrior or privateer like Odysseus, taking twenty years to get back home to Ithaca. Aeneas is Roman at heart before he ever leaves Troy. He is called pater Aeneas and pius Aeneas, meaning Aeneas the father who performs his duty to his father, to his fatherland, to his household gods, and to the great gods. Now Virgil is a great and humane poet, not just a propagandist. He extends the definition of such piety to include humaneness and mercy towards those who suffer. Rome must obey the right. But the bedrock definition of piety remains fatherly duty and duty towards the father. We see a perfect picture of Roman piety when Aeneas, instructed by the gods, prepares to leave the burning city of Troy. He sets his crippled old father Anchises upon his shoulders, and takes his little boy Iulus by the hand, while Anchises carries the “household gods,” that is, the ancestral images. 6 It is a picture of being rooted steadfastly in time, taking nourishment from the past, and placing one’s hope in the descendants to come.
That rootedness in the past, and that firm trust in the perpetuity of one’s line, can help us distinguish Rome from Greece, from the imperial governments of Persia and Egypt, and from the follies of our day. Unlike the Persian, the Roman in the days of the Republic never bowed before the glory of a self-styled King of Kings. He was a free man. His family too, though it might not be influential, was holy. Each family possessed its own genius or guardian spirit, passed along from one head of the family to the next. The State, a cooperative of families, could not breach the sanctity of any family without setting the precedent for its own destruction. The notion that a State could intrude upon the hearth and wrest the children from the authority of their parents, as is called for in Plato’s Republic and as is the precondition for every modern socialist state, would strike the Roman as barbarous and blasphemous.
Unlike the Greek, the Roman never conceived that the State was just the creation of men, to be altered at will. It was holy—as was the family or clan. As such, it could resist the surges of popular appetite or willfulness. Several times Rome came close to breaking up, but did not. The people’s fundamental reverence prevented it. Once, early on, the plebeian families, the commoners, grew sick of their high-handed treatment by the patricians, from whom the consuls were then chosen. So they threatened to destroy Rome, not by fire or sword, but by walking away. 7 They packed their belongings, just when Rome was threatened by the Volscians; but the Senators agreed to compromise, and Rome survived. And at a time when Rome was struggling for supremacy against nearby Veii, a powerful Etruscan port, the tribunes of the people complained that it was too great a burden upon the farmer-citizens to remain deployed through an entire year, “no longer allowed even during the
Father knows best
One reason was that they understood the truth of a proverb that now we can only snicker at: father knows best.
We can’t underestimate the importance of the father and the family in the Roman mind. When the great national poet Virgil wrote to legitimize the rule of Augustus—the first Roman ruler to be called “emperor,” and the reinventor of Roman government after the Republic collapsed—he compared his saving his country from civil war to its founding by the legendary Aeneas, a refugee from Troy. But Aeneas is no swaggering warrior or privateer like Odysseus, taking twenty years to get back home to Ithaca. Aeneas is Roman at heart before he ever leaves Troy. He is called pater Aeneas and pius Aeneas, meaning Aeneas the father who performs his duty to his father, to his fatherland, to his household gods, and to the great gods. Now Virgil is a great and humane poet, not just a propagandist. He extends the definition of such piety to include humaneness and mercy towards those who suffer. Rome must obey the right. But the bedrock definition of piety remains fatherly duty and duty towards the father. We see a perfect picture of Roman piety when Aeneas, instructed by the gods, prepares to leave the burning city of Troy. He sets his crippled old father Anchises upon his shoulders, and takes his little boy Iulus by the hand, while Anchises carries the “household gods,” that is, the ancestral images. 6 It is a picture of being rooted steadfastly in time, taking nourishment from the past, and placing one’s hope in the descendants to come.
That rootedness in the past, and that firm trust in the perpetuity of one’s line, can help us distinguish Rome from Greece, from the imperial governments of Persia and Egypt, and from the follies of our day. Unlike the Persian, the Roman in the days of the Republic never bowed before the glory of a self-styled King of Kings. He was a free man. His family too, though it might not be influential, was holy. Each family possessed its own genius or guardian spirit, passed along from one head of the family to the next. The State, a cooperative of families, could not breach the sanctity of any family without setting the precedent for its own destruction. The notion that a State could intrude upon the hearth and wrest the children from the authority of their parents, as is called for in Plato’s Republic and as is the precondition for every modern socialist state, would strike the Roman as barbarous and blasphemous.
Unlike the Greek, the Roman never conceived that the State was just the creation of men, to be altered at will. It was holy—as was the family or clan. As such, it could resist the surges of popular appetite or willfulness. Several times Rome came close to breaking up, but did not. The people’s fundamental reverence prevented it. Once, early on, the plebeian families, the commoners, grew sick of their high-handed treatment by the patricians, from whom the consuls were then chosen. So they threatened to destroy Rome, not by fire or sword, but by walking away. 7 They packed their belongings, just when Rome was threatened by the Volscians; but the Senators agreed to compromise, and Rome survived. And at a time when Rome was struggling for supremacy against nearby Veii, a powerful Etruscan port, the tribunes of the people complained that it was too great a burden upon the farmer-citizens to remain deployed through an entire year, “no longer allowed even during the
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