DICTATORSHIPS OF OLD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

DICTATORSHIPS OF OLD

Why Rome's Empire Fell

By E.M.B.

THE history of the Roman Empire is a subject which cannot be exhausted. Outworking on the changing stage of modern politics, we "watch, day by day, those conceptions of law, government and the state which descend to us from the first four centuries of our era. It is wjth this in view that Mr. H. W. Household has produced the second volume of his Roman history. "It is a story," he says of the Empire, "that presents many striking to the liis.tory of our own times. In the first two centuries we are dealing with men extraordinarily like ourselves, in their interests, their problems, their outlook and their behaviour; .and in the three centuries which' follow with men such as it would be fatally easy for our successors to become." Could a better case be made for the study of this period? That era saw a world weary of democracy turn to dictatorships; saw the prosperity and peace which followed as the ready price for the first bartering of individual freedom; saw dictatorship become Oriental despotism. Evils Began as Reforms

It saw the beginnings of so many other things; unemployment, rigid regulation of business and economic life, decline in the birth rate, the "dole," excess.fof imports over exports; centralisation of government; crushing armaments; crushing taxation and the ruin of the middle class, the barbarians seeking a place in the sun, bureaucracy grim and great, the clash of church and totalitarian state and the emergence of. the military autocrat. Other evils began as -well-meaning reforms. Paternalism and social legislation started in earnest with Hadrian. Household quotes an inscription from a mining village in Portugal "which reveals the meticulous care with which the details of life were regulated. Nothing was left to the whim of the individual or to the effects of competition. At paternal —perhaps too paternal —emperor settled everything. Though the result may not have been seen or desired, all private initiative was xiltimately extinguished. In that mining village no shop could be opened without permission, and each shop-keeper did his business under a contract which defined exactly his obligations. The village shoemaker was told the kind of boots and shoes and even the quality of the hobnails he must provide. . . . It was in keeping with the unsleeping vigilance that the secret police should be increased largely in numbers daring his reign." '" Based on Fear" What was the end? "The state became a structure based on fear. It was a cobweb of suspicion; its activity was an/ activity of extraction of taxes, rentless, remorseless to support an army and a mass of officials; it tied the artisan' to his guild, the serf to his plop, the councillor to his town in order that each, duly penned in liis place, might do his state service and pay his state dues." This was in Diocletian's ,day. Need we comment ?

This little history is lucidly written , for the general reader. It is a. story of a tragedy all should read. Why did Rome fall? The pressure in the obscure hinterland of Barbary with its shifting, restless tribes which ultimately broke the frontiers, was a factor not susceptible of control. The breakdown of internal standards, the dry-rot in the economic structure, the decay of individual responsibility, and the weariness within were other factors, and in these tilings we see a civilisation dig its own deep grave. The story is disturbing.

"Rom/, Republic aarl Empire; Vol 11, The Empire," by H. AV. Household. (Dent>