President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
Finley’s work is part of a long and glorious tradition of satire in the world of military and foreign affairs. Her books are a welcome mental break for modern audiences, but the wellspring of military and diplomatic satire was already deep. For autocratic societies, where censorship is a defining characteristic, satirists walk fine lines to say quiet thoughts out loud.
Killing for the Republic is, for ancient history, fairly accessible, and between that and its celebration of civic virtues and the republican spirit it may garner a significant audience. It does speak to fundamental questions: what made Rome special, and how is Rome relevant today? Republics do need citizens invested in military service and in public life generally. In the military sphere, for example, Eliot Cohen has written frequently and recently about civic virtue and citizen soldiering. While Brand's book asks us to consider the place of civic virtue in modern Republics, its mischaracterizations of Rome's military history and the civic virtues of its citizens make it difficult to recommend.
While still a republic, Rome built its empire through the virtues of its agrarian-based citizens and thanks to a political system characterized by the pursuit of liberty through divided sovereignty and participatory citizenship. The foundational element was a valorized civic mindedness, nourished by religious rituals, civic monuments, a commitment to family honor and communal glory, and that agrarian lifestyle. The latter habituated Roman citizens to the essential need of fulfilling their duty. Rome successfully cultivated martial virtues among the populace so that ordinary citizens could pursue their duty toward family and patria while also earning individual glory, but without threatening the delicate balance required to preserve the republican state.
Professor Harper has produced a wonderful case study that demands a general rethinking of how we view the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It turns much of the earlier views on Rome’s decline into surface explanations and places the chance happenings of nature in a driver’s seat that we can barely comprehend. It should also give us pause in how we think about the future.
The western world today—the United States and Europe—finds itself in a position similar to that of the late Roman Empire. Despite renewed threats from Russia and an ascendant China, the chances of another great power or world war are small. Technological advances and the realities of a global economy upon which all the great powers depend make such unpalatable, even for the most bellicose. While we ought to be prepared for the possibility of such a conflict, it cannot be the primary focus.
