Three Legacies of the Romans

The Romans left us three legacies that endured for centuries.

First, the Romans believed human beings who claimed to possess other human beings as chattel should be admired and respected as model citizens. In fact, the more chattel slaves a citizen owned, the more he was admired and respected.

Second, the Romans believed human beings who claimed to possess land and property should be admired and respected. The more land and property a citizen owned, the more he was admired and respected.

The first legacy of the Romans is, fortunately, no longer with us. The claim to own other human beings is seen as abhorrent. Those who make this claim are seen not as respectable citizens but as criminals.

During the French Revolution the Jacobins called the second legacy of the Romans into question. Property owners who feasted while their fellow citizens starved were seen during this revolutionary period not as respectable citizens but as criminals. "Property is theft" and "Starvation is murder" were two slogans often used to explain the shift in consciousness away from the Roman legacy.

We know from history that this revolutionary criticism of the respectability of owning property did not endure. Today owners of mansions who adorn themselves with silks and jewels while their fellow citizens starve on the streets are once again admired and respected as model citizens, in France and everywhere else in the West.

Engels famously claimed the only difference between a wage worker and a chattel slave is that a chattel slave is sold all at once, while a wage slave is sold piecemeal by the hour. Of course Engels exaggerates the similarities. The wage worker must sell his labor to the owners of capital to survive. But unlike the chattel slave, a wage slave whose owner abuses him can try to find a new owner who will treat him better. But the fundamental injustice, that some human beings are compelled by circumstances to serve other human beings, remains unchanged.

Along with the tradition of admiring and respecting those who feast while others starve, the Romans of course also bequeathed to us a third legacy, a humanist, literary tradition that refuses to admire the beautiful mansions and jewels of the rich, that refuses to ignore the human suffering underlying symbols of wealth and refuses to gape in awe at them.

The first century Roman poet Juvenal, for example, ridicules the Roman tendency to equate possessions with respectability. Here is a passage from his Satires, beautifully translated by John Dryden:

The question is not put how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.

Which tradition is ascendent in our culture today? The one that gapes in awe at the symbols of wealth? Or the one that sees the suffering behind and beneath them? The answer is clear enough. Celebrities who feast in million dollar mansions while others starve on the streets are admired and respected. We don't see them as murderers as the Jacobins did. We hold them up as role models.

Humanist Matthew Arnold offers us a name for those who admire material opulence while failing to see the material suffering caused by the choice to use resources on feasts rather than on food for the hungry, on mansions rather than on shelters for the homeless:

The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.

When we talk about the philistinism of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, we aren't just talking about bad taste. We're talking about a profound lapse of morality. A culture produced by directors and actors who feast in mansions while others starve on the streets is not merely aesthetically corrupt. It is morally corrupt.

The exquisite means of reproduction electrical engineers have created is now used to transmit our corrupt message to people across the globe. As Marx aptly points out, those who own the means of material production also own the means of ideological production, and can teach us to admire them rather than seeing them as the murderers they are.