Why Rome Failed--Part 3 or 3

In a couple of earlier posts, I discussed the subject of why Roman civilization--and with it, of course, the entire civilization of western Europe in ancient times--came to an end. This is a subject of more than passing interest to yours truly, as someone who has read and even published on the matter. And though of course I'm far from an expert, I do think I've gained a little insight from thinking about all this for some time.

Nothing that took place in Rome was really new from an intellectual standpoint: in terms of organization, engineering, and the military, of course, the Romans far exceeded the Greeks, but the underpinnings of their worldview were almost entirely borrowed from a much earlier generation of Athenians. Not only was the Roman economy, like that of the Greeks, completely dependent on slavery, but more important, the Romans subscribed to basic ideas about the universe that were common to Greek thinkers.

Though Plato and Aristotle differed on many points, they agreed on the idea that some are born to lead and the vast majority are born to follow. Plato's Republic develops this theme at great length, and Aristotle, in his Politics, maintains that the slave's physical work is a badge of his inferior condition. To these men, the most esteemed form of labor was mental; by contrast, the idea of actually working with one's hands--of getting one's hands dirty--was almost shameful. This is particularly ironic in Aristotle's case, since he was one of the first biological scientists to study the natural world at first hand, dissecting numerous animals with the help of his students. But there was a limit to his empirical commitment: like everyone else who's ever lived, Aristotle was still a man of his time and place.

To the classical mind, the work of the artisan was altogether inferior to that of the thinker, and thus when Hero of Alexandria invented the first steam engine, he saw it merely as a toy, and the potentially world-changing idea lay virtually unexplored for the next sixteen centuries. Even the great Archimedes, a fascinating character with a penetrating scientific mind on a par with that of Einstein or at least Edison, saw his inventions primarily as tools to serve the king and the military--not as a means to increase productivity.

Productivity: the ancients bore a deep suspicion of the very concept, because they tended to see life on earth as provisional, something carved out at the mercy of the gods, and not as something that the human mind could potentially improve. With its wariness of attempting to shape nature for fear of offending the gods, its disdain of invention as a mere form of tinkering not suited to great minds, and its lack of interest in finding ways to minimize labor for slaves, the classical world was doomed to die out. In fact, the really amazing things is not that it collapsed, but that it lasted as long as it did.

(In making these observations, which imply a high valuation of technological and economic progress, I am well aware that such a view is not fashionable--that the very use of the term "progress" is as outmoded as the idea of gentlemen regularly wearing hats in public. But when it comes to the rudiments of life, I prefer the old school; besides, I believe that people who claim they wish we were all living in mud huts without cars or planes aren't fooling anybody but themselves. Nevertheless, I still claim Fight Club among my all-time favorite movies.)

Finally, as mentioned in earlier posts, a brilliant article by a Professor Haskell at Southwestern University discusses in greater depth the reasons behind the ancients' failure to develop machinery. Particularly fascinating is Haskell's identification of an unlikely hero in the history of civilization: the humble, hardworking medieval monk, in almost every way opposite to the artistocratic geniuses of an earlier age. The essay will give you a new appreciation of those little bald-headed men who got up every day when it was still dark, spent their days crushing grapes and such, and quite possibly saved the West somewhere along the way.