Are We Rome?

The following is a timely passage from the book Are We Rome? by Cullen Murphy.

In 68 B.C. a pirate attack on Rome’s port of Ostia prompted the terrified Romans to cede far-reaching powers to one man, Pompey. There would be no turning back. The need to act boldly and react quickly; to ferret out enemy plans while keeping your own hidden; to show a public face of resolve, concealing doubt and dissent—in Rome, over time, all these mandates produced a change in character. They have done so in America, too. You could point to the expanding power of the presidency relative to the other two branches of government; or to restrictions on personal freedom in exchange for personal safety; or to a culture of secrecy; or to the pervasive influence of the military and the security apparatus.

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The Romans had nothing like the technological means that modern America has to create a true surveillance state, but the empire’s undercover operatives—the frumentarii—were diligent. In common parlance these operatives were known as the curiosi.

The philosopher Epictetus, who was born in Rome and knew firsthand the dangers of thinking freely (he was sent into exile), presents a vignette of entrapment in one of his writings: “A soldier, dressed as a civilian, sits down by your side and begins to speak ill of Caesar, and then you, too, just as though you had received from him some guarantee of good faith in the fact that he began the abuse, tell likewise everything you think, and the next thing is–you are led off to prison in chains.”

Our own curiosi have big ears. The National Security Agency, in a program known as ECHELON, sifts tens of millions of telephone and data communications every day, searching for any of hundreds of words or phrases that may hint at terrorist activity. Some of them (“White House,” “mail bomb,” “kill the president”) are self explanatory; others (“Roswell,” “blowfish,” “Bill Gates”) may be counterintuitive.

Another program, which bore the name CARNIVORE until someone started to worry, much too late, about the potential public-relations fallout, essentially conducts wiretaps on e-mail.

More recently the national-security apparatus has begun wiretapping the international phone calls of millions of Americans without legal oversight—on presidential orders, and despite the expressed will of Congress. It has also been collecting phone records of tens of millions more.

Then as now, legislatures seem to be the first to go. The Roman Senate remained a millionaire’s club and a source of public servants, but it atrophied as a true deliberative body. Foreign policy and war-making power became the sole province of the emperor and his amici, his closest advisors … Power [in America] has shifted decisively towards the executive, as the executive understands. George W. Bush made the point this way: “I’m the commander—see, I don’t need to explain … I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”