In honor of our trip to Rome at the end of the coming November, I’m reading up on Roman history. So I’ve added some history works to the political theory. Or maybe in place of the political theory…. we’ll see how I feel.  

Tender is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald  (1934)  
Gonna be honest- not my favorite read. The story, set in 1925-30 was about a couple, Dick and Nicole Diver. Nicole is a wealthy girl who was molested after her mother died. She develops mental issues and is sent to a leading edge psychiatric clinic in Europe where her doctor, Dick, falls in love with her. The story chronicles their relationship, marriage, and its eventual disintegration.   

I had a difficult time caring about either of these two, and the jet set they portray are so rich and concerned about parties and appearances that I just couldn’t identify with them. Interestingly enough, in the second novel contained in the book- The Last Tycoon, there is a line that sums up my feelings. It’s about a movie producer. He has decided to not make a movie and his seconds want to know why. He says of the characters in the story: “I don’t like the people. I wouldn’t want to meet them. If I knew they were going to be somewhere, I’d go somewhere else.” Yep. By the end of the story I didn’t care what happened to either of them.  

The Last Tycoon- F. Scott Fitzgerald  (1941)  
Definitely better than Tender is the Night, in my humble opinion. It’s beautifully written. For example there’s a scene where the main character has finally gotten a date with this woman he’s interested in. They are trying to decide where they can go. The lady says she would like some tea. He says: “We’ll go to the shore. There’s a place there where I got out once and was chased by a trained seal.   
Do you think the seal could make tea?  

Well, he’s trained. And I don’t think he’ll talk – I don’t think his training got that far….”  

Since the writer died before this was finished, maybe I should give the novel a break, after all, he didn’t get a chance to clean it up to final form. Not my favorite, but pretty good.  

Il giorno in più– Fabio Volo  (2007)  
Giacomo is a mid-30’s man, who sees a girl every day on his train ride in to work. They smile at each other but he never approaches her, fearing he’ll ruin things if he does. One day the girl, Michela, invites him to coffee, and tells him that she is moving to NY the next day. She leaves a company letterhead out for him to see, and while she uses the bathroom, he jots down the address.   

After a few months, he is still thinking about her, so he decides to go to NY and find her. When he does, she lets him know that she was really interested in him and was hoping he’d come to find her. Given their history with relationships, they decide to embark on a 9 day (the time left in his trip) engagement that would end of his trip.  He is called home with one day left in the ‘engagement’ because his grandmother is dying. After his grandmother passes, he remains in Italy for a few months. Then deciding he still has one more day (il giorno in più in Italian) he flies back to NY.  

Michela is happy to see him. They consider turning the temp engagement into long term, but she proposes that they wait. He would go back to Italy, and in three months, she would be traveling to Paris. If they both still feel the same way, they would meet at a predetermined spot, if either didn’t feel it, then they shouldn’t show up. They both show up and Michela is already pregnant with his child. 

One of the few Italian stories I’ve read that don’t have a bummer ending. 

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State- Friedrich Engels (1884)   
I’m continuing through my reading of Marxist classics. This one is interesting as Engels, working from the recently departed Marx’s notes, reviews the writings of Lewis H Morgan, an American anthropologist who had lived among the Iroquois. His description of the societal structure oof the Iroquois seems to be at a developmental level only a few steps behind what the Greeks had 2500 years ago. Which then allows us to see the development of society from its more primitive roots to now. This, of course, allows Engels to show how the primitive societies of the native Americans had evolved through private property from communal to oppressive societies based on inequality. 

SPQR- Mary Beard (2015) 
The focus of this book is supposed to be the republican history of Rome, but the founding, the early monarchical period, and the imperial period up to Caracalla is covered as well. 

The legends of Rome’s founding provide metaphors for realities about Rome. Romulus had declared his city to be an asylum, which attracted all sorts of unsavory types. This would later become a model for Rome to include peoples it conquered as citizens of Rome. Romulus also killed his brother Remus, and fratricide and violence became a normal part of Roman succession to leadership. There was also the incident of inviting the Sabines to a party, only to abduct their women. But this was reframed as necessary given the paucity of women in Rome. This was a grounding in the Roman view that their wars were always just. 

Rome had a 200 year monarchical period that ended with the establishment of the republic- an attempt at setting up checks and balances to preclude autocratic rule. Their religion- a religion of doing, not beliefs, and the structure of the army, highlighted the importance of the collective over the individual. 

The republican period saw a tribune of the plebians established in response to increasing demands from the masses for representation and a say in government. 

In their wars against neighbors, the only thing the Romans really asked of the conquered people was soldiers for the Roman army. Rome didn’t force administrative change on the conquered, but the fact that their sons were now in the Roman army gave the conquered people an incentive to root for Rome. 

The Romans nearly invented a new type of citizenship as well. People belonged to places and were citizens of that city or territory. Rome granted citizenship to all free men in its conquered territories, meaning those would have dual citizenship.  

The Roman military ideal meant wider and wider conquests, their inclusion of newly conquered peoples in the army cemented those relationships, and the swelling numbers of the army made Rome nearly invincible.  
The inclusion of all these peoples meant that the empire was increasingly exposed to outside influences and grew in sophistication. But the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC left Rome as uncontested rulers of the Mediterranean. Fear of an outside enemy had united Romans, but their success meant that a “Roman” was no longer someone from Rome, and that military itch turned from outside inward.  

Increasingly, the lack of external threat and the flood of wealth beyond anything seen before contributed to a growing divide between the elite and the rest. The senate was increasingly insular and worried more about protecting their own wealth. The ineffectiveness of the Senate led to the desire to see someone who could solve the problems take over.  

There were successive waves of ignoring republican ideals in order to get stuff done, and this led eventually to the people cheering autocratic rule, as long as it provided for them.  
While the “republic” didn’t formally end; the senate continued to meet and the structure of Roman politics remained the same, the practical reality of the situation was that there was no turning back. Rome passed from republic to monarchy again.  

Part of the tragedy of it is that Rome did a lot of things right, and it was still unable to escape being the victim of its own success.