You’re thinking about the Roman Empire right now, aren’t you? The release of “Gladiator II” this past weekend has brought new interest to that venerable civilization that—according to Instagram—is never far from the thoughts of many (mostly men). And while “Wicked” has crushed “Gladiator II” at the box office thus far—worse than when, horribile dictu, the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 A.D.—history tells us that we shan’t soon lose our fascination with ancient Rome.
When I lived in Philadelphia in my early 20s, my walk to work regularly took me past a statue of Benjamin Franklin in the window of The Library Company. Commissioned in 1789 and considered our nation’s first public monument, the statue is over eight feet tall and made of white Carrara marble. Ol’ Ben looks quite regal—or, I should say, imperial. To be honest, he always made me laugh. Because Benjamin Franklin is wearing a toga.
Certainly America’s authors have shared our nation’s enthusiasm in their close attention to the Roman Empire over the years. The magazine was just three weeks old when the topic first came up on May 8, 1909. For 115 years since, Rome’s vast reach (and demise) has been part of a million and one theological reflections, editorials, historical analyses, book reviews and more. Indeed, just two weeks ago, Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J., offered his thoughts on “Caesars, presidents and apostles: Viewing the presidential election from Rome.” And in May, the classicist Jessica Blum-Sorenson reviewed Mary Beard’s new book on Roman imperial power for America; we reviewed Beard’s last book, Twelve Caesars, in 2022.
The history of that empire is, of course, inextricably intertwined with the history of Christianity, from Jesus’ crucifixion at Roman hands to the early persecutions of the early church to the eventual Christianization of most of the empire in the fourth century A.D. (If you go to Midnight Mass this Christmas, pay attention during “The Proclamation of the Birth of Christ” that traditionally begins the Mass: the founding of Rome and the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus are both mentioned.) And some of the church’s earliest and most profound theology and religious practices (remember that the Roman emperors were called “pontifex” long before the popes were) were deeply influenced by Roman civilization.
Last, one could argue that modernity itself—and thus the contemporary Catholic Church as well as the modern nation-state—was made possible by the rise and fall of Rome. In his 2020 review of Walter Scheidel’s Escape From Rome, Dominic Lynch wrote that “Scheidel begins his book, a sweeping academic survey comparing empires and eras, with the claim that the best thing the Roman Empire ever did was to ‘fall and go away.’”
I suspect there is a simpler explanation of why this magazine should have historically had such an interest in the empire, however: For generations, two of the foundational texts for students at Catholic high schools and colleges—and for Jesuit novices and scholastics—were Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Virgil’s “Aeneid.” If you were an America author who spent hours of your youth memorizing “Arma virumque canō, Trōiae quī prīmus ab ōrīs Italiam” or “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,” the civilization that produced those texts might naturally become your default for historical reference.
In fact, writing a few weeks after D-Day in 1944, longtime America literary editor Harold Gardiner, S.J., claimed that part of the reason for the success of the Allied invasion was that at least a few schoolboys remembered that Julius Caesar himself had built the original fortifications in Normandy on which the Germans based their defense. The Allies, Gardiner wrote, “had read up on the history of the place; they located the old tunnels and sealed them with demolition charges. What potential traps there might have been there in Caesar’s fort were circumvented by the fact that some men in a twentieth-century mechanized army had read about the short swords and hollow squares that schoolboys agonize over in De Bello Gallico.” Do your homework, kids.
Former America editor in chief George W. Hunt, S.J., wrote in 1993 of the influence of the early Caesars on our calendar. “August, lest we forget, is the month named after Emperor Caesar Augustus. It was originally called Sextillus, the sixth month of the Roman calendar, but after Augustus became emperor, the Romans renamed it in his honor,” Hunt wrote. “Unfortunately, the month only consisted of 30 days at the time, and the ‘divine’ Augustus felt slighted, since the month of July, named after his great-uncle Julius Caesar, had 31 days. Consequently, in order to make August at least as long as July, Augustus stole one day from February (who would miss that!) and gave it to August—and here we are.”
One of the figures who looms largest in Catholic history and theology is St. Augustine. As Cecilia González-Andrieu once noted in America, our veneration of this ancient saint is the equivalent of commemorating a 20th-century historical figure in the 35th century. And St. Augustine’s theology, at least in City of God, was profoundly influenced by the aforementioned sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 A.D. That event shocked many who took literally the notion of Rome as eternal.
In a 2019 reflection on the catastrophic fire at Notre-Dame cathedral, Stuart Squires quoted St. Jerome, who was so devastated by the fall of Rome that he wrote “I scarcely knew my own name” and it felt as if “the entire world perished in one city.” Christians, preached St. Augustine in City of God, “must understand that the destruction of an earthly city—even the Eternal City—is ultimately meaningless. Instead, the heavenly city is the Christian’s true home,” wrote Squires. A different theology, to be sure, from that found in the similarly-named St. Louis Jesuits’ hymn, but one that has echoed powerfully throughout church history and doctrine.
The Roman Empire has its parallels in contemporary American life, and over the years a number of writers in America have noted the similarities. In a September 1909 review of Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, the reviewer commented that “We see, that in spite of great changes in institutions, in physical and material surroundings, men have not altered much since the days when wealthy Romans flitted from the City to Baiae or Bauli, as our moneyed class does from New York to Florida, or when Atticus, a type of the more honorable Roman, invested in real estate or gladiators, or in the publishing business, much as our capitalists might do in similar instances to-day.”
Eleven decades later, in 2019, contributor Nathan Schneider again noted the parallels between the Roman Empire and our current civilization. “Every empire comes and goes, even fabulously wealthy ones with armies stationed all over the world, even ones whose language and pop culture has become a universal tongue, that hold such dominion and then demand of themselves even more greatness,” he wrote. “Every period of alleged greatness is also a precursor to decline.”
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Our poetry selection for this week is, of course, “The Death of Cicero,” by James Matthew Wilson. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.
Members of the Catholic Book Club: We are taking a hiatus while we retool the Catholic Book Club and pick a new selection.
In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.
Other Catholic Book Club columns:
- The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison
- What’s all the fuss about Teilhard de Chardin?
- Moira Walsh and the art of a brutal movie review
- Father Hootie McCown: Flannery O’Connor’s Jesuit bestie and spiritual advisor
Happy reading!
James T. Keane
