After years of keeping them at bay, they rushed in. Swiftly and mercilessly, these brutes, these barbarians — long since dismissed in the public’s mind as a foreign threat already subdued — stood triumphant at the doorstep to an empire. The enemy was not a thousand miles away; it was not something that lived only in hushed whispers between politicians or in the shadows of the public’s rapidly fading memory. It was here. As outsiders looked on in awe, they knew that the world would never be the same. On the Visigoth sacking of Rome in the summer of 410 A.D., Saint Jerome wrote, “My voice sticks in my throat, and, as I dictate, sobs choke me. The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken.”
On that August day, the world was introduced to Rome’s mortality. A fatal blow had been dealt to the seemingly impenetrable armor of the Roman spirit, an irrecoverable shock that would bring the hegemon to its knees for the last time. Of course, the successful Visigoth sack of Rome did not occur in a vacuum. The historic assault was executed in concert with the political turmoil that had plagued Rome for years. These internal struggles — corruption, apathy, complacence, decadence — reached a crescendo as the Visigoths took the world’s greatest city from the hands of the world’s largest empire. The political backwardness of the time coupled with the loss of a collective Roman identity left this late-stage empire particularly susceptible to external threats, the last of which would forever alter Rome’s place in history. The similarities between Rome’s condition then and the U.S.' now is nearly impossible to ignore.
On June 12, the U.S. was attacked under circumstances similar to those seen in Rome more than 1,600 years ago. The Visigoth attack on Rome, while it was certainly the last, was by no means the first. On July 18, 387 B.C., Rome fell to Gallic Celts, an attack that would forever leave a mark on the Roman psyche and a day that Romans swore to never forget. After 9/11, Americans made a similar promise. But time slowly erases the scars of the past and, like Rome, we underestimated the power and influence of an old enemy wearing a new disguise.
Like Rome, the U.S. is aging in its supremacy. We have become what New York Magazine contributor Andrew Sullivan refers to as a “late-stage democracy,” the implications of which are becoming increasingly more evident. As we de-emphasize nation-building and focus ever more on tolerance and equality, our national conversation has become more introspective. While in years past social issues have taken a backseat to the execution of our “Manifest Destiny,” the U.S. has, upon realizing its global preeminence, attempted to remedy its internal maladies. While the pursuit of social justice is an essential and invaluable step forward in society’s tireless march toward equality, national “greatness” and societal reform are often irreconcilable pursuits, a paradoxical relationship recognized in a quote often misattributed to Aristotle, “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.”
It seems counterintuitive that increased equality and international hegemony are incongruous; however, the negative implications of tolerance are entirely contingent on society's apathy. Tolerance is a symptom of a dying society, rather than the ailment itself. It is apathy, seen first in Rome and now in the U.S., that is the viral component.
Much of the apathy in the U.S. is a result of the public’s disenchantment with a government and financial system that no longer seem to represent the interests of the majority. As in Rome in the third and fourth centuries A.D., a sense of economic and political disenfranchisement in this country has resulted in an apathetic populous largely disinterested in national greatness. Rather, the more productive and gratifying approach seems to be social reformation. In Rome, similarly frustrated citizens abandoned their political institutions, weakening the shared Roman identity on which the empire’s success had been built. As the U.S. faces growing economic disparity and heightened political polarization and antipathy, the shift in focus is quite similar.
Political stagnation and apathy in the U.S., as in Rome, is a product of complacence on the part of the government. Once dominance is established, there is no real incentive to push forward; once we are full, we forget what it means to be hungry. The U.S. has established a political, economic and social empire that extends to every corner of the Earth. Like Rome, we have effectively conquered the known world. Since then, change has been shunned as the institutions of our past act more as barriers to progress than guidelines for the future. We refuse to change, not out of reverence for customs, but out of fear of what diverting from the known might do.
It is under these conditions that we were attacked in Orlando. Weakened, divided and uninspired by a sense of national oneness, the social institutions which we constructed as a refuge from our political frustrations were used against us. Instead of uniting against a shared enemy, the tragedy divided us further, driving a wedge deeper between what have become two increasingly disparate American psyches. The target of this attack was the diversity and sense of acceptance that this country has come to represent. Tolerance in this country could be our Achilles heel, but it doesn’t have to be. Now is our opportunity to make tolerance and strength synonymous.
America’s reputation as a melting pot is our identity. It is what makes this country great — it is our Rome. Without the city from which it earns its name, the Roman Empire could not endure. Without unity, diversity and acceptance in times of besiegement, neither can the U.S.