The Hillsdale College lecture on “The Roman Legacy” illustrates the extent to which our form of government was based on those features of government that made Rome great.  Our founders created a government of divided, carefully balanced powers; and they recognized the importance of personal virtue as well as the importance of religion in maintaining those virtues.

 There are basically three types of government, monarchy, the rule of one; aristocracy, the rule of few; and democracy, the rule of the many.  The government of Rome was a combination of all three, and our government was designed to reflect that balance, part aristocracy, part monarchy, and part democracy.  Their government was not the result of a constitution convention, or based on the ideas of a certain or a few men.  It was a government that resulted from political and compromise over many years,

 First were the Councils, two of them, the commanders, the administrators, in charge of law and order.  They served only one year and each of them had veto powers over the other.  Next was the senate made up of ex-councils or magistrates or retired generals.  They had the power of the purse and they served for life.  Their opinions had no legal standing.  Their edicts were phrased in the form of recommendations, but they were respected. 

 Then there were the popular assemblies, the populous, and the people.  They could declare war, ratify treaties.  They could make the councils account for their actions.  They came to the defense of the people against the power of the state.   And they had the power of veto over the council and of the senate. Only another of the three assemblies could overturn the veto of an assembly.  According to historians, they were “The fountain of honor and punishment.” The assemblies also elected the councils.

 Mixed government combined status, interest and rights, a regime that could project enormous power abroad.  Although complicated, it was a perfectly balanced constitutional order where no one had power over the other.  After their year of service, the council, the commander, would likely join the senate.   The senate was made up of the very seasoned ex-councils or military men.  The people respected the senate, but they had safeguards through the assemblies and could assert themselves when they felt there was something wrong. 

 At its height of power and influence, the whole people, both public and private, were even more heavily governed by their much lauded virtues that perhaps grew out of the ethic of farmers, working the land. First manliness: the willingness to do their duty.  A farmer would leave his plow at a moment’s notice and return to battle.  That’s what men do.  Second faithfulness: the willingness always to act in the public good.  Third “Mos Maiorum”: reverence for the custom of the ancestors.  Romans looked backwards toward the profound wisdom of the way their ancestors had done things 

 One of the most prestigious offices was that of the censor, ex-council who censored moral behavior that was so basic to the life of the republic. When the extravagances of the East began to consume the people, the censor passed laws to reign in the extravagant licentiousness that began to invade the populous.  Their aim was to keep their fellow Romans from getting soft.  Rome’s purging of all luxury and protecting manliness explains in large part their victory on the battlefield.

 Religion was also important to Romans.  Their scrupulous fear and awe of the Gods kept them in line.  They performed many rituals and ceremonies to placate Gods.  Their final virtue, Pietas, piety, was a composite virtue: devotion to duty, to god, to fathers and fatherland, love and affection mixed with reverence. 

 

Our founders, deeply schooled in the wisdom of their ancestors,  created a government of divided, carefully balanced powers; and they recognized that it would only work with a well educated, virtuous and god fearing citizenry.  Had we insisted on the office of the censor, perhaps we could have avoided the reality show trash that has inured us to evil.