History: Doomed to Repetition

In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon observes that seeds of decay are planted as inseparable corollaries of great success. One such seed is the lust for power, which affirms Gibbon’s sentiment. Where virtue and restraint are the guiding principles of an empire, the desires of expansion and conquest find fertile soil. Gibbon demonstrates, however, that an unrestrained longing for power, analogous to the paradox of hedonism, serves to multiply rather than to quell the desires which it aims to satisfy, rendering its own goal strangely less attainable than it was at the first and beginning a cycle of power-seeking that only new leadership has the potential to stop. Through the lives of Agricola, Trajan, Commodus, and the early Christians, Gibbon shows that the seed of lust for power is planted where great success takes root. This seed of decay, undetachable from great success, demonstrates that human history, forever subject to the whims of an imperfect race, is bound to repeat itself.

Agricola’s extensive conquest of Britain under Domitian is noted by Gibbon as the first failure of Augustus’ followers to live up to Augustus’ moderation in conquest (Gibbon 32-33). Augustus had, Gibbon says, “bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which Nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries; on the west the Atlantic ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa” (Gibbon 32). A lust for the British pearls, however, drove Agricola to eschew the principled restraint of his predecessor, and he enslaved not only Britain, but also, lest the Britons be reminded of the beauty of freedom, Britain’s Irish neighbors. Britons with the prospect and example of freedom far removed from their eyes were Britons who, in Agricola’s eyes, “would wear their chains with the less reluctance” (Gibbon 34). In abolishing the Briton’s idea of freedom, Agricola affected to mold the people into a kind of domesticated animal race, unable to attain to the unadulterated freedoms which its unfortunate heritage had robbed from it and which chance had bestowed upon the majority, and skill the minority, of its masters.

Trajan, driven by a desire to emulate the conquests of Alexander the Great, followed Agricola. Gibbon notes that “Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters” (Gibbon 35). The topsy-turvy praise given to Trajan’s predecessors drove him to seek praise by the same means. His predecessors, however successful militarily, had conquered Britain, Ireland, and Dacia as “exception[s] to the [virtuous] precept of Augustus” (Gibbon 35). Driven by the twisted goal of emulating a lack of virtue, Trajan went on to conquer lands “from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian gul[f]” (Gibbon 36). Bosphorus, Colchos, Iberia, Albania, Osrhoene, and Parthia all became subjects of Rome under Trajan. Even the large and rich countries of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria were reduced to provinces under his rule (Gibbon 35). Gibbon notes, much to lover of virtue’s chagrin, that Trajan would have continued conquering, had his age “left him any hope of equalling the renown of the son of Philip” (Gibbon 34-35). Trajan’s conquest, unmerited on the part of the conquered and unmitigated in lust, did not long outlive him. As Gibbon says, “it was justly to be dreaded, that so many distant nations would throw off the unaccustomed yoke when they were no longer restrained by the powerful hand which had imposed it” (Gibbon 35). The failure of his lust-driven campaign, however, would not long prevent others from attempting similar conquests for the same motive.

Commodus’ life exemplifies the growth of lust for power where great success has taken root. Though the son of a mild and virtuous father who took many pains to correct Commodus’ growing vices, Commodus remained profligate and consummately immoral. Given the seat of Rome, Commodus had power over the greatest empire of his and perhaps any age. Yet Commodus was not content with the power which chance had allotted to his name. Driven by a supreme sense of entitlement to every perverted desire, Commodus spent his hours in a harem and would rape any unwilling “lovers” (Gibbon 116). He deemed himself the Roman Hercules, making himself the center of public spectacle by hunting animals in the amphitheater. “In all these exhibitions,” however, “the securest precautions were used to protect the person of the Roman Hercules from the desperate spring of any savage; who might possibly disregard the dignity of the emperor, and the sanctity of the god” (Gibbon 118). He also fought in the amphitheater as a Secutor, a type of gladiator, seven hundred and thirty-five times, being sure that such “a[ch]eivments were carefully recorded in the public acts of the empire,” though they had little to do with that subject of history, so that his fame might live on (Gibbon 119). Many of his opponents in this arena were mortally wounded by Commodus and thus “obliged to seal their flattery with their blood” (Gibbon 119). Furthermore, Commodus personally received “a stipend so exorbitant” from the common fund of the gladiators “that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon the Roman people” (Gibbon 119). He later disdained his Herculean title, demeaning it unworthy of his high position, and began to prefer the appellation of Paulus, a celebrated Secutor. These numerous and extraordinary examples of lust for power, both superficial and manifest, grew from the seat of great success. Commodus’ immense corruption and resultant desire to achieve the limelight of Rome’s public eye by any means necessary were a direct result of his lofty position. On the one hand, only his high position would allow for the new taxes, the animal hunting, and the gladiatorial fighting that composed Commodus’ reign, and on the other hand, only his sense of entitlement--due to his position--would breed his desire for these things. His birthright of success, therefore, conferred not only the lust for power, but also the option to feed the lust it conferred. His inability to learned either from history or from the tutors whom his father dutifully prescribed demonstrates the unavoidable vicissitude of history.

The early church was also subject to the vicissitudes invited by great success. Once the church began to see rapid growth through conversions and established a government with relative freedom and equality--ecclesiastical markers of success--pride arose among the bishops and lust for power reigned. Gibbon writes, “[n]or was it long before an emulation of pre-eminence and power prevailed among the metropolitans[, that is, bishops,] themselves, each of them affecting to display, in the most pompous terms, the temporal honours and advantages of the city over which he presided; the numbers and opulence of the Christians, who were subject to their pastoral care; the saints and martyrs who had arisen among them” (Gibbon 488). From a position of ecclesiastical and personal success, the bishops were driven by lust for power to usurp authority and make the size of their congregations into a contest. Having “acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and primates, [they] secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters” (Gibbon 488). Receiving a lofty title because of their success as presbyters, the bishops were overtaken by a lust for power. This seed’s creeping into the church demonstrates that history immutably bound to a perpetual cycle, for even the leaders of a people renowned for their moral values proved a fertile breeding ground for the lust for power.

Each of the above men and the group of bishops failed to learn from the examples of those before. Each was in the midst of great success of one kind or another, and each one was driven by the lust for power. One may conclude, therefore, that history will repeat itself as long as the nature of man remains the same: as long as men seek power above virtue and view virtue as valuable only as a means of self-promotion, disposable once it fails to attain its intended end, the lust for power will continue to arise and strangle the seedling roots of virtue. The seeds of lust for power grow into a kind of tantalian tree, always promise, yet always failing, to bring relief, but men will ever reach skyward for lust’s fruit.