toxic masculinity was rome's downfall

the inherent contradictions of men's obsession with the roman empire

there has been much discourse lately about the frequency with which men contemplate the roman empire and i must admit: as someone who grew up assigned to be a boy, thoughts of rome have stayed with me always. but i’ve also done a lot of reading about roman history and i find it ironic that cishet men are so eager to glorify an empire which collapsed thanks to a political system rooted in manly antics.

i still remember when a boomer cishet man, drunk with wine, approached me at a wedding to spontaneously share his thoughts on the fall of rome. he was sickened by the sexually explicit nature of music these days and he told me that “hedonism” and “sexual promiscuity” would be america’s downfall. this view echoes a very old one, that of the 18th century british historian edward gibbon. i read an abridged version of his book the decline and fall of the roman empire: my summary here does not do the full perspective justice, but gibbon partly credited rome’s downfall to the effeminate degeneracy of its men. roman men supposedly became so addicted to luxury and relaxation that they lost the old “manly virtues.” gibbon even claimed that by the end, the romans had become so essentially girly they were going into battle naked.

it makes me think of a comment i once read on reddit: a man described how he had seen an “effeminate hipster man” on the plane in the exit row! he worried: what if there is an emergency? will this man be able to help me? who is going to fight our wars for us? this idea that men need to be manly or the nation will perish seems deeply ingrained into the psyche of many american men: and when it comes to rome, this perspective actually stretches back even much further than gibbon.

the roman themselves were incredibly anxious about what the reddit commenter would label “effeminacy.” pliny the elder wrote diatribes against women he claimed were buying too much silk, cosmetics, and jewelry: draining the empire of its gold. the first emperor augustus, in his civil war against marc antony, used antony’s relationship with cleopatra to claim that antony’s rule would mean rome’s descent into unmanly luxury and hedonism. antony was portrayed as galavanting around alexandria with cleopatra at his side on wild drunken escapades: when augustus cemented power, he imposed new strict laws to promote more conservative morality and to control relationships between the genders as they were then understood. augustus was committed to controlling women as an extension of ensuring the public morality of his empire: he had his daughter exiled to an island for sexual promiscuity.

the start of august’s reign began nearly two centuries of peace enforced by the threat of being enslaved and having your entire city cleared of its population if you rebelled (see jerusalem 70 ce). i suppose some men would suggest: see? it was manliness which secured the roman empire! imagine if that playboy antony had taken control!

but the cause of roman instability before the beginning of the roman empire under augustus had nothing to do with a lack of “manliness.” augustan propaganda is easily twisted in the other direction; “playboys” can be “manly” too. marc antony was a man who had been fighting wars throughout his life: so what if he had some legendary romance in faraway “exotic” places like egypt? the romans were always bringing elephants, lions, zebras, and other creatures to rome as symbols of their vast domain: could antony not have displayed cleopatra in the same way? it’s the kind of thing these men would have done to women.

meanwhile, augustus hardly fought: he had his general agrippa take care of military tactics, while he himself used money from his adopted dad to raise private armies. once augustus took power, the whole apparatus of culture became dedicated to glorifying him. even rome’s poet virgil, author of the aeneid, was writing propaganda on august’s behalf. the aeneid itself is essentially augustan propaganda, commissioned by the emperor. if marc antony had prevailed, there is no “lack of manliness” which would have stopped him from ensuring he likewise maintained control and patronized the literary world to paint admirable portraits of him in its poems.

still, a part of me can’t help but wonder: would it have maybe been at least marginally better if marc antony had prevailed? augustus was a true moral draconian. he was actually almost the original godfather, as i wrote in another post:

“there actually is a word for the nightmarish fusion of husband and father when it is taken to its utmost extreme: the paterfamilias. the romans structured their whole society around the concept of the paterfamilias. under roman law, the head of the household had absolute authority over his family: he could sell his children into slavery; he could order a newborn baby to be abandoned in a field outside the city; his approval was required for the marriage of his children; he had almost complete authority to discipline his wife and total authority to discipline his children. when the emperor augustus founded the roman empire, he saw himself as the paterfamilias of the entire world: it was believed that he was the ultimate “father,” the “father” of us all, and his statue went up with children dangling from his hands.”

augustus was a man who had his own daughter exiled to an island for promiscuity; marc antony seems to have afforded cleopatra much more liberty. might things have been marginally better under laws created by marc antony?

in the grand scheme, and for ordinary people, i can’t help but feel like the question hardly matters, though i need would need to read a lot more to say anything certainly.

yet: in terms of “manliness,” it wouldn’t have mattered whether augustus or marc antony had prevailed. even if it was “manliness” which fueled initial conquests, it was neither “manliness” nor “public morality” / “lack of hedonism” which ensured longevity for the roman empire. the civil war pitting augustus and antony against one another had nothing to do with a “lack of manliness” or “hedonism”: romans had been fighting civil wars with one another and attacking their neighbors for hundreds of years by that point. the culture must have throbbed with testosterone. the fuel of roman instability was the same fuel that had spurred roman conquests: extremely manly men, generals actually, building popular support on the back of intractable social issues while ruthlessly fighting one another for power with one agenda: glory.

when the roman empire first disintegrated into three parts in the third century ce, its dismantling was a product of dozens upon dozens of generals fighting one another for decades so as to be able to crown themselves “emperor.” an emperor was “proclaimed” emperor by whatever faction of troops supported him: and these soldiers only supported a man if he was a warlord willing to pillage the state on their behalf. once he lost his ability to do this, they would kill him and “elect” someone else (often various factions of men would “elect” competing warlords “emperor”). the new “emperor” would secure them more gold. the roman military gradually destroyed itself, the economy crumbled, and the state was steadily bankrupted until one man, aurelian, reunited the empire, and then another, diocletian, reestablished the state on tweaked political principles: 4 men would “share” power, two “augustes” and two “caesars.” but the power sharing hardly lasted more than a couple decades before the boys were at it again.

virtually none of the men who took power after diocletian had any real concerns beyond military glory, personal enrichment for themselves and their clients, and the gradual imposition of christianity upon society. a few, such as constantine, made important fixes to improve the efficiency of the state, but the fundamental destabilizing factors were only temporarily brought under control.

the empire repeatedly fell back into civil war. its men continued to crush the state’s capacity to defend itself simply so that they themselves could take power and wealth. when men came to the throne, their agendas were not fueled by visions of improving the lives of hungry children, although they addressed social problems from time to time. they were either seeking military glory for themselves or they were figureheads in the hands of cliques of german generals whom the roman army had hired.

alexander the great was the roman boy’s version of a star athlete to emulate: alexander the great had conquered the east, his armies reaching all the way to india, and many emperors dreamed of repeating this feat by conquering neighboring persia, rome’s arch enemy. no one seems to have stopped to reflect on the fact that alexander’s conquests proved strategically useless to macedonia, that the whole “empire” fell apart as soon as he died, and that he himself probably drank himself to death. what mattered was that he had achieved something every little boy dreamed about in the same way that boys dream ahout becoming lebron james: he conquered persia. whether the conquest of persia provided any benefits to common people was irrelevant: what mattered was that the conquest of persia ensured eternal glory.

perhaps no emperor exemplifies this obsession with glory at any price than does the emperor julian. julian reigned some 50 years after diocletian. he began his reign with an idealistic vision of undoing the progress of christianity and restoring the hellenic religious and philosophical heritage. but within a few years he was so animated by dreams of becoming the next alexander the great, and he was so determined to solidify his political position by demonstrating an overwhelming military victory over a powerful foe, that he led the roman army on a suicide mission into persia. the result was devastating defeat for rome and the destruction of the same armies rome needed to defend itself from german invaders. not to mention: julian’s own death in battle.

there was no strategic benefit or rationale for this invasion. to stay in power, julian simply had to demonstrate to other men how manly he was by conquering another country. the more formidable the better. this would dissuade men who might rebel against him by convincing them of his power: the system almost reminds us of the social systems which prevail among our ape cousins, except those enacting the system in rome are consumed by the most delusional boyhood dreams of military glory to the point that these dreams define their politics and undo their most visionary projects.

take valens, who ruled a couple decades after julian. gothic armies had invaded the empire and were burning down greek cities. valens was posted up in constantinople, the eastern capital, and a general from the western empire was en route. together they would surround the goths and end their raids. the operation, if successful, would have spared countless greeks inevitable death, rape, and enslavement. but valens was so frightened by the idea that he might have to share glory with this other man that he led his army into battle early. valens was cut off from his troops and burned to death inside a farmhouse that the goths surrounded. his army was utterly destroyed.

people make much of “immigration” as the roman empire’s downfall. they say it was the gradual takeover of the army by germans that brought rome to its knees. but while it is true that german generals did take over the army especially in the west, and while it is also true that the last western emperors were no more than pawns in the hands of these germans, it’s worth examining one key reason why rome hired them to begin with. rome’s army had so utterly depleted itself by fighting itself, and by going on suicidal adventures into distant lands, that emperors began hiring germans to help them put down rebellions by other romans. eventually they were hiring germans and huns to help them fight off other germans and huns. when rome finally abandoned britain to saxon invaders, it did so because the general there had proclaimed himself “emperor” and took the army off to gaul to achieve his dreams: he was ultimately defeated and roman society in britain was eventually destroyed by the saxons.

now the same people who would have us emulate rome, the same people who claim that a lack of manliness and a descent into "femininity” will destroy america, are also inclined to say things like “women are too emotional to be president.” but were the irrational emotions of roman men not the key to the empire’s ultimate downfall?

to be honest, i never know what these people mean by “logic” and “reason,” or by the assumption that “men” are “more reasonable” and “more logical” than women. i guess what they mean is that men have so repressed their feelings for other beings, and even for their own communities, that they will destroy the whole world if that is the most logical route to achieving their dreams of glory, to being the best, to having power.

if restoring “manliness” is a path toward national redemption, what does that national redemption look like? men in my family used to joke about “shooting” people when i was growing up. “shoot ‘em” was a go-to solution for political and cultural issues. i remember on 9/11 an older family member look at me and said: “find afghanistan on a map andrew because it’s not going to be there anymore pretty soon!” i recall mccain in 2008 on his campaign, singing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb iran.” when i was in high school watching fox news (the kind of media environment i grew up in), i remember a cis man “foreign affairs expert” was asked what he would do about north korea. with a twinkle in his eye, he hinted that his view was so extreme and destructive he couldn’t say it on air. and yes, these same people tell us that women are too emotional to be president. i think about iraq, afghanistan, vietnam. these were delusional enterprises which resulted in the pointless deaths of millions: and they were as “roman” as it gets.

“shoot ‘em!” maybe that’s a bit like how the romans talked as they slowly destroyed themselves. pliny the elder believed it was women buying jewelry, silk, and cosmetics that would cause his empire’s downfall: but in the end it was men being serious, men being manly, men obsessed with glory and power and victory, men unconcerned with solving the empire’s many social and human problems. it was these men, not women or germans, who drained the state of gold and helped bring the roman empire to dust.

(rome 2014, photo my own)

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