Is Every Civilization Doomed to Fail? - Gregory Aldrete

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of after skool my name is Greg aldrete and I'm a history Professor who studies ancient Greece and Rome today we'll be exploring the theories of the ancient Greek historian pus who wrote about why civilizations rise and fall as well as what explains the astonishing success of the Roman Republic so let's get started. is every civilization doomed to rise but then inevitably fall? is there some ideal form of government that will allow a civilization to avoid collapse? how can we explain why some civilizations flourish and expand While others stagnate

or are easily conquered? these are vital questions that humans have pondered for thousands of years and they remain urgently relevant today they were also the exact questions that obsessed a man named Polybius who lived in ancient Greece over 2,000 years ago during the 2 Century BC while Polybius was a highly educated member of the Greek upper class for him these were not just abstract philosophical topics to be debated over a cup of wine but burning issues of direct and painful relevance not only to himself personally but to his home city of megalopolis and to the

entire wider Greek world this is because during Polybius' lifetime the Roman Republic had gone on a rampage through the Greek World defeating one state after another including Polybius' own city of megalopolis in 167 BC pus was shipped off as a hostage to Rome along with a thousand other prominent Greeks all of this came as a devastating shock to pus over a century earlier the conquest of Alexander the Great king of Macedon had spread Greek culture throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and into the near East although Alexander's Empire had fragmented upon his death into numerous smaller kingdoms

Greek culture remained dominant giving many Greeks a smug sense of superiority after all were they not the creators of such magnificent achievements as the architectural Perfection of temples like the Parthenon the sculpted beauty of statues such as the derus the clever plays of Sophocles and the brilliant philosophy of Plato the period after Alexander's Conquest was known as the helenistic era and during it the erudition and Ingenuity of Greek culture coupled with the the ruthlessness of the Macedonian military machine seemed an unbeatable combination the helenistic cities and empires of the Eastern Mediterranean were wealthy prosperous sophisticated

and self-satisfied and then this world was turned upside down onto this complacent scene burst the Romans who swept in from the Western Mediterranean and in little more than a generation toppled nearly every one of the mighty helenistic kingdoms to many greets the Romans would have seemed UNC barbarians utterly lacking in the intellectual skills and accomplishments that they prize so highly how could such relative brutes have triumphed so rapidly over the talented and Powerful Greeks this riddle was so compelling to pus that he devoted the rest of his life to trying to answer it his investigation

took the form of writing a gigantic 40 volume History of Rome in which he meticulously described Rome's expansion across the Mediterranean and offered his analysis of Rome's spectacular success he lays out his motivation right at the beginning of his history stating can there be anyone so apathetic or lacking in curiosity to have no desire to understand by what means and under what form of government the Roman humans conquered the entire inhabited world and brought it under their absolute control in a time span of barely 53 years pus was perhaps uniquely qualified to undertake such a

project because he acquired firsthand knowledge of Roman imperialism not only from his perspective as one of its victims but also from the Roman Viewpoint as well Polybius ultimately spent 16 years as a hostage at Rome where he was treated more like a guest than a prisoner while there he became friends with the most powerful Roman family of the day the scipios. Polybius accompanied these Roman generals on campaigns in Africa and Spain and thus when it came to analyzing the fall of the Greek world and the Rise of Rome pus had truly witnessed both sides before

looking at Polybius' explanation for the Rise of Rome we need to examine his overall ideas about how and why civilizations rise and fall like many ancient thinkers pus believed that civilizations behaved like living creatures and followed a natural biological cycle of birth growth maturity stagnation Decline and death the earlier Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle had both expressed versions of this Theory pus took these ideas even further and offered a very elaborate scheme he proposed a cyclical progression of seven stages of government that form an endless repeating Loop called anacyclosis he posited that primitive humans had

begun in a sort of anarchic original condition without political structures this is the first stage eventually a strong leader emerged who brings order and direction for the good of all and thereby gains the respect and falty of the group The People willingly bestow the mantle of authority upon him and thus we reach the second stage of the cycle kingship while the original King earned his position of leadership through his actions the kingship was usually then passed down by heredity over time subsequent monarchs start to grow arrogant and abuse their power through arbit or unjust actions

and the kingship degenerates into the third phase tyranny this provokes a group of the wealthiest and most dynamic men to organize together and overthrow the Tyrant they then take charge of running the state in a collective fashion sharing power among themselves and the fourth phase aristocracy is born while the initial group of aristocrats Act with the interests of all in mind once again over subsequent Generations their descendants become addicted to wealth and status and begin to think only of themselves and aristocracy degenerates into its corrupt form oligarchy The Ordinary People inevitably grow weary of the

abuses of the overbearing oligarchs and reach a point where they can't take it anymore the people rise up in Revolution and either kill or expel the oligarchs recalling their ill treatment by tyrants and oligarchs they desire neither a kingship nor an aristocracy this inspires them to take up the Reigns of government themselves and create a democracy in which political power rests in the hands of the people equality and freedom of speech typically form two of the cornerstones of democracies for a time there is Harmony and prosperity but soon corruption again Creeps in later generations who

have grown up always enjoying freedom of speech and equality begin to take these rights for granted and no longer guard or value them greed leads to inequality and affluence Fosters a sense of entitlement both create resentment among the populace deceitful and Shameless leaders arise who play upon these feelings by making extravagant promises vowing to shower the people with gifts but in reality these men are only concerned with increasing their own power with the rise of such power hungry and narcissistic leaders often called demagogues democracy devolves into the next phase mob rule at some point one

of the demagogues emerges as dominant over all the others and seizes control of the state or else there is a general collapse into Anarchy followed by the emergence of a new strongman then the entire cycle repeats itself this is how pus described his doctrine of anacyclosis and in his presentation of it there is indeed an almost biological inevitability to the way in which each stage degenerates into its negative twin that pus would subscribe to this theory is quite understandable because its General outlines matched up well against the histories of many of the Greek city states

for example if we look at Athens the largest and most famous of them its development aligns pretty well with the anacyclosis scheme according to Legend its earliest rulers were wise Kings such as Theus who was renowned for slaying the half bull half human monster known as the minitar then as Athens grew in power and wealth it went through a phase when it was ruled by tyrants The Arrogant behavior of these tyrants caused them to be overthrown and a group of aristocratic families assume power over time a series of institutional reforms shifted Athens towards an Ever

more democratic structure of government culminating in the direct radical democracy of the mid 5th century BC a time that also corresponded to the high point of Athenian power and wealth towards the end of the 5th century BC however unscrupulous politicians arose who although pretending to be champions of the people were really only interested in selfishly advancing their own careers these demagogues included men such as alabes who encouraged the Athenian people to vote for foolish policies that led to Athens catastrophic defeat in the pelian war and the collapse of the Athenian Empire during The Next Century

not just Athens but all of Greece fell under the control of a new generation of Kings such as Alexander the Great and his successors and the cycle seemed to have circled back to its beginning it's worth noting that innumerable later thinkers would be greatly influenced by Polybius' anacyclosis model and would either comment on it or or offer their own versions among the more notable of these during the Middle Ages was Thomas aquinus the great philosopher Theologian who wrote the sum theologica during the Renaissance Nicolo melli the brilliant and Infamous political commentator best known for his

trus the prince was heavily influenced by pus and in another of his writings the discourses offered his own version of the anacyclosis cycle during the 18th century the intellectuals of the Enlightenment were fascinated with ideas about the progression of history and many Enlightenment thinkers subscribe to pius's theory in an essay called men's lust for power the American Founding Father John Adams directly echoed pus writing simple monarchy will soon mold itself into despotism aristocracy will soon commit an oligarchy and democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy this concept affected Adam so powerfully that he described it

as the Creed of my entire life all of this leads back to the central puzzle that had motivated pus to write his history why had Rome been able to conquer the helenistic world so easily his conclusion was that the Romans had cleverly found a way to step off the ever revolving wheel of anacyclosis how did they accomplish this Rome had initially started out as a monarchy ruled by Kings but in the 6th Century BC had expelled them and established a republic dominated by Aristocrats so far this follows the anacyclosis model however by pius's time in

the second Cent BC the Roman Republic had evolved into a kind of hybrid governmental structure that still retained some aristocratic elements but also vested substantial power in the citizen body and featured elected magistrates pus believed that this version of the Roman Republic had managed to craft a constitution that mixed together elements of all three of the positive forms of government kingship aristocracy and democracy he thought that by blending these three forms together the Romans had found a way to arrest their Decay and avoid the dangerous and corrupting effects of their negative manifestations tyranny oligarchy and

MOB rule therefore to pus the factor that made the Romans different and accounted for their astonishing rise was the unique political structure of the the Roman Republic he describes it in this way as for the constitution of Rome it has three distinct components each of them possessing political Powers these respective powers are parceled out and the whole system regulated with such a scrupulous regard for equality and equilibrium that one cannot say for certain whether the constitution on a whole is an aristocracy a democracy or a monarchy if we focus our attention on the power of

the conss these are the most important elected officials in Rome we would be inclined to see the system as monarchical if we focus on the Senate then it seems an aristocracy and finally if one considers the power possessed by the people in the Roman Constitution it appears to be a democracy pus is describing what today we might term a mixed Constitution a political system in which power is divided among different branches of government that are themselves controlled by different groups within Society there is more to pius's analysis however according to him not only did the

Roman Republic cleverly divide political power among these branches of government but the three components were also bound together in a complex web of interdependency to quote pus again whenever any one of the three branches of government becomes overbearing and displays an inclination to be contentious and encroach upon the others the mutual interdependency of all three and the possibility of the Ambitions of any one of them being checked or blocked by the others curbs this tendency and so the proper equilibrium is always maintained to pus this was the secret strength of the Roman Republic that its

political structure managed to capture the best elements of three different forms of government and fuse them together into a dynamic but balanced hole one can debate just how accurate pius's assessment of the Roman Constitution was however in a world in which the current states were mostly monarchies there was indeed something unusual about the mixed structure of the Roman Republic if the idea of a government that divides power among three main branches and employs a system of checks and balances sounds very familiar especially to Americans it should the education of America's founding fathers was deeply steeped

in classical authors including pus whose comments on the Roman Republic were among the key influences on the founders of the American Republic as we've already seen John Adams was particularly fond of pus frequently quoting him in his speeches and essays and directly stating that they were an inspiration when drafting the Constitution of the United States Adams was not alone in his appreciation for pius's account of the structure of the Roman Republic Thomas Jefferson considered an understanding of pus so essential that during the Constitutional Convention he sent a copy of pius's History to James Madison for

him to study so was pus correct in his belief that the Romans had solved the puzzle of how to stop the cycle by finding the ideal form of government keep in mind that pus himself lived at the height of the Roman Republic success in the 2nd Century BC unfortunately beginning about a century later during the period known as the late Roman Republic the system that pus so admired would begin to malfunction and eventually implode it turned out that the Roman Solution was not permanent the Roman Republic did eventually collapse even worse when it did fail

during the first century BC it more or less followed the anacyclosis model resentments built up among many different groups within Roman society including veterans allies half citizens poor citizens and even some Aristocrats each of whom felt that they were not fairly sharing in the benefits and wealth that Rome Conquest had produced the last century of the Republic witnessed the rise of a series of demagogic leaders men like Marius suah pompy and Julius Caesar progressively undermined the institutions and traditions of the Republic and placed their own personal interests above the good of the state they manipulated

the Common People raised private armies and when they disagreed with political Rivals replaced debate or compromise with violence and bloodshed around around of Civil Wars ultimately led to the emergence of a new strong man who vanquished all his foes and became a king-like figure the emperor A system that would persist for the rest of Roman history the first of these Emperors was a grand nephew of Julius Caesar named Octavian later known as Augustus once he becomes emperor his rule marks the death of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire it might seem

that Rome's special mixed Constitution only temporarily managed to arrest the Turning of the anacyclosis wheel and that in the end the Roman Republic fell prey to all the usual ills predicted by Polybius' scheme the collapse of the Roman Republic was was a complex and prolonged process not all Scholars agree that it follows pius's model and it is certainly possible to debate this issue but regardless of how closely you think the Roman Republic followed the anacyclosis Paradigm there is no doubt that it does offer a useful and provocative method for analyzing history the basic question that

it poses regarding whether or not civilizations are doomed to fall is a Timeless one that all States including modern ones have to confront if Polybius' 2,000-year-old writings can provide a tool that enables us to better grapple with these fundamental questions then they certainly deserve to be remembered and studied I hope you enjoyed this episode if you want to learn more about ancient history or myself please check out my website my books or the various audio and video courses that I've made with the Great Courses slth teing company those are available from audible Apple Books Amazon

and directly from the Great Courses thanks very much for watching and remember it's easier to make sense of the present if you know about the past [Music]