Lessons from a Lost Republic

Michelle Berenfeld is the John A. McCarthy Professor of Classics at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. An archaeologist and fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she has done research in Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and numerous scholarly publications. She lives in Los Angeles.

“A classicist turns in a searching study of how republics become dictatorships. The demise of the Roman Republic has served as inspiration to would-be dictators . . . including, by Berenfeld’s account, the current occupant of the White House. Take the case of Augustus Caesar, the first emperor, of whom the author writes, 'If the Romans had a Nobel Peace Prize, Augustus would have given it to himself.' Augustus considered himself the center of the world, slapping his name all over public buildings and coins, remaking Rome to suit his tastes, purging the government of all but loyalists, and hijacking cultural institutions. . . . Augustus couldn’t have done all this alone, though; as Berenfeld notes, the Roman Senate ceded its legislative authority to the executive 'without a fight.' . . . Augustus took the republic they gave him and made it a tyranny that ruled with ruthless violence for the next thousand years. . . . That ceding of power was the key ingredient to dictatorship, as was the Roman equivalent of governance by executive order, abandonment of due process, militarization of society, inequality, and other like matters. . . . A deeply cautionary tale of how not to keep a republic.”—Kirkus Reviews“Rome is having a moment, often for the worst reasons—an obliging mirror, ready to flatter whoever happens to be holding it. Michelle Berenfeld will have none of it. Lessons from a Lost Republic is urgent and necessary: inviting without sacrificing intelligence, brisk without sacrificing depth; it pushes beyond the easy parallels into the deeper structures of a republic in decay. Berenfeld brings a historian's eye to this thrilling, sobering tale, and a citizen's voice to its lessons for our own moment.”—Ayad Akhtar, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Homeland Elegies