Listen to the audio model of the article
We are speaking concerning the Roman Empire, however mutatis mutandis, and even towards the sunshine, the picture of the West, of our West, appears to be seen. The rise, fall and fall of probably the most spectacular group of presidency and other people within the historical past of mankind is sort of a hint of what, generally with ill-concealed disdain, has been referred to as the American Empire, with its burden of information and values however. and dangerous habits and errors. With the distinction that, when the Roman Empire formally led to 476 AD, America, though imprisoned and in disaster, resists the swing of the “pendulum between East and West”, as Fabio Tamburini, director of Il Sole 24, defined. Hours and president of the dialogue, on the Economic Festival of Trento, between the engineer Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, president of the Caltagirone group, and Aldo Cazzullo, editor of Corriere della Sera and creator of the article When we’re the masters of the world, devoted to the Roman Empire.
Caltagirone, who confirmed a deep and clever information of the dynamics of the Roman Empire, and Cazzullo, exact in his references and beneficiant with anecdotes and quotations, agreed on one level: what brought on the collapse and fast (official) fall of the Empire. The Roman Empire, it was Christianity that in just some many years eliminated the founding values of the Empire. The 5 mos maiorum, the customs of the ancients: belief (fides), respect (pietas), authority (maiestas), advantage (virtus), integrity (gravitas). The canonical paperwork of the Roman world have been swept away by the bishops-consultants of the brand new emperors, first Ambrose, the bishop of Milan after which the saint (“my evil”, says Caltagirone with out mincing phrases). Ambrose satisfied the sixteen-year-old emperor Gratian to destroy the pagan temples and abandon the State faith. “Between religion and purpose”, explains Caltagirone, “religion was chosen. It was the start of a right away finish.” Faith was in Milan and it was displaying itself in Rome. Cicero used to say “O tempora, o mores”.
However, Cazzullo goes past the historic fall of the Empire. “The thesis of the e book”, he says, “is that the Roman Empire didn’t finish. Centuries have handed, it’s stuffed with the tradition of all of the governments which have dominated the world. From Napoleon, the emperor, to the tsars and kaisers (descendants of Caesar), as much as the American Empire , remains to be filled with Roman symbols: from the Capitoline Hill to the Senate to the locations that enhance the orator’s chair”.
Rome and Washington are clearly related, united by the will to be the primary, to draw one of the best, to defeat their enemies and make agreements with them and make them allies, Caltagirone and Cazzullo nonetheless agree. “But should you lose the need to be one of the best”, explains Caltagirone, “one can make the most of it”. It is the present disaster, which can be attributable to a sequence of strategic errors which have continued through the years. The pendulum swings in the direction of the East. The decollisation of manufacturing, for instance. “In the long term”, explains Caltagirone, “we find yourself deindustrializing and dropping buying energy. We give information and permit others to get well the millennial hole in three to 4 generations. A globalization mannequin based mostly on low manufacturing prices that dangers changing into its purpose.
Losing the competitors is imminent. Rome didn’t put revenue, however authorities first. “The college is essential”, stated Caltagirone “as a result of it may train you to be robust and keen to sacrifice, necessary values of historic Rome. Even Catiline, dissolute, slept on the naked floor within the battle and ate the rations of the troopers.”