At the beginning of this chapter I briefly indicated that the questions and problems that prompt ever-changing ways of conceptualizing the past are stimulated by the particular time in which they arise. When one considers that the model of a Republic that was democratic to a non-negligible degree arose in the 1980s and then quickly enjoyed a certain popularity, one is immediately tempted to think that frustration over developments in contemporary Western democracies favored this turn. The small opportunity in practice for outsiders to ascend into the political class while on the other hand the elite enjoyed great continuity, the dominance of ‘‘jovial’’ rhetoric toward the citizenry while simultaneously the heavily privileged position of the elites was preserved, the superiority of image over political content, not to mention the manipulation of public opinion through the use of the media of communication (which have naturally in the meantime changed fundamentally and become allpervasive) - all of this could bring a detached observer of our own time straight to the conclusion that conditions in the Roman Republic were really not so very alien, and that one could therefore also confer upon that constitution the honorable - if from this perspective admittedly devalued - title of democracy. Yet Fergus Millar is no resigned witness of his own time, developing a negative idea of democracy and drawing his interpretation from this standpoint; on the contrary, his view of democracy is sober but positive. For him the fundamental questions of sovereignty and participation were stimulated by the consolidation of the European Union and still more by the effects of specifically British parliamentarianism, in which a majority can make extraordinarily wide-reaching and even retroactive decisions. Millar’s commitment to present-day participatory models inspired his reflections on the Roman
In addition, as Millar suggests in his last book and John North confirms,121 his reflections were for obvious reasons stimulated especially by developments within the
State subsystem in which he is professionally situated: that is, the university system. In Great Britain processes have unfolded that reduce the level of participation (against vigorous resistance at first), consolidate hierarchical decision-making, and promote participatory rhetoric under simultaneously ever-tightening administrative control.1 2 There certainly are parallels here to the Roman Republic, yet it seems to me that the establishment of the imperial monarchy offers an even better analogy.
Present political conditions give the attentive observer no small stimulus for consideration of the past; and indeed, the distance from ancient Rome to the modern world is sometimes not so very great. Anyone acquainted with the Roman Centuriate assembly knows well that when a vote is taken by groups rather than individual ballots slight majorities are changed to clear ones and, indeed, from time to time - as in the case of the American presidential election of 2000 - a minority in absolute number of votes may prevail over the majority. The fact that the rhetorical drama of expressing devotion to the People need not have anything to do with actual policy can be admirably observed among the orators of the Roman Republic; likewise how special-interest politics for the benefit of narrow groups can be folded into the rhetoric of public welfare. The Roman political class shows us how oligarchy can be justified behind the trumpeting of achievements and the widely acknowledged claim to their recognition, but also for how long a time bitter competition for power and influence did not exclude building consensus on fundamental questions. These examples could be multiplied, but as we regard such parallels we should not forget that the Roman world is interesting not only because on an abstract level some things were similar to today, but also, and at least as much, because many things were very different, which meaningfully broaden our spectrum of the variations of social organization precisely because they are so completely foreign to us. In the following chapters there is a wealth of material for both perspectives.
World History
