A Decadent Civilization
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
A Decadent Civilization By Joseph T. Shipley 'The Roman Way" Tell* About the End of an Order With Startling Parallel* to American Life Today—When Wealth Accumulated and Men Decayed—High...
...AM the same, those noble talesmen declared that they would not come to court without a guard...
...Material development outstripped human development...
...Of course I grt-it your request, my dear Antony...
...It is little wonder that court scenes grew to be like this: "The challenging of the jury took place amidst an uproar, since the prosecutor, like a good censor, rejected the knaves, and the defendant, like a kindhearted trainer of gladiators, set aside all tl -e-spectable people...
...Of course, the Romans c aid never have been foolish enougii to try Prohibition...
...Individualism, whether of the road-builder in the wilderness or of the self-determined general in the field, must give way...
...It is in Rome that sentimentality ia first enshrined, that there are born the Mothers with a capital M, for whom our Mothers' Day is made...
...Size and money-value were her standards...
...es,' and every day in the year you meet a man who 'has given aconite to a half dosen relatives.' Where 'no one can sleep for thinking of a money-loving daughter-in-law seduced, of brides that have lost their virtue, of adulterers not out of their 'teens...
...Conscious virtue, noble declamation, a a fine gesture—a sordid place, inhabited by people whose standards are at best those of a dull respectability, whose ideal...
...Of course it v. 1 both ways: eve;y-body was obliged to empty the same number of glasses ' the temperate man hai...
...In the days of the Empire no self-respecting man went about the streets with less than five slaves...
...During the years of the Republic every respectable man went into politics...
...The Greek always hated death...
...They were more thorough...
...Or is it already too late to choose...
...while all we need <' is turn the corner and shake hands with waiting Prosperity...
...Out of deference to Jupiter, our own phrase runs "The sky's the limit...
...The rugged individui...
...a ?,* st c' the Drinking...
...Here, too, were he patterns for our motion-picture heroes, always ready to die for the cause...
...monstrotu forms of irresponsible pleau re and fear.'ul misery" — Rockefeller Center and Hooverville-in-the-Dumps...
...Virgil's epic was written specifically ot give Rome a background to boast...
...Are we to take possession of our opportunity, to grow spiritually to our material power...
...But she is referring—take comfort, Franklin Delano...
...Corrupt Life With the Empir...
...Even Horace moralizes...
...We are in much b.tter case than the deca>ing Empire, for *her first necessity was for intellectual and spirit insight, for wisdom and dish teresi- li...
...where no woman is decent and no man to be trusted and all wealth dishonestly got and all position attained by abominable means: 'the way to be somebody today is to dare some crime...
...He makes Jupiter proclaim: "To the people of Romulus I set no fixed goal to achievement, no end to empire...
...Rome...
...To overcome nature or nations alls for one set of qualities...
...The second of Igleslae' articles appears hi this ii sue and Socialists especially In the Harlem section are orgeel to ask their newsdealers to give The New Leader a prominent display fa the stands and In stores...
...It is worth our while to perceive that the final reason for Rome's defeat was the failure of mind and spirit to rise to a new and great opportunity, to meet the challenge of new and great events...
...Sr'endid lu:m.y - <d unspeakable squalor...
...The poor and lowly were happier than the rich and powerful...
...Cicero had said, "Anything more corrupt than the men and times of today cannot be conceived...
...The abilities of the pioneer and the conqueror, which resulted from their achievements...
...Of course...
...I have given them authority without limit...
...Her starving citizens were given free bread and circuses...
...for what was easier than to buy testimony ? "With liberty and justice for all...
...respectable men withdrew from politics...
...Rome, "City where everything U f^r sale...
...Then you could have seen the affection I have for you...
...their aim was to provide quick culture for the thriving people—as our outlines of everything (which give but the skeleton of the shadow...
...Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature will have onl one result that can be foretold with certainty: 'it will press hardest upon, the best, as very one k ws who is driven by lar^e numbers to use mass methods...
...Ten years later the Republic was ended...
...it is s place where virtue has all but piriahed and what little is left exists only to suffer...
...Of what century is Edith Hamilton speaking...
...When the jury finally took 1 - more disreputable lot never got together even in a gambling hell...
...the Dark Ages took possession of Europe, and classical antiquity ended...
...where spies abound 'whose gentle whisper cuts men's throats...
...As Edith Hamilton's brilliant book concludes: "Our mechanical and industrial age is the only material achievement that can be compared with Rome's during the two thousand years in between...
...or are we to bequeathe our children a civilization in the long throes of spiritual death...
...a mother always a mother"—thus was the pap * >red ou...
...the first article in last week's Issue of The New Leader by Santiago Iglesias was given wide distribution in the Puerto Bican section of Harlem...
...the man who was rich got all the other prizes, too...
...It is a nightmare city where men mi 1 'dread i ison when wine sparkles in a golden cup,' and wives 'learned in the arch-poisoner's arts carry to burial their husbands' blackened cor...
...A pretty picture, and if but a partial, a tabloid, picture, no lees partially our own...
...C^ero, who wrctj a trsa'' e on th'i 'Moral Duties," answers Mark Antony's request of a favor: "Your friendly letter makes me feel that I am receiving a favor, not giving one...
...and the manufacturer of the world's most famous automobile has assured us that history is bunk...
...Eternal Rome, forever triumphant—wholly ¦nable to foresee its imminem fall...
...But after him came the tabloids of Juvenal...
...to use the victory as a basis for a better state in human affairs calls for another...
...the Roman said 'twas "sweet" to die for his country...
...Horses, whose ideal rf "go'den mediocrity" makes him ths bourgeois par excellence, sdvises his young friends to curry favor with those in power...
...Thus Cicero's world, high ideals and the most foul practice...
...to <lri ,k a great deal more than he w.nted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such unexpected results come to pass...
...to ancient Rome...
...The grandeur of ths Greeks not copied, but "enlarged and improved...
...When men must turn from extending their possessions to making wise use of them, audacity, self-reliance, endurance, are not enough...
...Mammy...
...THE old virtues were completely inadequate for the new day...
...He sends a copy of this note to a friend, and adds: "Anthony's request is so unprincipled, so disgraceful and so mischievous, thst one almost wishes for Caesar back again...
...By the time Rome had reached the apejt of its power "easy money had become 'possible for a great many and the ideal for most...
...0. K., /merica...
...As suavely and intelligently as she recently pricked the bubble of Burton Rascoe's self-esteem, Edith Hamilton in "The Roman Way" (W...
...i the good old days...
...W. Norton, $3) shows how closely the Roman spirit resembles ours, how faithfully the symptoms th: preceded her fall are now being reproduced...
...It is suited only to the wilderness and the battlefield...
...Is the resemblance between Rome and our land to rest on a few generalizations ? Miss Hamilton presses home a thousand details...
...Queen Money," Horace calls the root of all evil...
...Pass a law, then the invariable Rom .^medy, :^ keep drunkenness within bounds...
...The writers of Rome were no inspired poets...
...I wish you had made it in person...
...His Rome is inhabited by a wis, degenerate people...
...are completely ordinary not to say stodgy...
...m of Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford, Edith Hamilton declares, is here not adequate—it is doomed...
...While we are on the subject of codes, it was Rome that gave the world, along with other laws, the double standard of sexual morality Moral Duties One more aspe t oMife...
...What has that city, her bronze eagle and her vast empire, to do with New York and the golden eagle of the U. S. A...
...J in fights—wh-t should they do...
...the old farm of boyhood's days to be preferred to marble halls...
...In this land, which established the principle that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty one way to win a case was to point out that a man had nothing on his side—no logic, no reason—nothing but a dozen witnesses...
...they looked at the many drunken parties that end...
...where 'every street la thronged with gloomy-faced debauchees' and banquets celebrate unnatural and incestuous vice...
...A Decadent Civilization By Joseph T. Shipley 'The Roman Way" Tell* About the End of an Order With Startling Parallel* to American Life Today—When Wealth Accumulated and Men Decayed—High Pretentions and Low Morals...
...F ae, Rome...
...Great wealth, great display...
Vol. 15 • January 1933 • No. 3
