Ancient Rome and Modern America by Margaret Malamud

Comparisons between the United States and ancient Rome are ubiquitous, but they're often far-fetched to make a point about something else. Not true of Ancient Rome and America; instead, it is about the deliberate, self-conscious comparisons with Rome made by Americans. Malamud's analysis provides a key to understanding why the US party system aligns itself with certain issues. It also discloses some of the reasons for our metamorphosis from yeoman farmers to world-class shoppers and why Rome is relevant to us in this relatively new identity.

To be read by all Americans, as history or a warning.

Today if Americans want a taste of Rome, all they need do is go to Las Vegas where they can rub shoulders with America's nobility and be treated royally in palatial accommodations deliberately based on decadent impressions of the Roman Empire. During earlier eras of American history, Rome was more of a cautionary tale, or at least, certain groups of Romans were examples of all that must be avoided. In Ancient Rome and America, Margaret Malamud takes us rapidly through American history, noting the stages in which the American identity crystallized because of contemporary forces and by seeing itself as a reflection of different aspects of Roman history.

The founding fathers saw themselves as Cato, Brutus, or Cicero, facing an oppressive tyrant, George III, another Julius Caesar. By the Civil War, abolitionists saw themselves as Carthaginians fighting against a slave-wielding Rome. The Gracchi were the Roman hero of the day. When America became overwhelmingly Protestant, Americans started looking at the early Roman Empire, a period in which Christians suffered. Unlike Rome, America wouldn't fall if it stuck to Christianity. Then, decadence and wealth, concentrated in the hands of the Neros of the world, paralleled the American experience. The wage-slaves wished to emulate Spartacus and rebel.

Most of the chapters of Ancient Rome and America are developed from earlier publications, which leads to slightly uneven treatment. Malamud seems to drone on about the entertainment industry in the U.S. with, for instance, great detail about Kirk Douglas in the context of illustrating the freedom-reducing acts of the McCarthy era. I wish she'd used the pages for even more on the less familiar eras of early America. At the beginning and end, Malamud invokes the wise Robert Byrd as a senator who really knows his history and should be heeded.