Three months on one’s back gives one plenty of time for thought. Sadly most of it seems to take the shape of shamefully sinful grousing—whining about the pains, whining about being confined to the couch, whining about the utter unfairness of it all.
The answer to the eternal question “Why me, O Lord?” is, of course, “Why not me?” Why should anybody imagine God has given them a free pass on the consequences arising from living in a fallen world?
But enough of this glum stuff! Three months on one’s back gives one the opportunity of a visit from old friend in the literary world. A few weeks on a diet of modern mystery novels and one is ready once again to delve into Caesar’s Gallic Wars, to marvel at a little Virgil, and to pore over the letters of the younger Pliny.
Today these great authors seem to have been contemptuously written off by opinion makers at the cutting edge of education as DWMs (Dead White Males) and banished from the classroom.
But these dear old DWM’s have a remarkable tale to tell—the tale of the decline and fall of arguably the greatest civilization this world has ever hosted. And in doing so, they shed a remarkable light on our own times.
Rome’s moral and political decline, for example, is illustrated by an incident that occurred when Pliny the Younger was a youthful army officer, working for the port administration at Alexandria.
In those days, Egypt was economically vital to Rome’s well-being. It was both the granary of the empire and the main source of sand for its amphitheaters. (The circuses consumed huge amounts of sand to soak up the vast gouts of blood that were shed.)
Pliny was responsible for allocating cargo space—a critically important job, as shipping at the time was in acutely short supply. Indeed, there were so few ships in port, he could load either grain to feed the citizens of Rome or sand to keep the circuses in business, but not both.
Not knowing what to do, Pliny asked his commander whether he should load the grain or sand. “Are you mad?” he was told, “Load sand!”
The point was that the people might not riot if they were short of bread, but with the circuses closed and no entertainment, they’d riot for sure.
Pliny’s illustration of the Romans’ distorted priorities springs to mind in connection with the not-so-different priorities exhibited by America’s mass media. Indeed, today’s television producers and movie directors would feel quite at home putting on shows at the Circus Maximus and the Flavian Amphitheater (a.k.a. the Coliseum). They and their Roman counterparts share similar tastes for sex and violence.
Nor is there much difference between our news media and the news media of Rome in its more decadent phase. To be sure, they didn’t have TV news, but they had daily newspapers posted in prominent places throughout their cities and all sorts of magazines, painstakingly hand copied by slaves in vast publishing factories (scriptoria).
Rome’s media pundits put out the same sort of sensational mélange of political propaganda, scurrilous gossip, and alarmism as passes for news in today’s America.
That the folks who control our most influential media cover our nation’s foreign affairs and domestic political and social agendas in such a cursory fashion is an affront not just to our intelligence, but to the principles upon which our republic is founded. Like Pliny’s commander, their priority seems to be sensation rather than substance.
The Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles make it clear that ancient Israel shared the same sort of problems as Rome and early 21st-Century America. What’s more, Israel’s cultural and political elite—like the Romans and many of their American counterparts—blamed their social ills on the lack of a strong central government.
God warned the people of Israel, through the Prophet Samuel, that this was way off the mark, and that it would ultimately cause far more problems than it resolved.
Perusal of the DWMs shows that the real cause of their problems was a lack of political honesty and the total absence of moral courage. GPH✠
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