How Romulus Might Solve Some of the Problems of West European and American Society

Many American and West European cities have major problems.  Crime and violence are only two of the problems. There is a general breakdown of social values that result in the breakdown of law and order.  Some cities are addressing the issues better than others, but the public dialogue about the problems seems unserious.  Not only cities but society at large faces many, many problems, and the future looks very grim.  Some ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking is needed.  This essay offers just that.  It is a 'thought experiment', with lessons taken from Romulus’s concerns and solutions when he established Roman society.

Living at the end of the 1^st century BC, Roman historian Dionysius of Hallicarnassus provided a summary of the accomplishments of Rome’s founder.  Once the people accepted Romulus as their monarch in the 8th c. BC, he organised the population, established laws, and expanded the kingdom through conquest and colonization.  Romulus at the very least offers a comparison to the failed governance in our times, even if many things are not realistic options for the present context.

First, Romulus organised society in two key ways.  Following Athenian and Thessalian models, he distinguished two classes of men.  The well-born were distinguished by their birth, virtue, and wealth, and those initially chosen also had to have established families (Roman Antiquities 8).  While Rome and Greek city states embraced a two class system to the extent that one group ruled while the other served, Romulus turned the relationship between the two classes from one of disparagement and resentment to one of patrician and client. 

All this seems so far from anything we might consider in Western cities, but several points should be considered.  First, the issue should not be whether society should be considered in terms of class but whether society is arranged in such a way that people from the lower class might have access to the upper class rather than shut out from it.  Romulus even notes that, over time, the hard distinctions between the two classes eventually broke down to a degree.  A problem we face in Western cities is that we assume equality when there is not, or, now, we assume that the right approach to ‘equity’—the equalizing of society—should undermine the ruling class and treat the lower class as victims who deserve reparations for their being victimized in past and present generations.  Instead of promoting social improvement, the result is restructuring society through social entitlement.  If entitlement was wrong for the upper class, it should also be clear that it is wrong for the lower class.  Social mobility according to merit not only promotes a certain degree of equality but also excellence.

Second, Romulus organised society as follows.  The largest grouping was that of tribes, overseen by tribunes, the next groups within these were called curiae, overseen by ‘curiones’.  Each curia was divided into ten parts, overseen by a ‘decurio’. 

This is largely a plan related to the land and its occupants rather than any city organisation.  Yet some more sensible division of society would make a remarkable difference in today’s cities.  Why would a town have a mayor and a city have a mayor when the differences can be measured in numbers from a few hundred to millions?  Imagine a city with smaller districts, even organised by neighbourhoods.  Romulus’s plan worked when the smaller social unit could operate in a more familial-business model of patricians (fathers) and clients (business).  Knowing the individuals that one oversees is essential for good governance.  This matter applies to policing, school sizes, housing, development, local government, the rejection of a large union for education, and so forth.  Cities would be greatly improved if smaller units were created with a familial-business relationship to introduce order, productivity, and beneficence.

The Roman social organization of patrician and clients provided an amicable and advantageous relationship between those with oversight and class advantage and the rest.  The problem with the Greek social arrangement was that the lower class resented the oppressive upper, ruling class.  The lawlessness of certain American cities operates in part out of a failure of policing (due to politics) and a sense of entitlement for those imagining themselves to be victims.  Romulus’ solution was to create more of a parental model, with the understanding of ‘parent’ (father) as one holding more authority than a master did over a slave.  Western cultures have largely broken down because they have undermined not only the family but also the role of a father in both the family and society.  Black society in America has the shocking statistic that 68% of children are raised in single parent households, most of which lack a father figure.  Options need to be introduced to improve family cohesiveness and responsibility.  Where families have broken apart, a parental model is still needed in the system.  The opposite of this is angry youth raging through the streets, pillaging shops and burning buildings because they feel victimized and entitled.

Dionysius offered some observations about good governance in the cities under the founder of Rome, Romulus.  He outlines these as (Roman Antiquities 18):

1.     Establishing favour among the citizenry for the gods (religious observance)
2.     Promoting temperance or moderation and justice.  This came through the laws that Romulus established.  He established laws that encouraged every citizen to be just and temperate in their own lives.  Dionysius describes these in some detail under the following topics: sexuality and marriage (24-25), fathers and children (26-27), and slaves (28).  He adds that Romulus administered swift justice (29).
3.     Making honour rather than shameful pleasures the measure of happiness.

4.     Rewarding bravery in war.  Dionysius then adds that other virtues would follow after the promotion in society of this virtue.

Could Romulus's suggestions solve some of the issues infecting American cities?  I would suggest that they could.  Christian religion is under attack in several Western societies, but Romulus advocates the promotion of religion.  This will not happen in America, of course, given the First Amendment.  However, what if society set aside the hours of Sunday morning for worship, not holding children’s sports programmes at that time?  What if children were given school vouchers that allowed them to study at Christian schools (or other private schools promoting good values)?  What the United States has right now is an increasing antagonism toward Christianity (not toward all religions).  The purpose of Christianity is not to promote good values in society—there is far more to Christian faith than this.  However, Christian values are good for society.

Romulus’s just laws in society focus on the family, which in antiquity was discussed in terms of marriage, parenting, and the master-slave relationship.  The new society advocated by a large sector of American society is anti-family.  Every form of sexual perversion hides behind the mask of freedom.  Adults promote sexual deviancy enacted before children, perform medical experiments on their bodies in the name of gender diversity, and wrestle them away from parental oversight.  A sexually lax society promotes sex as pleasure, turns marriage into partnerships, imagines that marriage can be between people of the same sex, offers no-fault divorce, and thinks nothing of adultery.  Society’s breakdown is always manifested most sadly in what it does to its children, who pay so dearly for the disparagement of marriage.

Romulus would also have us promote honour in society, and that over against shameful pleasures.  Hollywood knows how to produce movies about military honour, but Romulus probably reserved his thoughts about the military for the virtue of bravery or courage.  By honour is meant so much more.  Movies tend to be about romance and, if not on the Hallmark channel, romance understood as sexual passion.  Detective shows and murder mysteries abound, since people like to follow a story about who the criminal was and how he or she is discovered.  But where are the movies (not to mention videos and social media) that promote a society of honour, dignity, resolve, honesty, and so forth?  Entertainment is time and again a menu of violence and sex, a stoking of the baser passions that produce a society of violence and sex. 

We might beg to differ from Romulus about the chief social value being military bravery, but we see in his suggestions that social virtues must be promoted.  Here we need to note that this discussion requires a commitment to a certain vision of the good society.  The good society was something America’s founding fathers might have been in a position to discuss and, to a large degree, agree upon.  Today is quite different.  The most the Christian might hope for and pray for is what Paul offers in 1 Timothy 2.1-7: pray for the leaders of society so that they will allow Christians to live a quiet, godly, and dignified life in every way and so live that they can witness their good life to the larger society.  The Christian faith is one open to all as God ‘desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth' (v. 4).  The Church’s values are not universal values but values held because of the faith we profess.  We ask the larger society to allow us to live as God has called us to live.  We ask mainline denominations to stop living the way the larger society lives but to convert back to the Christian faith.  We ask those of other faiths to discern who is a true believer and who is a false believer that they might know the Biblical and historic values of Christianity.  We ask all to investigate the true, Christian life.

Romulus, of course, was anything but a Christian.  He is hardly the one to solve all the problems of the modern city.  He is, however—and in my estimation if no one else’s—far wiser than so many of our own politicians and government officials and city governments.  His advice can be promoted to some degree by Christians as providing good solutions for some of the problems plaguing our cities.

Finally, Romulus introduced a different concept of citizenship from Greece.  Instead of conquering enemy cities and then putting the military age men to death and enslaving the rest of populations, he colonized the cities.  Sending Romans to inhabit the reestablished cities was a far better plan than simply destroying them.  Moreover, some in these cities were granted Roman citizenship, whereas the Greeks guarded citizenship far more strictly.

A current problem in Western cities has to do with citizenship.  People from other nations pouring across the borders of America and Europe would have been met with battle by Romulus.  Rome became an empire because it did not allow itself to be overrun but took control of expansion.  Probably, if Romulus were to address the ‘root causes’ of a southern border crisis in the USA, he would not simply build a wall and enforce visa and immigration laws.  He would probably also conquer the nations whose populations stream across the border and then send American citizens to colonise those countries.  Thereby, he would establish just societies that are beneficial rather than a threat to America. 

Countries need more than borders and a respect for citizenship, both of which are lacking sufficient respect in countries of Western Europe (contrast Hungary and Poland) and America.  They also need to engage in mutually beneficial ways with those ‘tribes’ outside their borders.  The solution to the border crisis is subsidiary to foreign policy, and the West has a very poor historical record with its foreign policy. 

Romulus—the Romans—understood this.  Their imperialism is hardly a model to follow, but it was presented as a promotion of ‘peace’ wherever they extended their rule.  Self-interest was certainly a primary concern, as it is for today’s Chinese imperialism and American imperialism.  For various reasons, many countries are convinced that China’s self-interests will benefit them rather than enslave them.  One probable reason might be that China cares so little for the societies that it increasingly dominates through economic exploitation that the nations think they have retained their autonomy and self-respect.  Over against this, American foreign policy aims at social reconstruction through promoting ‘values’—often the new, Western, post-Christian vices more than anything else, such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion. 

Rome understood its greatest benefit in the world to be its establishment of the rule of law.  The pax Romana was due not only to military conquest but especially to lex Romana.  Certainly economic exploitation followed as well (as Revelation 18 notes).  People were enslaved in large numbers.  It is impossible to promote Roman imperialism as a model for today, but the ideal of engagement not through warfare, economic exploitation, and social imperialism but through the establishment of law and order would be worth considering.  The populations of Haiti and Venezuela would surely welcome this, even if the next generation would have to declare its independence from America.  Tyranny is always a problem, and the option of socialism thought to be so kind by many in the West is not only bad economic policy but also the seed of tyranny.  Rome’s imperialism brought Roman culture and rule to other parts of the world, not always in commendable ways.  Yet Dionysius also stated that Romulus respected regional differences and judgements.  Rome’s extension of peace to other regions was also  through its provision of Roman law.  Paul recognised this in principle in Romans 13.1-7, despite all the horrors of Rome we could also cite in another part of the leger (Revelation).

Romulus did not solve all the problems of society in his day and will not do so today.  Dionysius even begins his description of Romulus’ rule by noting that Romulus understood that all forms of government had their weaknesses and problems.  Yet a comparison of Romulus’s solutions in his time to the current dialogue seems to provide some surprising options that are ‘outside the box’.  Many of his solutions are not options as such, but some creative adjustments are possible.  Perhaps some Central European countries that still embrace both conservative European and Christian values to some degree will provide helpful alternatives for the West, if the West would only give up its obviously failing agendas, ridiculous new values, and anti-Christian bias.