The Two Great Republics

Nearly two thousand years after the curtain fell on the Roman Republic, James Lewis asks whether its final act is still being played in America.

Writing in early twentieth-century America, Lewis sets the republic on the Tiber beside the United States and looks for more than distant echoes. Rome’s story, he argues, offers a warning about what can happen when wealth gathers in a few hands and political leaders exploit the discontent of the many. Yet the comparison is not exact: Rome lacked the representative assemblies that help modern republics govern vast territories. Across the divide of centuries, Lewis traces the forces that weakened Rome and asks whether America faces their counterparts. Which lessons from Rome’s fall should the American republic heed?

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