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Why Did Rome Fall - and Are We Next?

2025-05-24 - source - Read full transcript
Steve Levitt (host)Tom Holland

Key insights

Democracies are historically rare and fragile, not a natural endpoint of political development.
Holland argues that across the broad sweep of human civilization, democratic government is anomalous. Athenian democracy collapsed, Renaissance Italian republics repeatedly succumbed to tyranny, and the French Revolution's republic gave way to Napoleon before he too was defeated. The American founders were explicitly aware of this pattern, which is why U.S. institutions borrow so heavily from Roman republican imagery.
democratic-fragility
The Roman Republic's collapse was driven by extreme wealth concentration among a few individuals, not just personal ambition.
By the first century B.C., provincial conquest generated wealth so vast that a handful of men - first Pompey, then Caesar - could accumulate resources large enough to eclipse the republic's institutions entirely. Caesar turned to conquering Gaul specifically to match Pompey's fortune.
democratic-fragility
Caesar's populist showmanship was as decisive as his military power in breaking the republic.
Holland describes Caesar as a 'Populares' who combined battle-hardened legions with a genius for humiliating the political establishment and living visibly, flamboyantly rich in ways ordinary Romans admired. Holland sees a resonant, though not equivalent, populist 'vibe' in Trump's political style, without comparing the two men's genius or ambitions.
democratic-fragility
Caesar crossed the Rubicon to escape looming prosecution once his legal immunity as governor expired, not purely out of conquest ambition.
As governor of Gaul, Caesar held legal immunity from criminal charges; the moment that term ended, his political enemies could try him in courts that functioned as an extension of political warfare. Facing the loss of everything he'd won, Caesar chose civil war over submission to that process - a dynamic Levitt draws a direct parallel to in Trump's use of political power to escape criminal exposure.
democratic-fragility
Holland doubts Trump could actually play 'American Caesar' because the role demands a level of sustained activity Trump lacks.
Caesar was, in Holland's words, one of the most relentlessly active men in history. Holland judges Trump too old, too fond of golf, and too impatient to execute a comparable multi-year campaign to dismantle republican institutions, while noting anxiety about a potential American Caesar has existed since the founding.
democratic-fragility
Ancient texts survive largely by accident and by a continuous 'popularity contest' of hand-copying, not by deliberate archival preservation.
Papyrus rots, so any text's survival depended on successive generations of scribes judging it worth re-copying by hand. The Library of Alexandria's disappearance, often blamed on a single dramatic destruction, was more likely a slow process of neglect and physical decay.
historical-transmission
Entire swaths of ancient history hinge on single surviving manuscripts.
Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, which Holland recently translated, survived because one manuscript was known to be in circulation by Charlemagne's era; had that single copy been lost, a foundational source on the early Roman emperors would not exist. Small, vivid personal details (like Cicero noting a crack in his plaster) only reach us because of comparably thin survival chains.
historical-transmission
Records of religious founders like Muhammad are shaped more by later theology than by contemporaneous biography.
The earliest surviving Muslim biography of Muhammad was written more than a century after his death, and Holland describes existing accounts as layered with theologically motivated framing rather than functioning as biography in the modern sense - because the aim was to present Muhammad as the climax of the prophetic tradition, not to record neutral historical fact.
historical-transmission
Modern secular values like human rights and individual dignity are, in Holland's argument, inherited Christian ideas rather than self-evident universal truths.
Holland points to the near-universal revulsion at Harvey Weinstein's conduct as evidence: a Roman would have seen nothing wrong with a powerful man using his social inferiors however he wished, since Roman elite sexual morality treated domination as an ordinary expression of status, not a violation.
christianity-and-modern-morality
Even self-described atheists can be 'cultural Christians' whose moral intuitions remain shaped by centuries of Christian conditioning.
Holland cites Richard Dawkins - an outspoken critic of organized religion - describing himself as a cultural Christian. Holland argues this isn't a contradiction: rejecting Christianity's truth claims doesn't erase the moral framework a person absorbed by growing up in a society built on Christian assumptions.
christianity-and-modern-morality
Holland's path into popular history succeeded partly because history, unlike most academic disciplines, is also a branch of literature.
Holland dropped out of an Oxford Ph.D. on Byron, wrote vampire novels for years to pay the bills, and only turned to history writing in his thirties with zero formal historical credentials. He credits history's literary character, and generous mentorship from academics like Mary Beard, for why his outsider path wasn't blocked the way it might be in a more insular discipline.
creative-career-pivots
A quick, disciplined gut-check can kill a policy idea before it wastes research effort - and that's a feature, not a failure.
Levitt applied his 'fast first cut' method to a listener's suggestion of restricting ammunition to curb gun violence. A quick look at the numbers - 8 to 10 billion rounds sold annually, the certainty of panic stockpiling and manufacturer ramp-up if restriction were debated, and the fact that under 1 percent of U.S. gun homicides involve four or more victims - showed the idea had 'no legs,' saving deeper analysis for ideas more likely to matter.
policy-idea-evaluation

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Techniques and frameworks

Summary

Steve Levitt opens the episode by pressing historian Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and co-host of The Rest Is History, on whether American democracy's durability is something to take for granted. Holland's answer is a firm no: democracies are historically rare, and republics from Athens to Renaissance Italy to revolutionary France have repeatedly collapsed into autocracy. The two spend the first half of the episode working through the parallels between the fall of the Roman Republic and contemporary American politics, with Holland walking through how wealth concentration (first around Pompey, then Julius Caesar) let individual men eclipse republican institutions, and how Caesar's combination of populist showmanship and looming criminal prosecution pushed him to cross the Rubicon rather than submit to a legal process controlled by his enemies. Holland draws real but bounded parallels to Trump - a shared "Populares" political vibe and a comparable use of power to escape legal jeopardy - while concluding Trump likely lacks the sustained relentlessness Caesar had to actually pull off an American version of the republic's collapse.

The conversation shifts into how any of this ancient detail survives at all. Holland explains that papyrus rots, so text only reaches us through generations of scribes who judged it worth the labor of hand-copying - a process he calls a "popularity contest" that explains why classics like the Iliad endured while vast amounts of antiquity simply vanished. Individual manuscripts, sometimes a single surviving copy, are the hinge on which entire chunks of history exist or don't; Holland's recent translation of Suetonius survived by exactly one thread traceable to Charlemagne's era. The same fragility applies to religious history: surviving accounts of Muhammad were written more than a century after his death and are, in Holland's view, layered with theological motivation rather than functioning as neutral biography.

From there Holland turns to the argument of his book Dominion: that ideas Americans (and secular Westerners generally) treat as self-evident - human rights, individual dignity, sympathy for the powerless - are specifically Christian inheritances rather than universal truths. He uses the near-universal revulsion at Harvey Weinstein's conduct as his central example: a Roman would have seen nothing objectionable in a powerful man using social inferiors however he wished, since Roman elite sexual morality treated domination as ordinary rather than transgressive. Even committed atheists like Richard Dawkins, Holland argues, remain "cultural Christians" whose moral instincts were shaped by a millennium of Christian conditioning they can't fully escape by rejecting the religion's truth claims.

The episode's second half is more personal and lighter. Holland recounts dropping out of an Oxford Ph.D. on Byron to write vampire novels, spending years supporting himself that way before pivoting to history writing with no formal credentials - a move he credits partly to history's unusual status as an academic discipline that's also a branch of literature, and to generous mentorship from scholars like Mary Beard. The episode closes with the recurring listener-question segment: producer Morgan Levey relays a question about whether restricting ammunition supply could reduce gun violence, and Levitt walks through his "fast first cut" method for stress-testing an idea (panic stockpiling, manufacturer ramp-up, and the fact that mass shootings account for under 1 percent of gun homicides) to show why the idea, despite sounding clever, doesn't hold up.

Notable Quotes

"Politics in ancient Rome is about vibe. It's about whether you cast yourself as a stern, flinty defender of the traditional order, or whether you play up to the gallery." - Tom Holland

"A Roman would've seen nothing wrong at all with what Harvey Weinstein did." - Tom Holland

"It's hard to judge ideas in the abstract, and I would say at least nine out of 10 ideas that I've had... in the end, it doesn't turn out to be right." - Steve Levitt

"You change from one lane into another lane, and suddenly there are no traffic jams. There are no roadworks. You're just driving away into the sunset." - Tom Holland