Authoritarianism is on the rise throughout the globe, together with in the USA. In April 2025, NPR reported that in a survey of over 500 political scientists, the bulk believed that the USA was transferring from a liberal democracy towards authoritarianism. And that was earlier than June, when common Individuals took to the streets in document numbers to oppose it. Over 5 million turned out to help the “No Kings” marches throughout the nation on June 14 to protest Trump’s insurance policies and a “military parade” on his birthday, budgeted at $45 million. However the place can we flip to for resistance methods? May the historic rise of authoritarianism within the historical world assist us perceive its fast growth as we speak? A freely downloadable e-book by high historical historians throughout the globe, How Republics Die: Creeping Authoritarianism in Historical Rome and Past (De Gruyter, 2025), argues that it might.
Within the new anthology, edited by Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, David Rafferty, and Christopher J. Dart, the authors collectively declare that readers can use Historical Roman historical past to make sense of the fast descent into fascism in the USA. A key motive for selecting Rome as a parallel to America is the extraordinary nature of the second we live in.
“Before now, no long-established democracy has fallen to internal causes except Rome,” the editors advised Hyperallergic in a press release. “Several of the old, consolidated democracies around the world are in trouble, and political science has only recently started to confront that as a problem; they are used to thinking of consolidated democracies as pretty safe.”
The e-book treats the late Roman Republic as a dataset. Though the editors famous that Rome didn’t have the identical scope when it comes to policing, healthcare, or inflation controls, they defined that democratic decay or creeping authoritarianism is primarily about “interactions of political institutions, about the relative power of the different parts of the state.” Whereas comparisons between Rome and America are nothing new, How Republics Die analyzes these empires’ parallel lives to underscore the constant strategies utilized by autocrats to shift societies away from dissent, democracy, or impartial pondering, towards a triumphalist narrative of the previous that culminates in their very own ascent.
Very similar to Trump’s try and rename the Gulf of Mexico, Mussolini used maps to promote energy. In 1934, the highway in entrance of the Colosseum, often called the Through dell’ Impero, showcased 4 massive maps that confirmed Rome’s ascent and empire from 753 BCE to 117 CE, together with a brand new map of Italy’s future conquest of Africa in 1936, which needed to be eliminated as a result of the marketing campaign was a failure. This picture is from 1935. (picture public area through the Library of Congress)
Though the USA grew to become a “mixed government” predicated on republican and democratic fashions of governance, Rome adopted a republican mannequin in 509 BCE. This got here within the wake of the overthrow of town’s final king. 4 centuries after Rome’s Republic started, the underpinnings of the state and the specific insurance policies that restricted the ability of bold politicians started to erode quickly. The e-book seems notably at this era from the top of the Roman Republic to the rise of the Augustan New Order (133 BCE to 14 CE) — a time when Rome started to transition from an electoral republic to a army monarchy. Vervaet, Rafferty, and Dart advised Hyperallergic that the a long time marking Rome’s shift from a republic into an autocracy had been closely influenced by the humanities. Additionally they counsel how we’d cross-compare Historical Rome and America with different moments of rising authoritarianism world wide, resembling in India and Belarus.
What’s the worth of historical past and artwork historical past as disciplines on this dialog? During the last 100 years, dictators and oligarchs have usually recycled the aesthetics of energy from the artwork and archaeology of Historical Rome. Benito Mussolini seized upon the artwork, archaeology, and recognizable semiotics of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, in addition to the fasces and the SPQR image, in an effort to visually legitimize his personal fascist rule from 1922 to 1945. Trump has equally praised Fascist Italy and Historical Rome for his or her contributions “to civilization and human progress,” and in January resuscitated an government order encouraging using Historical Greek and Roman structure to advertise “beautiful federal civic architecture.” Neoclassicism is again in, and the revival is getting used to as soon as once more sign the supremacy of Western beliefs.
Like Trump, Adolph Hitler was obsessive about modifying neoclassical structure for his personal functions, in addition to utilizing sculpture to encompass himself with heroes, simply as Augustus did within the creation of the Discussion board of Augustus. That is the Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery’s Courtyard of Honor in 1939. (picture CC-BY-SA 3.0 through the German Federal Archive)
Artwork historians are thus important to understanding how autocratic rulers rely on and search to regulate cultural establishments, monuments, heritage, and artwork. They translate symbols of energy whereas additionally exhibiting how artwork will be wielded as an instrument of propaganda or an agent of historic continuity.
“Trump is extremely attuned to the importance of the arts and visual culture as instruments for public relations and vehicles for opinion making,” stated Vervaet, Rafferty, and Dart. “In all these respects, Trump and his hardcore MAGA support base are evidently taking a leaf out of the book of the likes of Pompeius [Pompey the Great], [Julius] Caesar, and especially Augustus. Just as Trump likes to run the show from his residence-cum-golf-course, Mar-a-Lago, Pompeius the self-styled ‘Great’ built a magnificent theater in the sociopolitical heart of Rome in the 50s BCE.”
Like Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Heart board and its alternative of honorees, Pompey’s development of an opulent, everlasting theater within the middle of Rome was much less about public appreciation for the humanities and extra about telegraphing his personal magnificence whereas trying to craft his legacy.
Pompey’s actions established one of many first documented cases of what the authors establish as “competitive authoritarianism,” an idea developed by political scientists Daniel Levitsky and Lucan Method in 2010. Inside Pompey’s theater complicated was the temple of Venus Victrix, a public backyard, and a brand new Senate Home (the so-called Curia of Pompeius), “where the assembly could meet under the gaze of a towering statue of the great man himself,” the editors stated. And his efforts didn’t go unnoticed. Pompey’s use of structure and the humanities was mimicked by one other member of the First Triumvirate, Julius Caesar, who offered additional classes on the optics of authoritarianism.
Earlier than being killed exterior Pompey’s Senate Home in 44 BCE, Caesar would additional transgress republican custom by changing into Dictator Perpetuo (“Dictator for Life”). Caesar knew that titles had been necessary, however so had been the minted cash exchanged by tens of millions of Romans every day. “[Caesar] became the first living Roman to have his portrait appear on Roman coins, on the model of the absolutist Hellenistic Kings of the Eastern Mediterranean,” the editors famous.
From cash to calendars to buildings, Julius Caesar revamped on a regular basis objects, areas, and time to mirror his personal energy. Cash, and who seems on it, nonetheless talks. In March of 2025, Texas Republican Congressman Brandon Gill launched laws within the Home of Representatives known as the “Golden Age Act of 2025,” searching for to place Donald Trump’s face on the $100 invoice. “Supported by Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, the bill faces legal hurdles as US law prohibits living individuals from featuring on currency notes,” the editors added.
A silver denarius minted in Rome in 44 BCE, with the top of Julius Caesar sporting a laurel wreath and his title of perpetual dictator famous across the bust (picture public area through the American Numismatic Society)
Maybe essentially the most salient parallels between the authoritarian management of the humanities prior to now and the current concern Trump’s firing of the Nationwide Portrait Gallery director, the brand new White Home probe into the Smithsonian Establishment, or his interference within the Nationwide Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, public broadcasting, or the Library of Congress. In comparable methods, Julius Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian Augustus, “masterminded a comprehensive program to restore and aggrandize the traditional public institutions (res publica) and mores of the Roman people and the monumental and literary dignity of their shaken city,” stated the editors. “Augustus restored 82 temples and built the Diribitorium, a new voting venue for the Roman people, the largest building under a single roof in Augustan Rome and echoed by Hitler’s planned Volkshalle and Stalin’s planned Palace of the Soviets.”
“He also engaged writers of epic and poetry (Vergil and Horace) and took control of the available means of mass communication and propaganda, controlling the imagery and political messaging on Roman coinage and commissioning striking works of public utility and visual arts,” they added. Augustus solid himself as bringing a couple of “golden age” of reviving conventional Roman tradition, all whereas growing the ability of the chief.
Past the myriad parallels and historic comparanda, How Republics Die additionally presents methods of recovering hope by wanting on the Roman Republic’s tragedy. The e-book reconstructs the numerous decisions that historic figures made alongside those that they may have chosen. It makes use of these historic prospects to dismantle the fatalist views of the previous which have lengthy served autocrats. In a single chapter, scholar Cristina Rosillo López reminds us that “nothing is inevitable,” be it the autumn of the Roman Republic, the French Revolution in 1789, or the rising tide of fascism within the Thirties beneath Hitler and Mussolini. Apathy will at all times be to the benefit of the autocrat.
The identical goes for Trump as we speak. A part of understanding our collective energy is recognizing that when our histories are recast as inevitabilities, authoritarians can seize upon the thought of their predestined rule, with deadly penalties. As Vervaet, Rafferty, and Dart clarify, research of authoritarianism within the Roman Republic “help us see where we are now on different political trajectories, and where those trajectories are likely to go — unless we take action.”
