America as the new Rome.

FOR AT LEAST 240 YEARS Western societies have been fascinated by two inter-related events, one located in the distant past, and the other in the near but ever-receding future: the fall of the Roman empire with its causes and consequences; and apocalyptic expectations about the fate of America and Western civilisation. Three new books, Cullen Murphy's The New Rome?, Naomi Wolf's The End of America, and Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (all first published in America, but issued in Australia by Scribe), in various ways cater to (and indeed exploit) these perennial concerns. All three authors have publicised their books widely in Australia, through press, radio, television and internet interviews, or appearances at writers' festivals. While none can be commended, they raise some interesting questions about the historical study of ancient Rome and its contemporary relevance, and also illuminate some important preoccupations of the Western intelligentsia.

In contemplating the end of empire, Murphy and Johnson are joining a long tradition, exemplified by Edward Gibbon, who has described the moment when he first thought to write his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789):

 
   It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, 
   as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol 
   while the barefooted friars were singing Vespers in 
   the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the 
   decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. 

In 1782, the Frenchman Count Volney described a similar reverie before the ruins of another ancient city that led him to write Ruins, or Considerations on the Revolutions of Empires (1791):

 
   Here once flourished an opulent city; here was the 
   seat of a powerful empire ... Ah, how has so much 
   glory been eclipsed! How have been annihilated so 
   many labours! Thus do perish the works of men! 
   Thus vanish empires and nations! 

Meanwhile (c.1778-80), Johann Fuseli captured a similar moment in a drawing of the artist slumped in awe next tO the gigantic fragments of the Colossus of Constantine found in the courtyard of the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Then, a century on, Gustave Dore drew a similar picture, envisaging a future imperial London lying in ruins before the awestruck artist. Now, a further 140 years later, Murphy records the same type of experience as he wandered about Washington DC:

 
   I doubt I'm the only person who has trod, with 
   lofty step, the sculpted gardens of the Capitol and 
   been seized with a vision of how the city below 
   might appear as a ruin. [Great national edifices] 
   invite you to see them as derelicts ... What 
   calamity could bring the capital to this condition? 
   Earthquake, Pestilence? Pride?