Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Rousseau invokes the decline of the Roman Empire as a pointed reversal: the power that had imposed slavery on others eventually submitted to it, and the wealth Rome had gathered did not preserve it from conquest. The example supports his argument that civic virtue, not riches or refinement, is what sustains a people.

Rome’s transformation

Rousseau traces Rome’s degeneration to a cultural change that began, in his account, in the days of Ennius and Terence. Rome had been founded by a shepherd and made illustrious by peasants; it was once a shrine of virtue. The arrival of these writers marks the beginning of decline, while the later appearance of Ovid, Catullus, Martial, and other authors whom Rousseau characterizes as obscene marks its more advanced stage. Rome, once a model of virtue, became a theatre of vice, scorned by other nations and derided even by barbarians.

The passage makes cultural prestige part of the reversal rather than a remedy for it. On the very day Rome fell, Rousseau observes, it had conferred on one of its citizens the title of Arbiter of Good Taste. The juxtaposition turns refinement into an emblem of misplaced priorities: Rome could honor taste even as its political independence came to an end.

Conquest and reversal

Rousseau places Rome’s fate among examples of poor peoples defeating richer powers. The Roman Empire, after engulfing the riches of the world, fell prey to peoples who did not even know what riches were. Rome’s former dominance and its final subjection form the central reversal: the power that had imposed slavery on others was itself brought under a yoke of slavery.

The comparison belongs to a wider series. Rousseau contrasts a rich republic defeated by a poor one, recalls the Franks’ conquest of the Gauls and the Saxons’ conquest of England, and describes poor Swiss mountaineers overcoming the powerful house of Burgundy. He also points to the defeat of the heir of Charles the Fifth, despite the treasures of the Indies, by a few herring-fishers. Together these examples frame Rome’s fall not as an isolated accident but as evidence against the assumption that accumulated wealth secures political strength.

Moral and political meaning

Rousseau uses Rome to challenge calculations that measure a person’s worth to the state by how much that person consumes, or equate national prosperity with civic excellence. Money can purchase material goods, he argues, but it cannot purchase morals and citizens. Rome’s riches therefore sharpen the question of what prosperity is for: an existence that is brilliant but brief, or one that is virtuous and lasting.

The fall also completes Rousseau’s contrast between civic virtue and luxury. In his broader argument, ostentation and the many futile cares associated with wealth degrade the capacities needed for noble public action; even where people might retain strength, he argues, they may lack courage. Rome’s accumulated riches, followed by conquest at the hands of peoples who scarcely knew wealth, gives this moral claim a historical shape. Its decline is presented as a warning that brilliance and refinement can accompany, rather than prevent, political subjection.