Ancient & modern
Boris Johnson and the Dream of Rome on BBC2 ended in nightmare: that, in Boris’s view, only when the EU has the equivalent of an emperor can it hope to emulate the achievements of the Roman empire in uniting disparate peoples under a single banner. But since it will never have an emperor, is the whole project not doomed?
Very probably. There is, however, a tiny spark of hope, which can be glimpsed when one reflects on what happened after the Roman empire in the West collapsed in the 5th century AD. Apart from pockets of civilisation surviving among the elites, the answer is, broadly, an extended dark age, most clearly observed in the rapid decline in the standards of living in the West that archaeology records during the 5th–7th centuries AD. The point is that the whole structure of the Roman economic world, connecting Scotland with Tunisia, Syria with Newcastle upon Tyne, collapsed with Rome’s political demise. The result was that those material benefits brought by empire that spread among all classes and peoples — not just luxury goods for the toffs but high-quality materials for the middle and lower classes too — simply dried up. The reason is that the local Germanic kingdoms into which the empire broke up — the origins of modern European nation-states — did not have the means in place, let alone the vision, to keep the complex Roman networks going.
No longer could a single pottery near Oxford produce goods to be found in sites from Cornwall to North Wales, the Firth of Forth and the Kent coast; no longer could Italian peasants expect their houses to be roofed with tiles; only kings and bishops in Italy could live in stone and brick buildings (no more villas with their mosaic floors and hypocausts). Agricultural production fell and writing declined (Charlemagne was, apparently, illiterate) as did craftsmanship. Farewell prosperity, complexity and sophistication at almost every level across the West for 200 years.
Which brings us back to our muchloved EU. In the light of the postRoman experience in the West, what would be the consequences for Europe if Brussels shut up shop tomorrow? Widespread material, social and intellectual collapse? There is the answer to Boris’s dilemma: when the EU’s demise would cause the chaos that ensued after Rome’s, then we will have an EU that needs no emperor.
Peter Jones
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