Robert Nisbet on the Military-Civilizational Transition in Ancient Rome

Discussion

Paul Mueller:

"Nisbet tells a similar story about the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Pressures from war were the crucible that forged Roman society into a military community. And the process was remarkably similar to what had occurred in Athens. In Rome, the idea of the “patria potestas” dominated during the Republic. Fathers were priest and king of the family. Families were their own religious and political communities. Every Roman household had its own gods, the “Lares and Penates.” Marriage was as much about adoption and religious conversion of the wife as it was about matrimonial union. Even births had to be formally accepted into the political family (and tragically sometimes weren’t).

This deeply formative kinship community, however, found itself increasingly supplanted by the military community. Augustus, when ushering in the Empire, used the legions. Not so much to force external obedience (though they were used for that), but as a vehicle for reshaping culture and politics. Young men developed loyalties to their officers (and to Caesar). They attained status through competition and performance, not by waiting to become the eldest male in their family.

It was in the setting of the Roman Imperium that generations of jurists developed the legal system that came to define western civilization and its laws—even to this day. The legal/contractual relations of soldiers shifted views of law, property, and politics. The change and disruption brought about by the military community was profound."

(https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/how-do-communities-form-exploring-social-philosophers-5920234)