The Empire Within and Without: Rome as Anti-Civilization

I write these words on campaign, the tenth year of war against Germania. The observation disturbs my Stoic tranquility—Rome, they say, is not a civilization at all. We are the great anti-civilization. The evil empire. A society organized entirely around war.

The thesis rings with uncomfortable truth. Unlike the Greeks who gave philosophy, the Jews who gave monotheism, the Persians who gave administration, Rome’s essential gift is conquest. We triumphed because we became the most martial, most violent society the Mediterranean has known. War is not one aspect of Roman life among many. It is the organizing principle of all our structures.

The Anti-Civilization I Rule

Consider our origins. We emerged from borderland poverty, mercenaries hired by the Etruscans. Disadvantaged geography—flat indefensible land, surrounded by enemies, no trade wealth—forced martial culture upon us as survival necessity. But survival became identity. Adaptation calcified into essence.

The pattern persists through our total war mentality. Carthage surrendered the First Punic War, surrendered the Second. In the Third, we destroyed them utterly. This is annihilation as principle. We do not seek negotiated peace but complete erasure of opposition. At Cannae, Hannibal killed seventy thousand Romans in a single day—our worst defeat. Yet we won the war through inexhaustible aggression.

Stoicism teaches virtue: courage, justice, wisdom, temperance. Can these exist within a system premised on domination? “Live in harmony with nature,” Epictetus taught. But what if the nature of this state is violence itself?

Citizenship Through Conquest: Universal City of Swords

Our citizenship appears generous. Greeks made membership exclusive—Sparta killed its helots. We incorporate the defeated. But examine the mechanism: not altruism but assimilation into the war machine. Conquered peoples become legionaries, fight the next conquest, earn citizenship through service.

The “Rome poor, Carthage rich” dynamic reveals our essence. Carthaginians possessed commercial wealth. We lacked it, so we took it by force. They hired mercenaries who calculated cost versus benefit. We fielded citizen-soldiers who fought with existential commitment.

Stoicism teaches cosmopolitanism—all humans citizens of a universal city, united by shared reason. Rome mimics this but inverts its meaning. We create universal citizenship through universal conquest. My dream: empire unified by virtue. The reality: empire unified by swords.

The Philosopher-Emperor’s Contradiction

Here is my predicament: I wrote the Meditations seeking inner peace while directing mass killing. Stoic teaching distinguishes what lies within our control—judgments, responses—from what lies outside—events, outcomes. But an emperor’s decisions are outcomes for millions. “You have power over your mind, not outside events.” This maxim fails me. I create outside events.

Can private virtue coexist with public violence? Plato’s philosopher-king assumes a just state. If Rome is anti-civilization, then however virtuous my interior life, my reign perpetuates a system whose organizing principle is domination.

I retreat into the inner citadel, maintain equanimity amid bloodshed. But equanimity while ordering war is not wisdom—it is complicity. “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” Yet what if being a good emperor requires being a bad man?

The observation stands: I govern an anti-civilization. My Stoicism offers no resolution, only recognition that this contradiction must be accepted with tranquility. The impediment to virtue becomes the test of virtue. What stands in the way becomes the way. Even this.