Rhiannon Garth Jones on lessons from Rome – and why they’re bad

A guest post from the author of "All Roads Lead to Rome: Why we think of the Roman Empire daily’.

Happy weekend, everybody, Jonn here. This is one of those occasional guest posts I publish when a friend has a book out and I suspect that a not inconsiderate number of you would enjoy it.

This time, it’s the turn of the historian Rhiannon Garth Jones, whose book All Roads Lead to Rome was published on Thursday.

Subhadra Das, author of Uncivilised: Ten Lies That Made The West, described the book as "Authoritative and engaging. An enlightening, candid and pleasingly irreverent antidote to all those people who insist on harping on about the Roman Empire”. I describe it as exactly the sort of thing you guys would love, tracing as it does the legacies of Rome through the Byzantine, Islamic, Holy Roman, British, Russian and American empires, among others. Honestly, it’s great, and I can’t recommend it enough.

What follows isn’t an extract from the book: it’s a brand new bit of writing written especially for you lot. All in all, it’d feel exceptionally rude not to nab a copy right now wouldn’t it?

Here’s Rhiannon:

A campaign for meritocracy that dismisses the most qualified options, openly discusses plans to annex sovereign nations for their resources, and misunderstands an iconic tale of good against evil. Is this the Republican federal government in office in the United States today? Or the British Empire in India a century before? For a nation that hated the British Empire – so much so that, before starting a war to escape it, some of the leaders of rebellion actually dressed up in togas and gave public speeches in Latin in an effort to demonstrate they deserved to rule themselves – the current leaders of the US are doing a surprisingly good impression of that exact same empire.

Of course, the Founding Fathers never actually had a problem with the concept of empire – just the version in which they were the ones being ruled rather than doing the ruling. There are many striking similarities between the ruling class of what would become the USA, the rulers of what has become the USA, and the men who ruled the British Empire besides the ones I’ve highlighted above. There are even a few similarities between them and the men who ruled the Roman Empire – although I don’t mean that as the compliment they’d all almost certainly imagine it to be.

It is easy to make jokes about “meritocratic hires” committing incredibly basic all-time national security blunders or failing to understand some pretty obvious themes of Star Wars in their public comms. It’s fun, too. But, as regular readers of this newsletter will know, obscure but illuminating historic parallels are where the real fun is. Consider the British empire’s civil service hiring policies in India and what they tell us about the current White House’s notions of “meritocracy”.

The men who conquered and administered the territories of the British Empire were mostly pretty obsessed with Rome. Their idea of a proper education was the language, literature, and philosophy of ancient Rome; their idea of wit was to make puns in Latin; and their idea of good governance was to act like a Roman. One crucial aspect of the latter was to bring the benefits of “civilisation” to the “barbarians”, as the Romans had once done to them: with slightly tortured logic, they believed that having been conquered by Rome in the past meant they had a right to conquer – sorry, “civilise” – everyone else now. It was all very unfortunate, this line of thinking went; but, if you could not be trusted to govern yourselves properly, the British would simply have to step in and teach you, graciously bestowing the benefits of their superior understanding. Eventually, once you had proved yourselves “civilised” and “modern”, you might be able to rule yourselves again.

So when Thomas Babington Macaulay began to reform the education system in India with a view to “modernising” it in the 1830s, he decreed Indian students should be taught in English about, among other things, ancient Rome. He wrote a policy brief detailing his opinions at length, arguing that, “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” – which certainly feels like the type of thoughtful and considered take you might see posted in all caps on Truth Social. He didn’t speak Arabic or Sanskrit, he acknowledged; but he was pretty sure he was right anyway.

Macaulay’s brother-in-law, Charles Trevelyan, who worked with him on education policy in India, outlined the wider idea:

“The Indians will, I hope soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood towards the Romans. Tacitus informs us that it was the policy of [the Romans] to instruct the sons of the leading men among the Britons in the literature and science of Rome, and to give them a taste for the refinements of Roman civilisation. We all know how well this plan answered. From being obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends; and they made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans, than their ancestors had done to resist their invasion.”

I’ll be the first to tell you that the nuances of Tacitus and his critiques of empire are a bit harder to get to grips with than, say, which side are the bad guys in Star Wars, but this is definitely one of those takes to file under, “Oh, you were so close”. Tacitus is most famous for a quote in the Agricola, the exact same passage of the text Trevelyan was referencing, which discusses Roman conquest and rule of the province they called Britannia (a lot of, but definitely not all of, modern Britain). In his account, the leader of a British rebellion fiercely criticises Roman rule: “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of ‘empire’; they make a wasteland and call it peace.” Tacitus puts these words in the mouth of a rebellious Brit to give him plausible deniability in case the emperor, say, read it and wasn’t thrilled – but that’s no excuse for Trevelyan not noticing the anti-imperial sentiment.

So it’s pretty hard to imagine Tacitus as a cheerleader for empire. This ancient Roman historian did go on to say that the Britons acquired a taste for the luxuries that came with Roman rule and that it made them loyal – but he frames that as a sneering criticism. In fact, he pretty snidely concludes that they were so distracted by the treats of “civilisation” that they didn’t notice they were being enslaved, which doesn’t seem to be quite what Trevelyan was getting at (although I’m sure he would have been fine with the outcome). Tacitus would probably have agreed that Macaulay and Trevelyan were imitating the Roman empire. He definitely wouldn’t have meant that as a compliment.

Nonetheless, the British copied the Romans (or their idea of the Romans) in India, spreading “civilisation” and enforcing their educational ideals. Repeating over and over that theirs was the best way to rule, they instituted a supposedly meritocratic exam system through which people could enter the Imperial Civil Service and govern India - a system which would, they claimed, help the country enter the modern world. The odd thing was that these supposedly merit-based exams were heavily weighted towards Latin and Greek, which were – surprise! – rarely actually taught in the very limited system of education the British “reformed” in India. Languages like Arabic, Mandarin, Persian, and Sanskrit, arguably slightly more useful and certainly better known, were worth fewer marks. (Sustained pushback over many years changed this a little, but not a lot.)

Despite these obstacles, year after year, Indians passed the exams, demonstrating their ability to rule their own country according to British standards. And the man who was ultimately in charge of India on behalf of Britain, theoretically guiding India towards self-rule, was absolutely horrified.

Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India, from 1899–1905 the most powerful man in the country. In 1900, he wrote to the then Secretary of State for India to complain that the meritocratic system of examinations that had been instituted for the Indian Civil Service in 1858 was having the unfortunate consequence of allowing Indians to administer their own country. Specifically, he said,

“Some day I must address you about the extreme danger of the system under which every year an increasing number of the 900 and odd higher posts that were meant, and ought to have been exclusively and specifically reserved, for Europeans, are being filched away by the superior wits of the Native in the English examinations. I believe it to be the greatest peril with which our administration is confronted.”

Talk about saying the quiet part out loud.

In other words, the British changed the education policy in the hope it would make the people they conquered like them more, and imposed what they claimed were meritocratic measures in an effort to cement their rule so they could keep extracting resources for their own benefit, just as the Romans had done in Britain. The current US administration is bullying universities into adopting their preferred educational approach, firing women and people of colour in favour of “meritocratic appointees” of white men who accidentally include journalists in their top-secret group chats about military manoeuvres, and keeps suggesting Canada and Greenland would be better ruled by them. It’s essentially the same playbook.

A lot of people read the words of Macaulay, or Trevelyan, or Curzon - or Musk, or Trump, or Vance - and dismiss them as either ignorant or immoral. If it’s ignorance, this line of thinking goes, we can explain it with superior understanding and persuade them. If it’s immorality, we can expose it with superior morality and persuade their followers. Except, as you may have noticed, this has not been working. It didn’t work historically either: all those Indian subjects who demonstrated the ignorance and immorality of the beliefs underpinning the system didn’t persuade Macaulay, or Trevelyan, or Curzon. It was never really about being either right, or being moral. It was about who gets to hold power, and who has to be subject to it.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the leading nationalist and India’s first Prime Minister, experienced the ‘benefits’ of British rule and strongly disagreed that the British were anything like the Romans. In a book he wrote while imprisoned for advocating independence, he claimed the only similarity between Britain and Rome that he could discern was that both were “smug and self-satisfied, and convinced that the world was made specially for their benefit”.

On his way to this conclusion, Nehru had received a traditional English education, first at Harrow, then Cambridge; yet he was distinctly unimpressed by what he learned about empire in general, and both the Roman and British versions specifically. Perhaps he had read some Tacitus and, unlike Trevelyan, understood what he read.

Or, given he was confronted with the reality of imperial rule daily, perhaps he didn’t need Tacitus to reach that conclusion, or to encourage him to fight back. Peace really was a wasteland; the treats of civilisation were really oppression; and meritocracy was really about white supremacy. Tacitus knew that. So did Nehru. It was about power over others. It always is.

Rhiannon Garth Jones is a writer, researcher and author. Her book All Roads Lead to Rome: Why we think of the Roman Empire daily was published on Thursday. Here’s the blurb:

Rome is more than just a city; it’s an enduring idea, a symbol of identity, power, and legitimacy that has shaped the course of history for over 1,500 years. From ancient emperors to modern world leaders, the Eternal City’s influence in building the world we know today is undeniable.

In All Roads Lead to Rome, author and historian Dr Rhiannon Garth Jones embarks on a fascinating exploration of how the idea of Rome has been seized by emperors, modern governments, religious leaders and even pop-culture icons.

Each chapter examines how Rome’s famous history, politics, and mythology have been reimagined through the centuries, and explores how these interpretations continue to shape our modern world. Whether you’re interested in history, contemporary global issues, or simply curious about why Rome remains relevant, this book offers a fresh perspective on the lasting significance of one of history’s greatest civilisations.

So, how many times a day do you think about the Roman Empire? The general consensus seems to be an awful lot, and All Roads Lead to Rome explains why. So, dive into the history of Rome and its pervasive influence and gain a deeper understanding of the forces shaping the global landscape today.

Go buy it! This instant!