Faustian Rome: The Indo-European Nature of the Roman Republic, Part 1

In his monumental tome, The History of Rome, the historian Titus Livius wrote, “There is nothing man will not attempt when great enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards,” and in the annuals of human history nowhere is this aphorism truer than when one examines the nature of Faustian Europe and its rich diversity of constituent peoples.[1] In more specific terms, and as articulated quite definitively by Prof. Ricardo Duchesne, the uniqueness of Faustian Europe lays not with its institutions, but with the primordial drive of Faustian Man to overcome all that constrains him in the eternal quest for immortal fame. [2] Returning to Titus Livy, in his history of Rome the historian was exploring not only the meteoric rise of ancient Rome, but rather attempting to ascertain the exact reasoning behind the nature of Roman hegemony. Livy’s Rome was one of transition, the historian himself being born in 64 B.C. and dying 17 A.D., and as such had lived through the tumult of the Late Republic and bore witness to Rome’s imperial rebirth under Augustus Caesar. [3] Moreover, the nature of the age that Livy had lived through was a period of “transition” not only of governmental forms, from republic to empire, but more importantly was the beginning of Roman deviation from the racio-cultural values which underpinned the Faustian nature of Europe. When European man is truest to himself, it is when he and his civilization exist in harmony with his Indo-European, Faustian nature. When deviation from this historical, dare I say cosmic reality occurs, it is a prerequisite for civilizational chaos. In the historical context of Republican Rome, it was the transition from republic to empire, and the accompanying degenerative racio-cultural changes, which deviated from the Indo-European nature of the Faustian soul of Europe, which laid the foundation for Rome’s future collapse.

Evolutionary speaking, White-European success has its origin in the prehistory of the “Last Interglacial Maximum,” and it was through the successful surmounting of the trials and tribulations of such hardship that the Faustian soul of European man was forged. Irrespective of age or context, the success of European civilization stems from its evolutionary backgrounds as made manifest by the Faustian spirit of its earliest peoples, the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their successors, the Indo-Europeans. Early Rome, both of the monarchial and republican variety, was a continuation of the Faustian soul of Indo-Europe. Moreover, it is from within the racio-cultural values of early Rome that much of the Faustian soul of Indo-European Europe was transmitted to later societal and civilizations externalizations of the European soul. Returning back to Republican Rome, my proposition is that the success of early Rome was in large part predicted upon its adherence to the racio-cultural values of its Indo-European patrimony. While conversely, the fall of Rome coincides with its abandonment of its Faustian Indo-European patrimony, as evidenced by the demographic shift, immorality, and overall degeneration of the martial spirit of Indo-Europe, as evidenced by the Roman Empire, most notably in its later historical incarnation after the second century A.D.

The Indo-European, proto-Roman Latini people most likely migrated to central Italy, i.e., “Old Latium,” during the European Bronze Age, and from early on in their prehistory made their presence felt. [8] In continuation their Indo-European forbears, the racio-cultural world of both Monarchial and later Republican Rome was extremely competitive, with aristocratic individuals vying for power and prestige. This penchant for competition in both the IE and IE successor cultures more often than not found expression in a highly militarized racio-cultural milieu, From 509 B.C. to 27 B.C., in a series of gradual and militaristically stunning conquests, first of Italy, and eventually culminating with the conquest of entirety of the Mediterranean Basin, the Roman Republic reigned supreme. In continuation of the Faustian soul of Europe, the Republican era of ancient Rome was an epoch or martial glory and by extension, militaristic expansion, and one could argue by even the most objective metrics, the apogee of Roman civilization. Rome’s geopolitical expansion and eventual hegemonic lordship over huge swathes of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia is unprecedented in European history in terms of its sheer scale, scope and tempo, and as such is an important period of study for ethnonationalists. Furthermore, the Republican values held so dear by Livy and many of his fellow Roman contemporaries, that is martial valor, honor and what the later twentieth-century Danish scholar Georg Brandes would term “radical aristocratism” when describing the political orientation of Friedrich Nietzsche, are the hallmarks of European civilizational success. Ancient Republican Rome existed for nearly 500 years, and a great deal of this civilizational longevity was achieved by the Republic’s adherence to Faustian spirit of our Indo-European forefathers, particularly their warrior ethos.

The Indo-Europeans most likely originated from within the vast Pontic-Caspian steppes of Eurasia, and were initially a nomadic and later a transhumant pastoralist people, who conquered, colonized and migrated throughout Europe proper, the ancient Near East and the Indian Subcontinent. The Indo-Europeans were a hierarchical tribal people, with society being divided along tripartite lines, i.e. the religious, cultivator and warrior castes. In relation to our discussion of Republican Rome and its relationship to its Indo-European antecedents, the warband, referred to as the Comitatus or Männerbund was integral component of Indo-European society. The Männerbund consisted of pan-tribal groupings of military-aged men, led by free, non-autocratic aristocrats (what Duchesne labels “aristocratic egalitarianism”), and it was the nature of this client-patron relationship with its emphasis on high-group solidarity, meritocracy, and individual courage, particularly within the realm of combat, which was the hallmark of Indo-European culture and its descendant peoples, including ancient Rome. In ancient Rome this system of patronage was manifested under the guise of the clientela (Latin: patronship), which was a hierarchical and meritocratically inegalitarian system of bilateral mutual obligations. [4] One of the benchmarks of Indo-European culture, ancient Rome, and ultimately White-European civilization was a collective desire for prestige and glory, achieved through feats of martial prowess. In Republican Rome, the system of the clientela was a continuation of the Indo-European Männerbund, and it was through the racio-cultural medium of the clientela by which many of the military successes of ancient Rome were achieved.  Militarism, despite its negative contemporary connotations, was an important component of the Indo-European spirit, and a fundamental elemental of Roman success in the Republican period. The much later Greco-Roman biographer Plutarch, when waxing poetic about the then lost nobility and military prowess of Roman men from the Middle Republican period went so far as to write “They were the foremost men of their generation. In their youth they had campaigned against the Carthaginians for the possession of Sicily; in their prime they fought against the Gauls for the defense of Italy itself, and as veterans they found themselves matched once more against the Carthaginians, this time under Hannibal. In this way they never enjoyed the relief from active service which old age brings to most men, but because of their noble birth and their prowess in war they were constantly summoned to take up new commands. [5]

The basis of success during the Roman Republic was martial prowess, but in ancient Rome war and politics were intimately linked. In fact, the Latin word honos has a dual definition, meaning both “honor” in the traditional sense and to be in possession of political office in a more generalized sense. In stark contrast to the practices of the later Roman Empire, military service was a prerequisite for entering into politics. The cursus honorum (Latin: ‘course of offices’) was a sequentially ordered course, or ladder of military and political offices, which Roman aristocrats ascended as they vied for prestige and glory. Entrance into the cursus honorum presupposed military service, and in actuality was an informally organized institutionalized manifestation of the Indo-European Männerbund.

Intrinsic to the being of Faustian Man is the will to overcome that which constrains, and the Romans of the Republic in a continuation of the racio-cultural precepts developed by their Indo-European ancestors, sought to overcome the limitations of the material world via military force. Friedrich Nietzsche, when writing about “mankind,” but in reality implicitly referring to European man, posited that the underlying essence of the universe was “an insatiable desire to manifest power,” with power in the Nietzschean sense referring to the capacity of an individual (or a collectivity of individuals) to exert worldly influence over the course of events. [6]

In accordance with the Nietzschean conceptualization of the “will to power,” as a means for exerting influence and cultivating power, Romans, like their Indo-European ancestors, were imbued with a unique sense of historical agency. For our purposes, “historical agency” refers to the capacity of an individual or group to exhibit freedom of choice, and as such is in direct contradistinction to the reigning “structural” train of thought endemic to the contemporary social sciences which posits that variables like class, religion, gender, etc. determine action; some academics go so far as to posit that the theory of independence of agency is not only false, but any sense of free-will is merely an “illusion of control.”

However, it is from this sense of historical agency that the ‘Faustian’ soul of Europe and its peoples, specifically the early Romans, is derived. When the brilliant poet T.S. Eliot wrote about being in the possession of a “historical sense,” he stated that it “involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” Mirroring this notion, it was the unique ability of the Romans, as part and parcel of their Indo-European heritage, to transcend the delimiting nature of time and space, through the medium of fierce competition, embodied most saliently by a vibrant militarism. [7]  As a point of fact, during the Republican period alone, the Romans found themselves engaged in warfare virtually continuously, ranging in scale from small, localized cattle disputes with neighboring Italic tribes, to full-scale, multi-continental wars fought generationally over the decades; the most notable of these large-scale conflicts being the three Punic-Wars.

However, it’s important to remember that the uniqueness of European man, and specifically of the Faustian soul of the Roman Republic, shouldn’t be retroactively conflated with some myopically postmodern sense of individualized ego-gratification, but rather of a striving to transcend all delimitations in the service of a higher purpose; the purpose itself, could be the mere act of taking action, but the results are reaped by the many, not the few. More succinctly stated, he men of the Roman Republic sought individual glory through the attainment of prestige, most notably through the struggle of combat, both literal and metaphorical, but in doing so, they created great wealth which, given the non-despotic political organization, accrued in substantial measure to the plebeians as well.

Beginning in earnest around 133 B.C., in a time categorized by modern historians as the so-called “Crisis of the Roman Republic,” widespread political instability and social unrest began to grip and destabilize the Republic. In grim parallel to the current crisis gripping the contemporary European-world, the destabilization of the Republic was the natural accompaniment of creeping demographic change, and expanded notions of citizenship. The Romans, like their Indo-European ancestors were welcoming of racially analogous outsiders, mainly of the intra-European variety, and it was only when the political enfranchisement of  a large non-European racial element into a relatively homogenous population occurred that racio-cultural incorporation provide impossible, and the Republic began to become destabilize. Of course, like all historical processes related to the shifting complexity of demographics, this was a chronic, long-term, incrementally occurring process of degeneration which only began in the Roman Republic and wouldn’t blossom fully until the time of the later Roman Empire. In fact, it was during the death throes of the so-called Principate (when the Roman Emperor Caracalla, himself of Punic North African descent, conferred citizenship onto literally all peoples living within the geographical boundaries of the empire) that Rome began its long march to total systematic collapse. [9]

Competition is still, and has historically, always been both indigenous to the Faustian nature of European man, and a main contributory factor to White-European civilizational success; competition is however only a social net positive when it occurs within racially homogenous societies. Race and culture are inextricably interrelated, and when huge segments of racially alien DNA admixtures are incorporated into relatively genetically homogenous population clusters, change at both the biological and sociocultural level is all but a foregone conclusion. Genetic and in turn racial evolution is relatively “recent, copious and regional,” and when this delicate balance is shattered, chaos and civilizational destabilization are never far behind. [10]

All peoples are unique, but it was the specific uniqueness of the Indo-European martiality of the Roman Republic which endowed the tiny ‘Latin’ republic to conquer the majority of the old Mediterranean world. Conversely, and not entirely unironically, it was the Republic’s expansion into racially dissimilar geographical locales which ultimately diluted the Indo-European nature of its racio-cultural spirit. In The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, James Russell argues that it was actually the Hellenization, i.e. the expansion of late Hellenic and Hellenistic sociocultural values onto the Roman sociocultural milieu which contributed to the de-Indo-Europeanization of Rome, and with this assertion I am in total agreement. [9] Prior to the unification of the Italian Peninsula under Roman hegemony, the ancient Romans had always been in close proximity to their Greek brethren of southern Italy, in an area they called Magna Graecia (Latin: ‘Great Greece’). It wasn’t until the ‘Middle Republican’ period, during the civilizational life or death struggles of the Punic Wars, that the Indo-European Romans came into contact with the racially, and socially, degenerated elements of the so-called ‘Late Hellenistic World.’ After the defeat of the Persian Empire by the Greco-Macedonian general Alexander the Great, the great conqueror undertook a subsequent set of conquests which forged an empire extending from the Aegean all the way to the Indian Subcontinent. Upon Alexander’s premature death in 323 B.C., a number of ‘Successor’ states and kingdoms emerged, and for nearly 300 years were engaged in a perpetual state of war with one and other.

The American general, George S. Patton once said of war that “Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base.” Although this statement is in complete accordance with the martiality of the Indo-European soul, it underscores the racially degenerative aspects of war that occur as a negative eugenic consequence of the massive loss of life. [10] In war, it is the brave who perish, and when the ‘successor’ states of Alexander the Great waged a series of nearly intractable wars amongst themselves for nearly 300 years, it was likely the Indo-European and Greco-Macedonian elements of the population which declined. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when the ‘successor’ states of the post-Alexandrian East ran short of manpower they began to recruit, and impress, ‘indigenous’ members of their kingdoms into the service of their once homogenous armed forces. Military service has always been an instrument for political enfranchisement and by extension participation, and in European societies almost always leads to racial heterogenization and civilizational dissolution.

When the ancient Romans entered into the world of the ‘successor’ states of the ancient Near East, they were dealing with a racially mixed Greek-speaking population completely foreign to them and their traditional geopolitical dealings with the Indo-European Dorian Greeks of Magna Graecia. As Rome expanded further and further into the recesses of the so-called “Greek East,” years of proximity began to alter the racio-cultural spirit of the Republic. Regardless of the sociohistorical context, population proximity engrains a people with familiarity, which in turn encourages racial miscegenation, which leads to racio-cultural hybridization, and ultimately racial degeneration. Thus as the breadth, scope and duration of Roman contact with the post-Alexandrian Near East increased, the Indo-European nature of the Roman Republic lessoned and a concomitant process of degenerative Hellenisticization occurred. Sadly, this process of Hellenisticization continued unchecked and wouldn’t be reversed until the re-Indo-Europeanization of the Late Roman Empire by the Germanic invasions of the fourth century A.D.  Moreover, late Republican Rome became destabilized as it came into contact with the non-Indo-European peoples of the ancient Near East, and it was from this clash of racially incongruous civilizations that European demographics and ultimately Indo-Roman morality declined from within the Republic.

Go to Part 2