Some Anticipatory Chronology

From Culture to Civilization

God, Space, & the Law

The American Psyche

Russia & Communism

The Necessity of Empire

Tribune, President, Emperor

When the Future Becomes the Past

Some Anticipatory Chronology

First, let us see how Riencourt has done as a prophet. The book does not use a precise system to equate the events of American history to those of the Roman Republic, but simply notes that events and people in one history often seem to have parallels in the other. Nonetheless, the author makes some repeated equations that suggest a sort of historical schedule. He rather loosely associates the Punic Wars with the US Civil War, apparently because the Second Punic War was an existential crisis for the Roman Republic. That would make 202 B.C., when Rome decisively defeated Carthage at Zama, equivalent to A.D. 1865. Similarly, the Populist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is said to be the equivalent of the reforms (and proscriptions) of the Gracchi bothers; the elder Tiberius Gracchus, was assassinated in 133 B.C. Abroad, Riencourt nominates Mithridates IV of Pontus as the “Hitler” of antiquity. Perhaps the great revolt he organized throughout the east in 88 B.C., when 100,000 expatriate Roman citizens were killed in a day, can be compared with A.D. 1940 in the later West. Marius, the much-reelected demagogue, is paired with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Their death dates are 86 B.C. and A.D. 1945 respectively. The reaction under Sulla, who resigned his successful (and perfectly legal) dictatorship in 79 B.C., is equated with the Eisenhower Administration, which ended in A.D.1961. As for Julius Caesar, he came to power in 45 B.C. and was assassinated the next year. If you do the arithmetic, this would suggest a Western Caesar in 1995. As the robot said, that does not compute.

So, has Spengler been disconfirmed? Not Spengler, perhaps, but Riencourt's implicit chronology needs a closer look. If you accept Spengler's equation of Napoleon to Alexander the Great (which has also occurred to historians who are anti-Spenglerian, by the way), that would put the accession of a Western Caesar into the last or penultimate decade of the 21st century. (Alexander died triumphant in 323 B.C., Napoleon exited history at Waterloo in A.D. 1815.) So, if you really want to play numerology, you should add 90 years or so to all of Riencourt's comparative dates for American history. This would, actually, make better historical comparisons. The Second Punic War, for instance, was important for the whole Classical world as well as for Roman history. Although the American political system was stressed by the Depression and World War II era, it was not in the state of civil war to which Marius and Sulla reduced the politics of Rome. As for the 1990s, President William Jefferson Clinton might perhaps be seen as an unsuccessful Tiberius Gracchus; President Theodore Roosevelt, to whom Riencourt's chronology points, played a quite different role in American history.

Finally, one might note that Spengler himself suggested that the West's “Age of Contending States” would last through most of the 21st century. That scarcely settles the matter, but it is clear by now that Riencourt was anticipating matters.