Ferrero and the Decline
of
Civilizations
lgnazio Silone
TOWARDS
1898 Ferrero set himself to study the history of the
Roman Empire with the express intention, as he himself has
frankly admitted, of discovering in it some kind of fundamental
law about the evolution and decline of human societies. And since
whenever a convinced believer seeks he invariably finds, Ferrero
likewise managed to discover a truth which for the rest of his life
was to remain the food of his meditations. In reading Sallust,
Livy, Virgil, he was immediately struck by the fact that the things
which we today usually appreciate and admire, such as building·
up of power, acquisition of wealth, refinement of social customs,
were by them, on the contrary, defined and regarded as corrup–
tion. The ancient authors were therefore far from being unaware
of the causes which were about to determine the ruin of the Roman
Empire and Ferrero took on himself the mission of reviving this
consciousness, developing it, deepening it, and deriving from it a
universal criterion. After the completion of his vast work,
The
Greatness
and
Decline of Rome,
he returned to the scrutiny of his
own times. His travels on both sides of the Atlantic showed him a
world in the flower of civil and economic development. Enlightened
by Sallust, Livy, Virgil, he was prompt to discern in this world the
symptoms of its future disintegration. In the general optimism
then prevailing, his warnings rang like those of a hysterical Cas–
sandra, and he was mocked and derided, especially by his com–
patriots; but it was not long before events confirmed his words.
The fact that a forecast has proved accurate is of course
inadequate to establish as scientific the theories on which it is
based. People endowed with extreme physical sensibility, rheu–
matic people for instance, can often prediCt storms; but it is not
the rheumatism that produces the storm, and a meteorological
observatory cannot base its conclusions on rheumatism. Neverthe–
less, he is often and justly punished who, on leaving home in
the morning, laughs at his rheumatic friend because the latter
warns him, despite the clear sky and radiant sunshine, to go back
and fetch his raincoat.
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