D.C. on the Tiber?

Imperial WashingtonThe Author of 'Are We Rome?' Takes In the Sights And Similarities
By Bob ThompsonWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, June 30, 2007; C01
As Cullen Murphy stands on the west side of Capitol Hill, gazing in the direction of the Mall, he sees what the tourists around him see: the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian museums, the Washington Monument and, shining white in the distance, the Lincoln Memorial.
But unlike the tourists, Murphy is imagining these things in ruins. The monument toppled, perhaps. Marble museums cracked and broken. Kudzu engulfing the temple to the Great Emancipator.
And why not? The man has spent years mulling the American future and the ancient past.
Murphy's new book -- titled, simply, "Are We Rome?" -- is an extended examination of one of the most contested historical analogies around.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has stood alone as the world's dominant power. So, for centuries, did Rome. Much has been made of the comparison, both by those who have urged America to seize its imperial destiny and by others who fear the consequences of doing so.
Edward Gibbon, after all, didn't call his life's work "The Rise and Continued Prosperity of the Roman Empire." How relevant is the phrase "Decline and Fall" in the American capital today?
During a customized "Are We Rome?" tour of Washington, Murphy will do his best to address this question.
He will point out numerous physical manifestations of the Rome-Washington link, among them that obelisk chosen to memorialize our first president (the Romans imported their obelisks from Egypt). He will warn about the misuse of oversimplified historical analogies. He will also argue, as he writes in his book, that some comparisons do hold up, "though maybe not the ones that have been most in the public eye."
But right now, with the familiar Mall vista laid out below him, he is visualizing its decay. Because one of the most important differences between Washington and Rome, he says, is that the American city retains youth's powerful illusion of immortality.
In Rome, by contrast, "you can't turn a corner without seeing the actual effect of time."
* * *
Next stop, Union Station. Buses, cabs and a tourist-laden amphibious "duck" clutter the view of the architecture Murphy wants to discuss.
He's a reddish-haired man of 54 who gives no indication that the blue blazer and gray vest he's wearing might be at least one layer too many for a warm day. A longtime editor at the Atlantic Monthly who recently signed on with Vanity Fair, Murphy also worked in Washington for eight years, at the Wilson Quarterly, beginning in 1977.
He'd been through Union Station maybe 150 times, he says, but "never saw the obvious thing about it."
Which is?
"That it's a triple Roman triumphal arch in the front." And that, when you head inside, you'll enter a vast room with "vaulted ceilings taken from the Baths of Diocletian."
At the time of Union Station's construction in 1907, this historical allusion meant nothing more than that neoclassical architecture was still in vogue and that a gargantuan Roman bathhouse offered a useful model for a super-sized train station. But these days, when you think about who the emperor Diocletian was, the allusion gets more interesting.
He came to power in A.D. 284, after a long period of imperial decline. "Diocletian finally pulls the empire back together," Murphy says. But there's a downside: Diocletian's Rome "is largely a military state. Security becomes paramount."
Murphy opens his book with an imagined scene of Diocletian on the road. Advance men negotiate the emperor's security. Eagle-bearing legionaries follow to ensure it. Diplomats, adjutants and interpreters stay close at hand, along with "the core group of bureaucrats and toadies who function within any nimbus of great power."