Appendix H: The Natural Theory of Cultural Decline

A sense of decay appears as early as Nestor’s reminiscences in the Iliad and in Homer’s own awareness that later generations are less good even than those which appeared degenerate to Nestor. Homer shows no sense of a cycle; for him the decay is continual. A similar conception appears in Hesiod, though with more system; Hesiod, too, stresses the continuity of decay.^[1]

Probably the earliest theory of cyclical decay appears in Plato (Republic 8.546-7), where Socrates says that this periodicity will af­ fect both “bodies and souls” even in the ideal state (546A).

A cyclic conception of death and rebirth is, of course, a prom­ inent feature of Stoicism; Chrysippus (von Arnim II.337: entry #1174) also uses ἀφορία, like Plato and Longinus (see text of argument), as well as its antonym εὐφορία, in discussing periodicity in the producing of good and bad souls.

Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 2.1.5) remarks that the oratorical “period” of Roman greatness has reached its height and then predicts that “it now seems about to grow old and, in a little while, to come to nothing (senescat brevique tempore ad nihilum ventura videatur). Such decay, he says, is natural to almost all things.

Seneca the Elder, writing somewhere toward the end of Tiberius’ reign, expresses the notion more explicitly than Cicero (Controversiae, Preface 1.7) :”by a kind of fate, whose malignant and eternal law for all things is that, having been led all the way to the top, back things fall to the bottom, more swiftly, of course, than they rose.”

Velleius Paterculus (Roman History 1.16 ff.) asks why the geniuses in each art flourish in groups within specific and small periods of time. While admitting he has no certain explanation, he offers an ex­ planation which is a psychological variation of the natural theory of cyclic decay: (a) genius is nourished by emulation; (b) such competi­ tive striving leads to perfection; (c) to stay at the peak of perfec­ tion is difficult; what does not go forward naturally goes back; (d) when we despair of surpassing or equaling we lose our zeal; (e) as a result, we abandon the pursuit and seek new fields; (f) such fickleness is a hindrance to perfection.

We find cyclic pessimism scattered throughout the pages of Pliny the Elder: e.g., 33.1.3, where he foresees an earth exhausted of its resources as a result of avaritia; or 7.16.73, where, he says, with full sense of Stoic doctrine, that the age (aevum) is moving towards a holocaust (exustiο), and adds as evidence that men now are universally smaller than their fathers. Such a view combines notions of perpetual decay, such as those found in Homer and Hesiod, with Stoic notions of cyclical decay. In 2.5.18, Pliny praises Vespasian as a patron of the arts and sciences, although his patronage is of little avail: no new work is being done in science, Pliny complains, and even what we know from the past is being forgotten, because “man’s character has grown old (mores hominum senuere).”