History, it is sometimes said, does not repeat itself – at least, not exactly. But it does sometimes come close.
The multi-billionaire Elon Musk, a Donald Trump supporter, is reported in the Financial Times and elsewhere to have promised to give $1mn every day until the US presidential election on 5 November to randomly selected voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania who sign a petition through his Save America political action committee to protect free speech and the right to bear arms.
According to Richard Hasen, a legal scholar specialising in election law, quoted in the FT, Musk’s pledge violates the core ban on vote buying in US federal elections.
A lesson from history
Trump, Musk and other American plutocrats tempted to try a similar route to the White House, might first think carefully about a notorious episode in the history of the Roman Empire, as recounted by Edward Gibbon in his famous 18th century tome on the subject.
In 193AD, Gibbon tells us*, the Praetorian Guard, a sort of secret service tasked with guarding the emperor – Pertinax, at the time – murdered him instead and put the job up for auction. There were two bidders – Sulpicianus, the emperor’s father-in-law and governor of the city, and Didius Julianus, a wealthy elderly senator.
“The vain old man,” Gibbon tells us, “hastened to the Prætorian camp, where Sulpicianus was still in treaty with the guards, and began to bid against him from the foot of the rampart…Sulpicianus had already promised a donative of five thousand drachms to each soldier, when Julian, eager for the prize, rose at once to the sum of six thousand two hundred and fifty drachms. The gates of the camp were instantly thrown open to the purchaser; he was declared emperor, and received an oath of allegiance from the soldiers, who retained humanity enough to stipulate that he should pardon and forget the competition of Sulpicianus … “
“It was now incumbent on the Prætorians,” Gibbon reminds us, “to fulfil the conditions of the sale. They placed their new sovereign, whom they served and despised, in the centre of their ranks, surrounded him on every side with their shields, and conducted him in close order of battle through the deserted streets of the city. The senate was commanded to assemble; and those who had been the distinguished friends of Pertinax, or the personal enemies of Julian, found it necessary to affect a more than common share of satisfaction at this happy revolution…The obsequious assembly congratulated their own and the public felicity; engaged their allegiance, and conferred on him all the several branches of the Imperial power. From the senate Julian was conducted, by the same military procession, to take possession of the palace.“
The moral
This tale from ancient history would be nothing but a pointless irrelevance if it did not end with a moral, and Gibbon duly draws one: “[A]fter the crowds of flatterers dispersed and left him to darkness, solitude and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous predecessor and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire which had not been acquired by merit but purchased by money.“
“He had reason to tremble. On the throne of the world, he found himself without a friend, and even without an adherent. The guards themselves were ashamed of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept; nor was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror as the last insult on the Roman name.”
It all ended badly for Julian, inevitably. After a reign of only 66 days he was overthrown by Septimius Severus, abandoned by the faithless Praetorians and beheaded as a common criminal.
*Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edwards Gibbon. Chapter 5, Part 1. Available under the Project Gutenberg Licence,
