Imperial Purple
By Edgar Saltus
“For it is at the figurative feet of statism that Edgar Saltus lays the fall of Rome.”
Imperial Purple is a history of Rome from the time of Julius Caesar to the collapse of the Western Empire. It traces the gradual process of decay through the careers of the Roman emperors, spotlighting in turn each of the men who wore the imperial purple, depicting in rich detail the subtle but inexorable change in the Caesar's position from "first among equals" to absolute despot.
For it is at the figurative feet of statism that Edgar Saltus lays the fall of Rome. "When the murder was done and the heralds shouted through the thick streets the passing of Caesar," he writes, "it was the passing of the republic they announced, the foundation of Imperial Rome." As each of Caesar's successors extended the absolute rule of the purple, as human rights underwent the steady erosion that began with the mindless Sybaritism of Augustus and passed to the monument building of Hadrian and finally to the unchecked, murderous megalomania of Heliogabalus, Rome passed from government by representative body to rule by the whim of an emperor, and so to enervating plots and counterplots, to civil gang-wars for imperial power, while semicivilized tribes were bribed not to attack and disturb the infighting. By the time the barbarians of the north were ready to put their designs on her into action, Rome was so torn and weakened by internal strife that she could offer only token resistance.
Her death agony is superbly re-created in Saltus' colorful prose, the product of one of the most disciplined and poetic styles in American literature. Imperial Purple is not a technical treatise, but a portrait; it does not discuss the decline of Rome; it shows it, concretely, vividly and in infinite sensuous detail. As Carl Van Vechten wrote of Saltus' style in the 1920's, "color smears the page.... We taste, we smell, we see, we hear, we touch." Never has Rome been so immediate, so real. Not only is Imperial Purple a brilliant historical essay; it is also an unforgetable experience.
Reviewed by Jeff Riggenbach / History (234 Pages) / BFL Price $10