Americans have always had an appreciation for ancient Rome. Some of that comes from our reliance on Roman models that are, ironically, so pervasive as to escape notice. But we see those models everywhere, in our language, our systems of law and education, in our appreciation of art and styles of architecture, in our sport culture and our engineering. Romans also passed down symbols of power along with the methods to secure that power and keep it secure.
One of those methods, the Cursus Honorum, helped Rome organize during its Republican era (509 B.C. to 29 B.C.) that period of citizen governance sandwiched between the death of the last Roman king and the rise of the first Roman Emperor. It stabilized self-governance by channeling ambition, forcing status-seeking, would-be statesmen, into a rigorous ladder of career advancement. Through the Cursus Honorum or “path of honor,” status (i.e. influence) was earned through rank and rank was earned slowly. However, over time the rungs of that ladder compressed and the path to success became the instrument of the Republic’s own demise. The American Cursus Honorum is less narrowly focused but just as dangerous in its potential.

Sometime after dethroning the last Roman King “Tarquin the Proud,” Romans vested authority in elected officials. Of these, the position of “Censor” was the most powerful. Censors kept the official roster of Roman citizens (the census), controlled taxation, certified every major decision, and enforced moral order. Those who ran afoul of proper conduct risked punishment by the Censor (censorship). Censors had absolute authority and wielded unquestioned power. For over 400 years, the office of censor was the highest and best honor to which any Roman could aspire and many did aspire it.
Achieving the rank of Censor required a steady march up the Cursus Honorum, the rigorous and rigid, but largely unspoken, list of offices preceding Censor. To qualify for election to Censor, Romans first had to serve a term as Consul (chief magistrate). The prerequisite to that office was a stint as Propraetor (military general). Propretors were drawn exclusively from among Praetors (judges) who were, in-turn, qualified for that role by their service as Aedile (something like a town trustee). But it didn’t stop there. Aedile’s were chosen from among Quaesters (treasury officials), Quaesters were chosen from Tribunes (military officers) and Tribuneships were hard to get. A Roman citizen had to serve at least 10 years in the army, and distinguish themselves in combat, before even being considered for the title.
The road to Censor required a military background, some political maneuvering, and a lot of patience—most Romans qualified for the office only after their 60th birthdays. As the decades passed, Romans grew tired of the slow march to glory and Roman aristocrats did whatever they could to shortcut their way through the ranks. The wealthiest Romans secured choice military commands for inexperienced sons who entered the Cursus Honorum at astonishingly young ages and gained rank well before they should have, if ever. And so, by the second century B.C., we see Roman armies launched headlong into battles, not out of strategic need or defensive purpose, but to satisfy ambitions of young generals. In the end, the death of Rome’s Republic was inevitable.

Rome’s Cursus Honorum was a response to heightened competition among aggressive status-seekers, but no amount of career laddering could stop the overweening ambitions of those least qualified to rule. Each stop along that path of honor was meant to give direct experience with critical, on-ground issues. A few decades spent digging out encampments with the army, followed by a decade or more work with civilians on local affairs, then by more time leading massive armies, and maybe a decade or two negotiating with foreign rulers, gave a Roman Consul empathy, sound judgement, and unmatched perspective. The system worked so long as the outcome (e.g. advancement to higher office) was subordinate to experience. In other words, when Romans stopped caring about experience and cared more about their next posting, things fell apart.
American’s Cursus Honorum falters along those same lines. Like the Romans, we’ve channeled our ambitions into career ladders that make education, training, and rank prerequisite to increased responsibility. We do this in the hopes that experience will accumulate and result in better, more effective leadership. But also like the Romans, we’ve looked for ways over, around, and past these experiences. We celebrate the efficient pursuit of celebrity and honor fast fortunes gained with low effort and minimal energy. Education bears some responsibility for the rapid rise of rapid risers; college credit-bearing opportunities extended to high school students have exploded in recent years, as has the willingness of colleges to accept these credits.
It’s not wrong to seek efficiencies but there’s no escaping value of inefficiency. For experience to mean something it must be pursued in a somewhat desultory manner, full time, with undivided attention and with little thought to how that experience will feed ambitious ends. Education works the same way. When pursued strictly for external validation, and the typical markers of validation, individual courses become meaningless exercises and the final shape of a degree is more like an amorphous blob. When that degree is the means to an end, a career or advanced degrees, we lose the opportunity to discover what’s most important about our pursuits and ourselves.
Lessons from Rome’s fallen Republic allow us to scrutinize our own experiment with democracy. The Cursus Honorum failed to protect Rome from the Romans, can Americans do better? Certainly not if our answer is to pursue and promote the same modes of destructive self-interest. Higher education has a role to play in the preservation of the Republic and Kentucky Wesleyan College understands this responsibility all too well. Here, the student experience is made whole by faculty and staff committed to the idea that the success of the individual is possible only in the aggregate, that is, when students work together in common cause and with shared responsibility. Our coursework reinforces collaboration and our pedagogy places mastery of material above all else. When process is held apart from product, the value of education becomes clear.
We can avoid the same fate as the Romans if we multiply these ideas and if we spread a similar commitment; if we can reward meaningful experiences and train up generations to seek after the same. Rome’s Republic fell because Romans reduced experience down to its essentials, then distilled those essentials even further until all that remained were a jumble of meaningless titles. The American Republic can remain strong, so long as our judgement of title, of rank and experience, remains fixed on the things that matter most.

James P. Cousins, PhD
President, Kentucky Wesleyan College