BY GEORGE HOPKINS

In the year 120 BCE, the Roman Senate banned actors from holding elective office, according to Mary Beard, in her magisterial book S.P.Q.R: The History of Ancient Rome (2015).

So why this odd footnote to history? It seems the ancients were as prone to confuse (and vote for), a fictitious on-stage persona with an off-stage persona as we still are today. Thus, those Old Guys in Togas simply banished actors from politics.

They distrusted direct democracy almost as much as our own Founding Fathers, who  knew Roman history, and understood something that perhaps explains “The Donald” phenomenon today.

His meteoric political rise mostly boils down to an ability to “read” an audience and then give it what it wants, rhetorically. This skill doesn’t require deep knowledge of governing technique or programs, which is why a talent for demagoguery alone, while it can win elections is insufficient for successful governance.

But admit it! Trump has already won. His Performance Art is mesmerizing to watch, honed for years on his reality TV show. He feeds on his crowds, works them into a frenzy with his Elmer Gantry carnival barker routine, and they love him. They believe everything he says, even when the facts say otherwise.

The Electoral College was created by the Founders, in lieu of an outright ban on popular democracy, to prevent just what appears to be happening today: a popular but unqualified demagogue on the verge of winning the most powerful office in the world.

Even if Trump loses, he wins because he will enter into history alongside such famous names as Henry Clay, founder of the Whig Party in America, though he never won the presidency.

Trump won by recognizing that the Republican Party had transitioned into something different, a vehicle for white working class frustration and anger on cultural, economic and social issues. His followers are unlikely to fade away, since they are now a majority of the so-called Republican base.

This is a momentous transition historically, comparable to Franklin Roosevelt’s remaking of the Democratic Party.

All this means the Nov. 8 election is historically significant in multiple ways. Trump recognized and exploited the transformation of the Republican base into a vehicle for the frustration and anger of the white working class.

Trump saw their anger and angst, and gave voice to it like no other Republican candidate.  His message, without religious overtones, beat the religious right at its own game. He defeated his primary opponents and took the party away from them. His mark on Republican politics is likely to be permanent.

And what of Hillary Clinton? Her mark on history has already been secured as the first woman presidential nominee of a major party. She has withstood the slings, arrows and smears from a generation of Republicans including Trump with dignity and grace, and is likely to win the presidency, another historical first.

Back in the Bill Clinton years, an old Arkansas friend who knew both Bill and Hillary and was impressed with her intelligence, drive and yes, fetching good looks and ambition, said of the Clintons, “someday they’ll both be buried next to a dead president of the same name.”  We shall soon know….

George Hopkins is professor emeritus of history at Western Illinois University in Macomb.