"If you’d been born 1,500 years ago in southern Europe, you’d have been convinced that the Roman empire would last forever... By 476 CE it was gone." Math fail

"If you’d been born 1,500 years ago in southern Europe, you’d have been convinced that the Roman empire would last forever... By 476 CE it was gone." Math fail. If I had been born in CE 517, it would have been "gone" for 40 years already even before I was born, so I doubt I would have ever thought it would last forever. Then again, as a newborn, I wasn't very bright.