> But remember that even though all those traditionalist revolts ended in disaster, it is in fact the traditional societies that survive to this day, whereas th

> But remember that even though all those traditionalist revolts ended in disaster, it is in fact the traditional societies that survive to this day, whereas the Greek and Roman empires have long vanished. Might this not "just" be because those "fallen" empires largely blended into and became whatever came next--arguably barely even having an identity other than their government--while these separate smaller cultural groups chose to maintain their heritage (something "Rome" arguably didn't have any of to begin with) and so can be subjugated and suppressed but not destroyed? Like, to the extent to which Rome is even a thing with a culture as opposed to merely the world's most thinly-stretched government, I have seen a lot of historians now take the position that it was more of a decline than a fall, that depending on where you were that it might have existed for a very long time (a century? longer?) in a form where people on the ground might have only barely noticed changes, and that maybe it arguably even still exists in the form of greater western civilization.