8 ms·

The “Decline and Fall” of Rome – A Dangerous Idea?

45 points by diodorus 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
makeitdouble 5y ago
> He also examines those who built literary and political careers around jeremiads against decline alongside promises for rebirth and renewal. I saw this as the thrust of the article. People proclaming a decline to raise a sense of crisis at their advantage, and gain a pretext to destroy anything on their path to power. This, happening at at every scale.
- eevilspock 5y ago
  He is claiming some new sort of Godwin's law[1], where instead of instead of Nazis and Hitler, the idea is that every polemicist or ideologue will eventually claim to explain Rome's decline and fall. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  I can see that is like declaring there is voter-fraud everywhere therefore we must make it extra difficult for people to vote
- coldtea 5y ago
  >I saw this as the thrust of the article. It is indeed the thrust of the article. A pre-determined political point he wanted to make, written up as being about history. The problem is that besides "people proclaming a decline" there are also actual declines in history, and people should be warned, prepared, and take measures against them. And this period looks like very well it could be one (for some areas). To counter this point, he argues that there are never declines in history, going as far as to deny the very real decline of Rome. This has huge denial and "we were always at war with Eurasia" vibes...
redis_mlc 5y ago
I study history. The article is an interesting stroll through Roman history, but doesn't draw any deep conclusions. To some extent, it's difficult to do that, since distilling 2,000 years of history into a few paragraghs is a difficult task. What's different about ancient Rome and the US today are: - ancient empires depended on external taxation, but the US depends on internal taxation, trade and being the global curency. Shrinking tax bases rapidly destroyed most ancient empires. The US has island military bases, but no empire and no external tax base. What's similar about ancient Rome and the US today are: - both welcomed foreign talent. In ancient Rome, governors often came from subjugated states, with the notable exception of Britain. One of Byzantium's leaders arrived as a serf, but was a very clever person. The main problem the US has faced for a couple decades is lack of policy. If you watch any interview with a billionaire, it always comes up. Trump was the most effective President in terms of policy in the last 75 years, as seen in his CCP, trade and border policies. You can contrast that with Biden's woke agenda, which involves military and border blunders, inflation and plummeting respect world-wide. Biden is a perfect end-of-the-Roman-empire leadership example. Luckily his administration will be marginalized in 2022 and voted out in 2024.
ah27182 5y ago
> But now there was no genuine possibility of renewal — in 1453 Rome had truly fallen. I understand how different the Ottoman regime was, but they definitely used many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule. Can one not view the Ottomans as another transformation within a continuum of the “Roman Empire”
- nigerian1981 5y ago
  After the fall of the Byzantine state in 1453, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror Sultan Mehmed II declared himself to have replaced the Byzantine ruler as the new Kayser-i Rum, literally "Caesar of the Romans”
  - coldtea 5y ago
    That was just to claim the legitimacy and influence of the prior state he conquered. The western tribes that contributed to the fall of the actual Roman Empire also called themselves the "Holy Roman Empire" later.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule Reference to justify this? Also, what is "many"? Assuming you don't mean "most", then, no, I don't see how you could justify that claim.
  - ah27182 5y ago
    I cant say most, thats hard to argue. But definitely many, i found this Turkish book published online that lists out multiple claims of Byzantine influence: https://emagaza-ttk.ayk.gov.tr/detay/623/some-observations-on-the-influence-of-byzantine-institutions-on-ottoman-institutions-1999 https://emagaza-ttk.ayk.gov.tr/detay/623/some-observations-o... Im sure one can argue that this might be biased, but the influence is definitely there. Its a quick search online.
- flexie 5y ago
  Shouldn't one look at genetics as well? When a completely different ethnicity invaded and called themselves Roman, and copied the parts they wanted from Roman civilization, but without having almost any Roman ancestry, are we to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?
colechristensen 5y ago
This would be written by a scholar of the eastern empire, the focus on everything past when the capital wasn’t just Rome leads to lots of confusion. If you focus on the city of Rome and the pieces of Western Europe under its power it is hard to say that there was not a serious decline and fall of civilization. Cities of tens of thousands or more reduced from a complex society to losing an order of magnitude of population (or gone completely) and reduction to mostly subsistence agriculture. There are places where it’s hard to see anything but a thousand year gap from a peak in development to return to similar levels. Another “dangerous idea” is trying to be profound by contradicting the prevailing thought, history is quite full of these kinds of overcorrections where in order to “fix” an idea the response is going off the deep end in the other direction.
zeteo 5y ago
The fall of Rome was not a fall and it didn't happen in Rome. The event of 476 AD happened in Ravenna (Rome had not been the capital for almost two centuries at that point[1]) and it was a military coup whereby the chief of the army deposed the head of government. In a very mild development, even by modern standards, the deposed emperor was given a substantial pension and went on to live in luxury in the countryside for a few more decades [2]. The average citizen saw few if any changes in their everyday life. The Senate continued to function for over a century afterwards [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan#Prehistory_and_Roman_times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan#Prehistory_and_Roman_tim... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus#Life_in_exile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus#Life_in_exi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate#Senate_in_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate#Senate_in_the_Wes...
- lou1306 5y ago
  But it was a "fall" in the sense that the line of western Roman emperors ended then and there. Odoacer did not claim the title for himself and even sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople.
  - zeteo 5y ago
    He did send the regalia to Constantinople, because he wanted Zeno to wear them. The two halves had been ruled sometimes by different emperors and at other times by a single person (Constantine, Julian etc.). As far as anyone at the time was concerned, things were legally returning to the state of 395 AD with Zeno instead of Theodosius as the joint emperor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nepos#Exile_in_Dalmatia_(475–480) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nepos#Exile_in_Dalmatia... (This was no mere pretense either. When Zeno became dissatisfied with Odoacer he sent in Theodoric to depose him. When Theodoric's daughter was assassinated, the new emperor sent in the army and took back direct control of Italy.)
anvandare 5y ago
History is either seen as a circle or as a line. If as a circle, then history repeats itself endlessly. The world is reborn and dies, over and over. It is seen as the lives of generations. If as a line, then history has only one beginning and will have one ending. The world is born and will die. It is seen as the life of an individual. The ones that adhere to the line can in turn be divided along those that see the line going up (toward a sunlit city at the top of a hill) and those that see the line going down (towards a hellish valley at the foot of a hill - Megiddo perhaps). Or rather, it's the same line, and the same hill, but they disagree on the direction they are headed. Of course, any line is just a circle zoomed-in close enough, and any circle draws a line if it rolls on long enough. History is just another form of story, a way of seeing things. What matters is not the story, but who is telling it and why.
- eevilspock 5y ago
  A philosophy professor of mine at Berkeley claimed that the fundamental difference between Eastern and Western culture is that the former is built around the concept of Saṃsāra[1] while the latter around telos[2] and the teleological[3], that Eastern religion and culture is centered on the eternal cycles (e.g. life, reincarnation) and thus the importance of peace and stability while Western religion and culture is centered on "a progression from the beginning to the end" (e.g. Genesis to Judgement Day, a teleological view of evolution) and thus oriented toward teleological change and revolution. It's an interesting theory that provokes thought, but breaks down on analysis and reveals a deeply arrogant Eurocentric view of history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(disambiguation) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology
coldtea 5y ago
>The Byzantines called themselves “Romans” (Rhomaioi — in Greek) right until their conquest by the Turks in 1453. Cato’s corrupt Greeks had become the saviors of the Roman Empire. Kind of. What carried on was not the Roman Empire in toto, but the Eastern Empire. Which was placed on the ancient Greek mainland (wider than current Greece, e.g. including southern Italy and Asia minor) and the hellenistic (Greek-speaking, as a result of Alexander's conquests) areas, like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and so on. They called themselves Romaioi (Romans) because (aside from the peaceful state-capital transition to the east instigated by a legitimate Roman emperor himself) the first emperors and many early higher-ups were latin-speaking romans, and because, even those who weren't wanted the state influence associated with being successors to Roman empire. As for the population, they weren't romans in the large, either by ethnicity (italic), language, or culture (hence "Cato’s corrupt Greeks"). They were "roman citizens" but this wasn't much different from "roman subjects + civic rights". Heck, the barbarians that followed Rome (Franks, Germanic tribes, etc) also called themselves "Holy Roman Empire", while having little to do with Romans, and even Mehmed the Conqueror when the ottomans conquered the eastern empire called himself "emperor of the Romans". And while the Eastern Roman empire went on for over a millenium (with ups and downs, attacked by Persians, Arabs, and so on), Rome and the actual Roman empire did fell, and there was a very real and measurable loss of population, state function, quality of life, culture, infrastructure, and so on that lasted for many centuries. So to say "Roman empire didn't decline, it moved east" is not really accurate.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  There was no such thing as a roman ethnicity or language (perhaps latin for law? The byzantines kept latin for a very long time in this context). Rome itself was a backwater long before the western empire fell. The difference between Byzantium and, say, the holy roman empire, was that at no point did a barbarian king declare himself the inheritor of roman tradition. The byzantine state was always the roman state, and it was the state that had continued (fitfully) since Caesar (or Romulus I guess).
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Holy Roman Empire is exactly what you're saying didn't happen - non-Romans declaring themselves the direct continuation of Roman Empire tradition.
inglor_cz 5y ago
An idea may be dangerous for an unskilled mind and yet useful otherwise. Much like a knife or a car. There isn't really any doubt that civilizational standards of the Western parts of the empire declined severely after the fifth century. Population went down, cities were abandoned, literate secular class almost disappeared (and even many priests struggled with reading and writing), the network of long distance trade was hollowed out, security situation deteriorated, even cattle became smaller as a result of subpar fodder. Many places abandoned monetary economy and reverted to barter trade; soldiers (people who were paid with money, solidus = a kind of Roman coin) gave way to aristocracy paid by land. What is dangerous is taking this event and twisting it around to use it in contemporary political conflicts. It almost never fits. We do not have, for example, any equivalent of Attila the Hun destroying our cities by pure slaughter and terror. (Which likely contributed to the decline and later collapse, as cities housed a lot of specialized skilled workers.)
greenail 5y ago
> "we read of the dangers of the suicide of the West — most often as a paean to white supremacy." This is very interesting since typical arguments for the modern theory of "systemic racism" and "white fragility" do not generally admit that for thousands of years slavery was the only alternative to being killed post lost battle. They tend to make it seem to be an American invention. Also what relevance is a Joan Collins quote from 1984? I never heard trump talk about Rome. The article seems like a bit of a stretch. Further, the argument seems to be "history interpretation used for political gain" which is generically true and has nothing to do with that particular history. P.S. if you are casually interested in Rome I highly recommend Mike Duncan's "the history of Rome" podcast.
steveharville 5y ago
Great article but I don't like the way it ended. Needs revision :-)
redis_mlc 5y ago
The article is an interesting stroll through Roman history, but doesn't draw any deep conclusions. To some extent, it's difficult to do that, since distilling 2,000 years of history into a few paragraghs is a difficult task. What's different about ancient Rome and the US today are: - ancient empires depended on external taxation, but the US depends on internal taxation, trade and being the global curency. Shrinking tax bases rapidly destroyed most ancient empires. The US has island military bases, but no empire and no external tax base. What's similar about ancient Rome and the US today are: - both welcomed foreign talent. In ancient Rome, governors often came from subjugated states, with the notable exception of Britain. One of Byzantium's leaders arrived as a serf, but was a very clever person. The main problem the US has faced for a couple decades is lack of policy. If you watch any interview with a billionaire, it always comes up. Trump was the most effective President in terms of policy in the last 75 years, as seen in his CCP, trade and border policies. You can contrast that with Biden's woke agenda, which involves military and border blunders, inflation and plummeting respect world-wide. Biden is a perfect end-of-the-Roman-empire leadership example. Luckily his administration will be marginalized in 2022 and voted out in 2024.

45 points by diodorus 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

> He also examines those who built literary and political careers around jeremiads against decline alongside promises for rebirth and renewal. I saw this as the thrust of the article. People proclaming a decline to raise a sense of crisis at their advantage, and gain a pretext to destroy anything on their path to power. This, happening at at every scale.

eevilspock 5y ago
He is claiming some new sort of Godwin's law[1], where instead of instead of Nazis and Hitler, the idea is that every polemicist or ideologue will eventually claim to explain Rome's decline and fall. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
galaxyLogic 5y ago
I can see that is like declaring there is voter-fraud everywhere therefore we must make it extra difficult for people to vote
coldtea 5y ago
>I saw this as the thrust of the article. It is indeed the thrust of the article. A pre-determined political point he wanted to make, written up as being about history. The problem is that besides "people proclaming a decline" there are also actual declines in history, and people should be warned, prepared, and take measures against them. And this period looks like very well it could be one (for some areas). To counter this point, he argues that there are never declines in history, going as far as to deny the very real decline of Rome. This has huge denial and "we were always at war with Eurasia" vibes...

redis_mlc 5y ago

I study history. The article is an interesting stroll through Roman history, but doesn't draw any deep conclusions. To some extent, it's difficult to do that, since distilling 2,000 years of history into a few paragraghs is a difficult task. What's different about ancient Rome and the US today are: - ancient empires depended on external taxation, but the US depends on internal taxation, trade and being the global curency. Shrinking tax bases rapidly destroyed most ancient empires. The US has island military bases, but no empire and no external tax base. What's similar about ancient Rome and the US today are: - both welcomed foreign talent. In ancient Rome, governors often came from subjugated states, with the notable exception of Britain. One of Byzantium's leaders arrived as a serf, but was a very clever person. The main problem the US has faced for a couple decades is lack of policy. If you watch any interview with a billionaire, it always comes up. Trump was the most effective President in terms of policy in the last 75 years, as seen in his CCP, trade and border policies. You can contrast that with Biden's woke agenda, which involves military and border blunders, inflation and plummeting respect world-wide. Biden is a perfect end-of-the-Roman-empire leadership example. Luckily his administration will be marginalized in 2022 and voted out in 2024.

ah27182 5y ago

> But now there was no genuine possibility of renewal — in 1453 Rome had truly fallen. I understand how different the Ottoman regime was, but they definitely used many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule. Can one not view the Ottomans as another transformation within a continuum of the “Roman Empire”

nigerian1981 5y ago
After the fall of the Byzantine state in 1453, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror Sultan Mehmed II declared himself to have replaced the Byzantine ruler as the new Kayser-i Rum, literally "Caesar of the Romans”
- coldtea 5y ago
  That was just to claim the legitimacy and influence of the prior state he conquered. The western tribes that contributed to the fall of the actual Roman Empire also called themselves the "Holy Roman Empire" later.
einpoklum 5y ago
> many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule Reference to justify this? Also, what is "many"? Assuming you don't mean "most", then, no, I don't see how you could justify that claim.
- ah27182 5y ago
  I cant say most, thats hard to argue. But definitely many, i found this Turkish book published online that lists out multiple claims of Byzantine influence: https://emagaza-ttk.ayk.gov.tr/detay/623/some-observations-on-the-influence-of-byzantine-institutions-on-ottoman-institutions-1999 https://emagaza-ttk.ayk.gov.tr/detay/623/some-observations-o... Im sure one can argue that this might be biased, but the influence is definitely there. Its a quick search online.
flexie 5y ago
Shouldn't one look at genetics as well? When a completely different ethnicity invaded and called themselves Roman, and copied the parts they wanted from Roman civilization, but without having almost any Roman ancestry, are we to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?

colechristensen 5y ago

This would be written by a scholar of the eastern empire, the focus on everything past when the capital wasn’t just Rome leads to lots of confusion. If you focus on the city of Rome and the pieces of Western Europe under its power it is hard to say that there was not a serious decline and fall of civilization. Cities of tens of thousands or more reduced from a complex society to losing an order of magnitude of population (or gone completely) and reduction to mostly subsistence agriculture. There are places where it’s hard to see anything but a thousand year gap from a peak in development to return to similar levels. Another “dangerous idea” is trying to be profound by contradicting the prevailing thought, history is quite full of these kinds of overcorrections where in order to “fix” an idea the response is going off the deep end in the other direction.

zeteo 5y ago

The fall of Rome was not a fall and it didn't happen in Rome. The event of 476 AD happened in Ravenna (Rome had not been the capital for almost two centuries at that point[1]) and it was a military coup whereby the chief of the army deposed the head of government. In a very mild development, even by modern standards, the deposed emperor was given a substantial pension and went on to live in luxury in the countryside for a few more decades [2]. The average citizen saw few if any changes in their everyday life. The Senate continued to function for over a century afterwards [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan#Prehistory_and_Roman_times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan#Prehistory_and_Roman_tim... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus#Life_in_exile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus#Life_in_exi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate#Senate_in_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate#Senate_in_the_Wes...

lou1306 5y ago
But it was a "fall" in the sense that the line of western Roman emperors ended then and there. Odoacer did not claim the title for himself and even sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople.
- zeteo 5y ago
  He did send the regalia to Constantinople, because he wanted Zeno to wear them. The two halves had been ruled sometimes by different emperors and at other times by a single person (Constantine, Julian etc.). As far as anyone at the time was concerned, things were legally returning to the state of 395 AD with Zeno instead of Theodosius as the joint emperor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nepos#Exile_in_Dalmatia_(475–480) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nepos#Exile_in_Dalmatia... (This was no mere pretense either. When Zeno became dissatisfied with Odoacer he sent in Theodoric to depose him. When Theodoric's daughter was assassinated, the new emperor sent in the army and took back direct control of Italy.)

anvandare 5y ago

History is either seen as a circle or as a line. If as a circle, then history repeats itself endlessly. The world is reborn and dies, over and over. It is seen as the lives of generations. If as a line, then history has only one beginning and will have one ending. The world is born and will die. It is seen as the life of an individual. The ones that adhere to the line can in turn be divided along those that see the line going up (toward a sunlit city at the top of a hill) and those that see the line going down (towards a hellish valley at the foot of a hill - Megiddo perhaps). Or rather, it's the same line, and the same hill, but they disagree on the direction they are headed. Of course, any line is just a circle zoomed-in close enough, and any circle draws a line if it rolls on long enough. History is just another form of story, a way of seeing things. What matters is not the story, but who is telling it and why.

eevilspock 5y ago
A philosophy professor of mine at Berkeley claimed that the fundamental difference between Eastern and Western culture is that the former is built around the concept of Saṃsāra[1] while the latter around telos[2] and the teleological[3], that Eastern religion and culture is centered on the eternal cycles (e.g. life, reincarnation) and thus the importance of peace and stability while Western religion and culture is centered on "a progression from the beginning to the end" (e.g. Genesis to Judgement Day, a teleological view of evolution) and thus oriented toward teleological change and revolution. It's an interesting theory that provokes thought, but breaks down on analysis and reveals a deeply arrogant Eurocentric view of history. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(disambiguation) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

coldtea 5y ago

>The Byzantines called themselves “Romans” (Rhomaioi — in Greek) right until their conquest by the Turks in 1453. Cato’s corrupt Greeks had become the saviors of the Roman Empire. Kind of. What carried on was not the Roman Empire in toto, but the Eastern Empire. Which was placed on the ancient Greek mainland (wider than current Greece, e.g. including southern Italy and Asia minor) and the hellenistic (Greek-speaking, as a result of Alexander's conquests) areas, like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and so on. They called themselves Romaioi (Romans) because (aside from the peaceful state-capital transition to the east instigated by a legitimate Roman emperor himself) the first emperors and many early higher-ups were latin-speaking romans, and because, even those who weren't wanted the state influence associated with being successors to Roman empire. As for the population, they weren't romans in the large, either by ethnicity (italic), language, or culture (hence "Cato’s corrupt Greeks"). They were "roman citizens" but this wasn't much different from "roman subjects + civic rights". Heck, the barbarians that followed Rome (Franks, Germanic tribes, etc) also called themselves "Holy Roman Empire", while having little to do with Romans, and even Mehmed the Conqueror when the ottomans conquered the eastern empire called himself "emperor of the Romans". And while the Eastern Roman empire went on for over a millenium (with ups and downs, attacked by Persians, Arabs, and so on), Rome and the actual Roman empire did fell, and there was a very real and measurable loss of population, state function, quality of life, culture, infrastructure, and so on that lasted for many centuries. So to say "Roman empire didn't decline, it moved east" is not really accurate.

pasabagi 5y ago
There was no such thing as a roman ethnicity or language (perhaps latin for law? The byzantines kept latin for a very long time in this context). Rome itself was a backwater long before the western empire fell. The difference between Byzantium and, say, the holy roman empire, was that at no point did a barbarian king declare himself the inheritor of roman tradition. The byzantine state was always the roman state, and it was the state that had continued (fitfully) since Caesar (or Romulus I guess).
- emteycz 5y ago
  Holy Roman Empire is exactly what you're saying didn't happen - non-Romans declaring themselves the direct continuation of Roman Empire tradition.

inglor_cz 5y ago

An idea may be dangerous for an unskilled mind and yet useful otherwise. Much like a knife or a car. There isn't really any doubt that civilizational standards of the Western parts of the empire declined severely after the fifth century. Population went down, cities were abandoned, literate secular class almost disappeared (and even many priests struggled with reading and writing), the network of long distance trade was hollowed out, security situation deteriorated, even cattle became smaller as a result of subpar fodder. Many places abandoned monetary economy and reverted to barter trade; soldiers (people who were paid with money, solidus = a kind of Roman coin) gave way to aristocracy paid by land. What is dangerous is taking this event and twisting it around to use it in contemporary political conflicts. It almost never fits. We do not have, for example, any equivalent of Attila the Hun destroying our cities by pure slaughter and terror. (Which likely contributed to the decline and later collapse, as cities housed a lot of specialized skilled workers.)

greenail 5y ago

> "we read of the dangers of the suicide of the West — most often as a paean to white supremacy." This is very interesting since typical arguments for the modern theory of "systemic racism" and "white fragility" do not generally admit that for thousands of years slavery was the only alternative to being killed post lost battle. They tend to make it seem to be an American invention. Also what relevance is a Joan Collins quote from 1984? I never heard trump talk about Rome. The article seems like a bit of a stretch. Further, the argument seems to be "history interpretation used for political gain" which is generically true and has nothing to do with that particular history. P.S. if you are casually interested in Rome I highly recommend Mike Duncan's "the history of Rome" podcast.

steveharville 5y ago

Great article but I don't like the way it ended. Needs revision :-)

redis_mlc 5y ago

The article is an interesting stroll through Roman history, but doesn't draw any deep conclusions. To some extent, it's difficult to do that, since distilling 2,000 years of history into a few paragraghs is a difficult task. What's different about ancient Rome and the US today are: - ancient empires depended on external taxation, but the US depends on internal taxation, trade and being the global curency. Shrinking tax bases rapidly destroyed most ancient empires. The US has island military bases, but no empire and no external tax base. What's similar about ancient Rome and the US today are: - both welcomed foreign talent. In ancient Rome, governors often came from subjugated states, with the notable exception of Britain. One of Byzantium's leaders arrived as a serf, but was a very clever person. The main problem the US has faced for a couple decades is lack of policy. If you watch any interview with a billionaire, it always comes up. Trump was the most effective President in terms of policy in the last 75 years, as seen in his CCP, trade and border policies. You can contrast that with Biden's woke agenda, which involves military and border blunders, inflation and plummeting respect world-wide. Biden is a perfect end-of-the-Roman-empire leadership example. Luckily his administration will be marginalized in 2022 and voted out in 2024.