What I really want to see is “Real American Gladiators.” Essentially UFC or MMA, but with edged weapons added. I did actually once manage to interest a major network (which I am not allowed to name for reasons I am not allowed to discuss) in the idea, but uncharacteristically vigorous (even loud, I daresay, in the literal sense) protests from the legal department caused the project to get the thumbs down, as it were, despite amazingly positive response from the test audience.
Overeating and orgies.
We’ve yet to have our Marius, let alone our Caesar. And after the Empire took over from the Republic it took centuries before the collapse came.
Historians have been arguing about what caused the Fall of Rome since the Fall of Rome and haven’t even been able to agree on the definition of the Fall of Rome. (Some say it fell when it was sacked, some when the emperor Romulus Augustulus was killed, some say it just moved into its new eastern offices in Constantinople (now a Turkish delight on a moonlit night), some argue that due to the papacy it really didn’t fall at all but just evolved.
Similarly you can draw many similarities between modern day America and Rome in the 1st century or in the 2nd or in the 4th century or between Byzantium in the 12th or the Incan empire or Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate. If you couldn’t compare and contrast it freshman history tests would be much shorter. Ultimately though the U.S. in the 21st century isn’t even that comparable to the U.S. in the Civil War or even the U.S. in the Cold War, let alone an empire with a huge slave populations and mass starvation and constant epidemics and insurrections and semi-divine rulers and monumentally shifting religious paradigms and every day under threat of major invasion.
I believe history has many useful lessons but I don’t believe it repeats itself. At best, to borrow a line usually attributed to Mark Twain (though without proof) “it doesn’t repeat itself, it just sort of rhymes sometimes”.
And we can agree with the ancient Romans that eunuchs control freaking everything.
Oh hell yea. We have an entire ‘history’ awaiting us of genuine assholeishness as we enter our non-democracy conquest phase!
Hmm–I’d say Woodrow Wilson came pretty close.
UsA! USA! USA!
Christians did not destroy the Roman Empire, indeed they probably prolonged its existence, if not for them Rome might have been totally destroyed and a true Dark Ages like the one in post-Mycenean Greece might have happened-ie writing lost, all cities burnt out, all cultural heritage gone.
nope, the corleone family was like the roman empire.
This capper follows as night follows a mother duck.
This is why you shouldn’t try to learn history from Fox News.
The OP gives a list of items that were historically spread out over centuries - many of them before the Roman Empire was even founded much less collapsed. It’s like saying, “Vietnam, AIDS, Jesse James, Nat Turner’s uprising, the cancellation of Firefly, Napoleon - aren’t these the signs that the United States is doomed?”
You forgot the Star Wars prequels. :eek: True signs that the American Reich shall fall…
I’m just going to come right out and say that I’m a conservative who believes in capitalism, and thinks that those who actually work are real Americans, and thinks that the welfare class is NOT helping the country. I happen to be pro-choice, regardless of what you leftist wingnuts may or may not think. I’m only bouncing thoughts and ideas off of others to get their perspective on any given matter.
You’re just stealing lyrics from Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” aren’t you?
The last emperor to extend the borders of the Roman empire was Trajan, in 116. After that, every emperor was just trying to hold onto what they got and keep things from falling apart. As far as “didn’t really do much to extend the Roman empire’s reign”, I guess I’d like to know exactly what you meant before I could agree or disagree, because a bunch of them took actions that helped unify the Empire and keep it alive when it was on the verge of falling apart.
Constantine I managed to put an end to the squabbling and civil war that broke out in the post-Diocletian tetrarchy. Justinian managed to rewrite Roman law codes, getting rid of a lot of obsolete provisions, and briefly retook North Africa, Italy, and Spain.
Heraclius overthrew a tyrant usurper and drove out the Persians from Roman territory, even though he wasn’t able to stop the Arabs. Basil the Macedonian pretty much reasserted control over the Eastern Mediterranean. Leo the Wise actually managed to push the Arab armies back. Basil II reconquered Bulgaria and reabsorbed it into the Empire. Isaac I’s legal reforms, unpopular though they were, probably kept the empire going when it was about to fall apart. Michael VIII managed to regain the Empire from the Latin Emperors and basically revived it. And Manuel II, even though the empire by that point was next to nothing, and little more than a vassal state of the Turks, managed by clever maneuvering, to give it another 50 years of life.
So there were certainly Christian Emperors who did their best and were successful in extending the life of the Roman Empire, and if you disagree with that, I’d like to know why.
And another thing that isn’t helping is the shipping of jobs overseas. After Dec. 7, 1941, US manufacturing and production skyrocketed when we entered World War II, thousand of people who were unemployed were suddenly hard at work, making money and boosting the economy. Back then, we did what we had to to ensure our security, and that meant making weapons, ships, tanks, planes, trucks, etc, etc. Now, things are better for some, worse for others. If another recession occurs, followed by another World War, we will not be able to manufacture our way to the top, because we have moved all of it overseas.
Economic restructuring.
So we become subservient to China? to Mexico? to everyone who has American companies manufacturing on their soil? Should I move to China so that I can live on pennies a day, even though I have a CCNA, Network+, A+, and and all other kinds of IT certifications?
I thought Theodosius was to be considered one of history’s biggest villains! Not for his religion though, but his politics and their murderous results. Maybe I have it wrong.
The question led me to musing on this:
from here.
The gist being that the world could end, and everyone left would think the world began. Or, that no one could agree what it was like, but probably nothing else IMHO.
Let’s face facts, we’re a mostly military society. We didn’t get the country we have through negotiation and diplomacy, we gained it through force and bloodshed. We EARNED this land, we didn’t barter for it.