@Roman Empire,
Roman Empire;59525 wrote:It is now being discovered that in the final days of Empire, Rome was actually the most powerful and organized it had ever been. It was not disunified, it was not in decline, it was not in a shortage of manpower or in a period of economic turmoil. And all its fall can be traced to the invasion of the Germans.
So my question is can there be any logical links made to the Roman Empire and to the United States?
Since Rome was theoretically going to continue indefinately...
Since Rome, made by the sword, was unmade by the sword...
What use are comparisons between the US and Rome since none of the comparisons accurately portray the reasons for the fall of Rome?
When do you mean? The Roman Empire ended when Constantinople fell to the Turks, not far off the time Columbus sailed to America. If you mean the end of the
Western empire in the Fifth Century, you are under a misapprehension. The Empire had ceased to expand but
had partially civilized the peoples along its border, so that they had just as good a military technology. The key points, though, were long-lasting economic depression, the existence of a professional army able to change governments and an extreme conservatism based on slavery, which divides intellectual development from technical development - because the rich never have to do (and regard as below them) any real work. The immediate causes were a ban on changing from your father's form of work, a calamitious climate change and - most of all - the spread of plague, which (because it depended on rats which depended on large granaries) heavily favoured barbarians living in small villages. That is the case for ex-Roman Britannia anyway. It's not much like the present really. Let the climate-change deniers stop discussion with their lies, however, and it probably soon will be.
