<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 8:50 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>I'm curious why the comparison is always with the Roman _Empire_ and not with the Roman _Republic_. And the Roman Empire lasted quite a long time, especially if you consider the Eastern part survived long after Rome "fell." (It's hard to draw a line too of when exactly the Eastern part ended. Surely, long before Constantinople fell, but still long after the city of Rome fell to outside rulers.)</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It just so happens I have a healthy obsession with ancient history with a focus on the Romans. It's all as a layperson, but I've been obsessed with that time period (and the barbarian successors in the West) since I took four years of Latin in high school.</div><div><br>Anyways, any comparisons between the US and any part of Rome are very tenuous at best IMO. I'm not even sure they really rhyme, let alone repeat.  That said I picked the Empire versus the Republic because of the expansive umbrella of the US's influence in the world from WW II forward.</div><div><br></div><div>As far as the fall of the actual Roman Empire, the Western half arguably fell not with a bang but a whimper in 476 Anno Domini under the inauspicious reign of the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus. It was already coming apart at the seams long before him though.  Once the Praetorian Guard abandoned their sacred duties and started both assassinating and appointing emperors</div><div><br></div><div>The Eastern Roman Empire arguably was finished somewhat ironically at the hands of the the West during the 4th Crusade.  Yes, it took the Turks and a very large cannon a few hundred years later to bring down the actual Theodosian walls, but the East never really recovered from the damage done during the 4th Crusade.</div></div></div>