Today's United States vs Ancient Rome (Egypt, Japan, France, slaves)

[Grandstander]

It's only a matter of time before we are overrun by those barbaric tribes from Canda.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

It's only a matter of time before we are overrun by those barbaric tribes from Canda.

This time the danger is to the south.

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

This time the danger is to the south.

The parallels to the Vandalic/Rugian/Gothic incursions are certainly interesting. Especially when you consider where the Visigoths eventually set up housekeeping.

[Leovigildo]

Not many similarities.
First place, the US is a economic empire.
Has not yet arrived to the dictatorial stage.
There are other superpowers. Rome always destroyed superpowers after prolongued wars.

[nebulous1]

Originally Posted by Stac2007

Like Rome the U.S. has a real problem controlling the greed and self indulgence of many of its people. Right now we are robbing the middle class of the American dream and shattering their hopes of a future just so that the privileged few can live like kings and queens. Why would any one want to fight for a country which prevents the economic future of its people?

Exactly. The people have lost faith in their leaders. People do not trust their government. This has progressed over several decades.

The government has just become a way for crooks to get at the taxpayers' money.

[Leovigildo]

Rome lasted (legend) 1200 years, the twelve vultures.
The US a century and falling.
Will the US survive the dictatorship stage?

[jtur88]

I don't think you can make these kinds of comparisons. First, it is a certainty that every powerful entity will fall, and the broad-brush circumstance that will be visible at the time of its failure will have a high probability of congruence.

Aside from that nothing is really relevant. Romans in distant outposts, maybe as much as half the time, didn't even know who the emperor was, because it might take about half a term of office for word to reach the boondocks. Everything ran on inertia.

Rome was far from being the only power in the world in its time. There were plenty of civiiizations elsewhere, that the Romans didn't even know about, who were patiently waiting to sweep in and replace the Romans when Rome self-destructed. Conversely, the US has so much dominonce over the entire world, the the fall of the US will pull everything else down along with it, with no Huns over the horizon to reassemble the pieces. Today, global superpower can be taken literally.

In Roman times, it took months to transmit information throughout the empire, and today it takes nanoseconds. So the length of time it would take for precipitous change to occur has gone from multiples of Roman months to American nanoseconds. Rome wasn't built in a day, but America will fall in a day.

[Grandstander]

That's pretty thin, jtur. As easily as one can argue that instant communications will lead to an instant collapse, one may argue that the same communications bond Americans to one another in a manner not possible in the Roman Empire. Apart from being dominated by Rome, the elements of the empirte had little in common with one another and there was no sense of fraternity between an Egyptian and a Celt. When the Japanese attacked Hawaii, the folks in New York were fighting mad and viewed the attack as one on them as well. Within the Roman Empire, if some Moesians were invaded by a fre lance eastern tribe, no one gave a crap about it in Mauretania or Corsica, it was Rome's problem.

[jtur88]

What you say would be applicable only if the nation's demise came from an external threat, whereupon the internal defenses would act with commensurate celerity. But if it collapsed from within (a far more likely prospect), the speed of communications would accelerate all phenomena, including the death knell. It is unlikely, for example, that our banking and financial systems would gradually erode over a couple of centuries. Even the simple telegraph made the financial collapse possible in a single day in 1929, an event unimagineable in even several months in Rome.

[BlackShoe]

During the late Republican and Imperial era Rome was not like the USA;it was more like the Soviet Union.Wars of conquest and occupation,brutal crushing of dissent,looting of resources,etc.America today is somewhat like Rome of the middle republic years.What is disturbing is that we may be entering a period that in some ways is similar to the last hundred years of the Republic with regard to internal affairs.