Me in 2020: “Wow, I really hope these past four years were our ‘Nero’ era and not our ‘Honorius’ era.”
Me in 2025: “Oh god oh fuck here comes our ‘Honorius’ era”
The Roman Emperor Nero was devoid of redeeming qualities and ruinous to everyone he touched, but the state recovered and would go on to a healthier existence for another ~100 or so years.
The Roman Emperor Honorius was devoid of redeeming qualities and ruinous to everyone he touched. The state would not recover, and another ~50 years of decline would turn the already-reduced quality of life of the Roman people to cinders, benefitting no one except the powerful and wealthy who managed to survive long enough to carve out little kingdoms for themselves.
Luckily, the USA does not hold up the world the way that Rome did - a few days travel from the border will not lead you to a land where modern science and development is unknown. Unfortunately for those of us living here, it very well may take you to a place where modern science and development is more robust.
a few days travel from the border will not lead you to a land where modern science and development is unknown.
You gotta go deeper inside for that now.
Does this imply that Europe is the Eastern Roman Empire?
Britain is Rome, the US is Constantinople.
I hope not.
Could be. And China is the ascending Kalifate and India the empire of Charlemagne?
there are no great empires OP 🙃
Greatest empire huh? I think we can do better than a society with slavery.
Note that the US still has slavery - the 13th amendment contains an exception for prison labor. Which is widely abused for literal slave labor.
Slavery also exists in the US illegally but goes under reported due to often involving immigrants living in fear of deportation
don’t forget that children and the disabled are also often labor trafficked.
labor trafficking happens way more than sex trafficking, but all y’all got your panties in a wad about sex trafficking so all y’all think the only trafficking worth caring about is sex trafficking. my sister who spent a few years working in labor trafficking prosecution and couldn’t get juries to convict because it was just labor and not sex trafficking quit law altogether after the experience.
public opinion thinks slavery is okay if it’s for profit and you give them pennies. just as long as you don’t fuck them.
and you all are the public
Genghis Khan: am I a joke to you?
That empire didn’t survive his death.
USA 🤝 Romans
Hate for the Britons.
Funny, considering the US has far more in common with the British Empire than it does with the Roman one.
Highly financialised naval power, with land holdings around the whole globe (the sun never sets on US military bases), mostly coasting on the momentum it had coming out of the previous century and flailing wildly in a way that only accelerates the inevitable decline into irrelevancy.
The amount of times ive gotten confused between USA and Ancient Rome is concerning
The Achaemenid empire was greater than the Roman one.
I may not agree, but I know good taste when I see it o7
When people ask why men are always fascinated by the Roman Empire it’s because it’s analogous to our current timeline. It’s a great way to parse where we are or how far we have left to fall.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. It gives us hints, like all great powers in the past. The question is, how much are we willing to learn?
jk, we’re Americans, we don’t learn shit
I have been fascinated by the era when Roman Empire collapsed and what happened then. Maybe I’m trying to make myself understand that people still lived their lives and survived. At least some of them.
