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History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes (Twain)

Looking over the slow developing disaster that is America (now you know my bias), I decided that the best way to get a sense of what the implosion of an Empire looks like was to study another empire that, through no outside forces, when the way of the dodos. Initially, I though that I could look at the decline of some 18th or 19th century European empires, but I realized that these did not so much decline as they were superseded.  In other words they present a poor example of an implosion.

The solution, it turns out was something I’ve already been reading about, a few months ago While watching a Daily Show interview with Robert O’Connell, an American historian who wrote the Ghost of Cannae – about the darkest hours of the Roman republic (in fact the point at which the republic lost its “democratic” footing).  So yesterday I downloaded Gibbons: The History o Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, paradoxically published in 1776.  It is a massive work, which according to friends is a difficult read (thanks Nameede for suggesting instead Margarete Yourcenar’s Memoirs of an Emperor, but it's not available on Kindle) which comes in six volumes… on the kindle it has 89,000 “pages”, and I’m about at page 100 (the intro alone was 40 pages).

Certain amazing facts are already emerging (out of the intro):

  • The decline was slow, over centuries (so it could take a while for America to decline)
  • Roman citizens slowly gave up their rights to improve the security of the empire (sounds familiar with the new rules and regulations after 9/11)
  • Roman citizens believed they had a God given right to rule the world (well you know…)
Anyway, page 100, so I’ve got some reading to do here, thanks to a few long flights and the Christmas break, I should be able to make a large dent in the story.  Don’t know if I will have the fortitude to read the entire thing – by the way, I purchased my copy for 99¢ on Amazon (but if I purchased each volume, on the kindle, it was $2 per volume ), it could be free on the Gutenberg project, but this version was re-edited.

Good times 

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