Salvē!
This episode of Londinium Chronicles was broadcast live yesterday on YouTube and X. Join us this Sunday at 6PM EST for another live broadcast.
We're at the edge of the empire.
We will be the first to be abandoned in the 5th century A.D. But not yet. Not yet. We're at the edge of having a good run.
Our emperor's Domitian—nobody likes him. But that doesn't matter. The Senate doesn't like him. Therein lies the problem.
After Domitian, we'll have a good run of about 80 years. After that, the empire will hold together despite the best efforts of the barbarians, of internal dissent, of the usual rascals in Rome. It'll hold together for another thousand years after the trouble in the 5th century. And then it's a memory.
Well, we remember, because for some reason, here we are in the 1st century A.D., we're able to see the 21st and every century in between. And Germanicus and I have enjoyed speculating about the events of the 21st century in America, because America inherited the Roman model.
American males, when they're asked, “Do you think about Rome?” they acknowledge they think about it every day—often repeatedly.
I note that American women, when given this fact, say something like, "They do?" in amazement.
Now, why do they—these young males and the older males, too—why do they think about Rome? Because they're aware of the fact that they're living in a civilization that's built on the foundation of the Roman Empire, the one we're living in.
We're going to turn to our experience with the Roman Empire between now—91 A.D.—and let's say, Attila the Hun, about the middle of the 5th century, because we recognize that there will be repeated episodes of disorder challenging the cohesion of the empire. Eventually it will break it in half. Germanicus does a wonderful job of representing the winning half (that would be Constantinople, the Eastern Empire. It becomes Greek-speaking).
Whereas I am more comfortable in the western half, which descends so that Rome, a city of a million people at one point in our lifetimes, will go down to about 10,000 in the year 1000 A.D.
It will be crushed, ignored entirely as civilized progress passes it by, and then it revives. All that is in the future—we're going to address the future, because these last days have brought an episode that we recognize, which is how to start a war.
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