It is 91 AD, and yet we have something to do in the 21st century, which is to impart what we've learned about how Rome, the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire, dealt with barbarians at the gate, inside the gate, transforming the power of Rome into the Middle Ages.
That took a thousand years. And yet at the beginning, Rome in the West and Rome in the East had success dealing with the barbarians, managed them until the late 4th century AD, and early 5th century AD, when the Huns rode and dislodged the Goths, and the Goths parked themselves at the Danube, asking for permission to enter the Roman Empire—there is the moment we rehearse again and again as Romans who can see the future.
We're safe here in 91 AD. We're surrounded by retired centurions. Our legions are very successful. If anyone revolts, we point the Legion at the revolution and say, March until they resist and die, or concede and die. Their slaves are your slaves, and it works in 91 AD. It will not work so well at the end of the 4th century AD, nor in the 5th century AD. Eventually, we'll right ourselves, but we'll have lost Rome at that point and Byzantium.
We talked last week of how we Romans dealt with the barbarians successfully for several hundred years, and then not. The news from the 21st century is that there is a new emperor, and the emperor is given the order to transport the barbarians back to where they came from. They can do this in the 21st century. They don't need to drive them.
They can fly them or put them on boats. And there is counterattack. At least one leader of a barbarian nation—this would be Gustavo Petro, the president of Columbia in Bogota—initially rejected the barbarian return. And then when the Emperor spoke, there may be concessions. However, that's not as interesting as the fact that the emperor means what he says.
He will send the barbarians back to Caracas, to Bogota, to Santiago, to Buenos Aires. They will go back and they will continue to go back in waves. And the American people applauded. That's why the Emperor knows that this is a good thing; he campaigned on this.
However, I need Germanicus to help me understand how the barbarians will react to this. We know what they did in the 4th and 5th centuries. They overwhelmed the frontier. We know that the Romans were right to resist, but then again, they made deals, and they acknowledged, and they passed gold into hands; they paid the ransom in order to keep the barbarians back.
Are we going to watch America pay the ransom and make deals and invite in the leaders of the barbarians and try to integrate them in the West and watch Rome slip away?
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