Having spent a couple trans-Atlantic plane flights listening to the more gritty sorts of history podcasts...
Culturally, the Romans were a *hell* of a statistical outlier.
@icefox I'm curious how you mean that. The Romans are so titanically overrated in just about every conceivable department...
@kara Well, yes. The podcast I was listening to (Hardcore History) admits a certain bit of Roman fanboyism, just cause they actually bloody wrote everything down.
But contrasting with other civilizations of the time, the early Roman Republic seems moar militaristic, moar regimented, and moar socially-indebted, while also moar bureaucratic, moar artistic and moar indulgent. Which is a heck of a combination. Continuing developments seem to emphasize these traits, to almost caricature.
@icefox indeed. and the great thing is that, 2000 years later, our culture is basically just as self-destructive. one can see in the evolution of the Roman state, and its open embrace of what we now call fascism under that vile little shit Octavian, the roots of our present state of social collapse
@kara I reeeeeally wasn't thinking that far ahead! Lots of water passed between then and now. I shall ponder.
But there's often a rise-and-fall pattern of empire that is much more apparent in Asian and Middle Eastern empires than European, where it lasts 3-5 generations before falling apart. Moguls and other Gunpowder Empires, certain caliphates, others recognized by Ibn Khaldun even in the 14th century. The Big Important Empires are the ones who avoided the typical generational sine-wave.
@icefox basically we (and by we I mean the scions of Western civilization) aren't any more capable of organizing on a large scale than the Romans were'
not at making it last for more than a few hundred years, anyway