A Contemporary Fall of Empires

 In recent years, the phrase "How often do you think about the Roman Empire?" became a viral sensation, but for historians and political analysts, the question has never been a joke. The comparison between the United States and Ancient Rome is one of the most enduring tropes in political discourse. While some use the comparison to signal imminent doom and others dismiss it as historical cherry-picking, a comprehensive look at the last two decades of American history reveals striking parallels and equally significant departures from the Roman experience.

One of the primary drivers of Rome's instability was a fundamental shift in its economic engine. During the Late Republic and early Empire, Rome saw a massive concentration of wealth where small-scale farmers were often displaced by massive estates, known as latifundia, owned by the elite. This led to a disenfranchised middle class and a heavy reliance on state subsidies and entertainment—the famous "bread and circuses"—to maintain social order. In the modern United States, a similar pattern has emerged over the last twenty years. The country has grappled with the highest levels of wealth inequality since the Gilded Age, while the erosion of manufacturing jobs and the concentration of capital in the hands of a few technological and financial giants mirror the Roman shift toward an oligarchic economy. Furthermore, Rome’s habit of devaluing its currency, the denarius, to fund military overstretch draws frequent comparisons to modern American debates over the national debt and the long-term impact of inflation.

The "Fall of Rome" did not happen overnight; it began with the slow decay of the Roman Republic's political culture. Historians often point to the era of the Gracchi Brothers as a turning point where political norms—the unwritten rules of the game—were broken. Compromise was replaced by "lawfare," a state where the legal system was used primarily to target political rivals. Analysts note that the last decade in America has been defined by a similar erosion of norms, ranging from the increasing use of executive orders to bypass a gridlocked Congress to the questioning of election integrity and the politicization of the judiciary. This reflects a strain on the machinery of the Republic, where the intense polarization between the "Populares" (populists) and "Optimates" (the establishment) in Rome finds a modern echo in the divide between current populist movements and the traditional political elite.

This domestic strain is compounded by what historians call "imperial overstretch." Rome eventually reached a point where it was too large to govern and too expensive to defend, with borders stretching thousands of miles and military maintenance becoming a primary cause of financial ruin. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spanning much of the last twenty years, have sparked a similar debate in the United States. While the U.S. does not maintain a formal empire of colonies, its global network of hundreds of bases and the immense cost of its defense budget—which remains larger than the next several nations combined—create a fiscal and logistical burden that many argue is unsustainable in the long term.

Despite these rhymes in history, there are several areas where the United States and Rome remain fundamentally different. Rome was an agrarian society with communication limited by the speed of a horse, whereas the U.S. is a digital-first superpower. In the modern era, information and misinformation travel at light speed, which can accelerate social volatility but also provides tools for recovery and organization that the Romans could not have imagined. Additionally, the role of the military differs significantly. In Rome, soldiers eventually became more loyal to their specific generals, such as Caesar or Sulla, than to the State because those generals were the ones who paid them. In the U.S., despite extreme political tensions, the military remains strictly apolitical and under civilian control. Perhaps most importantly, the U.S. has a constitutional mechanism for the transfer of power that has survived for over two centuries, whereas Rome never truly solved the problem of peaceful succession, often descending into civil war upon the death of a leader.

In considering whether America is "falling" like Rome, history suggests that states rarely simply fall; instead, they transform. Rome did not disappear in 476 AD; it evolved into smaller kingdoms in the West and continued for another millennium as the Byzantine Empire in the East. The comparison between the two is less a roadmap and more a mirror. It shows us that when institutions weaken, wealth gaps widen, and polarization replaces governance, a republic becomes vulnerable. The lesson of Rome is not that decline is inevitable, but that the survival of a republic depends on the constant, active maintenance of its cultural and institutional foundations.