I've been watching the series 8 Days That Changed Rome (I think that's what it's called) Jeez they were a barbarous lot. Very good series though and accurate as far as I recall from my readings. But I was thinking this morning was there a point in time when your average Roman decided "Right, the empire is finished, what do we do now" Probably not because the process of decay was a slow moving river. There were floods at times but the process was longer than any man's lifetime. Cicero thought it was all over for Rome when Julius Caesar made himself dictator. But it would be a few centuries more till Rome's ascendancy was at an end. Makes you think about our current world. We've had 3 centuries of parliamentary type government in western society. Are there any signs that might crash soon. I'm going out to kill a chook and examine its entrails.
