Monk

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The Times has a mordant piece on the oft made comparison between America and the Roman Empire. Adam Goodheart closes with this notation on the limitation of Roman conquest, a kinda warning note for America:

There’s one warning sign from ancient Rome’s history, though, that everybody, past and present, seems to have ignored. The juggernaut of Roman conquest stalled in only two places. One, of course, was along the Rhine, where warlike German tribes held the course of empire in check. The other place was the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, or ancient Mesopotamia — roughly, modern Iraq.

For centuries, one would-be conqueror after another marched his legions into the east, only to return in disgrace, or not at all. A few decades before Diocletian, there lived a Roman emperor named Valerian, a man from a fine old senatorial family. His army was annihilated not far east of the Euphrates.

Valerian was taken as a captive back to the enemy capital, where the Persian king, according to one ancient historian, amused himself by using the Roman emperor as a footstool for mounting his horse. When the erstwhile master of the known world finally died, his skin was stuffed with straw as a trophy.

But how much better it would be for the Persian and Muslim civilization to be 'conquered' and become a more vital part of the thriving modern world! I suppose it's happening by degrees in any case, though, by dribs and drabs, if not without a lot of murderous resentment. As children have to grow up sometime.


(Source: Adam Goodheart for The New York Times)

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