Spqr=usa?

[Barry Lyndon]

Here are the parallels between the rise and fall of the United States and Rome:

753 BC: Rome is founded=1607 AD: Jamestown, the first successful English settlement in North America, is founded

509 BC: Romans overthrow Etruscan monarchy, establish a Republic=1776-83: American colonies defeat English monarchy, establish a Republic.

449 BC: The Twelve Tables, the foundation of Roman law, become the legal code of the Roman Republic=1787: Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

509-290 BC: Romans conquer all of Italy, defeat and destroy rival tribes=1783-1890: Manifest Destiny-United States conquers the Western American continent from Native Americans and Mexicans.

264-42 BC: First Punic War-Rome conquers Sicily, its first overseas possession=1898: Spanish American War-United States conquers first overseas possessions in the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba, crushes Filipino insurgency.

216 BC: Hannibal of Carthage wipes out the entire Roman army in the battle of Cannae=1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, United States enters World War II against Axis Powers.

146 BC: Rome finally defeats Carthage, completely destroys the city and sows the fields with salt. Rome becomes the dominant power in the Mediterranean.=1945:United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaskai, defeating the Axis Powers. US emerges from World War II as the dominant world power.

133-23 BC: Brothers Gaius and Tiberius Gracchus, two popular tribunes who champion the cause of landless plebians, are elected and assassinated by the patricians=1963-68: Assassinations of John and Robert F. Kennedy.

68 BC: Cilician pirates(from present-day Turkey), launch surprise attack on important Roman port of Ostia, only 19 miles from Rome itself. They burn the city, destroy the local fleet, and kidnap two senators=2001: September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York City and Washington D.C.

67 BC: Consul Pompey given extraordinary powers to deal with the menace of the pirates=2001: Patriot Act.

66 BC: Under the pretext of rooting out pirate sanctuaries, Rome annexes Cilicia, Syria, and Judea=2001-2003: US invades Afghanistan and Iraq.

More to come.....

[Adi Shankara]

The United States won't fall the same way--it'll fall as a result of an economic collapse within itself that sets people off into individual groups, fracturing the union forever.

[ComradeOm]

You want me to do a comparison between the Ottomans and Rome? The Soviets and Rome? Austria and Rome? Obviously when you start shoehorning empires into a 'rise and fall' narrative you will get the superficial similarities that you are looking for. Unless you're doing some real analysis however, such as indentifying underlying common social or economic factors, there's not much point to the exercise beyond personal entertainment

[RedAnarchist]

I read something once that compared the USA to Ancient Rome, and the UK to Ancient Greece.

[Raúl Duke]

I read a book called American Theocracy that compared the US with multiple declining empires although not in the "brick by brick" kind of way, more in the sense of hubris, religious fervor, etc that were common to each in some level.

Although at this point in time I don't think the GOP is pandering to out-right "christian theocrats" but more to their own tea party base which are more like libertarians/fiscal conservatives/anti-progressives.

[AK]

What about the bits where the Romans crucify the Christians... shit, man, minorities are fucked.

[Dimentio]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u0P2QogTe4

If your theory of "parallel existences" is correct, then I guess it will be the Mexicans who deal the final blow to USA

:lol:

[Robocommie]

I think most of these similarities are fairly superficial, and a bit of a stretch. However, I will say that the extent to which American government and politics resembles Rome was highly intentional. The literati among the Founding Fathers were classicists, like most well educated men at that time period. They therefore knew their Greco-Roman history very well, and they intentionally set out to make the new American republic like Rome. This is why we have a Senate, for example.

This identification with Rome is also demonstrated by the political culture. Many early founders were members of a group called the Society of the Cincinatti, which tried to preserve the ideals of the revolution. This was named after a Roman culture hero, Cincinattus, who in ancient times was honored as the ideal Roman, because he accepted the position of dictator to lead Rome through a crisis, and then after the crisis, gave up the dictatorship and returned to his farm.

Furthermore, Roman iconography is everywhere in our symbols, in our public architecture, so on and so forth.