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If America is the New Rome, it might help to study a side-by-side timeline of Roman and American histories and get a feel for whether we are travelling down the same road. This will give us the opportunity to make several pointless and unfounded, yet totally irritating, predictions of what to expect in the next few centuries.

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Originally posted by rici:
I hadn't seen it before and it's hilarious.

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"the Romans often tried their best not to conquer their neighbors. They would have preferred leaving independent client states under puppets. Generally, the Romans fought three wars with every country around the Mediterranean. The first war was a warning not to mess with Rome; the second was a reminder that Rome won the last fight, so mind your manners; and the third war resulted in an exasperated Rome taking direct control of a troublesome client state.

At the end of the Second Punic War, the Romans could proudly and plausibly deny imperial ambitions. Although they had beaten the other peoples of Italy over the course of several previous generations, the Romans had allowed them to retain self-government in exchange for military alliances that put Roman garrisons up and down the peninsula. (NATO?) The Romans hadn't even picked a fight with Carthage this time around. They had honorably gone to war to protect the tiny Greek city-state of Saguntum from the Carthaginian aggressors. The time when Carthage would be sacked by Roman legions without provocation, its people massacred or sold, its land plowed with salt, was still half a century in the future.

The attack on the World Trade Centre might be considered the equivalent of the Battle of Cannae 216 BCE. The last, darkest military disaster in the Roman heartland for a long time to come.

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Third Freaking Macedonian War. The Romans are getting mighty sick of having to fight the Macs every few years, so Macedonia is directly annexed by Rome. The rest of Greece is reorganized into independent (sort of) client states.

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Third Iraqi War: The whole Mideast is reorganized. New states include Kurdistan and Farsistan. Lebanon, Yemen and Kuwait disappear. All oil producing regions are administered directly by the USA.

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