I am thinking a lot about that recently, the Roman people (albeit pagan) were a moral people and with a strong family orientation and up until the time of Augustus they were a Republic that looked to better their society. But then conquest and unrivaled wealth overwhelmed everything and the rise of Imperial rule by a series of good, bad and indifferent rulers helped lead them into ruin. I can't help but make comparisons to their latter days to our recent history. Like they we have nearly unrivaled wealth and superior military strength. We are extended all over the globe, some of that is sensible, but a lot of that is unnecessary or outdated. We have good and bad rulers and our moral underpinnings and public institutions and our Judeo-Christian institutions and heritage are under relentless attack from within. We are squandering wealth on boondoggles on a scale that would shock even Nero. We are debasing our coin of the realm with gusto. Our politics is polarized and more and more laws are not helping things, they are speeding us down the path of tyranny and oppression. If this trend continues we cannot and will not escape their fate, and in terms of scale our collapse will make theirs look tame and orderly. No Emperor can save us, even a beneficent tyrant is still a tyrant, and the underlying rot will still win in the end.