posted on Mar, 2 2011 @ 03:01 PM
When I was younger I read Edward Gibbon's classic
History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire and Suetonius's
The Twelve
Ceasars, where all the famous old lurid stories of the debauched and insane Roman emperors are laid out page after page. There we can read tales
of madness such as Caligula naming his horse a consul, sleeping with his sisters, and killing for amusement. I won't even mention the grotesqueries of
emperors like Elagabalus or Tiberius.
Anyway, the point being, upon reading this stuff, I thought:
How could this be possible? How could such a mighty society reach a point where
millions of sophisticated, wealthy, educated people accepted rule by a man who openly debauches his sisters and wants to give his freaking horse a
cabinet-level position? And it isn't just this one one emperor -- for several hundred years, Roman lunacy in high places was frequent enough to almost
be the norm. Why didn't anyone notice? How could it have gone on?
These are EXACTLY THE SAME QUESTIONS people will ask about our own time in the centuries to come.
edit on 3/2/11 by silent thunder because: (no reason given)