A Seemingly Inevitable History Re-run - The Glue Holding America Together

Scipio

Babble and Rome are not the best of fates.
But as with us, Rome's biggest thieves and pirates were

the government itself. m/r

The Glue Holding America Together | National Review Online

JUNE 27, 2013  By Victor Davis Hanson
As it fragments into various camps, the country is being held together by a common popular culture. 

By a.d. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empireeven knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.

Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together?

A young Cicero

A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian, and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain was available to millions throughout the Mediterranean world.

As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves were cleared from the roads, and merchants were allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant Rome.

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