The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and How It Mirrors the United Essay

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and How It Mirrors the United States - Essay Example Importantly, the rise of both Roman and American empires follow almost same trajectory of consolidation of ‘pockets of power’ to large scale annexation through combined constitutional, economic and military assaults. The American quagmire in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the growing fallacies of the American empire gives a sense that its doom too would follow the Roman course. The purpose of the paper is to give a glimpse at the rise and fall of Roman empire and see the parallels with the case of the America empire, by examining some of the constitutive features of both the political formations in a brief and concise manner. The Making and the Unmaking of the Empires From the ancient period to the present time, world has seen the rise and fall of many empires. Roman, Greek, ancient Egypt, Persian, British, and American empires are a few to name. The timeline of these empires varies from each other. The chances of survival of an empire in ancient times were more than the mode rn ones. However, a country has more chances to survive than an empire. Decline or fall of an empire is inevitable and only depended upon on time whereas a country can survive for longer period. When a country goes for territorial expansion and succeeds in it, the country then transforms itself into an empire. After acquiring a status of an empire, the nation precipitates the unavoidable decline and fall of the empire. This is the basic but generalized story both the Roman empire and the American empire tell to us. The fall of empire reflects the decaying of the society. After the disintegration of an empire, the society experiences too much hardships and the life of the people become miserable. Experiences of fall of the Roman, ancient Egyptian empire show that the lives of the citizens later were never as good as it was during empires’ height. Now itself, we can sense that America citizens’ hardships are growing day after day and it certainly sheds light into the wea kening core of the American empire. Roman Empire lasted around one thousand years whereas American empire started stumbling only after two hundred and twenty years. There are certain parallels between fall of Roman Empire and the contemporary scenario in the United States. Romans started up with a republic, later transformed it into an Empire. The twentieth century saw America metamorphosing from a nation into an empire. It is very interesting to see that how these two most sophisticated republics of their times ended up as being vicious empires! Importantly, cold war with the former Soviet Union and the subsequent triumph of an American new global order have many parallels between the Romans’ eternal tension with the Carthage. Same as in the case of American empire, the Roman empire was also fully constituted only with the complete disintegration of Carthage. America too became an empire with truly global capabilities only after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991. It is im portant to remember that â€Å"the Roman Republic was an unabashed plutocracy; the citizen-body was carefully graded according to stringent property qualifications. In turn, this classification regulated voting rights: all adult male citizens were enfranchised, but a system of electoral colleges guaranteed that the rich, if united, would always be able to out-vote the poor. In addition, the heavy costs of electioneering and office-holding ensured that all who were most prominent in government were