Quote of the morning from David Bowden :
Culturally, the Romans were the great plagiarists, freely stealing from the Greeks and plundering the best of their conquered lands. It was materially – in building those roads and viaducts – that they really left their stamp on the modern world. While the British Empire sought its legitimacy in those cultured Greeks and their smooth marbles, the consumerist US has always been much more fascinated with the Romans, with their gains of blood, orgies and land. The willingness to emulate the Romans says a lot about America’s self-image: both asserting its significance (after the fall of Rome came barbarism) while letting its opponents have their small victory (the Yanks have no culture, sniff the Europeans) and getting on with ruling the world. The West has always revelled in the decadence of the ancient world. But as Angus Kennedy has argued, what is decadent about Western civilisation today is not its sexual licentiousness or profanity, but the fact that it consumes without creativity or production. That America is looking to invoke the excess of the Romans is not because it shocks, but rather that it comforts.
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