Does anyone else think that Rome's collapse is a bad comparison?N
Posted by Lady_Broch_Tuarach@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 75 comments
It seems like whenever I talk with anyone in-person who is even marginally aware of collapse, they bring up Rome. I get that it’s one of the few we can draw from, but we’re talking about an empire that existed millennia ago, a very slow decline that took centuries, and a very different and much simpler lifestyle.
If over decades, a certain trade good was no longer available because of the Empire's decline, people likely had a local workaround or could just do without. If a bridge broke, they might still be able to fix it, make a ford, or find some other way around. Roads in disrepair? There’s less travel or more roundabout ways to go. All the fun stuff like bathhouses and amphitheaters are crumbling due to lack of maintenance? Well, looks like we'll have to find other fun things to do.
Yes, there was some pretty bad shit that happened: as cities stopped being maintained, the population shrank. Local governments slowly fell to pieces without support from Rome. Soldiers didn’t get paid, and defenses fell by the wayside, with expected results as far as war/invasion. But the point is, for the most part, this all took a very long time and for the local people (excluding the people actually living in Rome) living through it, it was probably hardly noticeable at the time.
And then you look at us. Our heavy dependence on technology. Our globally interconnected economy. Our reliance on just-in-time systems that leave very little margin for disruption.
If any one of those breaks downs even partially, then we're looking at a cascading effect on the other systems that could have dramatic affect; collapse is going to happen much more swiftly for us than it did for the Romans and the states of their Empire. I won’t even speculate on how long it would take for things to go to shit, but it sure as hell won’t be centuries.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here and not saying anything you don’t know. My point is, when people use Rome as a talking point about collapse, there needs to be some pushback. I feel like some people who mention it are using it as some sort of normalization of what we are currently facing and a way to downplay the realities. "It took Rome centuries to collapse, so it won’t be that bad for us that are living now."
Personally, I don’t feel that’s true at all. A better, more modern example would probably be the Soviet Union - ask yourself how much worse that would have gone if the rest of the world wasn’t available to lean on because they were dealing with their own collapse? Or take a look at COVID and how bad things got with supply chains - imagine what would happen if supply chains feel apart even further than they did, and extrapolate from there.
Yeah, this is the shit that keeps me up at night.
switchsk8r@reddit
There's basically no comparison in human memory for what we are and will go thru. The comparison that pisses me off the most is the Cold War Nuke Scare! It's not the same! One had a chance of happening vs climate death which WILL happen!
Beneficial_Delay_365@reddit
also nukes would effectively wipe out humanity in a few minutes whereas climate change is a slow painful event that most of us will live to see the effects of for a long time
PatrolMan2129@reddit
There are a lot of civilizations and their collapse that we can draw on... we just happen to draw our civilizational family tree from Rome, kinda ignoring others we descended from, and so pay the most attention to it.
But you're right, we're in a unique spot. Technologically more advanced than ever before by a ton. Most people in 1776, at the founding of the US as a unique national identity, would find Rome a relatively recognizable way of life even though over a thousand years passed. We would not.
One of the big reasons we head forward is we burned all our bridges backwards. Yes, if collapse happened, there would be a small contingent of people that could homestead, hunt for food, or other. But the other 90% would be dead by then -- mostly because there isn't enough out there to hunt and homesteading is already hard with experience.... let alone being thrown into it at middle age or later.
It's one big reason our civilization will do nothing but drive itself over the cliff. No slow downs, no stops, no pondering secondary routes. We know we can't turn back the clock, we burned the excess of the earth and destroyed the ecology. It's why hopes and total Hail Mary's such as AI is embraced so damn hard.
Anyway, hopium springs eternal, results otoh are rather independent and inevitable. Over 99.x% of species that ever lived are now extinct. We'll probably just be another heap in that pile.
TheArcticFox444@reddit
Get a copy of Columbia or Oxford history of the world...just skim...every civilization humans have built have failed. Doesn't it EVER occur to people...especially academics...that the reason for consistent failure is not economics, location, political structure, etc. but is with our species.
Homo sapiens--Man the wise-- is that we aren't wise...we're a flawed species. Why haven't academics figured it out? If they did, then they could work on the problem and maybe...just maybe...find a solution.
It's a behavioral problem. Isn't that the intellectual jurisdiction of academia? ('Cus if they don't solve it, evolution will!)
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
Don't forget about pollution and manmade hazards (nuclear waste pools, completely destroyed plant genomes, etc,) that will make survival much harder than it was for the last few thousand years of human history!
-Hastis-@reddit
In the direct "western" family tree, the Minoan Civilization's collapse was much closer to what we might experience. It collapsed in about a century, with a volcanic eruption at Santorini wiping out a good portion of it.
eyeCinfinitee@reddit
I’m just curious how the Minoan civilization, which existed in the Bronze Age and in Greece, was somehow more directly western than the Romans?
The Romans set the template for so much of European and later American everything that citing a polity from pre-antiquity that had very little lasting effect on the area around them seems sort of silly.
Besides, the Founding Fathers were heavily classically educated like basically every dude with serious learning from that era was, and many of them were heavily inspired by and took notes from the Roman Republic. It’s also helped that loads of them owned human beings. The Romans put a lot of thought into the most
efficient ways to keep human beings, and also saw themselves as virtuous exemplars of their system. There’s a lot more to say but I’m tired and would rather go to bed.
-Hastis-@reddit
I was saying it more in the sense that they are also part of the western family tree. From them came the Myceneans, then the Greeks, then the Romans. Not that they are more direct than the Romans.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
5 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea ceased to exist under less climatic change than what is coming on our trendline.
The melting of ice at the poles caused the sea floor under the Strait of Gibraltar to rise cutting off water input from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea evaporated. As in totally gone. Go search current academic data about how that water flow is presently doing.
DeepTime_Navigator@reddit
Spot on. In systems theory, the Roman Empire was 'loosely coupled'. If a bridge fell in Gaul, it didn't collapse the economy of Egypt. Our modern world is 'tightly coupled'. We optimized everything for maximum efficiency (just-in-time supply chains), which inherently stripped away all resilience. A disruption today doesn't isolate; it cascades. The Soviet Union analogy is much closer, but even they had a localized agricultural buffer that we completely lack today.
ShyElf@reddit
The Roman economy was more loosely coupled than in the modern day, but not by a huge degree. The monetary economy of Egypt was mainly based on grain exports. Sailing was very dangerous in this time period, and sailors were viewed as close to being disposable. Grain would mainly be shipped on larger vessels limited to sail power, but even these would still be mainly crewed by slaves or freedmen. The largest source of slaves was Germania, although skilled sailors would be mainly from the eastern Mediterranean. And, of course, the German campaigns were dependent on the bridges of Gaul, and both the campaigns and bridges heavily depended on the gold from Egyptian grain exports.
Yes, failures cascaded. It's more that the subsistence economy which was left was more of the original economy than it would be today, so the collapse could be said to be shallower.
DeepTime_Navigator@reddit
That is a fantastic historical nuance, and 'shallower collapse' is the perfect way to phrase it. You're completely right—the Roman trade networks were complex, but their 'floor' (local subsistence agriculture) was much closer to their 'ceiling'. Today, the baseline subsistence economy is practically non-existent for the vast majority of the population. So our drop from the hyper-optimized Technosphere back down to a localized baseline wouldn't just be a step down; it would be an abyssal freefall. Great context!
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Hi, DeepTime_Navigator. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:
Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.
You can message the mods if you feel this was in error, please include a link to the comment or post in question.
RandomBoomer@reddit
This is why the Bronze Age collapse is a better model for what we're experiencing now. It was "tightly coupled" in the exchange of materials that were needed to make bronze.
DeepTime_Navigator@reddit
Exactly! Tin was their microchips. The fascinating (and terrifying) thing about the Bronze Age collapse is that when their hyper-specialized trade network failed, civilization didn't just slow down—it suffered a hard reset back to localized, low-complexity systems. We are standing on an infinitely larger version of that same trap.
RandomBoomer@reddit
At the age of 71, I'm in the position to constantly compare what was "necessary" for a comfortable life in the 1950s versus the incredible technology that we have now, which has largely replaced non-tech systems.
Something as simple was checking a book out from the library used to be nothing more than signing a piece of paper that was stamped with a due date. Paper records were cumbersome, time-consuming, labor-intensive BUT they required nothing more than a pen/pencil and enough light to see what you were doing.
Life is much more efficient, fast-paced and intricate now, but all of it is dependent on electricity to power computers. "The system is down...." is a common phrase that brings everything to a screeching halt, whether it's buying a pack of gum from corner store or waiting on test results from a medical test.
Yes, society can function without the pervasive tech infrastructure of the past 50 years, but getting back to that point would be a rough transition. Recovery would not happen overnight.
There's also the slight complication that our population has doubled during that time, and the old way of doing things can't support a population of 8 billion people. So, yeah, rough ride ahead.
DeepTime_Navigator@reddit
Thank you for sharing that perspective—there’s no substitute for seeing that phase transition happen in real-time over 70 years. Your last point is the absolute crux of the matter. We are trapped by our own success. We didn't just digitize the world; we grew our population to 8 billion because of that hyper-efficient tech. There is no 'going back' to the 1950s manual systems because analog infrastructure simply cannot process the metabolic requirements of 8 billion people. The complexity is no longer a luxury; it's a global life support system we can never unplug.
RandomBoomer@reddit
This is why I'm somewhat less judgmental about how we got into this mess. It's not just about some selfish 1% billionaires that line their greedy pockets; our entire society bought into this lifestyle because it was convenient for all of us.
And our infrastructure molded itself to this new pattern. No one person or group orchestrated that change, it just happened as a natural response from every sector. It was an explosion of "Hey, look what we can do here and here and there and overhere" with this fabulous energy source.
And now we're trapped by the sheer weight of our innovations and their dependence on oil. We can't just turn off the tap. Everyone will suffer and most likely die when the oil stops. A non-traumatic transition off oil will take far more time than we have left. Even knowing that it will all collapse eventually, few people are likely to say "Okay, let's die now, rather than later."
DeepTime_Navigator@reddit
You absolutely nailed the underlying reality: this wasn't orchestrated, it was systemic. Infrastructure always molds to the path of least resistance and highest energy. And your last sentence is the haunting truth of our predicament. Faced with the traumatic, immediate collapse of turning off the tap, versus the slow-motion collapse of staying the course, human nature will always choose 'let's die later.' Thank you for such a grounded, realistic perspective.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
Might I recommend Retrotopia by John Michael Greer?
RandomBoomer@reddit
Not sure I get the connection between what I said and the reference you're making. As a Hispanic atheist gay woman, I have no false nostalgia for previous decades. My life today is far better than I ever imagined it could be, not least because I've married my partner of 35 years.
That being said, the future may be quite grim for women. Collapsing societies don't tend to lean humanistic.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
Oh, I didn't mean anything offensive. That story is about how it is possible to use what is left to thrive.
RandomBoomer@reddit
I hope that's the eventual outcome: a thriving society of some kind, even if it's not an industrialized one. I'll never know how this story ends, but it's nice to assume the best.
BitchfulThinking@reddit
I think the Justinian Plague during the late Byzantine is more precise. A lot of the same themes tend to keep popping up because humans keep repeating stupid mistakes.
TLDR... Gross novel disease (early Bubonic) kills a bunch of people. Science still hadn't caught up so to make sense of their newly fucked world, people turned to superstitions and cults, and went HARD on religion. Less farmers led to food shortages. People were traumatized from the sheer loss as well as having survivor guilt, and families were torn apart. People left major cities to avoid disease, and commerce suffered. It didn't end things, but it certainly turned a bit dark...
It's a lot like the current shitshow we live in thanks to Covid-19 🙃
standard_deviant_Q@reddit
What is the current shitshow caused by covid19? How many years has to pass since the covid outbreak before people stop blaming everything that's going wrong on it?
Good_Stick_5636@reddit
I feel like some people who mention it are using it as some sort of normalization of what we are currently facing and a way to downplay the realities. "It took Rome centuries to collapse, so it won’t be that bad for us that are living now."
The timescale compression of modern collapse compared to Roman times is 5-10 times to my estimate. Depending on which phenomena exactly you are looking. So yes, Roman adaptations (migration and lifestyle adjustment) are going to fail this time.
But i still do not think collapse would be as quick as in Soviet Union, which transitioned from industrial stagnation to lawlessness in 14 years (1980-1994).
So my guess is 18-36 years from now until common folks will see guys shooting rounds on the city central squares.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
It's crazy to me how the USSR seemed it would last at least another hundred or so years at the time.
Good_Stick_5636@reddit
Just look on nearby construction sites. When you will see some stopped mid-process, then it is time to stockpile. Disruption of logistics starts from materials with maximum weight/value, i.e. construction materials. In Soviet Union this indicator has become obvious in 1984, four years before acute shortage of foodstuffs.
PrrrromotionGiven1@reddit
Most people that make this comparison have no idea how long Rome's decline went on for. Rome was a declining Empire for longer than the USA has even existed. They had that whole "Crisis of the Third Century" schtick that would kill most empires, then limped on another two hundred years. And that's if we draw the line at the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Count the East, and we need to tack another thousand years onto that!
jbond23@reddit
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is a better analogy to the USA now than Rome.
The Roman Empire never ended. Top-Down layered pyramid management structures, Christianity, Alcohol, Coffee took over the world.
Coco_Cannibal@reddit
I feel the same about the bronze age collapse.
1) It was incredibly local climate change and a chain reaction of events brought it westwards.
2) the global population was estimated to be 100 million and the ecosystems would be considered pristine by today standards.
3) That means these people not only could simply move to greener pastures, that's exactly what they did.
4) Neither a healthy ecosystem nor greener pastures exist today and 8.5 billion humans do not make the situation any better.
5) The collapse was not directly caused by the local climate change, that was the trigger. The collapse was caused by the human reaction to start wars on the neighbours, so every warri a tribe pushed their victims west and those then watered against their neighbours, because they have been displaced.
6) The real collapse was the mass migration and violence, some possibly simply used the situation to solve age old grudges against their neighbours.
7) Noone can imagine mass .migration of hundreds of millions pouring into "greener pastures" who are not so green and already on the brink of collapse too.
mem2100@reddit
Yes, it will be way way faster than Rome and frankly far more dangerous. There are 9.5 nuclear armed states and collapse is going to create stressors that impact all of them.
Pakistan makes me uneasy as they: Have the poorest and most fragile economy of the group. Adding to that they are getting clobbered by climate change and drought. Plus they hate India.
Ok_Main3273@reddit
0.5 Israel
Who is n.9?
mem2100@reddit
Israel is 9.
Iran is 0.5/9.5. On the edge. Halfway ish.
Ok_Main3273@reddit
Oh, I see. I was counting 'nuclear armed states' as only the ones who tested nuclear weapons 'in the open' so to speak. Hence why I gave the state of Israel a 0.5 instead of 1, but I got your point.
YourBoiJimbo@reddit
look up the Vela incident. its pretty likely south africa and isreal did a joint test in the 80s
Ok_Main3273@reddit
Yes, that might have been a 'direct' test of a nuclear weapon built by Israel.
There was also 'indirect' testing done, way back in time. According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D. Farr in a report to the US Air Force Counterproliferation Center, much lateral proliferation happened between pre-nuclear Israel and France, stating "the French nuclear test in 1960 made two nuclear powers, not one—such was the depth of collaboration" and that "the Israelis had unrestricted access to French nuclear test explosion data," minimizing the need for early Israeli testing.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_nuclear_weapons
OctopusIntellect@reddit
Looking at it rather callously, India and Pakistan nuking each other is likely to have very little direct impact on someone living in, say, California.
mem2100@reddit
Au contraire my dear Cephalopod. A nuclear winter is a global event.
winston_obrien@reddit
Not likely according to more modern analysis.
CrimsonBolt33@reddit
It's bad cause there is no collapse happening
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
pity upvote
Current-Code@reddit
The USSR collapse is a much better comparison.
Somewhat modern society, interwined multiple economies, multiple shortages, quick collapse,...
Roman empire is very much a bad analogy yes
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
And even then average post-Soviet peasant has oodles moar survival experience than average overweight suburban dad in USA.
CrackingToastGromet@reddit
It is the Bronze Age collapse (approx. 1200-1150 BCE) that’s kept me up at night because it was very quick. As OP mentioned, Rome had years of contraction (About 250) before the final bell tolled and the city was sacked by invaders. And Rome still existed even after the fall and the empire carried on in the east.
But the Bronze Age not only had a collapse, it saw several of its top civilizations destroyed in the eastern Mediterranean within a span of 40 or 50 years.
What a horrible and terrifying time to be alive…we are talking three vibrant, wealthy and advanced civilizations that fell and abandoned within a couple of generations due to climate challenges, natural disasters, and invasion of the infamous Sea Peoples whose origins still are not wholly confirmed.
The struggles started with trade disruptions, the trade disruptions led to less money flowing through economies, the climate challenges and earthquakes led to further stretching of resources in an already strained system. Then the invasions started happening, kings are all begging one another for help with their cities burning and people are starving. But everyone is in the same shitty situation so there’s naught help to offer.
Three thriving civilizations were wiped out - Hittites, Mycenaean, and Levant. Survivors dispersed and village/tribal settlements formed in the aftermath.
The new kingdom of Egypt managed to survive, and I think the Assyrian did as well, but those left were greatly weakened.
I feel there are some parallels to draw in that collapse and the perils we are facing now. But it’s the speed and scope of the collapse that I find fascinating
whereismysideoffun@reddit
Yes, but we are in a worse position because of the ratio of farmers to not farmers in society. Multiplied by they could farm without petrol. We will collapse harder and faster because we will be without food.
AtrociousMeandering@reddit
Plus our fields are in far worse shape in terms of nutrients, the manure we produce is now horrifically toxic to put on the fields even after it's biologically sterilized, let alone directly. Lawns, which we have so much of, will take several seasons lying fallow before they can be planted with crops, if there's even enough roots to hold the topsoil down without fertilizer and watering. The climate is going to twist and turn and so many crops will be planted just to die and be lost entirely to fire or flood.
I'm really not looking forwards to living through or past the collapse of agriculture. It is not possible to be truly ready for this.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
Yeah, the Earth has been used up, and does not abide in the strength it once had.
winston_obrien@reddit
“The struggles started with trade disruptions…”. Heh
RandomBoomer@reddit
You beat me to it (and explained it much more eloquently). The Bronze Age collapse has always been my reference point for what we're going through now.
The empires of the time were dependent on the global trade of the ingredients that comprised bronze. No one area had them all. So when trade was disrupted for any reason, everyone was affected.
We're seeing that same interdependence now in the trading oil, potash and other crucial components of a modern industrial age. And we're just beginning to experience what happens when that trade is disrupted.
The incredibly complex structure of modern living is going to be strongly rocked as the Iran War drags on. It is rapidly becoming more than just a trade disruption, too. Oil extraction machinery is damaged if the oil doesn't flow continuously out of the deposit, which means it could take years to restore functionality.
We're getting a preview of what will happen when oil runs out.
Prior-Tadpole-1860@reddit
Yeah, the Bronze Age Collapse has always been mine as well
Rossdxvx@reddit
I have become far more fatalistic and nihilistic about this issue in general. The whole point about Rome, or Egypt, or Mesopotamia, or whatever, is that they did not last forever. Nothing ever does, and as you said, our globally interconnected, hyper-capitalist society won't either. Its collapse will be unique to its own situation and, in many ways, far worse because the stakes are much higher and the damage being done far exceeds any previous human civilization's impact.
I don't have any hopes of collapse being turned around or prevented, however. What should be being done is cushioning the effects of collapse as much as possible so that something can still be built upon the ruins of what once was. If you study history, then you know that collapse is the natural progression of things and inevitable. Collapse is change. Nothing stays the same forever. Everything is in constant flux and motion.
Civilization rots, decays, and dies like anything else.
How painful this transition will be, or death, is the only thing that is up to us. Not whether it is going to go or not, that is inevitable.
HappyCamperDancer@reddit
A few years ago we visited Chaco Culture/Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde.
Yeah, the Ancestoral Pueblo culture and civilization (which was AMAZING) all disappeared rather quickly, and most probably due to changes in weather patterns/resource depletion. Roughly around 1300 CE. People migrated and abandoned the area, and they think due to polycrises.
1300 wasn't that long ago.
CertainKaleidoscope8@reddit
The Soviet Union was intentionally bankrupted
investigatingheretic@reddit
Yeah. Best analogy is the Bronze Age Collapse.
jacktacowa@reddit
Our technology dependence is the uniqueness, but the corruption and self dealing of the ruling class is the universal part
CMBarbarian96@reddit
Better to look at the fall of the Republic than the Empire for modern comparisons
OctopusIntellect@reddit
I feel that the population of Rome going from well over a million to a few thousand, within one generation, wasn't "hardly noticeable" to most of the people involved.
On the other hand, people's inability to come to terms with the likelihood of the Earth's population going from eight billion to one billion in one generation, is one of our major problems.
Lady_Broch_Tuarach@reddit (OP)
Note that I said excluding Rome itself. I’m talking about the Roman Empire excluding Rome the city.
Remarkable-Okra6554@reddit
I mean we do still abide by the constitution and that was written with a feather…
NyriasNeo@reddit
Yes. It is a very bad comparison. I would say the modern collapse has no comparison in history. The soviet union example is not a true collapse. It is a transformation.
2hands_bowler@reddit
Well, earth has had a limited number of empires, so there are a limited number of examples.
Perhaps you're overthinking it OP?
mmps1@reddit
Think it’s more collapse of the Republic than collapse of the western Empire. That’s looking similar.
Trump will also try to declare himself king, doubt he’ll get assassinated tho as there’s no spine left in the US.
Safe_Chicken_6633@reddit
I don't agree that it's lack of spine. I'm incredibly disappointed in the behavior of the liberal base since, well, at least the Obama eta, but especially since the Israeli freakout on Gaza and the loss of the 2024 election. I do think the lack of spine there has been appalling.
But Trump will be 80 soon and shows signs of declining health. Also, he almost operates as a king now, there's no need to risk codifying it.
But the main reason why I personally wouldn't be interested in participating in any kind of assassination plot even if I knew it would succeed and I could never suffer any consequences for it is because I don't think that whatever would happen the day after would be worth killing for.
I mean, what do you think happens next? President Vance ascends? Joe Biden comes back into power? Harris? Obama? Hillary Clinton? AOC? Cory Booker? No thanks. All set.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
From the common folk? p'raps. From the ppl most likely to be able to wield the real power in that scenario? The Praetorians had a reputation for a reason....
Dave37@reddit
Real collapsniks talk about the late bronze age collapse.
03263@reddit
There's major differences. Rome collapsed for political/social reasons. We're collapsing because we overconsumed, caused rapid climate change, and depend on fossil fuels.
Arguably there's some amount of political fixes to these things, but implementing them would probably cause the collapse too, trying to actually address climate change and get off oil in a timely fashion... not gonna happen.
We built a global economy, we get a global collapse.
hiddendrugs@reddit
“Collapse” by Jared Diamond is a pretty fair anthology of past collapses and how our situation stands, as far as I remember
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
For the vast majority of history, the average joe knew all the skills to survive and support a family. We have essentially dismantled even the means to do that today-- at least in the decademnt West.
JoyluckVerseMaster@reddit
Yes.
MatchDry6277@reddit
If such an argument triggers you, and you are not able to quickly dismantle their argument, maybe you shouldn't have strong opinions on things.
FYI just ask them what led to the fall of the Rome and how is that remotely comparable to the issues we are facing today. Issues so numerous and impactful someone with a hard stance on collapse should be aware of and easily be able to describe them to their peers.
DisillusionedBook@reddit
If we were all ONLY inside the USA and not aware of the wider world, Roman empire might be ok as a comparison... but we are not. This is a worldwide, an ALL empire omnishambles encompasing eco systems, financial systems, societal cohesion, techno-existential calamity.
So yeah there's that. Lol
Stratos_Hellsing@reddit
well, Rome didn't have nuclear weapons.
HomoExtinctisus@reddit
I agree it's a bad comparison. Worse than bad IMO.
Znake_@reddit
The reason is that the great u.s. experiment is compared so often to that of the roman empire is because we are in some capacity rome 2.0. The founding of this country was based on the age of enlightenment, and a lot of that thought is heavily inspired by, or even directly correlated with the roman progress of old. I understand there may be other examples that may compare better to a collapse happening currently, but those don't have the psuedo-cultural roots like the ancient roman empire has to the american empire. Just look at every capital building here, and historic site here, and you will see the greeco-roman influence even on the aesthetics of this country, not only it's founding.