By: Mike Lynch

Mike Lynch
Sun, 12 Jun 2022 12:03:42 +0000

I can’t help being a little cliche here and state that Gibbon might have indeed been right in his assertion that the Roman Empire fell precisely because of the lack of civic virtue - in essence, that’s its citizens were no longer interested in the concern for wider society and only in their own needs in the end. A situation that became particularly virulent during the Pax Romana after all outside aggressors had been subdued and assimilated. When a culture no longer has to defend its beliefs and virtues from an existential threat then it starts to rot from within.