When in Rome, don’t do as the Romans did…

But the important thing to consider is the prodigiousadj.1/2 vitality of the Roman idea. Rome was so mighty that it could not fall. It had to vanish in a cloud, like so many of the mythical heroes of antiquity, and to receive its apotheosisn.1 among the stars before men became fully aware that it had vanished from the earth!

H.P. Lovecraft
In a letter to Mr. Harris, February 25 to March 1 1929

Although “…Lovecraft later believed that Hellenism and astronomy were the two central influences of his early years”, he was clearly awed by the Romans as well. The Roman Empire as a whole survived as an autocracy for five hundred years, however, the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire lasted almost another thousand years until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks.

Despite Edward Gibbon and his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire it has been argued that the Empire did not fall at all but underwent a very complex transformation. In some ways, as Lovecraft comments, it vanished, but in others, it remained.

For those who maintain that it fell and who attempt to draw parallels between its decline and collapse with other empires, for example, the British and even the USA (although it is not clear what is actually meant by an ‘American Empire’), a variety of reasons are postulated including, Christianity, the decline in morals and values, public health problems, political corruption, inflation, unemployment, urban decay, inferior technology and military spending. To this have been added the use of lead, the dole and barbarians, and, the sheer size of the empire at its height. It has even been suggested that Rome never fell as it still exists and it has been very well argued that our common view of Roman history is far from the case.

If there is one hero of antiquity who personifies the Roman Empire and who received his apotheosis amongst the stars it is Hercules (Greek Herakles) and the constellation named after him. Indeed, as Wikipedia notes, Hercules was the hero “…whom the later Roman Emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximinus, often identified themselves.”