There is an ancient (typically self-deprecating) Jewish joke about a pupil who insists on writing all his essay assignments on Jews or Judaism. His exasperated teacher finally assigns him the writing of an essay about pachyderms ("olifantachtigen").
The next morning, his pupil hands in an essay entitled "The elephant and the Jewish problem".
I could not help being reminded of this as I watched a documentary on the National Geographic channel about the Roman Empire. The producers could not resist drawing all sorts of analogies between the Roman Empire and American "imperialism". They even presented as "the Roman 9/11" a massacre of expatriate Roman citizens in 88 BCE by followers of the Greek king Mithridates VI (Encyclopedia Britannica entry), in which no less than 80,000 are said to have been killed. The makers of the "documentary" actually claimed that the fierce Roman reaction to such attacks led to the collapse of the Roman empire (which happened some five centuries later, of course). All this over footage of antiglobalists, the burning of the US flag, attacks on McDonalds branches,...
One can argue about the true causes of the collapse of the Roman empire until one sees blue in the face, but this neo-"left"ist explanation appeared particularly far-fetched. In fact, the historical events lend themselves no less plausibly to the very opposite interpretation.
For one, brutal (not just forceful) retaliation was the norm of the Roman empire since the days of the res publica. After all, this was the country that not only fought the Punic wars under the banner "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage is to be blotted out, hence "Carthaginian peace") but carried it through to its gruesome end -- a century before the "Roman 9/11". (Those were also the days when instead of the Geneva convention, one had vae victis -- "woe unto the vanquished" -- as a basic principle of warfare.) It can in fact be argued that the Roman empire started crumbling when it ceased to be able and willing to retaliate with an iron fist, although there's obviously a lot more to it than that.
Or, for that matter, when the Romans adopted the religion of the enemy as their state religion?
Or, more relevantly perhaps, when the limes (Eastern border of the Roman empire) ceased to be the limes and creeping immigration of Germanic tribes hollowed out the Roman empire from within?
A commentator with an axe to grind can, in fact, use the history of the Roman empire to argue for restrictions on immigration; for democracy with checks and balances; against "bread and circuses" statism; against unconditional religious toleration; against debauchery; against hereditary absolute monarchy; against conquering populations which one is unable and unwilling to assimilate; against the use of lead compounds as pigments and sweeteners;... I would agree with some of these positions and disagree with others, but all of the above have at least a tenuous connection to the actual history of the Roman empire. Which is more than can be said of the Guardianistas who made this agitprop "documentary".
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