Ancient Rome and Modern America

In my Ancient Roman History class I have been rather surprised how similar ancient Rome was to the United States. Both countries have had revolutions where they kicked out their kings, both originally had republics which turned into bureaucracies, and both have had large national deficits. Let us imagine for a while what a conversation that may have taken place in ancient Rome between two Roman men who we'll call Flavius and Quintus in ..Oh .. lets say 188B.C. ,George Burns would have still been alive then and Dick Clark would have only been a little kid. The conversation would most likely have started out some what like this, except in Latin instead of English.

"Hey Flavious, how's it going?"
"Not too bad Quintus, the weather has been a little bit disturbing though."
" Yeah, I know what you mean, we needed the moisture but this is a little bit too much."
(This was probably how they started their discussion.)
"Well Quintus, I'm still gratefull for it."
"Yes, I am too but it would sure be nice if it come slowly, I mean my weekend plans are ruined."
" Well, how's your son doing?"
"Not to bad Flavius, he seems to like college life and his grades are pretty good, or so he tells me."
" Now where's he going again?"
" He's attending Auger Community College."
" Is he going to be a priest then, or what's he gonna do with that?"
" He doesn't know yet but he went there because he likes to play with the sacred chickens. How about your son, Flavious, where's he going?"
" Yeah, Junior decided to go to U.T. He thought about Athens but the tuition was too high and they say Tarentum is just as good anyways, I mean, they're all Greek."
"What are his plans then?"
" Oh, he's majoring in business so he can take over the family business, that is if there will be any business left by the time he graduated."
" Things are that bad then, huh?"
" Yah, they say its cheaper to import things than it is to by our products. You can't hardly find products that say made in Italy, Its all made in Africa, or Greece, or Spain."
" I know what you mean why I heard Paul Harvey on the radio yesterday.."
( All right, maybe the radio is a little much. Paul probably had to announce the news and "Rest of the Story" in the public square where it was further spread by word of mouth. I'll try again.)
" I know what you mean, someone told me that they heard Paul Harvey say that our nation is so far in debt that if you piled all the money up that is required to pay off the national debt that I would completely cover the senate building."
"Yes, and all the government programs are destroying the family farmers and replacing them with those big commercial outfits, those latifundia."
" Times are getting bad Quintus. All kids want do anymore is stare at game boards and a watch this new reality stuff they've got over at the stadium."
"I know exactly what you mean Flavious, look at how people just out right disobey the sumptuary laws and at the influx of cold-footers we have crossing aover the Alps illegally into Italy, its just terible but the government wont do anything about it."
" Exactly, and in times like these we need to be particularly carefull about who we let in, I mean just today I heard that suicide burner over in Asia Minor started four people on fire by hugging them before he finally burned to death."
" Well Flavious, all I know is we'd just better win this war on terror or we'll be in trouble."
" Yes Quintus, and they say those Syrians are developing anthrax from a stock pile of dead animals, you know what that would do to Rome?"
" It would decimate us."
"Well you bet it would, but not everyone wants to go to war because we 'don't have a coalition', what do they mean we don't have a coalition, We've got the Aechean league and Rhodes with us not to mention Macedonia."
Well now they've got the Aetolians who we armed, I never liked those guys and now they're fighting against us with our own weapons."
"Well I better go. My wife is making pizza tonight and I don't want to miss it."
" Yeah, I better go too. See you later Quintus."

As you can see life back then greatly resembled ours and though today we have a few more modern conveniances and things move faster the old adage still aplies, "The more things change the more they stay the same."