Below is a translation of a lecture given by György Spiró in 2006. Here is the original hungarian transcript and videos here and here. It explores how Rome declined and fell resulting from the spread of ideas from its periphery to the center. Superpower leaders often fail to grasp Seneca’s warning: “whom you conquer today will enslave you tomorrow,” as the nature of this “enslavement” are unpredictable and difficult to recognize in the moment. Beyond ancient Rome and its modern parallels, these dynamics are also at play in communities, corporations, and both domestic and international politics. The lessons of the past remain strikingly relevant today.

VIII. Semester, Lecture 5 - March 20, 2006

GYÖRGY SPIRÓ

HOW DO THE PROVINCES CONQUER? - ON THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE NOVEL “CAPTIVITY”

The background of “Captivity” is set in the 1st century BC Roman Empire. The lecture is not about the novel itself but about some lessons from the research that served as the basis for the novel. The foreign policy of the Roman Empire was based on the principle that Rome did not interfere in the religious, economic, and legal life of the provinces. In the capital, gods of every nation conquered by force or persuaded with money were given statues, according to a multicultural, uniquely tolerant, and wise approach that no superpower has been able to demonstrate since. Despite this, the intolerant mentality of the peripheries penetrated the center and shattered imperial Rome both culturally and politically. What could be the reason for this? Is it possible to draw parallels between developments two thousand years ago and current trends?

I. PRAISE OF THE EMPIRE

I am not a historian but a writer, specializing in the literature of Eastern Europe, which interests no one these days. Yet, I spent more than a decade writing a novel about the events of the 1st century in the Roman Empire. I conducted no original research; everything I learned came from historians and religious scholars, to whom I am grateful. Now, standing here in their place, I will try to answer a very modern question. I will not talk about the novel, which you can read. Why and how do the peoples conquered by superpowers usually win, and what are the consequences? My terminology follows today’s political language because I am interested in history from the perspective of our current problems, not for its own sake. However, this does not imply retrospection, so I do not intend to update the history of this empire, only to draw lessons for ourselves.

First, I will discuss how Rome achieved its dominance in the Mediterranean basin and what its foreign policy was like, then how this foreign policy became domestic policy as the provinces infiltrated the center and what this entailed, and finally, I intend to draw certain lessons.

Rome became the sole power in the Mediterranean after defeating and destroying Carthage. When Publius Cornelius Scipio won at Zama in 202 BC, he clearly saw that supremacy would fundamentally change the Republican Rome and was especially afraid that Roman virtues would crumble. He was right; a century and a half later, Julius Caesar established personal autocracy, which we call the empire after his name, crushing all institutions of the republic and democracy. The war against Carthage was a commercial war, like all normal wars where weapons have the final say. Rome aimed to reap the greatest benefits from global trade, and although it sometimes subjugated peoples with fire and sword, it often settled for convincing them of the benefits of Roman rule through cordial negotiations. After defeating his former ally, Antony, who turned against Rome with Egypt, Augustus applied the principles of Pax Romana.

Pax Romana primarily means not “divide and rule” but that the conquering superpower does not interfere in the religious life and jurisprudence of the conquered peoples. Wherever possible, Rome left the local ruling elite in place, did not aim to change the social structure, and did not impose heavy taxes on the provinces, only as much as necessary - a maximum of 2.5% or even less - to cover the costs of Roman administration and the Roman legions stationed in the region. No more severe oppression was possible. Rome wanted to profit from global trade, not local taxes. Rome was often content if allies remained independent kingdoms. The empire’s borders were clearly defined, so border wars were primarily fought in the North against Germanic tribes, but in the East, in the 30s of the 1st century AD, Rome managed to negotiate with the Persians, or the Parthian Empire, and the Euphrates served as a border river for centuries. In the Northeast, Rome extended its border to the Danube in the early 1st century, which also lasted for centuries. North Africa needed Egypt for Rome, but the territory further south did not. Spain and Gaul became entirely Roman provinces, then the British Isles. In these areas, some tribes or legions sometimes rebelled, but they were suppressed, and trade could continue peacefully.

Roman legions in the provinces were recruited from local inhabitants, with Latins at most being some senior officers. Roman governors, who only had judicial powers if a case directly affected the Empire’s interests, were placed at the head of the first-rank provinces, otherwise, local authorities operated. Perhaps the best illustration of the principle of peace establishment was the suppression of piracy. The pirates of Asia Minor severely threatened maritime trade, and Rome waged unsuccessful campaigns against them until they realized it was simpler to buy them off and integrate them into the Roman commercial fleet. From then on, maritime trade was unthreatened for centuries.

Peace fundamentally reigned in the Roman Empire, which included almost the entire known Europe, the voluntarily subdued Greek island world, as well as Asia Minor and North Africa. This was the first great era of world trade and even tourism, into which the world outside the empire, India and China, were connected through intermediary trade on the Silk Road. Gunpowder was not yet imported to Europe, but everything else was. Local wars were disputes between peoples allied with Rome or civil wars within some peoples, where Rome provided disinterested friendly assistance if called upon, established order, and withdrew. The empire’s foreign policy was unprecedentedly rational, and we have not seen anything like it since.

The expansion of Roman rule was facilitated by the successful Hellenization of the empire’s eastern parts. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hellenism spread to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, Greek technology built on and absorbed local traditions, and the Greek language became either the second language or the mother tongue of the local peoples. In many Greek-founded cities in Italy, Greek was primarily spoken, and this was true for Rome itself until the second half of the 1st century. It is characteristic that King Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great, who grew up in Rome and often lived there, was allowed by Emperor Claudius to deliver his thanksgiving speech in the Senate in Greek, meaning he did not need to learn Latin. The Gospels do not mention the use of an interpreter at the meeting between Pilate and Jesus, not because Pilate had learned Aramaic, but because Jesus obviously knew Greek. Jews in Rome and Egypt knew only Greek, and even in the villages of Palestine, Greek could be spoken, as private legal contracts - inheritance and marriage agreements - were made in Greek and Aramaic. The command language of Roman legions in the eastern parts of the empire was Greek for centuries. Greek was the common language of the empire, with wandering philosophers speaking and writing in Greek everywhere, and a significant part of Latin historians writing in Greek in the 2nd century, making it the lingua franca of the time, just as Latin in the Middle Ages and English today. Commerce - and science - benefited from the common language.

International banking is essential for trade over great distances. The Roman Empire had everything that exists today, except for credit cards. Although paper money was not printed, bills of exchange, the predecessor of paper money, were invented so that large amounts of metal money did not have to be transported on long journeys. Interest was known. Both Roman and Jewish laws strictly prohibited usury. What is legally prohibited is usually widely practiced. Currency exchange fees were charged. An official exchange rate existed for the myriad currencies in use. There was no inflation yet, although the silver content of metal coins was gradually reduced. Insurance existed, even more so insurance fraud. Primarily ships and transported goods were insured; fire insurance was abolished because owners themselves were setting fire to their rental houses. There was no stock exchange, but the Roman Forum practically functioned as one, where buying and selling were done by announcement, and there was no point in cheating because the cheaters were excluded by the others. State lending was introduced by Tiberius at the end of his reign, his private treasury functioning as a state loan bank. They were familiar with mortgages. Senators and knights knew perfectly well that more money could only be obtained from money, not from production, and they gladly converted land ownership into commercial capital or invested in shipping. The nature of capital was not theoretically described, but it was applied in practice.

In a slave-owning society, feudalism and capitalism appear simultaneously, and if we add that Roman proletarians received free supplies from Augustus onwards through a specific voucher system, the theoretical basis of socialism is also present. In larger cities, such as Jerusalem, unemployment among the masses flowing from the countryside into the cities was solved with meaningless public works. It is a misconception that the listed social formations follow each other, as we were taught.

However, I came to bury the great power, not to praise it. If this empire was so magnificently organized, what caused the unmanageable conflicts and the horrific bloodshed that made this world peace so terrible that something radically different had to be invented?

II. THE PROVINCES TAKE OVER ROME

As the Mediterranean Sea became an inland sea for Italy, foreign trade became domestic trade, and foreign policy gradually turned into domestic policy. Cicero already feared the influx of foreigners into Rome, and a hundred years later, Seneca stated, “Whom we conquer today will enslave us tomorrow.” He was primarily thinking of the Jews, but he could also have feared the other conquered peoples. By the 1st century AD, Rome had become a metropolis of about a million people, home to many traders and craftsmen from abroad. If business comes first, their expulsion cannot even be considered; they must be provided with Italian or Roman

citizenship. The Roman authorities made it difficult to obtain citizenship, just as it is not easy to get a green card in the United States today, but it was inevitable that more and more people from the provinces would settle in Rome.

Paradoxically, the enemy defeated in wars contributed even more to changing the demographic ratios of Rome; working-age men were brought to Rome as slaves and, after a few generations, became free Roman citizens with voting rights. The freed slave could only become a full citizen through his grandchildren, but this change occurred within forty to fifty years. Following a Jewish civil war, Pompey helpfully occupied Jerusalem in 63 BC, sending thousands of Jewish prisoners to Rome, and they formed the foundation of the Jewish settlement on the right bank of the Tiber. By the time of Jesus’ birth, most of them were free Roman citizens, and in the first half of the 1st century, there were about forty thousand of them, which was not a large proportion of the total population, but their role would become increasingly important.

With the cessation of major wars, the supply of slaves dried up, and their lives generally became bearable. A slave had value; a freedman did not. If a slave was injured, his owner was entitled to compensation; a freedman was not compensated for similar injuries. After their emancipation, they remained clients of their former masters, and a dizzying career awaited them. The confidants of the emperors were mostly freed slaves, who sometimes had more power than the entire Senate. These trusted individuals often favored mafiosos from their native peoples. The senatorial and equestrian orders based on origin and wealth census had to reconcile themselves to the fact that low-born newcomers were snatching good deals from them.

Rome’s public squares and temples were enriched with the statues of gods of new peoples, either defeated or turned into allies, in addition to the usual Roman and Greek gods. More and more prayer houses and temples were built for the newcomers from the provinces. Rome became a multi-religious imperial capital, and following Augustus, this trend was supported by every emperor, with minor, quickly revoked prohibitions. Foreign customs and rituals settled on Latin. There was no other way if Rome wanted to remain the capital of the world empire. All religious holidays of every people became official Roman holidays, with a third of the year’s days being holidays when other peoples did not work either. There was no linguistic difference, but there was a religious one. Rome was religiously unparalleledly tolerant. The emperor was automatically inaugurated as the chief priest, Pontifex Maximus, the haruspices continued to operate, the cult of the Vestal Virgins was still maintained, new statues were given to Roman and Greek gods, but temples of new religions competing openly or in reality with the old Roman religion were built unobstructedly.

The authorities did not understand why the Jews did not want to erect a statue of Jehovah in public squares or the Pantheon, although it was repeatedly offered to them. It is incomprehensible that a god should not have a human or animal form. This is only a theoretical problem; the real trouble is that the Jews observe the Sabbath under all circumstances, making them unsuitable for military service. From the perspective of the ruling polytheism, the Jews are atheists, i.e., they do not believe in the gods. The Latin term for the Jews’ belief in their one god above all is superstition, which later in the Neo-Latin languages becomes the equivalent of superstition. But Rome tolerates this easily, and the Jews, once they have become Italian or Roman citizens, do not suffer any disadvantage, the unemployed receive their free food, they are also ensured that they can receive it on Monday because of their Sabbath, and that they get clean - kosher - meat.

Followers of various Egyptian religions are also equal. Rome is not prejudiced against the individual, and Caligula does not have to fear protests from the Latins when he knights the respectable, wealthy families of the provinces. The same applies to industry; Greek entrepreneurs often win state construction tenders against Latins. Many popular gladiators, actors, and writers are immigrants or their descendants, where individual performance counts, not origin or religious affiliation.

In today’s terms: the Third World gradually infiltrates the First World’s center and assimilates it to itself.

But which is the Second World? It seemingly does not exist since the defeat of Carthage, but in reality, it does, and that is Egypt, Rome’s granary, with the real center of world trade, Alexandria, at its helm. The danger of the Roman Empire splitting did not disappear with Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra. Augustus did not ban senatorial rank individuals from setting foot in Egypt for no reason; even the Roman governor could only be an equestrian. Tiberius did not kill his rival, Germanicus, for no reason following his visit to Alexandria. Emperor Caligula, quarreling with the Senate, plays on moving to Alexandria and attacking his own empire from there. He is killed in time, but the next ruling family, the Flavians’ first member, Vespasian, blackmails Rome with the cessation of grain shipments from Alexandria, and partly for this reason, he is elected emperor. Both because of its agricultural products and its role in intermediary trade, Alexandria is the Second World.

The rest of the provinces belong to the Third World. There are more important and less interesting parts; for example, the former Jewish kingdom is commercially insignificant, although it has its own Jewish merchant fleet, and certain products, such as wood and balsam, are transported to Rome. Judea is so uninteresting that, while under Roman governors, no legion is stationed there, only three infantry cohorts and one cavalry ala. If there is trouble, a legion is sent from Syria. The Judean governor is also subordinate to the Syrian governor.

If the Jews are commercially and power-wise insignificant and their religion, although different, is not disturbing, why talk about them at all? Because there are many of them. Four and a half million Jews live in various state formations in the Mediterranean basin - some in the Parthian Empire - and that is as many as the total number of Latins. The Greeks are also numerous, but they have long been part of the Roman religious, literary, and philosophical imagination; their integration has already taken place, and Hellenism has encompassed a significant part of the Italian peninsula. The Jews speak Greek or Aramaic, languages used by non-Jews as well, Hellenism has influenced Jewish social organization, but something remained unchanged even after the former empire of Herod the Great was divided into four parts and came under Roman sovereignty. The Jews live in a theocracy. The Jews do not acknowledge that a person - in this case, the Roman emperor - should be worshipped as a god, either during his lifetime or after his death. Relatively few Jews live in Rome, the capital of the empire, but they also send their sacrifices to the Jerusalem Temple - redeemed in money - just like the Jews living in Egypt, Syria, Parthia, and Greek territories, which Rome permits and even supports, but the concept of the emperorship is opposed by the Jewish religion.

This conflict caused surprisingly little trouble during the first hundred years of Roman rule, to the credit of Roman tolerance. Tiberius expels the Jews from Rome in AD 16, taking six thousand young Jews to the island of Sardinia allegedly for military service, most of whom die, families are deported, but then they are let back in. We do not know the reason for the measure. Next, in 42, Claudius bans the assembly of Roman Jews, which also hinders the practice of their religion, the reason for which we also do not know, but then the decree is revoked. Also, Claudius expels the followers of a certain agitator Jew, Chrestus, from Rome in 49 - many suspect the Christians -, then silence again until the great fire, when Nero blames the fire’s cause on the Jews - and the Christians - (which others blame on him, although the emperor was in the countryside when the fire broke out), and many Jews are slaughtered by the Roman mob. By this time, we are approaching the end of the peaceful century because two years later, the four-year Jewish War breaks out, in which two million Jews are killed, the armies of the later emperor Titus - including Jewish units - capture Jerusalem, plunged into civil war, and destroy the Temple. Many thousands of prisoners are transported to Rome, and they build the Colosseum, financed by the treasures of the destroyed Second Temple. With this, the number of Jews in Rome increases again. Although Vespasian introduces extremely harsh measures against them, the Jewish tax must now be paid to the Temple of Jupiter, and even children and the elderly are obliged to pay, but they are not expelled from Rome and Italy.

The two million dead is a very large number, considering the population data of the time, it is almost half the number of Jews alive at the time. Back then, everyone had to be killed personally, by hand, as the technology of mass murder was undeveloped. In terms of proportion, such a massacre had to wait until the 20th century. But this war was not a religious war: it had political and economic causes. The economic reason is what caused the massacre in Alexandria in 38: if Jewish commerce threatens Greek commerce in a Greek city, if the number of Jewish residents reaches 30-40%, hostility inevitably breaks out. There are many such cities in the eastern basin of the sea. The political reason is that this Greek-Jewish conflict can be exploited to seize imperial power. Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and the other emperors did not let their generals into significant battles for a reason: they feared their triumphs, their popularity. The Roman peace had this reason too. The military emperors - Otho, Vitellius - could become emperors after a great victory. Vespasian recognized that he could become a great general by slaughtering Jews. He also took advantage of the blackmail potential of blocking Alexandrian grain shipments. This massacre was caused by economic competition and Roman power struggles, and religious considerations did not play a role.

It may be true, as Josephus Flavius, the Jewish high priest, ally and historian of the Romans, and participant in the war, says: there was a debate between the commander-in-chief Titus and the quartermaster, the Jew Tiberius Julius Alexander, about whether to destroy the Temple. Titus argued for destruction, believing that with it, the independence of Judaism would end, and Christianity would also disappear, as the two were identical. Tiberius Julius Alexander, considering the interests of Rome rather than those of the Jews, warned against destroying the Temple: if the Jews no longer had a fixed religious center, they would become spiritually stronger scattered around the world. The Temple was destroyed.

The significance of this is that Christianity, which started as a twenty-member Jewish sect, spread explosively with the Jewish diaspora, and Emperor Constantine the Great was forced to make it the state religion in the early 4th century. By then, about three million Christian believers lived in the empire, despite all persecution. An astounding spiritual revolution of immense size and speed. The Jewish province subjugated the entire Roman tradition, nullified Greek and Roman high culture, and created a completely different, unexpected paradigm. This required the turnaround of Paul the Apostle, who extracted the faith in Jesus from Judaism, which was accompanied by a radical confrontation with the Jewish religion.

III. GLOBAL RESPONSE TO THE FIRST GLOBALIZATION: CHRISTIANITY

From the perspective of the rationalistic, anthropomorphic Greek and Roman worldview, which perceives the world as a dramatic battle of gods, the Christian faith is irrational, its followers are blind, primitive people who believe in the happiness of the afterlife and resurrection and therefore resist all torture and deprivation. They were seen as religious fundamentalist terrorists, hated and feared, this type of behavior appeared for the first time in history. Cicero and Seneca could not have envisioned anything similar in their nightmares. It was impossible to foresee that a religion that would sweep across all of Europe in a historically short time would develop in the bosom of the Jews, who were considered ridiculous for their religious eccentricity, and especially no one imagined that this would engulf the most enlightened, most rationally governed superpower of history up to that point, presumably we, our descendants, will still be amazed.

Rodney Stark, who made a sociological turn in the study of religion in the 1980s and 90s, explains the rapid spread of Christianity as follows.

1. Jews (and Christians), as well as Germans, did not expose children, while Greeks and Latins did. The Germans are outside the empire, they will only play a role in the disintegration of the empire later. Inside the empire, the Jews did not want to get rid of their girls in this way, they raised them, so they did not experience a shortage of women, and population growth remained normal, unlike the non-Jews who got rid of girl infants, among whom demography showed an increasing deficit.

2. During epidemics, Greeks and Latins gave medicine to the sick, but the healthy fled; the medicines did not work, and since there was no one to care for the recovering, they also died. Jews - and Christians - did not give medicine but cared for the sick, so those who could recover did recover. After every epidemic, the proportion of Jews - and Christians - increased dramatically.

3. The religions of the Roman Empire should be imagined as a market where many religious offers compete. The one that is most accessible and offers the most wins. Compared to the complicated Greek and the complicated, rule-laden Jewish religion, Christianity demands nothing but that the individual believe in the divinity, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. Anyone can enter the Christian community regardless of origin and social status, even women. The early Christian congregations equalized women, which in itself was a huge revolution. In the congregation, everyone has a priestly function (this is what Jesus means by turning water into wine).

Stark began with the study of the Bahá’í faith, continued with the examination of modern American sects, and thus reached Christianity. According to his findings - which he also extends retrospectively to Christianity - an individual does not believe in a religious dogma when joining a sect but flees from loneliness into the protective community. Many years later, the individual repaints the reasons for joining, and only then does faith come to the forefront. If this is true, then there were infinitely many people in the Roman Empire who, isolated, torn from family bonds, could not endure life and chose the community that could accept sinners and sinless, Greeks, Latins, and Jews, women and men alike without setting difficult conditions (such as circumcision, which deterred adult men).

Other researchers believe that Christianity did not become popular among the poorest or the conservative rural masses but among the more mobile urban dwellers because in mixed Greek and Jewish cities, both Greek and Jewish notables had something to fear, and in their anxiety, they approached each other through a new religion. The Alexandria pogrom caused fear in every major port and trading city, similar massacres occurred in many places, it is no coincidence that the apostles preached in these cities before going to the center (like Paul, who was taken, and Peter, who went himself), because they recognized that they had to seize the empire in its capital.

Thus, Roman Jews played a decisive role in spreading Christianity, although this topic has so far escaped the attention of most researchers. It is taboo for both Jews and Christians that the overwhelming majority of early Christians were Jews for generations for a long time. This may be why the Jewish catacombs, after their excavation, were partially backfilled in the 1930s and residential complexes were built on them, so they are not researchable, or they are still closed today. Experts say the only significant difference between Jewish and Christian catacombs is that the corridors in the Christian catacombs are narrower.

One of the reasons for the terrible bloodshed during the long period of world peace might also be that the Jews, with their sense of chosenness, could not compromise with the neighboring peoples and always sought the protection of the current superpower, whether Persian, Greek, or Roman. This aroused hatred in those with whom they should have compromised. This reflex is observable even in the 19th and 20th centuries. Christians did not tie chosenness to birth: whoever joined them became one of them. Jesus said: there is no more origin, no more family, no more rich or poor, only the community exists.

The enormous change was caused by ancient globalization, which resulted in a typical Third World division. The Jewish religion was not unified for a long time, the rationalistic conceptions of the high priests appointed by Herod the Great, considered alien by the Jewish masses, denying the afterlife, resurrection, spirits, and the opposite position of the Pharisees could be interpreted as two different religions, not to mention the Greek Pythagorean Essenes and the Samaritan Jews, who were unwilling to pay taxes to the Jerusalem temple. Jewish taxes were extremely high, up to sixty to seventy percent of the crops had to be given to God - to the priesthood. The high priests traded with the Roman governors, violating all laws, acquiring land and transferring it to the Romans while bypassing all regulations of the Torah, while the lower priesthood starved. During the long peace, Jewish robber bands formed, which then turned against the law enforcement forces of the high priesthood. It was easy to incite further discord among the mutually hostile factions if Roman domestic politics required it. The typical Third World division is characterized by the fact that politically, Judaism is not unified: there are both supporters and enemies of Rome among them, and the Roman army that participated in the demolition of Jerusalem included Jews. After the Temple was destroyed, a peculiar situation arose: Judaism no longer had a center or priesthood. Rabbis are not priests but learned men. This structure without a center was inherited by the Muslim religion. Its disadvantage is that it is impossible to carry out a unified reform. Its advantage is that it is close to the people.

Ancient globalization differs from ours in that there was no modernization, technology remained unchanged, and unemployment remained within previous frameworks. Our globalization thus causes more severe crises than ancient globalization. There was also arrogance of great powers back then. Roman envoys and governors did not consider it important to thoroughly understand the mentality of the local population. Today, a street sweeper of a superpower considers himself superior to a provincial multiple doctor.

IV. TODAY’S JEWS: THE MUSLIMS

A historian could not say what a writer might allow himself. I believe that the history of the Roman Empire is paradigmatic, its development is characteristic of later empires. The disintegration of the Soviet Union was not only caused by the arms race but also by the well-functioning interest representation organizations of the never fully pacified Caucasian peoples from the periphery to the center, the mafias. Today’s problems in Europe can also be discussed in this language: masses of people with different religions and mentalities have flowed from the periphery to the center, Europe has failed to integrate them, their numbers are growing, and Europe does not know what to do with them, now its own citizens.

It should be clear that today, in the sense concerning the Third World, I do not consider the remaining Jews but the Muslims to be Jews. Their situation is similar to that of the ancient Jews: they are religiously fragmented from the beginning (Shiites and Sunnis), divided into countries and layers with opposing positions in world politics, they have both the blind fundamentalism and the enlightened, technocratic, secular state. The split in Islam has been spreading since the 19th century, originating from Persia, the elite Bahá’í faith with a living god, just as much as the narrow ideology of popular military organizations. Islam, like Judaism, does not consider ethnicity, just as ethnicity did not matter to the Jews, a significant portion of the 1.3 billion Muslims are not Arabs. Muslims also do not have a church, they inherited the forced solution of the rabbinic diaspora Judaism with its advantages. In many Muslim countries, there has been no separation of secular and religious functions, just as in Judaism. Terrorist movements also efficiently deal with education, health care, and social care, and where secularization has taken place, it can be easily reversed.

The United States, temporarily the only superpower, has so far escaped the Muslim demographic problem, even after September 11, with South America flooding into the center uncontrollably, and to some extent China, which has the potential to occupy the position of the Second World.

Every analogy limps, but it can be seen that Seneca was right: whom you conquer today will enslave you tomorrow. The manner and mental nature of this enslavement are unpredictable. If two thousand years ago, following bloodshed but even more so due to peaceful fear, confusion, the unbearable lack of community, an unexpectedly new religion born in one of the most insignificant provinces forced the most enlightened, most rationally governed superpower of history up to that point under its rule, presumably we, our descendants, will also be amazed.