Chapter One - History Ignored
When Seneca, the Roman statesman, warned that Rome would fall, the people snickered. "Rome fall? Never!"
Rome was alive with activity - progress! The Roman citizen basked in affluence, in the glitter of the Empire. He enjoyed an explosive frenzy of building - huge cities, bejeweled with rising marble columns, paved, pleasant tree-lined avenues and rushing fountains.
He saw victory parades marching through triumphal arches. He heard of the exploits of this or that great general. "Rome," mused the average citizen, "is impregnable." Rome was the world - and the world was Rome.

To speculate for one brief moment that glorious Rome would collapse was unthinkable, What Roman Jeremiah could have prophesied that the ravages of wars, taxation, mounting crime, race riots, moral decay, subversion from within, political assassinations and public apathy would one day bring Rome to utter collapse and ruin? To the average Roman citizen, this was not only unimaginable - it was downright idiotic.
And to millions of American and British people today, the thought that America and Britain could suffer a similar fate - though with more modern consequences - seems equally ludicrous.
But Rome did fall. The voices of the ancient Roman scoffers are as still as the rubble of ancient Rome. Unable to stem a tidal wave of violence, wild spending, wars, degenerating morals, and unbelievable public willingness to accept the decadent society of their day, these scoffers were led to the fate they had all denied was possible. And millions of ancient Romans lived to see the "impossible" happen.

The Affluence of Rome
Fortunately, Roman history is fairly well documented. We know more about the Romans than any other great civilization of the past. The more we investigate their lives, the more we are forced to face the true causes for their final collapse!
The Romans built a highly advanced society for their time. To them, it was even a "Great Society." They developed and used many techniques and achievements common to our modem way of life.
They were the Americans and Britons (and Canadians, Australians, South Africans) of their day. They were the ones who had wealth, a high level of culture, fantastic buildings, bureaucratic institutions, and sprawling cities.
"Prodigious engineers.. high rise apartment houses...the cosmetic arts...spectator sports.. sightseers and tourists." These are only a few of the words used to describe Roman activity in the second century - the time Rome was at the height of its power.
They constructed roads all over their vast empire --roads surpassed only in recent times. Some are still in use today, Roman engineers built a road network equal to times the circumference of the earth at the equator! And they didn't hesitate to cut through hills, tunnel through mountains, build sturdy bridges over rivers and valleys. Their "freeways" ran as straight and flat' as possible. They used concrete hardly inferior to ours and just as durable. They even developed a cement that would harden under water. The Romans mastered the art of plumbing and built water-supply and sewer systems perhaps only slightly inferior to ours. Some of them still function. Sewer systems like the Cloaca Maxima in Rome were large enough to drive a wagon through. Some of the rich had furnaces under their houses with warm air circulating through pipes or ducts in the walls. Water was everywhere, supplied by fantastic aqueducts over long distances. Hot-and-cold-water public baths were a must to the Romans. There were over 800 public baths in the city of Rome itself.

"Health-Club Hysteria"
Romans cherished body hygiene, physical culture and health. "Roman baths" with a country club atmosphere for the well-to-do are thoroughly documented, and the ruins are with us to this day, The well-to-do were traveller's, inveterate sightseers and tourists. Nothing was quite so dear to the Roman heart as languid vacationing, health resorts, mountain spas, or seashore villas.
One of the most obvious marks of affluence was the possession of one's own personal vacation retreat
But the cities became increasingly crowded, requiring the development of high rise apartment complexes. Records show many of these became much like modern slums. Some buildings were so poorly constructed that, despite stringent Roman building codes, they menaced the health and safety of infuriated tenants. Rome, too, had its ghettos.
Street noises were unbearable, day or night, in Rome's big cities. The rich fled to the countryside whenever possible.
Yes, long before us, the Romans managed to run into that giant headache called the "urban problem" - complete with unbearable traffic congestion, drab city looks, crowded and noisy living conditions, run-down tenements and slums, high rents, unemployment, racial tension, spiralling crime, a soaring cost of living and polluted air!
Ancient annals absolutely prove that various civic disturbances over some of these worsening conditions resulted in riots and conflagrations which literally destroyed whole towns!
Rome had her "long, hot summers," too!
And her economy? Rome's economy collapsed under the crushing twin burdens of taxation and inflation. The steady deterioration of Rome's currency was symptomatic of the increasingly serious financial situation of the Empire.

Her morality? It became practically non existent. We shall soon see what happened to it - WHY the moral collapse, and how it contributed to the downfall of a great, world-ruling empire.

Rome Never Had It So Good
But at the height of her power, everything looked different!
"If at any time in history, a people could have looked confidently to the future, it was the Roman people of the second century of our era," wrote Dr. Robert Strausz-Hupe, noted historian and international relations expert.
"Within the empire, law and order prevailed, and never [before] did almost everybody have it so good. No foreign power could challenge her."
Up until the last few years this could have sounded very much like a description of our English speaking peoples But Strausz-Hupe asks, "Why did this civilisation decline at all? And why did it decline so rapidly that within another 100 years, the Roman Empire was plunged irreversibly into anarchy and penury, ravaged by foreign aggressors and doomed to extinction?"
The same author says "What can Roman experience teach us? Of course it can teach us nothing if we are satisfied with the notion that the Romans of the second century were not modern nations of the 21st century, and that, hence what happened to them could never happen to us."
But the striking parallels between our English speaking peoples today and the Romans of yesteryear make such complacency very dangerous.
What average pleasure seeking Roman, living for the day, ever dreamed his proud nation would some day collapse into ignominy?
There were those who warned the Romans of the inevitable end. Rome had its prophets, its seers, its political satirists. But their combined jerimiad fell on deaf ears. Romans, as a whole, would not listen.
Will Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians, South Africans - the modern House of Jacob - listen to the veritable torrent of shouts and warnings trumpeted by leaders in all aspects of national life?
And will these same peoples listen to the warnings of the God they have forgotten? He has commissioned his servants of God to "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up they voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins" (Isaiah. 58-1).
Said researcher of Roman history H.J. Haskell: "It required a century or more for the destructive forces in Rome to work out there effects. The modern tempo is faster. The history of the later Roman Empire carries a warning to present day Caesars" (H.J.Haskell, The New Deal in Old Rome).
Will we heed the lesson of history, the voice of experience? Will we mend our ways before it is too late?