Thinking About Our Roman Empire

There’s a meme that went around a few years ago asking women how often men think about the Roman Empire. The joke, as jokes often do, points to something real. Rome occupies the cultural imagination as the definitive story of a civilization that seemed permanent—an empire that absorbed every threat, kept expanding, built the infrastructure of an entire world, and then simply stopped. Not all at once, but gradually, then decisively. That story feels all too familiar now, as the United States enters a new era of struggling to maintain its global hegemony.

On February 28 at 10 a.m., the United States and Israel struck multiple locations across Iran, including the capital, Tehran, in what President Trump described as “major combat operations.” Explosions were reported across Tehran earlier today. As the United States opens another military front, the parallels to the Roman Empire seem hard to ignore. So let’s talk about what Rome actually tells us about where this leads. The Romans left a detailed record, and it is not a good one.

The Weight of the Frontier

At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. It was an extraordinary achievement, but also an administrative nightmare. Communication was slow, supply lines were thin, and the empire spent its entire existence defending borders that only grew harder to hold. Emperor Hadrian eventually stopped expanding and built a wall in Britain, because continued conquest was draining the empire faster than it could recover.

There is a reason the world moved away from direct colonialism after the mid-twentieth century. Not out of sudden moral awakening, though morality played a small role (apparently), but out of practical exhaustion. Holding territory is costly, not just in money, but in people, resources, time, and political will. Sustaining public support for endless conflicts is even harder. The shift to softer forms of influence—through trade, financial leverage, and military alliances—was a recognition that empire carries hidden costs that eventually catch up.

The current situation in Iran shows those costs in real time. The U.S. has one of its largest regional force concentrations in roughly two decades, comparable to the pre-Iraq War posture of 2003. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine has warned that munitions stockpiles have already been drawn down by operations defending Israel and supporting Ukraine. The top uniformed officer in the country is effectively telling the president that the tank is not full, and the car is headed toward another highway.

The Frontier That Eats Armies

Rome returned to its eastern frontier, modern Iran and Iraq, for centuries. The campaigns were never decisive. The region absorbed Roman resources and attention, producing no lasting resolution. Rome’s military was extraordinary, but maintaining it became an obsession that hollowed the state. Emperors poured money into legions while cities and infrastructure decayed. Every campaign created new obligations instead of resolving old ones.

This morning, the U.S. struck Iran. By afternoon, Iran had responded. Missiles were fired at Israel and at U.S. bases in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. What began as a strike has become a multi-front exchange within a single news cycle, and it is far from over.

The operation was predictable. Assets deployed included stealth aircraft, refueling tankers, and early-warning planes. Former officials warned that degrading Iran’s missile program alone could require hundreds of strikes. Regime change could expand that to thousands over weeks or months, requiring a long-term occupation. Iran is three times the population of Iraq in 2003, its terrain is mountainous, and Persian identity runs deep. Nobody there will greet invaders as liberators.

The bases used to stage the operation are now targets. Every U.S. installation—Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE—is at risk. Iran built its missile program to make forward American presence costly. The potential for escalation is high. Hezbollah could intensify attacks against Israel or U.S. interests. Hamas may open new fronts. Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Yemen have struck Saudi Arabia before and will likely do so again. Gulf states that tried to balance relations are under pressure. Bahrain and the UAE, once symbolic targets, have been struck directly. Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar now face impossible choices. Jordan must maintain a fragile peace with Israel amid domestic anger. Oil markets are already reacting, and every new move ripples across global economies.

Every response requires resources—ships, aircraft, munitions, personnel, diplomacy, political will. Those resources are finite. Every sortie, every repositioned battery, every diplomatic call draws from the same limited supply.

Rome could win battles repeatedly, but each victory demanded more. Garrisons had to be staffed, supply lines maintained across hostile terrain, and local dynamics managed indefinitely. Legions were stretched across the Rhine, the Danube, North Africa, and Britain, and that strain ultimately contributed to its downfall.

The United States now faces multiple fronts. In addition to Iran, it continues to supply ammunition and air defenses to Ukraine, maintains operations in Venezuela under Operation Southern Spear, and has been involved in a developing conflict in Mexico. These simultaneous commitments draw on the same finite pool of munitions.

Although individual battles may be going in its favor, the broader picture is more precarious. Pushed toward the limits of endurance, the United States risks winning engagements while losing strategic stability. Even if short-term objectives are met, sustaining influence across all these fronts will become a major liability for an increasingly strained nation.

Every response requires resources—ships, aircraft, munitions, personnel, diplomacy, political will. Those resources are finite. Every sortie, every repositioned battery, every diplomatic call draws from the same limited supply.

Everything Else Is Also Rome

Military overreach grabs the headlines, but it is only part of the story. Other factors historians cite for Rome’s collapse are not ancient history—they are happening now.

Economic inequality widened as the Roman elite avoided taxes, retreating to private estates and withdrawing from civic life. In the United States, wealth concentration has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age, while the systems that once distributed opportunity—public infrastructure, education, healthcare—have been steadily defunded, even as the defense budget has grown. Rome’s oppressive taxation drove its wealthy out of civic life. America’s version looks different but functions the same way: a political class increasingly insulated from the consequences of its own decisions.

Political instability in Rome was extreme. More than 20 emperors ruled in 75 years, and the Praetorian Guard effectively auctioned the throne. The United States has spent much of the past decade in near-continuous institutional crisis. The Senate no longer effectively checks executive power, and public trust in government has fallen to historic lows. When institutions lose legitimacy, power is filled by whoever is willing to act unilaterally, and the tool hardest to challenge is military force.

Rome relied on mercenaries—soldiers with no particular loyalty to the empire. The United States has increasingly privatized wars, outsourced supply chains, and relied on foreign-manufactured components for defense. The barbarians who eventually sacked Rome learned everything they knew from serving in Roman legions. America’s vulnerabilities are being studied just as closely by potential adversaries.

The excesses of the elite also mirrored historical patterns of domestic instability. Roman aristocrats lived lives of extreme luxury, often exploiting slaves—including boys—for sexual gratification, throwing lavish parties, and accumulating wealth while ordinary citizens labored under heavy taxes. These abuses fueled resentment, weakening the bonds between ruler and population and undermining the legitimacy of the state. In the United States, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal offers a modern echo: concentrated wealth and power enabled sexual exploitation, trafficking, and impunity for elites, eroding trust in institutions and leaving social cohesion frayed. Just as Rome’s domestic excesses created instability, today’s elite misconduct magnifies public cynicism at a time when the nation relies on broad consent to sustain its global commitments.

This domestic rot connects directly to the overreach abroad. When cultural, economic, and institutional authority erodes at home, the state falls back on military force to maintain influence and project power. Late empires follow a pattern: military might becomes the sharpest tool left, not because it is the best, but because it is all that still works. That is where the United States is today. Cultural influence has weakened, soft power has eroded, and the dollar’s dominance is being challenged. Military force remains the primary advantage and convenient distraction, covering the cracks left by elite decay and domestic discontent.

The excesses of the elite also mirrored historical patterns of domestic instability. Roman aristocrats lived lives of extreme luxury, often exploiting slaves—including boys—for sexual gratification, throwing lavish parties, and accumulating wealth while ordinary citizens labored under heavy taxes.

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What Comes After Is Not Nothing

The date historians assign to Rome’s fall, 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed the last western emperor, was not the moment Rome truly ended. The sacking of Rome in 410, the Vandals in 455, the gradual disintegration of the legions—all of that came first. The official date was just the point when everyone acknowledged a reality that had already been unfolding.

The collapse of the Western Empire was not the end of civilization. It was a transformation. The Eastern Empire endured for another thousand years. Roman law became the foundation of European governance. The Catholic Church preserved vast amounts of classical knowledge. Out of the rubble of Roman collapse came the medieval world, then the Renaissance, and eventually the modern era. The end of Rome was brutal, chaotic, and often violent—but it was not final.

Transitions are never clean. People living through them cannot skip ahead to the chapter where things improve. Empires fall because the systems they built no longer serve the people inside them. What comes next, when it works, is something more adaptive, more humane, more suited to the world as it actually exists. The Roman Empire built roads, laws, and aqueducts, but it also ran on slavery, conquest, and the unchecked excess of its elite. What followed was messy and unpredictable—but it produced foundations the empire itself could not have imagined.

TThe cultural and economic gravity that once made American power self-reinforcing has been quietly eroding for years. If history is any guide, the end of this arrangement of power will not be the end of the people living under it. Something comes next. It is rarely orderly, often painful, but it is built by those paying attention, those who notice what went wrong, and those willing to rebuild from the cracks left behind.