this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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My classical studies minor (and Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast) make me want to say:
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.) Which, Tacticus wrote. Cicero lived during the fall of rome
I think he would've said "O tempora, o mores!" (Oh the times! Oh the customs!... ish) that lament he used often when describing the state's decline.
I love this meme on every level. I'm going back to my corner
Fuck you for triggering that hell of a trauma Latin cause me.
Consider me fucked
*he fall of the Republic. The Imperial era (Principate + Dominate, if you distinguish) in the west lasted another five centuries and its successors took a while to fully fragment. The eastern empire is a whole different chapter.
My own amateur attempts at understanding sources (and Bret Devereaux's blog) make me want to point out that Rome's decline wasnt such a clearly defined moment as the ascent of Caesar.
Tacitus was another century and change later. He will have grown up in the tail end of Nero's reign end, witnessed the Year of Four Emperors and spent most of his early adulthood during the reign of Domitian, whose authoritarian style further curtailed the Senate's powers.
Before that background, it's not hard to see why he'd believe the fall of Rome to be imminent, depending on when exactly he wrote that sentiment. I don't know what it's from (but maybe someone else here does?), but I'll place it shortly after the end of Domitian's reign, about 100AD.
By the assassination of Domitian, Tacitus was 40. The city had (supposedly) been founded ~850 years ago, the Republic had been formed ~600 years ago, survived for ~450 years, and the Imperial era was ~150 years old. It would go on for another ~380 years. If we calculate from the legendary founding 753 BC to the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD, Rome lasted just about 1200 years.
He obviously couldn't have predicted any of that, but writers predicting the impending doom is such a common phenomenon, you could make a drinking game out of it: Go through the list of famous Roman authors and drink every time you find one bemoaning how far they've fallen from the glorious past. For the sake of your liver, you probably should limit it to Rome, because that trend is still going strong.