Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t read Pajiba for its biting and insightful political commentary. No. He reads Pajiba because he likes to keep up with movies, movie reviews, commentary on current goings-on in Hollywood and such stuff. Yes. Your Maximum Leader reads Pajiba to keep socially current.

Well imagine his shock when he reads biting and insightful political commentary on Pajiba. Well… Biting and insightful political commentary in the guise of a review of the (late and oft-lamented-in-the-Villainschloss) HBO series Rome

If you haven’t read Requiem for the Republic: Rome by Jove you need to click through and read it RIGHT NOW! Here are the first few paragraphs:

“This can only mean that the Republic has fallen.” -Lucius Vorenus
“And yet, the sky is still above us and the earth still below. Strange.” - Titus Pullo

This is a story of how democracy dies.

Rome is the mother of nations. The legend lurking at the dawn of history. The altar at which our laws and governments still worship. Every courthouse and capital echoes the ruins of that ancient city we still haunt. Legalese is still half Latin a millennium since the last native speakers died. Our senators and theirs would hardly notice the difference between each other, besides the togas and Italian suits.

Rome was a young state in an old world. Just old enough to feel confident and experienced, young enough to think it would last forever. For two thousand years, Egyptian slaves had built desert mountains for god kings. Italy was such a backwater for so long that Alexander overran the world from Greece to India, but didn’t bother hopping the Adriatic. Less than three centuries later, Caesar thought he was special. Ozymandias and all that. Empires always believe they’re eternal because men never believe they’re mortal.

They conquered through ingenuity, through a granite faith that their law was the only law. Anything outside of Roman law was barbarian. Order was their one true god, immortalized in all the identical temples and standardized roads. Rational repetition fueled the legions: men trained to fight as a single machine, gears and clockwork carved from flesh, individuality burned off in the smelter. They tamed ancient Egypt, yoked Spain and France, pillaged Greece for fertile minds. They destroyed Carthage so utterly that atomic weapons could not have improved on the job. Who now remembers the American Indians?

They were the first combination of that most potent meme of state: the imperial republic. They always insist that they rule by force for the good of the people. “For the republic!” Say it enough and you believe your own press. They were the embodiment of that ancient dichotomy of war and peace. Pax Romana. Pax Britannica. Pax Americana. It’s lightning in a bottle, catching the fever for empire along with the spasmodic beauty of freedom. An unstable equilibrium cannot last: either the empire exhausts itself or it devours its own children. The British did the former, the Romans the latter, America’s decision is pending. Rome is the story of that devouring.

Damn it is good stuff. Go and read for the love of the Gods!

Also, if you haven’t seen Rome you need to put it in your Netflix queue or buy it. You’ll not be sorry…

(Okay… If you are a stickler for a “historical drama” being more “historical” than “drama” you might be disappointed. If you can put that behind you, you will love it.)

Carry on.