No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

could you tell me a story about the fall of Rome that likens it to the fall from grace?

It’s a familiar story, of course: that of a once great state that is consumed by corruption. This is different, in ways that you won’t believe. The downfall of the Roman empire is a tale of betrayal by the one person who’s supposed to have been its most reliable defender; that of the Byzantine empire was a tale of corruption from without as well as from within; that of the French empire was a tale of civil war that devoured its potential; that of the Russian empire was a tale of failure to understand the world and of an inability to adapt to new developments; the downfall of the Chinese empire was a tale of corruption from within, from the palace to the imperial bureaucracy and from the military to the provincial governors and from the imperial officials to the provincial bureaucrats and from the provincial bureaucrats to the imperial inspectors; the downfall of the Ottoman empire was a tale of corruption that could be seen as just another part of the empire itself.

But all of these state failures were personal. They began and ended with the person of the individual ruler. The downfall of Rome was different. This was a story of a state’s failure by one man, one woman, in their entirety; by the entirety of the imperial family and its allies, by the entirety of the imperial military, by the entirety of the imperial bureaucracy. It’s a story of the Roman state’s fall in the most literal sense possible.

It began in the mid-1980’s. The collapse of the Soviet empire was a tale of the rise and fall of one family. So, too, were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And after Rome, it was the turn of the American empire. And it all started with the fall of that last Roman emperor.

Rome. That beautiful city. Rome was the center of an empire that, at one point, stretched from London to New York. The emperor of that empire was a god. His name was Aurelian. “Aurelianic Rome,” they called her. Rome’s Last Days is all about the last days of the city, and its fall.

In the years after the death of that last Roman emperor – and it was not long after that – a lot of people realized something that many others had already noted. Rome was falling apart. It was a city of decay, a city of corruption, a city that was falling apart. This was a process that had been building up, for centuries if not millenia, but had finally, in the aftermath of Aurelian’s death, reached critical mass. The people of that empire realized that everything, and everyone, was crumbling. They realized that if they wanted things to go back to normal, they needed someone to take charge.

III

You probably already know the story. In the aftermath of Aurelian’s death, a general called Tacitus was tasked with the restoration of the empire. That sounds like an odd job, but it was the right thing to do. The general had seen the aftermath of Aurelian’s downfall firsthand, and he was determined to avoid its fate. But first he needed power, and he had no political base. He did not have the power. His only hope was to ally himself with someone who had both power and political support.

The obvious answer was of course Caligula. It was the perfect union: Tacitus was committed to the cause of the republic, to the Roman state’s traditional ideals, while Caligula was all about power, all about a new vision. Tacitus had no particular love of the Republic. His great political project in Rome’s Last Days was his attempt to restore it, with his vision of the ideal republic. The ideal empire was one where the ruler would still be a Roman, that is, it would be a republican state.

The problem was, Tacitus had no power. Caligula had power, and Caligula had ambition. So the two of them, united, decided to rule.

They started by pretending to be best friends and made friends with each other’s friends. It didn’t take much to get them both on the same page. After all, Caligula and Tacitus were both committed republicans, and Tacitus – with his obsession with the republican ideal – had no problem with Caligula’s plan for absolute power. He was all for any plan that promised power and stability.

A marriage to cement the alliance, in that order. That’s what they agreed upon, and soon they were marrying. It took them another year to figure out a name for it, and so they settled on “Caesarian.” But that was far down the line.

First thing they had to do was take Rome. They were united in one cause, after all. It took them another year, but it was finally done, and the empire was no more. Rome was now a republic, its ideals finally realized. “Caesarian,” the name for this new regime, would be “Rome’s Rebirth.”

They were in power – at least that was how it felt. For Tacitus – for them both – for all of Rome’s former power – it was as if they finally had a real job. As if Rome, finally, was back where it belonged.

They weren’t in power for long. It wasn’t even a year. They decided, for their marriage, to adopt children. And they were in power longer, much longer, than anyone would have thought.

For some, they lasted a generation. Some lasted more.

VII

But power breeds corruption, as you will recall. And so the empire slowly disintegrated from within. There was a constant crisis. The empire was never really united. There was always tension in the background, always a conflict that threatened to tear the country apart. It started with a coup d'etat, when the generals decided that the emperor had no right to marry.

“Caesarian” would be overthrown, and its fall would be in part the fault of Tacitus and his fellow general. They tried to use the power of the military – and in this they were not alone – but the people would hear them no. Eventually they would be driven out. And they would lose everything.

VIII

After their fall, many would attempt to revive the glory of the empire. There were still people who loved the republic; they would set out to restore it, only this time better. It wouldn’t take them very long to realize they were wrong. They would fail.

The emperor Caligula decided to try something different. He thought the problem with Roman republics was that the populace was unwilling to accept absolute rule. So he gave up on democracy. In the name of restoring the republic, he proclaimed himself emperor.

“Caesar” had been one of the titles that Julius Caesar had claimed. It was the name that had given the empire its legitimacy. After Tacitus and his fellow generals, the emperor was the last one left. Now he was Caesar, and he would claim it all.

It went worse than he could possibly have hoped. There was no resistance. Within a month, Caesar had absolute power. And so he did something that many had feared: he appointed members of the senate to positions in his bureaucracy, and in his military. (The two were very much related, after all. “Caesar’s Legion” and “Caesar’s Bodyguard” were some of the nicknames that Roman history gave the two.)

“Caesar’s New Religion.”

And the thing was, these positions could be taken away. They didn’t have the power of the military. Caesar could not have a personal army, as he was not personally the most powerful person in the country. It was a power that came from one source: his own person. And, more than that, it had to be taken away. Caesar would never be able to have control over the senate again, not if Caesar wanted it.

What did that mean for the republic?

XII

Caesar’s reign would fall quickly. Not that he had any real competition, but his position was precarious, and he would fall. He did fall.

XIII

And then there was the fall of Rome itself.

XIV

One day, in the year 476, a Roman soldier came to the gates of the city, the gates that had been the symbol of Rome’s strength and its glory for centuries. He called out, “Open the gates for me, or you are all dead!”

And everyone was dead.

There is no known end to this story.

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