Rome Lives!
"The Vanishing Paradigm of the Fall of Rome" by Clen W. Bowersock, in The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (May 1996), Norton's Woods, 136 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
For centuries, the Fall of Rome has been a handy, even irresistible, metaphor for thinkers who fret about the state of civilization. Have a social problem on your mind? Trot out a comparison to the last days of the empire. Today, however, observes Bowersock, a professor of historical studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, historians have a surprisingly different view of that oft-invoked example. Rome, they contend, never really fell.
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