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Apparently a similar trend was ongoing at the end of the Roman Republic: Plutarch reports in his “Life of Caesar” that the great man had just returned from Gaul when he saw a group of Roman women making much over a monkey. He asked those with him: “What is the matter have these women no children?” Juvenal in his Satires reported and satirized, many years after Caesar, the childlessness of Roman women-the Roman race simply died out.

THANK YOU! That piece of information fits perfectly into the puzzle that was presented to me in the late 60s by an Italian immigrant. He had received a classical education which, at the time, was the trend in Italy. Essentially, children were introduced to their heritage through studying the Roman Empire. This was accompanied with a study of the Latin language. As they progressed in their studies, they were then introduced to the Greek Empire and its language.

This friend assessed the american landscape at that time and made a pronouncement I will never forget. Seeing the rise of feminism in the US, he described how the same phenomenon occurred in both Rome and Greece. It was soon followed by a rise in homosexuality, after which, those societies collapsed under the weight of moral decay and the destruction of the human family unit. He then predicted I would witness this in my lifetime.

At that time, the US was still viewed as the most powerful country in the world. The notion of these events manifesting themselves in my lifetime was laughable. I stopped laughing decades ago as I watched his predictions manifest themselves. Now, you have added yet one more element to that picture.

THANK YOU! That piece of information fits perfectly into the puzzle that was presented to me in the late 60s by an Italian immigrant. He had received a classical education which, at the time, was the trend in Italy. Essentially, children were introduced to their heritage through studying the Roman Empire. This was accompanied with a study of the Latin language. As they progressed in their studies, they were then introduced to the Greek Empire and its language.

This friend assessed the american landscape at that time and made a pronouncement I will never forget. Seeing the rise of feminism in the US, he described how the same phenomenon occurred in both Rome and Greece. It was soon followed by a rise in homosexuality, after which, those societies collapsed under the weight of moral decay and the destruction of the human family unit. He then predicted I would witness this in my lifetime.

At that time, the US was still viewed as the most powerful country in the world. The notion of these events manifesting themselves in my lifetime was laughable. I stopped laughing decades ago as I watched his predictions manifest themselves. Now, you have added yet one more element to that picture.

Post of the day. Amazing when people predict stuff that comes true decades later. I won’t bore you with the details but this has happened to me at least twice. You don’t forget.

Everyone should read Juvenal's "Satires". I swear it is a mirror of our society: the Non-Roman alien, the homosexual, the liberated woman, the actor(mime for Romans) and the gladiator, poor morals, wealth seeking etc. It is all there in slightly different form.

One of my favorites is from Livy's introduction to his history of the Roman people: “... I would then have him trace the process of our moral decline, to watch, first, the sinking of the foundations of morality as the old teaching was allowed to lapse, then the rapidly increasing disintegration, then the final collapse of the whole edifice, and the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them.....of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective...” TITUS LIVIUS 59 B.C. TO 17 A.D.