Look to ancient Rome and the Aenid? What ancient Rome would that have been? The romantic Rome in the mind of this writer or the real Rome? And the Aenid was state propaganda in poetic form.
Here is how the French thinker Montesquieu described the Rome in his book Consideration of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline:
Page 121: (start) Augustus established order - that is durable servitude. For in the free state in which sovereignty has just been usurped, whatever can establish the unlimited authority of one man is called good order, and whatever can maintain the honesty liberty of the subjects is called commotion, dissension or bad government.
All the men with ambitious projects had labored to inject a kind of anarchy into the republic. Pompey, Crassus and Caesar succeeded marvelously at this. They established an impunity for all public crimes; they abolished whatever could stop the corruption of morals or make for effective public order. And as good legislators attempt to make their citizens better, so these labored to make them worse. They therefore introduced the practice of corrupting the people with money; and if someone was corrupted with intrigues, he also corrupted the judges. They disturbed elections with all kinds of violence; and if someone was brought to justice, he intimidated the judges as well. The very authority of the people was destroyed (end).
And the Romans rulers established what was called Damnatio Memoriae or cancelling all past memories. They erased the names of heroic leaders just as the BLM is erasing the names of Lincoln and Washington from public schools. They mutilated statues just as they are doing today. They forbade the use of the name of those they condemned (watch and they will be doing this with the Trump name). And they persecuted their followers. Holidays were eliminated. Today this is called the Cancel Culture. It is a page taken right out of the Roman playbook.
Agree we are in a collapsing empire.
People like Caesar, Pompey and Crassus followed in the steps of Sulla and Marius. The republic’s roots of destruction were laid centuries before.
The destruction of our Republic is willful and deliberate. It needs to be stopped but I fear we have lost all the levers of power to do so.