Western decline
Sir: The symptoms of smallpox and bubonic plague have not changed since the Roman Empire, nor have the symptoms of political decay and corruption, two diseases which did more to bring about the fall of Rome than all the armies of the Goths, Huns and Vandals put together.
The symptoms of political decay are evident in Western society today and may yet be responsible for our own downfall.
Rome did not fall to the Vandal army, which would not have filled a Third Division football ground on a wet Saturday afternoon. The Goths did not conquer Rome, they were invited in and bribed with land. The gates of the city were finally opened to them, so they could creep in unobserved and begin their pillage.
Rome fell because nobody cared enough to defend it. It fell because initiative was sapped by the civil servant and the tax collector. It fell because most of the power had fallen to an army of rough uneducated peasants, able to dictate its own terms to an elected Emperor.
The Emperor needed votes and had to buy them.
If this seems horribly topical, take heed. Attila may come again, not bearing a sword, but waving a pick handle.
John Lavender 87 Thingwall Road, Irby, Wirral, Merseyside
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