Rome's long shadow

Adrian Goldsworthy reviews Rome: An Empire’s Story by Greg Woolf, and considers the lasting influence of the Roman Empire in the modern world:

The empire flourished in the first two centuries AD, the period when the vast majority of its great monuments were built. It also survived subsequent crises, but ultimately it still collapsed. The dream of Rome’s success cannot avoid the nightmare of its fall—or almost inevitably its “decline and fall,” for the title of Edward Gibbon’s great work is firmly established in our minds. Whether called the Dark Ages or the early medieval period, the world that followed was a lot less sophisticated. The lesson appears to be that progress is not inevitable and success rarely permanent. Yet that has not stopped successive generations from looking to Rome in the hope of matching its success and avoiding its failure.