In the middle of the twentieth century, the Roman Empire is like a mirror in which we see reflected the brutal, vulgar, powerful yet despairing image of our own technological civilization, an imperium which now covers the entire globe, for all nations, capitalist, socialist and communist, are united in their worship of mass, technique and temporal power. What fascinates and terrifies us about the Roman Empire is not that it finally went smash, but that, away from the start, it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope.
The Emperor Hadrian was individually what we now are collectively, Lord of the World; what we are collectively, each of us can in fantasy see himself as individually.
— W.H. Auden in a Review of Eleanor Clark’s Rome and a Villa
