Why Speculative Fiction Keeps Rebuilding Rome
Rome has a way of resurfacing when you are not looking for it. It appears in science-fiction empires that span galaxies, in fantasy legions marching under unfamiliar banners and in systems so vast and orderly that they seem less like governments than permanent features of the world. I have felt that pull for as long as I can remember. As a child reading Asterix , I was supposed to root for the unruly Gauls, yet I often found myself studying the Roman camps instead: the straight rows of tents, the palisades, the almost hypnotic suggestion that everything had been assigned its proper place. Much later, lectures on the Roman food supply made the attraction clearer. Rome depended on tax grain, private shipping, ports, warehouses, officials and distribution systems capable of feeding a city on a scale that its immediate surroundings could not support. The empire was not simply an army or a culture. It was a machinery for turning conquest into routine. That may be why speculative fict...