Reddit mentions of Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World

In case you guys haven’t seen it, there is a really well-written, insightful book comparing the United States to Rome in a positive way.

It is called Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — And America is Building — A New World by Thomas Madden. It’s a bit outdated, since it doesn’t consider Donald Trump and his attempts to tear down the new world order, but it is nevertheless an excellent rebuttal to people who think America is declining and that being like Rome is automatically a negative thing.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Trust-Built-America-Building-/dp/0452295459?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ipad-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0452295459

Sulla's first civil war was primarily caused by Italian allies acting up when a tribune who had promised citizenship and reform to allow people in the provinces to have a say in Roman affairs and have Roman citizenship was killed, no? And the conflict led to the Republic no longer being a republic under Sulla.

You're basing an argument on 1/3 of the wars being offensive and the other two? I'm not saying what I'm saying is 100% correct, the book has to be taken with a grain of salt. One could say all of the United States' conflicts, interventions, and wars were done for the protection of the US and her allies, destroying threats as they appear and future threats on the horizon. That doesn't make it correct, that just shifts the justification for the conflict.

>"And as for our map of the empire, a Roman at the time would have strongly denied its accuracy. Rome, he would have insisted, was no empire. It was a state and a people... With the exception of a few places like Veii or Capua, Italy was not under Roman rule. It was made up of free allies. The same went for most of the Greek cities. Even provinces like Sicily or Macedonia, a Roman would insist, were not part of an empire. They were merely administrative arrangements created in order to keep peace and provide order for Rome's friends. To say that Sicilians or Greeks were citizens of a Roman Empire was not only an insult to those proud ad free people, but a lie. Rome was Rome, our Roman would insist. Nothing more. It had organized a powerful coalition of allies, but it was simply first among equals."

Author goes onto compare it to the American Empire, having hundreds of thousands of troops deployed throughout the world, but not actively fighting, rather in the defense/assistance of allies. No one would categorize citizens of Germany, Italy, or Japan as subjects of the American Empire.

Rome went to war to avoid Carthage bringing a war to them. Messana in Sicily asked for protection from both Carthage and Rome against the leader of Sicily. Carthage and Rome both eventually responded, Rome ejected the Carthage garrison and placed their own there. They didn't want Carthage to have an easy path to their peninsula. Both Sicily and Carthage declared war. The addition of Messana to the coalition was not one of expansion/conquest, Rome was asked to come there. They wanted to be able to stop an invasion of Italy from there if it were to occur.

I was interested in the book because it seemed to present an argument that isn't very common. I may be getting the civil war mixed up with another conflict of allies of Rome fighting Rome for citizenship (which the start of Marius/Sulla CW sounds like) and I was only saying that Caesar's actions would have been considered acceptable by that point (to take out perceived threats).

I was only presenting the idea that the book did. If you'd like to read the book, I'd be happy to get you a copy or provide a book store code for you to get it.