Words Worth Noting - August 21, 2025

“‘The two greatest problems in history,’ says a brilliant scholar of our time, are ‘how to account for the rise of Rome, and how to account for her fall.’ We may come nearer to understanding them if we remember that the fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. Some nations have not lasted as long as Rome fell. A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. Christian writers were keenly appreciative of this decay.”

Will Durant Caesar and Christ