Ewiges Imperium. Wie das Römische Reich die westliche Welt prägt

Downfall. Which downfall? – On the modernity of an ancient empire. The Roman Empire never truly fell. To this day, its influence is omnipresent; every subsequent empire has seen itself, directly or indirectly, as the heir of the ancient Romans: Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, or the German Empire.

The myth of Rome captivated them all: Napoleon revered Caesar and chose to be crowned not as a king, but as an emperor. The Italian fascists dreamed of the resurrection of the Imperium Romanum, while the Nazis envisioned a Greater German Empire. The communists around Luxemburg and Liebknecht emulated Spartacus, while Mark Zuckerberg, the digital ruler of the 21st century, is obsessed with Emperor Augustus. And in popular culture, whether through Asterix, Ben Hur, or Gladiator, the Roman Empire continues to thrive.

The renowned Italian journalist Aldo Cazzullo reconstructs the myth of the empire: starting from Aeneas through the Republic and the Imperial period to the ideas and insignia of a superpower, from which our contemporary culture originates. Cazzullo illustrates not only how Rome lives on in our streets, in our minds, words, and symbols, but also how everything we today call the West ultimately leads back to Rome.