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Hello and welcome to the history of Rome. Episode 95, the beginning of the end.

Don't worry about the title of this episode. The transition from Marcus Aurelius to

a suncomodus is usually pointed to as the point at which the luck of the Roman

Empire began to run out. But it has also been joked on more than one occasion

that as decline phases go, we should all be so lucky to enjoy one as long as

the Romans did. We are still 300 years from the last Roman Emperor and more than

a thousand years from the fall of Constantinople. To put it another way, the

United States has officially been a big-ass state for about 230 years, which

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