This is the Friends of History Debating Society in Lunditium live.

Welcome on a evening in which is going to be wonderful nor'easter striking New England.

As a great big rain, snowstorm comes from the south,

colliding somewhere over Jersey, I imagine, perhaps over Connecticut.

So here in southern New England and western Connecticut,

we're expecting anywhere between 10 and 20 inches, depending on the rain.

And all along the coast, there's watch out tonight for what can be the blizzard of 26.

Not yet.

It's spinning Nor'easter off of the Newfoundland coast headed down from the Greenland-Issland

Gap.

We are comfortable here in Lunditian in 92 AD, in other words, not only on the other side

of the Atlantic, but you'd have to say 2,000 years before, debating what we can of the

American Empire, inheritors of Roman institutions.

We've talked about the military,

a Roman military throwing itself against the Persians

and not succeeding.

Now we talk about the American military

contemplating throwing itself against the Persians

and if history is a guide, not succeeding.

Now we turn to the emperor himself.

Nero, once upon a time, was a young man who was chosen for the role by luck, by God. He was born. He didn't want it. He wanted to be an actor

and a singer. He wanted to behave on stage in some fashion that he found thrilling. He was no emperor,

...