Scott here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.

Rome lasted somewhere between 500,000, 1,000 or 2,000 years, depending on your definition of when it

began and ended. But you can make a good argument that it lasted at least 2,000 years, because

whether it's 800 BC or 1,200 AD, there was a state that

called itself the Roman government and a people who called themselves Romans. Now, what's

interesting is that if two people from each of these time periods met, they would have almost

nothing in common, and they actually wouldn't be able to speak to each other. The Roman from 800 BC

from the Italian Peninsula would speak archaic Latin,

while the Roman from Constantinople and 1200 would speak medieval Greek. The old Roman

wear a wool and toga, worship pagan gods, and barely have more than a few iron tools. The Roman

from the 1200s would be an Orthodox Christian, live under an emperor and patriarch, wear silk

robes decorated with an eastern influence design, live under an incredibly complicated system, wear silk robes decorated with an eastern

influence design, live under an incredibly complicated system of law and bureaucracy.

There have been many books and a lot of analysis on why Rome fell.

But what many people don't look at is, how did it last as long as it did?

When, as we can see, it was almost a completely different state from the beginning and end.

How did it manage the transition

from paganism to Christianity when a change in religion is almost guaranteed to destroy an empire in the

ancient world? Like it did the assassinated empire in Persia when the Zoroastrian state was conquered

by the Rashi Dune Caliphate or when medieval Tibet became Buddhist. Well, today's episode

we're going to be looking at the incredible continuity of Roman history

over its 80 generations and why Rome was so incredibly resilient.

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