Corruption and inequality. The rise of persecuted cults 
and their role interpreting wildfires and crop failures. 
How this was possible by loss of conviction in science 
and technology, while everywhere roads and engines 
and hydraulics were taken for granted. Barbarians.
A turning point was the crossing of the Danube. 
Hadrian’s wall at edge of empire also signalled the end, 
the cost of maintaining the military industrial    	        complex. 
(Who is to say if mass shootings are cause or effect,       	                  ditto 
the sinkholes of terrorism that open under your feet). 
Growing suspicion that enables the surveillance state 
by easy stages. Incompetence, particularly over 		             climate 
changes, so the few in wealth play, while the working 
poor descend into chaos. Over-reach. Viruses
(virtual and otherwise) that infect the cities. Add 	        famines 
bubbles and collapses. The encroach of outside forces 
within the Empire coupled with the usual pogroms 
and disappearances. But increasingly, the flawed idea
of inevitability that makes limbs heavy. A drugged 	 torpor 
that is only sleep if that is a forgetting of       	    	                  wakefulness.