It has become fashionable to compare the United States’ current disarray to that of ancient Rome. The parallels are easy to make — both are powerful empires, nominally operating by the rule of the people, with hefty engineering and military might to back up their conquest.

Harder to appreciate is the fact that what we imagine as “Rome” is often just one sliver of a 2,200-year-old history, lasting from approximately 753 BCE to 1453 CE, with the fall of Constantinople. If the United States is at risk of following the path of Rome’s fall, this nation-state of nearly 250 years has quite a bit further to go.