In a courtroom the suggestive hypothesis that we will proceed to argue would be rejected because it is not supported by the law and aimed at conditioning the judging panel, represented here by the readers, but not being in court, we will proceed to offer this suggestion and with it a reflection .
It was the III century after Christ when a declining Roman Empire saw the advances of the Middle Ages advance, the mystery of this decline was amply explained by historians, political scientists and economists, but it is interesting to remember it and then realize our parallel.
The Roman Empire after Constantine was a mastodon that went from the British Isles to Mesopotamia, this political-military giant was actually held on four pillars: the slave system, the adhesion of the vanquished to Roman civilization, a wide religious tolerance, an army efficient.
The four ideological columns described above faltered after about two hundred years of principality, but it was the epoch under examination that gave the coup de grace to the imperial grandeur.
The slavery system guaranteed the supply of labor for the imperial agricultural system, which was then the industry of the time, as well as the basis of Roman civilization, this labor at almost no cost, thanks to long periods of peace and the sensitive contraction of wars of conquest progressively diminished seeing as a reflection the impoverishment of the middle class whose income capacity was founded precisely on the cultivation of small plots of land thanks to the employment of slaves.
As regards the relationship between the vanquished and the Roman civilization, with the consequent enlistment of these in the auxiliary troops, it was difficult to reconcile with the migratory pressures on the limes and in this regard the greatest deception was that made by the Visigoths, a nomadic people by necessity coming from the Danube which, following an agreement with the emperor Valente, was received in Mesia (territory currently between Romania and Bulgari nda), but the deep economic crisis, the inter-tribal struggles and the resistance to Roman customs determined the revolt of the Visigoths who for the next two hundred years will be one of the causes of the fall of the Western empire and social barbarization.
In this complicated situation the advent of Christianity as "state religion" as imposed by the pagan Constantine, stiffened the customs and determined a new morality that in the censorship of behavior could resemble stoicism, but as regards the system of values exceeded the centrality of Rome in favor of a transcendence not very inclined to the principle of si vis peace para bellum.
As for the army, it gradually became a caste, with over half a million individuals, net of allied troops.
These soldiers of Rome, engaged in the defense of the limes, were progressively taking root in the territory, losing that fighting spirit and that sacred dimension that were proper to the legions in republican and imperial times, at least until the time of the antonini.
In this historical synthesis the present of our country: the young Italian state, little more than 150enne, can be said to be the result of a social and cultural stratification that makes it right if not a son, at least nephew of imperial Rome, this close kinship makes possible the suggestion of which we have said and with it the comparison.
For about two years, our Armed Forces have been progressing, in a certainly commendable way from a humanitarian point of view to an efficient maritime rescue against the peoples coming from the Italian limes of the third millennium, the southern shore of the Mediterranean best known as Maghreb.
Precisely the Maghreb and the aftermath of the Arab springs, the breeding ground of desperate and terrorists, are not only eroding Italian sovereignty, as it was for ancient Rome, but are impoverishing the role of the Armed Forces, less and less determined to conduct war actions in favor of a dual use that increasingly prefers the non-kinetic part of military activities.
The "legionaries" of today, like those of yesterday are progressively leaving the gladio in favor of a bureaucratic rooting that progressively depersonalizes the military instrument.
As for the economic crisis today is an industrial crisis, yesterday it was an agricultural crisis, but with due moderation we could say that it is the same process of impoverishment that in the long run undermines the solidarity of the middle class.
On religion, the new cultural relativism can be said to be a homologue of early Christianity, above all as a phenomenon destined to break the ethical-religious equilibrium of Italian society and thus deprive society of those antibodies necessary to contain the prevailing desire to dominate the men of ISIS, very similar to the ancient memory of the Visigoths.
We do not know if Italy will be the Mesia of the 21 century and even if the comparisons are adequate, the fact remains that the instabilities acutaesi with the advent of the Islamic state are likely to throw the whole of Italy and with it the Western world in a the Middle Ages probably more obscure than what happened to the Roman Empire.
(opening picture: Ulpiano Checa "La invasión de los bárbaros")
