Occasionally, when some new military cruelty makes the news, I reflect with horror on the idea that some far-future philosophers and politicians and armchair military afficionados will look back on the height of American power with the same lion-chested admiration that our own feel when they look back at Rome. And, then, I wonder if Rome had people like me. Were there those who were disgusted by Rome's violent military expansion? Were there senators, soldiers, everyday workers speaking out for the rights of people across the world? Did they speak against the entitlement the Roman state assumed to the world's land, people, and resources? Certainly we never hear about them, but I cannot be surprised - if they exist, would not their presence dilute what Rome represents in our own time? What state, hellbent on being the next Rome, would ever admit the city bore rising tides of internal dissent?