Querelle

The banqueting of his latter days actually coined the term lucullan, for tasty dishes and the appreciation thereof. In swedish this is lucullisk and hence the fish (probably named in the 1940s or so). Anyway I just read a summary on his career and he seemed a nice man. More good roman than greedy politician. Brought first cherry trees to Italy

In sweden you can still buy pickled fish called Lucullus, so he isn't completely disregarded in our times. Yet that is - since competition is severe from the ABBA, the modern day swedish pompey of pickled fish. -_-

I think the post so far make too much of military shortcomings like Adrianople, decline of the legion etc. The question remains WHY these were allowed to happen in the first place. The fall-of-rome-subject is obviously huge, but I would still like to list the few basic reasons I come to think of that Rome would eventually collapse. 1. Demographic pressure - stagnating or declining population within the borders while heavy increase outside. (very similar to modern day western culture, even though the parallell should probably never be mentioned in this forum) 2. Lack of institutions, and espacially for appointing power, maintaining power and passing power on. Ever since the moral and factual collapse of the republic the romans lacked mens to legitimize ruling. The divinity of their augustuses evidently never hindered civil wars, and political murdery. Compare later monarch rulers, with god-given hereditary rights backed by the church, or later citizenship-nationalist-representative legitimity of parliaments, presidents etc. The Christian church could probably have played a part as nation-builder, sanctioner of power and so on, and DID in the longer lasting byzantine part. This, however, brings the next point: 3. Totalitarianism probably similar to the centralism mentioned in earlier posts. The institutions which DID appear post-republic, were, besides insufficient, oppressive and dictatorial and would hinder progress - be that economic, cultural or military. This factor did much to destroy the east. nuff said.