All Roads Lead to Rome

Rome is the terrible symbol
that suggested a world
united by conquest,
through which civilization
spread but could not be
maintained, where power
corrupted absolutely
and the barbarians
at the gate saw no
great loss in storming it,
where religions ebbed
and flowed, a lasting
treasury bequeathed
to mankind but never
a good opinion,
famous and infamous,
a cautionary tale,
fear spread like fire
in the night, no one
to watch, but everyone
to remark what a tragedy
it is, that no one
could survive.

All the roads lead there still.