Escape from Rome Quotes

“Their failure to do so may well have been our biggest lucky break since an errant asteroid cleared away the dinosaurs 66 million years earlier: there was no way to “get to Denmark”—to build societies that enjoy freedom, prosperity, and general welfare—without “escaping from Rome” first.26”
― Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity

“Peter Turchin observed that up to 1800, except for modern European overseas colonies, most empires that covered at least 1 million square kilometers (a convenient metric equivalent to three-quarters of a percent of the earth’s land surface outside Antarctica) emerged in close proximity to a steppe frontier. My own revised and updated version of Turchin’s survey shows that 62 out of 73 such polities more or less clearly belong in this category. No fewer than 54 of these 63 developed either in or very close to the Eurasian steppe. We must not put too much weight on precise numbers: some of these empires were effectively continuations of previous ones and need not be classified as discrete cases. Even so, the overall pattern is robust.”
― Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity