Imperial Washington

The idea for the book first came to him more than a decade ago, after the Cold War ended and discussion of America's Rome-like role came out of the democratic closet. "This was the first time in my lifetime that I really remember hearing an overtly imperial ideology in America," Murphy says. By way of example, he cites the boast made to reporter Ron Suskind by an anonymous official in George W. Bush's administration.

"We're an empire now," the official said. "And when we act, we create our own reality."

In the summer of 2004, Murphy found himself back in Ireland, flying into Shannon airport. "If you look out the right side of the plane," he recalls the pilot saying, "you're going to see something that you probably will never again see in your life." When Murphy looked, he saw two presidential jumbo jets parked nose to nose on the tarmac.

President Bush had dropped in for a European summit. Concertina wire, surface-to-air missiles and U.S. troops in battle fatigues surrounded the planes. Men with automatic weapons stalked airport rooftops. Six thousand Irish soldiers and police officers -- more than enough to man a Roman legion -- patrolled the nearby roads.

"You could almost have imagined, 1700 years earlier, someone saying the same thing to you in almost the same words," Murphy says. "Come look. You're going to see something that you may never see again in your life:

"Diocletian is going by."

'Imperial Overstretch'

The "Are We Rome?" tour doesn't make it across the Potomac to the Pentagon. This doesn't stop Murphy from noting that the most obvious analogy between 4th-century Rome and 21st-century America has to do with global military commitments, and with the problem historian Paul Kennedy has called "imperial overstretch."

The phrase, as Murphy employs it, refers to far more than the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- but the narrower connotation is impossible to avoid. "Such a mess," he says when the day's headline from the Middle East ("New Detainees Strain Iraq's Jails") is mentioned.

"When you think of the number of times that Rome ventured into that part of the world. Sometimes successfully, but often they had their head handed to them . . . "

Murphy titles his military chapter "The Legions: When Power Meets Reality." He acknowledges huge differences between the American and Roman military situations, among them the vast technological advantage Americans have over their foes and the fact that U.S. troops are not normally asked to hold conquered territory.

Yet the similarities he points to are instructive.