Ugo Bardi, professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence, here, in September 2009:
I think it is enough to say that the Romans did not really understand what was happening to their Empire, except in terms of military setbacks that they always saw as temporary. ... it gives us an idea of what it is like living a collapse “from the inside”. Most people just don’t see it happening ... we can’t rule out that at some moment at the time of the Roman Empire there was something like a “Roman ASPO”, maybe “ASPE,” the “association for the study of peak empire”. If it ever existed, it left no trace.
Ugo Bardi admits he's no historian, but one would like to think that a contemporary Italian would remember with pride the most famous Roman citizen of Italy's Christian past.
Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.
-- I Corinthians 10:11
Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
-- Galatians 4:3ff.
For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
-- Ephesians 1:9f.
