What if the author Mary Beard had access to the best computing systems in the world and also up to date global information on the most important, not lying/politically skewed, scientific factors and could project how rome (as a concept of egalitarian society and/or whatever) could have saved itself, potentially without the killing and looting and bread and circuses, etcetera (since this seems to the pinnacle politics for many countries, after the fall of the original):

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome - Wikipedia