Watts says he believes that the autocracy that occurred and dominated Rome, can occur today.
He claims that this autocracy was due to growing social inequality and the inability of the Rome government to remedy the problems arising from it. This resulted in a strong wave of violence that completely left the control of the government and made people start to believe that all this disorder was created because of all the freedoms that democracy allows.
Watts says that for years we can see these same problems occurring in the US and other parts of the world, which justifies the support of many citizens for authoritarian and abusive governments, just like what happened in Rome