Perspectives

Homer, expressing the Greek perspective, describes Odysseus as crafty and wise whereas Virgil, expressing the antagonistic Trojan perspective, describes Ulysses (the same character) as cruel and deceitful.

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Fall of the Terran Empire is followed by a period of chaos called the Long Night. Pete Pinto, the second-hand bookseller, made the point that later civilizations which had grown out of that period would not refer to it as "the Long Night."

Poul Anderson imagines an sf writer in Augustan Rome who considered three possible futures:

the Empire will conquer the whole world;

in accordance with Augustan policy, the Imperial borders will remain unchanged;

the Empire will fall as barbarians move in, leaving - 

"...nothing...but ruins and wilderness."

-Poul Anderson "The Discovery of the Past" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 182-206 AT p. 190.

Instead, Anderson tells us that:

"A heretical offshoot of the religion of a subjugated people, afar in a corner of the Mediterranean ambit, took over Romans and barbarians alike, completely transforming them and breeding new, utterly different civilizations." (ibid.)

Augustus himself, in a fictional account, tells Lycius the dwarf that the prophetic volumes foretold that either the Romans would:

"...last a few hundred years and then [be] gone - - eaten from outside by barbarians, from inside by strange gods."

-Neil Gaiman, August IN Gaiman, Fables And Reflections (New York, 1993), pp. 98-122 AT p. 113, panel 5 -

- or that they would conquer the whole world.

And here is my point about perspectives: what Anderson describes as transformation by a foreign heresy, Augustus describes as being eaten by strange gods!