To quote Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, ‘We’re doomed, doomed!’ That seems to be the message of Paul Cooper’s eminently readable series of essays about how and why 14 civilisations rose to greatness and then collapsed. He begins with the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BC, at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, and
Started in 216 AD by Septimius Severus, the Baths of Caracalla in Rome were completed by his bloodthirsty son, who went to great length to achieve his vision.