Today the transnational forces of capitalism are trying to modify the old political form known as nation state , and in all probability they will achieve it following the pattern of old similar transformations.

 In the final decades of the roman republic a new political mechanism was inserted in the old system of things , using the naked force but immediately creating an ideology of legitimacy. This mechanism was personal military power.

 The "Roman Revolution" was the adaptation of the old oligarchy-ruled Italy to a transnational confederation with a globalized economy an a global and united military direction.

Mr Syme writed this book for the Oxford univertity press in 1939 in a clear decition to fight the then loud Mussolini┬┤s propaganda of a "Empire" being other thing than a tirany , and the accession of Augustus to total power other thing than a permanent military putsch.

The fact of Augustus being the most able and intelligent Politician Europe has ever seen in all history doesn┬┤t change the main developments: pluralistc politics was dead in the Mediterranean for 1500 years.