Si Sheppard

H.G. Wells was using science fiction to make a serious point. His saga plays out in a contemporary England invaded – and defeated – by the superior technology of an alien expeditionary force that arrived unheralded in a fleet of ships from a point of origin unimaginably distant. What ensues is a war of extermination; the interlopers are the vanguard of a colonial project intended to reshape our world in their image. Wells was trying to bring home to Victorian readers, the beneficiaries of imperialism, what life was like on the receiving end of that process.

The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica needed no such literary
metaphor. They had been living that reality for generations, ever since their mightiest nation, the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, had been humbled by the superior technology of an alien expeditionary force that arrived unheralded in a fleet of ships from a point of origin unimaginably distant.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the terminal Republican period is that, in an era dominated by the sword, a succession of inspired military leaders - Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar - failed to impose a viable alternative to the Republican constitution. Conversely, for all the martial qualities implied in the name he bore after his adoption, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus never won a set-piece battle in his life but it was he who laid the foundations for an imperial system that dominated the Mediterranean world for centuries after his death.

Brutus himself was the cause of these murmurs, being of a gentle and kindly disposition toward all – not like Cassius, who had been austere and imperious in every way, for which reason the army obeyed his orders promptly, not interfering with his authority, and not criticising them when they had learned them. But in the case of Brutus they expected nothing else than to share the command with him on account of his mildness of temper.

Two women had been devoted to Antony; had he followed Fulvia's lead he might have been master of the Roman world; had he remained faithful to Octavia he might have divided it. Instead he chose Cleopatra, whose only devotion to him was as the instrument of her ambition; and her he would follow, and follow to his ruin, because he loved her. 'That is what redeems his memory, that at the end he did lose half the world for love.'

The Gezeirah, the Age of the Decree, circumcision, the Sabbath and the teaching of the Torah were all forbidden, and Hadrian ordered the name of the province changed from Judea to Syria Palaestina. This could, perhaps, be interpreted as the ultimate tribute to Jewish tenacity; never before (or after) was a province renamed as a corollary of a revolt against Rome.