"A welfare state: Because of the economic issues that the Roman's had, the emperors were faced with a lot of unrest (jobless citizens [among others] flocked to the cities, especially to Rome, where they created a constant fear of rebellion). To help calm them, "bread and circuses" were enacted" Most of the "jobs" in ancient Rome were done by slaves, so it's a poor analogy if you're making comparisons with the modern USA. The bread & circuses thing was really just pork-barrel politics, it wasn't a welfare state. I'd say that the major weakness that eventually brought down the Roman Empire, assuming it wasn't just old age, was simply that they weren't a particularly inventive people. All of the technology we associate with the Romans was copied from the Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, and the various places they conquered. Their skills were military, logistic, administrative, but unlike the Greeks, they really weren't into research into new ideas (there was the arch though -- give them that). This lack of ideas, of science, might well have been the ultimate cause of their downfall (mind you, the Holy Roman Empire, as opposed to the military empire, survived through to the 19th century, just).