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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy (Random House, 677 pp., $24.95)

The Greek historian Polybius, witnessing the burning of Carthage by his patron, Scipio Africanus, says that the Roman general “burst into tears, and stood long reflecting on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties, one and all, as it does every one of us men.” It came to Scipio’s mind that the fate of Rome’s great enemy would eventually befall Rome itself. With their pagan belief in historical cycles, both historian and general had no doubt that Rome, like “the once mighty empires of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and that of Macedonia,” would some day come to an end.

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Samuel T. Francis

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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy (Random House, 677 pp., $24.95)

The Greek historian Polybius, witnessing the burning of Carthage by his patron, Scipio Africanus, says that the Roman general “burst into tears, and stood long reflecting on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties, one and all, as it does every one of us men.” It came to Scipio’s mind that the fate of Rome’s great enemy would eventually befall Rome itself. With their pagan belief in historical cycles, both historian and general had no doubt that Rome, like “the once mighty empires of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and that of Macedonia,” would some day come to an end.