Lessons from a fallen empire by James Carroll

Across the canyon walls of stripped brick and broken columns, connoisseurs of history declaim with spray paint, ''Stop the war on Iraq!" To the American eye, the word ''on" leaps out of that slogan. Wasn't it in Latin class that subtleties of the preposition first showed themselves? In the United States, George Bush's war is defined as ''in" Iraq, but in Rome, as always, the harsher truth of the imperial impulse is clear.