I was at the vomitorium the other day with my esteemed colleagues of the Centralae Faction of the Senate, when the inevitable unfortunate reality of the Little Booted Emperor reared its ugly head in discussion. Most of the company was aghast of course that the Blonde Bumbler would declare his horse a member of our esteemed institution. I recommended offering a compromise: That we accept the top half of a horse instead, rather than the entire thing. This was met with sage approval and the counter-proposal will go out at our next assembly.

The fact that our august institution must be so debased as to humor Emperor Caligula’s merest and most erratic whims goes far further than this, however. Did you hear he is planning to declare war upon Neptune and the very sea itself? Madness! Such an action is not a real war, and a real war is what we need right now to remind people of the power of our ancient Roman institutions. As well as their continuing relevance in a world beset by peril.

Have the people forgotten World Punic War II? When the forces of the underworld strove to conquer the world and were only repelled by the forces of Jupiter’s light? Have they forgotten when Hannibal was reincarnated to challenge Roman law again in the forms of Mithradates VI, Philip V, Amanirenas, Arminius, and Boudica? In each of these battles we reaffirmed that the Pax Romana was the only way of being; a true and Platonic path towards an end of history. Everything was going just fine until Little Boots came along and singlehandedly ruined everything.

If we do not confront the Parthian King Gotarzes II NOW all of this will be in peril. The very legitimacy of international Roman Law is on the line in Arabia Petraea. It was Parthia, after all, that installed Caligula as their puppet ruler, enabling them to spread an anti-Roman coalition to Nubia, Armenia, and Dacia united under one principle: their hatred for our laws and freedoms. This Axis of Zoroastrianism now plots to extinguish our way of life once and for all. They plot to conquer the entire world, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Kingdom of Punt. All will thus bend the knee to Persian tyranny.

But the solution is clear: the mobilization of 50,000 legions driving into Mesopotamia will quickly topple the regime and restore our interrupted destiny, finally bringing about the Platonic unity which has been so rudely interrupted by the current embarrassment on the throne. It will be of no consequence to restructure Parthia into a law-loving republic where the name Socrates is on the lips of every upstanding citizen in lieu of the name of Zoroaster. Eternal peace will then reign for both of our people, as the sensible precept administrators we refer to as the Yglesiaii assure us.

Otherwise there will only be more Caligulas, forever, as the laws of our institutions are sacrificed in another modern Battle of Cannae. Tell me Citizens, are you with the New Hannibal, or are you with Scipio? The moral arc of the timeless forms is with us if we just pick up the gladius once more.

Titus Aenus Probusfistus is a Senator, chairman of the Humane Slavery Society, and Senior Citizen at the Anti-Cincinnatus Foundation.