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Over the holiday break, I’ve been reading the excellent book SPQR by Mary Beard, which surveys the history of ancient Rome. So that was subject was on my mind when I visited Arlington National Cemetery this past weekend, and I was struck by just how similar we remain to our forbears thousands of years dead. The architecture, the pageantry, and the pathos of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and its eternal guardianship would have fit right in with the trappings of Roman civilization — in ways resolutely intentional and uncomfortably not.
