They figured it out — it was every man for himself. No problem. ;’)
And the Roman Empire *did* last from at least as far back as 335 BC (occupation/colonization of Ostia, and Ostia probably wasn’t Rome’s first conquest) and the generally accepted Fall of Rome was 476 AD, 811 years; the city of Rome goes back some centuries before 335 BC, and the eastern division of the empire (which under Justinian reconquered Italy and a good bit of northern Africa, plus parts of the Balkans not under Byzantine control) didn’t come finally to an end until 1453 — giving us a 1700 year span of Roman rule. From the late “republic” period during which the city-state of Rome marched on all of Italy, grabbed Spain, entered the Balkans, conquered the Alexandrian successor states in Greece-Macedonia and Egypt, that’s still over 1500 years. :’) Rome had it goin’ on.