Ah, yes. Quite true, it didn't. There are many parallels to history that don't bode well for us as it is.
Constitutio Antoniniana (aka Rome legalizes all non-citizens)
The Roman Jurist Ulpian in his work Digest stated ‘All persons throughout the Roman world were made Roman citizens by an edict of the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla’.
The context of the decree is still subject to dicussion. According to Cassius Dio the reasons Caracalla passed this law were mainly to increase the number of people available to tax. In the words of Cassius Dio: “This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, inasmuch as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes.”[2] It should, however, be noted that Cassius Dio generally saw Caracalla as a bad, contemptible emperor.
Another goal may have been to increase the number of men able to serve in the legions, as only full citizens could serve as legionaries in the Roman Army. Despite what might have been seen as easy benefits, the edict came at the cost to the auxiliaries, which primarily consisted of non-citizen men, and led to barbarization of the Roman military.
Additionally, before the edict, one of the main ways to acquire Roman citizenship was to enlist in the army, the completion of service in which would give the citizenship to the discharged soldier. The edict of 212 may have made enlistment in the army less attractive to most, hence the recruiting difficulties of the Roman army by the end of the 3rd century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutio_Antoniniana
The Han and the Roman empires both made it around 400 years. Nothing lasts forever. A few thousand years from now the USA will be another note in the history books.