There are parallels that may be drawn between the 9/11/01 attacks and the sack of Rome in the year 410.  For hundreds of years, Rome was safe and secure, but that changed after the initial sack of Rome, which signaled the beginning of the end of “civilization” (i.e., the highly developed culture of the Greeks and Romans).  While Greco-Roman civilization ended gradually through many events, it did so inexorably.  Rome was not built in a day, nor did its civilization end with a single event.  It took many, many decades.  The ultimate outcome was that the West entered into an era that has often been called the “Dark Ages,” an era during which illiteracy increased dramatically within only a couple of generations.

The sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths under Alaric was only the beginning.  The pagans blamed that event on Christianity and its forsaking of Roman Gods, just as some militant Islamists of our own day have blamed America’s 9/11 tragedy on its non-allegiance to Islam and its acceptance of Trinitarian Christianity, which they consider to be the worship of three Gods and therefore blasphemous.  In answer to the charges of the ancient pagans, Augustine wrote City of God.

Everyone in the ancient world remembered where they were and what they were doing when they received word of the sack of Rome.  Jerome, for example, was sitting in his cave in Bethlehem writing his Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel.  While the sack of Rome was the beginning of the end of ancient civilization in the West, it was not the end of Christianity; just the opposite.  Rome progressively fell, but the Church carried on, and ended up having to govern the collapsing civilization.

The fall of Rome was a gradual process.  Rome was able to survive after 410, but it became very vulnerable when it was realized for the first time that Rome was not invincible.  For a time, it was the Christians who were able to prevent further attacks upon Rome.  In 452, Leo I persuaded Attila the Hun to spare the city of Rome and in 455 he induced Genseric the Vandal to spare Rome.   The empire as a political entity was gradually falling to the barbarians, but the Church remained.  Even after the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Western Christianity was able to thrive and bring order out of the chaos.

Until that time, Rome had been the bastion of power throughout the world.  In just the same way, it could be said that the Pentagon has been a citadel of power in today’s world.  It would seem to me that the United States, formerly considered invincible, could become a tempting target to its enemies if it is perceived that even the Pentagon itself cannot defend itself from enemy attacks.