If ancient Rome had the Internet...

-- The destruction of Pompeii in 79AD is the most viewed video at YouTube. The first comment is..."OMG so cool! Volcanos ROCK!"

-- Attila the Hun has his own MySpace page. Nobody ever rejects his "invite a friend" emails.

-- The soothsayer's "Ides of March" email fails to get Caesar's proper attention as it's inadvertently filtered into his junk folder.

-- But at least Caesar's "Et tu Brute?" comment is available as a free ringtone download.

-- The domain gladiator.rome sells for the record sum of 1,000,000 denarii.

-- "Naked Cleopatra" is the top search term on Google.

-- Unfortunately, the Queen of Egypt dies an early death after misunderstanding IT's call to embrace an ASP solution.

-- Hannibal blogs his way across the Alps with posts like, "Whoops, lost another elephant today."

-- But he runs out of money when his PPC budget is plundered by an iberian click scam organized by Publius Cornelius Scipio.

-- Tiber.com opens, initially selling scrolls and tablets before expanding to include togas, pottery, and do-it-yourself mosaic kits.

-- Websites like handsome-literate-male-british-slave.com pollute the search listings thanks to generous commissions at the slaves.co.rome affiliate program.

-- Roman programmers moan about projects outsourced to cheap coders in Mesopotamia.

-- The Colosseum is renamed the eBay Colosseum, with free wireless hotspots outside the lark's tongue restaurant.

-- The volume of spam collapses when the penalty for not providing a working opt-out mechanism becomes equal billing with the lions at the eBay Colosseum.

-- But we still get emails featuring Brunhilda, the lonely Visigoth, and hot deals on cheap peacock livers from Gaul.

-- Nobody invents a spam filter good enough for the House of the Vestals.

-- Classical geeks wear t-shirts proclaiming, "there's no place like CXXVII.0.0.I" (bonus points if you get that one)

-- Finally, Rome burns to the ground while Emperor Nero battles online with Hakkar the Soulflayer in World of Warcraft.


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