X-XXIII-CDLXXV

Josephus
Adviser to the Emperor,
Holy Roman Empire

Romulus Augustulus
Emperor,
Holy Roman Empire

Pax Tecum!

Dear Romulus,

My great Emperor, I desire to write this letter to give my advice to you on how we will rise again
from our past stumbles against the Visigoths’ revolt victory at Adrianople in 378. This has led to
their ransack of Rome in 410. The Vandals have also found their ways on how to beat us. Before
we lost everything, kindly heed my advice.

I want you to understand the reasons why we became weak. If we only get to address these roots
that resulted in vulnerabilities, we would be able to salvage the Holy Roman Empire. Here are
some of my observations and theories: Our Military virtues are weakened by our religion’s
strong emphasis on the Kingdom of God. Then, our traditional Roman values declined because
of prominence of the non-Italians in the Empire. I also observed that the mental processes of our
people have declined; in most of the research I commissioned, I found out that there is lead
poisoning that are we got from our water pipes and cups. Moreover, the plague which wiped 10
percent of our population has even made our status worst. Furthermore, we failed to develop
better technologies that we could use in the battle. Lastly, we are politically unstable because we
failed to create a workable political system.

My Emperor, your name would be immortalized if you’ll be able to fix our internal problems,
and lift the people to victory against our enemies. As your adviser, I want you to ban
Christianity; this way, the military virtues that our soldiers used to develop would return to their
consciousness. Secondly, we should limit the prestige of the non-Italians by limiting their
population growth and asking large amounts of taxes from them. Then, we should ban everything
that contains lead. Lastly, our enemies have better technologies than ours. Let us imitate their
tools and create a better version.

As long as we breathe, hope is still on sight. Together, let find our ways to restore and preserve
the Holy Roman Empire.

Josephus