Most people know that a simple flu virus killed over 50 million people in 1918, almost a third of the population in Europe . To learn more about this virus, you can google the Influenza A virus. The search will show that it has "8 single (non-paired) RNA strands that code for 11 proteins." In layman's term, this means the virus has only 11 genes. In contrast, the host (human beings) who died has some 25,000 genes. So a virus too small to see under the most powerful light microscope, after the proper mutations, can kill a 170 pound man. Talk about "asymmetric" warfare!

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

 But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression - for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?