Staring an advanced civilization straight in the face, the Roman dismissed it as either barbarism or decadence.

WSJ: Still Under Cleopatra's Spell

And what times we are living in, with the Large Hadron Collider on the one hand, and on the other, Nick Bostrom's very logical argument that we're actually living in a simulation operated by an advanced future civilization.

BBC: How sci-fi moves with the times