A friend and I were talking this weekend and had a thought.

Who decides which past empires are good, and which are bad based on the same acts.

Example, a (relative) few Nazi's killed 11 million outright. = Bad.

Pol Pot and his men kill 2(?) million. = Bad.

Mongols, kill millions = Bad.

Huns, kill a very large number. = Bad

There are many more, but you get the point.

British kill hundreds of thousands  in the Boar wars = Good.

Romans kill millions. = Good

Greeks kill a whole bunch. = good.

All of these groups engaged in wholsale slaughter of civilians through the use of their military power in building or maintaining empires.

So who decides who is good, and who is bad?  Thoughts, ideas.

Both valid points.  Atencio, your line of thought was in line with what I thought.  We consider them "clasical" or democratic, or progressive, and we like to think the same about ourselves, there fore we choose them as good, because we think they are like us.

I never had the thought that we do trace our roots to those empires directly.

I always thought that no one ever took notice that the Romans took over the known world, killing millions, and they are admired.  The Germans took most of Europe, killing millions, and they are hated.
I always thought this little side note was lacking from history books.