Characters and details come and go, but the plot remains.
There I was, doing some garden clean-up work yesterday morning, when I had a random thought about pigs walking backwards. Wait, what? Ah... something about a plot to destroy our degenerate modern society and bring about a glorious new era of civilization? One inspired by the Roman Empire?
Jog memory: The Grandeur That Was Rome. (Lest the link go dead, that was an episode of The Avengers - with Patrick MacNee, accept no live-action comic books* - from 1963.)
Yeah, kill off most of humanity with a plague or poison (the story is somewhat inconsistent on the point), provide a vaccine or antidote to the new ruling class and to such commoners as submit to the new order, and the grateful survivors will gladly embrace the rule of those who saved them from the pestilence the new rulers themselves created. An old story indeed, but who would believe such a thing?
Afterthought: Of course the Romans didn't defile themselves with tobacco; it's a New World plant. Considering the stuff the Romans did indulge in - otters' noses, anyone? - surely they would have embraced tobacco had it been available to them.
* Except for that one episode (watch, mirror-imaged).
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