“Empires only last 250 ye-ACK”
That number comes from the book “The Fate of Empires” by John Glubb and it’s a number he pulled out of his ass. There is no set date for when empires collapse, it’s not even an average date for when they collapse. The German Empire lasted 47 years, the Ottoman Empire lasted 623 years, the Aksumite Empire lasted 1110 years, etc.
The book itself is illogical and inconsistent since Glubbs constantly flips back and forth on whether the “collapse” of an empire means the end of that country’s status as a great power or the complete end of that entire civilization. It has odd definitions for what an empire even is since it groups all Hellenistic-era polities from Alexander’s empire to the Seleucid rump state in Syria as part of a single contiguous “Greek empire”. It also has nonsensical dates for when an empire collapsed since it claims the Spanish Empire ended in the 1700s (which anyone with a brain knows is nonsense, the Spanish hadn’t even lost their colonies in the Americas at this point).
The book itself is illogical and inconsistent since Glubbs constantly flips back and forth on whether the “collapse” of an empire means the end of that country’s status as a great power or the complete end of that entire civilization. It has odd definitions for what an empire even is since it groups all Hellenistic-era polities from Alexander’s empire to the Seleucid rump state in Syria as part of a single contiguous “Greek empire”. It also has nonsensical dates for when an empire collapsed since it claims the Spanish Empire ended in the 1700s (which anyone with a brain knows is nonsense, the Spanish hadn’t even lost their colonies in the Americas at this point).
