Should we draw parallels between Wagner, warlordism, and the Fall of Rome?

On Wednesday, it was announced that a plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner mercenary group, had crashed. 

While his death has still not been confirmed, it would be an unsurprising end for a man often labelled as Russia's most prominent warlord who had dared stage a mutiny against Vladimir Putin in the midst of the ongoing war against Ukraine. 

Earlier in July, Prigozhin shocked the Kremlin and the world after he captured Rostov-on-Don and staged a march on Moscow, and it wasn't long before his mutiny inspired commentators to draw parallels with episodes from Ancient Rome.

Direct comparisons between ancient and contemporary history rarely work, but they can be stimulating to think about. The so-called "Fall of Rome" in particular has proven to be a highly popular parallel in explaining major problems of our time. 

Rather than drawing explicit correlations, which might fray under scrutiny, it might be better to explain how "warlordism" contributed to the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West. 

Readers can then make up their own minds about whether the fate of the Wagner company bears any resemblance.

The term "warlord" is often used generically in ancient history which can lead to analytical confusion, as ancient sources did not use it. 

But it's not because they didn’t use the vocabulary that they did not recognise the phenomenon. The 5th-century historiographer Orosius, for instance, at one point drew up a catalogue of "usurpers and dissident commanders", the latter essentially equating to what we would see as warlords today.

Warlordism became a domain of political sciences after the collapse of China's Empire in the early 20th century. China entered its Junfa (軍閥) era, with former generals separating