[lbryce]

No comments are to be made only until sunkenciv takes over this post. Just kidding.

[panzerkamphwageneinz]

CE and BCE?

What exactly determine the ERA? What is the dividing line between Current Era and Before Current Era?

YOU GUESSED IT= THE DEATH OF CHRIST

So why not dispense with this bullshit and call it what it really is? BC and AD?

[Tzimisce]

Unlike the Romans, we can read our history and learn from it.

But that would be racist....

[ExSES]

It has long been popular to compare the decline of the Roman Empire to our own state of affairs. Obviously (as pointed out in the article) we find little in the way of solutions to today's problems when compared to those of Rome but, many of the problems themselves!

Sadly, it appears that we are doomed to repeat the travails of the past regardless of whether we study history?

[VanDeKoik]

She has some really good documentries on YouTube about the Roman Empire. I especially liked the one about Pompeii.

[Always A Marine]

An interesting and very worthwhile read. Like others, I am both annoyed and amused by the tortured use of BCE/CE when the yet unspoken benchmark of history remains the birth of Christ. Man’s exaltation of Self only emphasizes the self-evident omnipotence of God.

[zzwhale]

human nature has NOT CHANGED

[Rinnwald]

...the Romans seem versions of ourselves. But then there’s the ... babies on rubbish heaps.

Really?

That doesn't seem like a distinguishing feature.

[Paddyboy]

Romans like Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar knew exactly how to handle barbarian invasions. Marius organized a peoples army and annihilated the Germanic hordes and Caesar just went to Gaul and committed a genocide of about 2 million people.

[Cincinatus]

Roman conquest undoubtedly was vicious. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul has not unfairly been compared to genocide, and was criticised by some Romans at the time in those terms. One of Caesar’s political rivals even suggested that he should be put on trial for war crimes, with the jury made up of the tribesmen he had conquered. But Rome expanded into a world not of communities living at peace with one another, but one of endemic violence, rival power bases backed up by military force (there was not really any alternative backing) and mini empires. Most of Rome’s enemies were as militaristic as the Romans, and, in our terms, as sadistic.

After expending 4500 words carefully explaining why we are NOT like the Romans and do not live in their world, Mary Beard proves exactly the opposite.

It's a cruel world, filled with evil and few stand for good. We do. And they hate us for it.