Posted on 08/24/2010 3:47:47 PM PDT by decimon
No matter how it happened, I’m sure it was somehow Bush’s fault.
>>> The USA fought and triumphed in WWII with 187 million citizens. Today we have over 300 million residents with a good percentage of those being illegal “mercenaries.”
History books are good things. I recommend them.
Good American gold bought many fighting allies that helped those 187 million Americans. It always has back even to the Indian wars and the Shores of Tripoli.
>>> 24 August 410: the date it all went wrong for Rome
I’ve always been of the school that the time it went wrong was when the Empire split into the western and eastern divisions. The economic and intellectual center of gravity shifted to the Eastern Empire, leaving the original Western Empire a hollow shell.
The History Channel looked at this. Compared the Roman soldier of Caeser’s times with that of 400 years later. No comparison. Caesar’s soldiers were heavily armored brutes, trained to ruthless efficiency and armed to the hilt. 400 years later they were conscripts from outside Rome, equipped with straw armor and joke swords. Kind of like what Obama is doing to our military now.
you forgot a couple of diseases that depopulated the country, from the smallpox epidemic that killed Marcus Aurelius that depopulated the entire Roman Empire to the introduction of malaria into the swamps near Rome, that made women have sponatenous abortions and their children die at an early age.
Indeed, Alairic died of one of these diseases shortly after he sacked Rome.
Without the depopulation, Rome might have gone on for a couple more centuries...and because of the depopulation, they welcomed the Barbarians, who didn’t get hit as badly, because their smaller villages for cattle raising (rather than city dwelling) made the disease hit them less severely.
And america depopulating with abortion and the pill. Our invaders are not.
Even one more similarity. Thanks for reminding me.
Hey, thanks general. I’d forgotten about Cinna. I guess the day I’m seeking is the date Sulla defeated the Marians. It was notable because that date could have been a turning point in reviving the republic, but it did not pan out that way. Roman culture had already declined too much. Has America’s? [shudder]
O/T: IIRC, the young Julius Caesar was chased into exile under Sulla’s dictatorship. Do you recall if that was the time Caesar was held by pirates? In my dim memory, I think it was.
Never mind. Caesar was taken captive in 75 BC, after his return from exile. There was an earlier capture (82?) by pirates, but it was minor and over quickly.
Anchor Babies!
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