Posted on 08/27/2010 8:09:39 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Joe...All aspects should be preserved...good and bad.
Because I was commenting on one area does not mean that I was discounting what the Empire has contributed to mankind. It’s the same with our own country; unagruably the greatest nation founded in the history of mankind...however, there is evil that has permeated every facet of our society, but that does not erase what contributions this Nation has made to the world.
Regarding learning how to fight like gladiators...well...each person has to examine why they feel that that is ‘fun’. It was a hellish, brutal sport that ended in a gruesome death for one of the participants. And although thousands of years have passed since that time, the deaths of those men are no less gruesome. Should there also be a school on how to gas people/jews...because, well that’s fun? Sounds ridiculous maybe but when we attribute fun to something so brutal as this is, it is diminishing what really happened. Perhaps the participants don’t even recognize what the gladiators represented...I don’t know.
Anyway, that is what struck me as apalling. I’m sorry...I wasn’t advocating rewriting history or trying to be ‘above’ anyone. I just can’t understand how anyone would think learning about something that was so gruesome and brutal, could be fun.
I'm not denying that gladitorial combat was gruesome...and where the competitors were unwilling participants it was no less vile than any form of slavery...yet, like today's NFL, MMA or pro-Wrestling, there were also willing participants who gained great acclaim and celebrity through it...which I suppose is as much a commentary on the society as it is the voluntary participants. What I was responding to was your outright dismisal (if not ridicule) of the gladiator lessons and the participants. I personally would think it a fascinating way of learning and participating in history, and would look at much like when I was given the opportunity to fire a Union 12 lb. cannon at Chickamauga, or when a fencing student studies the techniques of Hans Talhoffer. That does not mean I have any desire to fire canister shot into a line of confederate soldiers, or yearn to flay an opponent with an epee, but to gain a conscious and real feel of how horrific such things would have been.
It's my belief that much of the very same moral decay our society is going through now is precisely because we have lost contact with our past, and keeping it alive and maintaining a conscious contact with our cultural forebears is critical in not repeating their mistakes, and improving upon their advancements.
Gladiatorial combat didn’t start out to the death, and in the higher ranks of the sport, even towards the end, rarely was.
If you think about it, it’d be stupid if most matches ended in death. They would rapidly run out of combatants.
Yeah, you have failed in your history.
The Roman emperors immediately post-Diocletian seem to have been either those who viewed Christianity favorably or who were actual Christians holding a ‘true belief in the Lord Jesus’. See the Nicene Creed and everything through Theodosius’ reign for proof.
In addition, the empire spent the next *thousand* years (off and on) defending Christianity, and in fact the last remnant of the empire (the Eastern part, aka the Byzantines) fell to the swords and cannon of Islamic Turks in the Siege and Fall of Constantinople in 1453 (in part) because the emperor refused to leave the church of Hagia Sofia for the Islamics to torch.
I would also suggest that you re-read the works of the Apostle Paul, a Roman who prior to conversion violently and cruelly persecuted the Christians. Specifically, Galatians 1:13-14, Philippians 3:6, and Acts 8:1-3.
Do you not consider him holy or Christian? Because his conversion was a parallel to what would eventually happen to the Roman Empire as a whole.
You’re about 5 hours too late to the party ... give it a rest.
Why, because you don’t know history? It’s never to late to pound it into someone else’s head.
The Holy Roman Empire was a medieval German creation, founded long after the Western Empire fell. The old saying was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
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