Posted on 10/03/2014 5:10:05 PM PDT by Vinylly
Penguin Books has most of the contemporary historians
Thank you, we are familiar with Penguin Books.
If you were a poor Roman you got grain from the state and could live on that.
If you were a rich Roman you could retreat to your estate and meet your needs with what your slaves produced.
So defense and other public responsibilities were left in the hands of foreigners who weren't always loyal to the empire.
That page is a little interesting, but there’s no single reason or parallel between the US and the Roman Empire found there.
Rome’s first known significant conquest was Ostia, in 620 BC.
The Roman Empire was divided into four parts by Diocletian in 293 AD, and other than some de facto supreme rulers (like Constantine), the east and west halves remained politically separate until the fall of Rome in 410 AD.
The eastern half, nowadays usually called the Byzantine Empire instead of Eastern Roman Empire, continued to thrive for quite some time, even as its territories shrank after the reign of Justinian (J had reconquered good-sized chunks of the lost western portions).
The Byzantine Empire is generally regarded as having ended with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
That’s a nice little run of 2,073 years, rather than the usual 200, or somewhat more reasonable 400 years, given for the natural duration of any country.
Thanks, and well said!
/bingo
Pompey was given the title, basically an honorarium, as were others before and after. The Roman republic, such as it was, didn’t evolve into a monarchy until the 3rd century.
The office created for/by Augustus was merely an evolution of the Roman system, which had long before begun to need an executive branch. The three dozen or so families of landed gentry who had been inheriting things, and running things for centuries for their own benefit, fought tooth and nail against reforms of any kind, continuing to try to enrich themselves through imperial expansion, confiscation, and slavery.
Exactly, very much an oligarchy. As the population under management grew, the Senate continued to be a family affair, and the tribal assembly very much a place where Hobson’s Choices were made.
Thanks for the further explanation. I agree with the explanation, if I accept certain premises and assumptions, but I still disagree with the premise and assumptions. It’s like saying that a healthy dose of Christianity in the US would further, rather than help hold back, the consequences of our Economic, Moral, Spending, Over Reach ... ‘sins’ ... because we’d be LESS likely to defend the borders or prosecute a war on ISIS with actual resolve.
I’m not a Christian apologist by any means, but I think it’s a moronic argument to actual make, even if the logic holds up if one’s already accepted a number of bogus assumptions.
So ... my issue is not with you ... or the internal coherence of the argument, rather ... the context in which the the argument would have to exist in order to be anything but a hypothesis whose form holds up only as long as one doesn’t note that it’s appearance requires an absolute suspension of context. Like saying ‘a section of air shaped like a deer is a deer’ ... which is fine, except that when you observe that section in the context of the air around it, it disappears without a trace.
Something like that :-)
Yep - went to Pompeii myself.
Down in the San Vito/Brindisi area, there were many reminders of the war - pock-marks from gun fire on old churches, craters in the coral beds along the coast (made for some beautiful snorkeling), and some of the art work in the churches is amazing. I remember one church, standing isolated from anything else and on the way to the Brindisi airport, had restoration work being done. They were cleaning the whitewash from the walls, one square centimeter at a time) to reveal the artwork underneath. I was told that the Nazis would deface any artwork they came across so the folks started covering it up - mixing soot and ashes with the whitewash to make it look old and dirty and painting over the walls of the buildings to hide the art. Much beauty up and down the country - also drove the Amalfi highway from Naples to Sorrento; requires full attention, but a beautiful drive.
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