Posted on 05/20/2019 7:19:12 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Sometime around A.D. 60, in the age of Emperor Nero, a Roman court insider named Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical Latin novel, “The Satyricon,” about moral corruption in Imperial Rome. The novel’s general landscape was Rome’s transition from an agrarian republic to a globalized multicultural superpower.
The novel survives only in a series of extended fragments. But there are enough chapters for critics to agree that the high-living Petronius, nicknamed the “Judge of Elegance,” was a brilliant cynic. He often mocked the cultural consequences of the sudden and disruptive influx of money and strangers from elsewhere in the Mediterranean region into a once-traditional Roman society.
The novel plots the wandering odyssey of three lazy, overeducated, and mostly underemployed single young Greeks: Encolpius, Ascyltos, and Giton. They aimlessly mosey around southern Italy. They panhandle and mooch off the nouveau riche. They mock traditional Roman customs. The three and their friends live it up amid the culinary, cultural, and sexual excesses in the age of Nero.
Certain themes in “The Satyricon” are timeless and still resonate today.
The abrupt transition from a society of rural homesteaders into metropolitan coastal hubs had created two Romes. One world was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan network of traders, schemers, investors, academics, and deep-state imperial cronies. Their seaside corridors were not so much Roman as Mediterranean. And they saw themselves more as “citizens of the world” than as mere Roman citizens.
In the novel, vast, unprecedented wealth had produced license. On-the-make urbanites suck up and flatter the childless rich in hopes of being given estates rather than earning their own money.
The rich in turn exploit the young sexually and emotionally by offering them false hopes of landing an inheritance.
Petronius seems to mock the very world in which he indulged.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
Nice topic. I think I’ll read it. I think it all started from within-like everything else.
Marxists have had a lifegoal of tearing down the United States and it’s example of freedom.
The threat has been from a fifth column within our borders born and raised as Red Diaper Doper Babies.
Buttipegg wants to strike Thomas Jefferson down as a historial figure honored in America.
Madhair Halfwit said that the US Constitution isn’t a good model for nations looking to draft such a document.
Bernie Sanders has been pro-despot for 50 years and has been a leading Democrat presidential candidate for the last 2 electios.
Thank you for posting. Davis, as usual, is astute and verbose, but I always welcome his thoughts.
Those who fail to learn from history....
Thanks for posting.
We may prevail by lead poison of higher velocity.
If I can buy them back from that nice fellow at the E Ft Worth car wash.
BDH is always a good read
in brief:
“ Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (President) John Adams
Read Jeane Dixon’s book. She compared the fall of Rome to the fall of the USA in the ‘70s. She predicted JFK’s assassination. She died in 1997. I read the book in the ‘80s when I was in junior high. It was a fascinating read. She said 0bummer is a prelude to a coming disaster and between the years 2020 and 2037 will be the second coming. Who knows. It was an interesting read back then and much of what this article states, I read by her in ‘80s.
*ping of interest*
between the years 2020 and 2037 will be the second coming
bump for later
I am welcoming the final breakdown.
Its the only way we can truly clean house the way that its necessary to. we’ve got 40-50% of the people here that need to go, one way or another.
Many of the founding fathers were very likely familiar with the works of Petronius considering the end result which is our constitution.
VDH is such a gem, and his write ups are so educational.
Obama hired a roomful of anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists to help his campaign.
To help him win his campaign.
Not to help him govern.
To help him convince people to vote for him.
The greedy Democrat politicians use social scientists to help them gain access to the public treasuries so that they can loot them.
Obama and Hillary and their masters want money.
Bathhouse Barry would know all about this...
Sounds like she might have been onto something.
I often find myself thinking that President Trump is like one of those kings in the Old Testament, I forget which, but for a while there was a cycle, bad king, good king, Israel turns away from God, Israel turns back to God.
I feel like this is God giving us one last chance. Turn to Him, or ... it’s off to Nebuchadnezzar, tip the idol on your way home, he’ll be here all week.
So, while her predictions sound a bit out there, well, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Go figure.
Most of these articles and theories are BS.
Rome had divided the empire and was using mercenaries (read former enemies) and paying them to not fight. The thing is not how did Rome fall, but how did a city control such a vast empire for centuries, while pagan and immoral.
Since christianity was the official religion almost a hundred years before the fall, it can be posited that Rome was the most moral than at any time before it fell.
Lastly, in 69 AD Rome was still strong and expanding despite the “immorality” especially of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. So should we say the more less moral, the stronger the empire?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.