[infowarrior]

Well the causes of Rome's fall is one of the great puzzles of history -- it's always fun to kick it around for while, but I am not about to argue with Gibbon about it at this time (he was wrong, of course.)

I was always less interested in Rome's fall, than I was in Rome's origins, myself. Were they, indeed as depicted by Virgil, descendants of refugees from the fall of Ilium (Troy), to the Achaeans, or not? Many people long thought Homer (if Homer was a single individual and not a composite of several) to have been completely in error of the existence of Ilium/Troy, until Schliemann, following clues in Homer's verses, actually found the city's ruins. Could Virgil have had a definite knowledge now lost to us?

the infowarrior

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I tend to think that Rome started as a Latin city, located in the right place to gain the most from the Etruscan culture, while retaining the greater military seriousness of the Latins. And they were lucky!