Posted on 12/20/2005 6:04:54 AM PST by robowombat
An onager isn't weight-activated. It uses torsional energy stored in twisted ropes. Operationally speaking, I think onagers would have offered the advantages of being compact; easily assembled/disassembled/transported; and you don't need a whole lot of precision in their construction. Downsides would be that your motive power depends on ropes, which can be affected by things like rain, rot, and so on; plus which you're somewhat limited in the size of your projectiles.
The catapults in the last LOTR movie were trebuchets. They use conservation of momentum -- put heavy(!) weight on one side of a pivot, and a sling on the other side. Primary advantage is that you can throw very large things a long way -- further than any other sort of catapult. Downside is that they're large, hard to disassemble/transport, and require a great deal of precision in their construction. (There's a way cool NOVA special about trebuchets.)
I think I've seen the Nova special. I've been a trebuchet fan, but I've been using Onagers in the Rome: Total War game I've been obsessed with, along with Scorpions, Ballistas, and repeating ballistas.
Rome's military supremacy was based on their engineering, I think I'm safe in saying.
That and their troops -- very well-trained, well-conditioned, and extremely battle-hardened. The difference between Roman troops and their enemies is similar to the differences between our troops and those of the salamikazes.
Let me throw my two cents in...Rome fell primarily, because of 3 factors. The 1st was social: Families didn't want to send their "boys" off to war to defend Rome; and the soldiers rather fight for who paid them most, rather than their homeland.
The 2nd was political: Too many leaders were corrupt and interested in their own political gain/money/power instead of their countries.
The 3rd was economic: The barbarians (Huns, etc.) were disrupting trade in the empire...this led to less trade...etc. (I'm oversimplifying it b/c of time)
The Final Nail in the Coffin was Barbarian attacks. The barbarians had the will, not the might. The Romans had the might but not the will.
Sound familiar?
Just Maybe The LESSONS of History are worth something.
Nicely summarized.
There is no doubt too, that the Romans watered down the significance of Roman Citizenship by giving it to those who didn't value it.
So you keep saying.
That is all predicated on the ignorance the Left sows within our culture. Face to face, the Right's arguments always triumph, because they are based on reason rather than emotion. However, the power of emotions -- fear, self-righteousness, vanity -- exceeds the calm of reason. So what the Left lacks in clarity, it makes up in volume.
It's very easy to appeal to emotion; it's much harder to appeal to reason. That's why the Left finds its flimsy tenets so readily accepted, even though they seldom survive the first collision with reality.
Reality, then, is our friend. But the presentation of that reality is colored by the distortions of the Left.
We agree on the basic effects, even if we disagree on the ultimate causes behind those effects -- and because it's a feedback loop, there's room for both of us to be right.
Not to mention those who valued it only for its benefits, which the could enjoy without the burden of having to understand and defend the roots of those benefits.
The years where so much damage was done was right about the 60s and early - mid 70s. People were so SELFISH, so into "its all about me" (gee, who can we name who epitomizes that phrase?) and I remember as a teenager told by others to "NOT get involved". Well guess what, not getting involved, not being a good citizen and helping your community, your city, your country leaves a gap and the liberals tried to fill it all up. Now, we seem to be waking up a bit, but so much damage was done (laws enacted to protect the wrong, not the victims) that we have to work harder just to make any progress at all.
A lot of people who bring up the topic are talking more about the present than about Roman days. Many of them are looking for some kind of answer or law to explain why societies decline and fall. Some of what they come up with is wrong or has more to do with our own condition than with anything that happened in Rome.
But the "other side" that doesn't want to discuss the question makes similar mistakes: a Boston Globe editorial of a few years back said that it had been proven that lead in Roman crockery brought the empire down, so all talk of decadence was pointless. I hope we can all agree that that's not an especially useful attitude.
Rufus Fears teaches at Oklahoma University, and has recorded lecture series for the Teaching Company. They're interesting and useful, and Fears is certainly conservative, but he's more of a preacher or popularizer than a detail man. Anyone who wants to know more about Greece or Rome, or Winston Churchill or the history of freedom might look into his lectures, though they're certainly not the last word about such topics.
The problem with discussions about why empires rise and fall is that objective and subjective factors are so entwined. Bring in morality and things get yet more complicated. The British empire faced serious anti-imperial sentiment in the 20th century. But the objective fact of two world wars probably did as much to doom the empire as anything else. And if we ask ourselves whether the empire was a good or a bad thing at this or that point in history we get into quite a discussion.
There was a speech that Ronald Reagan gave when he was Gov. about the similarities between the fall of Rome and social trends in the USA. What he pointed to for the fall of Roman unwillingness of young, privileged (liberal) Romans to enter the military and defend Rome, abandonment of traditional morality (acceptance of homosexuality and philosophies of the Cynics, etc.) He attributed part of the downfall to the Romans "outsourcing" their defense to foreigners instead of shouldering the burdens themselves. Eventually it became so expensive to pay others to defend the Empire that taxes became burdensome.
This speech pointed out that Rome enjoyed a kind of "pioneer heritage" of a sort, rose to its zenith, and then declined in its third century. Reagan pointed to the social decay in the US and declared that it threatened to hollow out our ability to protect freedom.
I used to have the speech in hardcopy years ago, but I've since lost it. I've searched online for it a couple of times, but I haven't found it yet. If anyone else has it, it would be a pertinent addition to this thread.
Is history about to repeat itself with the ongoing assault on our republic and the Constitution?
However,it is noteworthy that archeologist have found considerable amounts of lead in the drinking utensils of the Romans. I seem to also remember hearing that syphillis and the subsequent madness that follows would have impacted their fate as well.
I guess if the Bird Flue kills us all, future historians will make some correlation between the great American Empire and the Roman Empire on the basis of disease.
To me one of the grand lessons of history is this: No one likes to have their own tactics used against them.
Snip...Scipio's critics would argue that he did not so much outwit Hannibal, as merely copy his tactics in extending the line of battle and allow for his superior troops to do the damage.
They already had tactics. They got reformed and refined.
Snip...Had Cannae exposed Roman tactics as primitive, then Scipio's reforms had turned his army into a fighting machine which could match even commanders as great as Hannibal.
The Roman army had mastered tactics and now could begin with its near unstoppable conquest of the civilized world.
I have never met Professor Fears, but once heard him speak at a conference.
But not with Rome. If there is a lesson to be learned there it is that an autocracy with a sufficient army can prevail over fragmented democracies as Rome did and Alexander before them. Liberal democracies do, actually, make for neighbors as decent as any other and for the same reasons - if you have a strong government, a competent army, and the determination to independence, they'll be fine. If not, not. "Good fences make for good neighbors."
Nor is the Middle East necessarily a quagmire - God, how I have grown to hate that word! - or the "graveyard of empires" as Fear asserts. It is their birthplace as well - the Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chaldean, Medean, Persian, Parthian, Sassanid, Hittite, Hurrian, Lydian, just off the top of my head. Ptolemy enthroned a new Pharoah from there. Rome very wisely drew a boundary there considering it had an army of less than half a million men for an empire of the span Fears describes. That isn't simply efficiency, it's a wonder for the ages.
But one must be very careful not to draw too much of an analogy between Rome and the United States - for one thing, Rome's republic was gone in reality well before Caesar, or even Marius and Sulla, and its Augustan government of a Primus Inter Pares was nothing other than a monarchy with all the attendant problems of succession. It was the latter that crippled Rome time and again as her empire entered a renewed age of migratory peoples who finally remapped Europe and the Middle East despite her best efforts at resistance. Moreover, Rome was never an elective republic prior to that by modern standards at all, but an oligarchy.
There is one lesson I'm contemplating at the moment, however, and it is that a high culture such as Rome that is dependent on external food supplies and incapable of reproducing itself was swamped by the influx of hungry, fecund peoples, and that this lesson appears to be repeating itself with respect to Europe and threatens to with respect to the United States as well (albeit to a decidedly lesser degree, panic over immigration despite). That's worth thinking about. Rome didn't deal with it very well.
I agree with the first few posters: the man is an idiot. An educated idiot, but an idiot none the same.
All the facts he musters are true, but the conclusions he draws are nonsense.
The strength of Rome happened before the Caesars, back when the succession of rulers was clear, and followed by all.
When Julius crossed the Rubicon, and destroyed the process of regular succession, it began the decline and fall of the Roman empire.
The strength of America is the rock solid rules for succession, leaving no doubt who's in charge.
Added to that is a constitutional government, with a bill of rights establishing and enumerating the rights of the government and the people. This document is defended by the courts, and ultimately by the people.
The government of the US is unique.
He doesn't see that.
I think you have stated most clearly what the truth of the matter is. Others on the thread have said that it is pointless to look at history and compare societies, because of changes in technology. But human beings have exactly the same inherent weaknesses today as they had 6000 years ago. The results of those weaknesses may be mitigated, delayed, or accelerated by technology, but the results will be the same if human nature expresses itself the same.
So, IMHO we can indeed look to history to seek warnings about the state of our civilization. I have grave doubts we will actually do anything about what we learn.
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.