Posted on 12/23/2008 11:41:49 AM PST by briarbey b
It's a fun read (if you get a good translation) and by itself shows that an awful lot of what people think is true about the Middle Ages is false: it's a history full of allusions to both Scripture and classical Greco-Roman mythology, written by a woman, and showing the manifest self-understanding of the Empire centered at Constantinople as the Roman Empire (as under the reforms of Diocletian, the Emperor is title both Emperor and Augustus, and 'sub-emperors' are title Caesars, Comnena refers to its citizens as "Romans" even though they all spoke Greek).
Beyond that, the most accessible thing are the writings of Fr. John Romanides and his followers. Most of them are available on the website www.romanity.org. By and large, this is the only modern source to take the approach of not making a distinction between 'Roman' and 'Byzantine'. He has an odd agenda, in some ways the complete reverse of Gibbon's, to reclaim the 'glories of Rome' for what he regards as its living continuation: the Orthodox Church. (There is an odd sense in which this last idosycratic view, if not strictly true, at least supportable: Orthodox canon law draws heavily on Roman civil law, notably the Novellae of Justinian, and the Orthodox Church is home to one institution that still functions under an Imperial charter: Mount Athos.)
We should have a few more good centuries since we have had only one Civil War and have haven’t yet conquered our neighbors except culturally.
Of course, limiting the power of the dependent class will become even more critical. Caesar rode it to power becoming so powerful a threat to the status quo that its defenders killed him and unleased the wars resulting in the empire.
The institutionalization of the payoff to the lumpenproletariat ate away the vitals of the City morally and economically. Only by exploiting the rest of the world could the loot be raised while becoming a permanent interest for war and expansion.
In Rome probably a majority of the citizens were on the dole and the whole society was supported by slavery. We are not in that situation so there is a limit at which government can extract and redistribute. As far as federal taxes go the number oscillates around 19-20% over the last century.
BTTT
bttt
Adversity employs great talents; prosperity renders them useless and carries the inept, the corrupted wealthy and the wicked to the top
May they bear in mind that virtue often contains the seeds of tyranny
May they bear in mind that it is neither gold nor even a multitude of arms that sustains a state but its morals
May each of them keep in his house, in a corner of this field, next to his workbench, next to his plow, his gun, his sword, and his bayonet
May they all be soldiers
May they bear in mind that in circumstances where deliberation is possible, the advice of old men is good but that in moments of crisis youth is generally better informed that its elders
Denis Diderot
Apostrophe to the Insurgents, 1782
Amazing - very insightful... Thanks for sharing Aunt B.
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