You don't need to to "legitimize" the selection process. What you need are brave and honorable rulers...period.
The best goverment is a "Good Caesar". The worst government is a "Bad Caesar".
It's that simple.
Caesar Augustus
Posted on 07/16/2007 5:34:07 PM PDT by blam
At the risk of hijacking the thread, mostly Saginaw, which is falling faster than Rome. (See how I steered that right back onto the track?)
I believe the Latin Church Father, Augustine, gave his explanation in his tome “The City Of God”. That’s at least one place to look, as well as Edward Gibbon’s “Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire”
And here, if nowhere else, the author reveals his tedious and banal message.
The fact is that Rome never solved the critical problem of the succession. As early as 69 AD there were multiple "caesars" contending and fighting internecine battles for the seat of empire. The gathering of external forces was real, as Hadrian, famous for his English wall, had to relinquish Trajan's eastern conquests in the face of powerful Persian forces. Marcus Aurelius faced hordes of Germans pouring across the Danube, the Alps and into Italy itself by 180. By the year 193 Rome again saw a contest of four emperors, including one based in Gaul-- and by 238 there began a period of "military anarchy" in which rulers rose and fell like the tides, all the while foreign forces were gathering strength.
In spite of all, Rome regrouped and in the later 200's consolidated and restored some territorial integrity and defensible boundaries on a reduced scale. The foreign forces were formidable in size, not mere tribes of roving outlanders--in 268 AD the emperor Gallienus won a victory over the Goths, in present-day Balkans, where 50,000 enemy were slain.
Rome didn't create these forces. They came from the foggy swamps and endless forests of northern Europe and the vastness of the steppes of the Eurasian landmass.
The point is, Rome didn't just "collapse." Over a period of at least 400 years it stumbled, fell, regained its footing, was knocked down and got up again, and was actually sacked more than once before it gave up the ghost as the capital of the known world in 476.
Throughout, its strength was vitiated by the absence of any coherent, agreed upon means of selecting and legitimizing its rulers, a crippling internal weakness when fending off the weight of the rest of the world on its borders.
utter nonsense/ read the history.
you heard wrong. lead poisoning is a 5 second tabloid explanation for a 500 year history.
Western powers - mainly the Europeans - today bear little resemblance to the Christian infused nature of Byzantium.
As for Russia—its identity was almost destroyed by the Bolsheviks—most of whom were not even Russian!...a foreign ideology that crept in and almost destroyed Russian Orthodox Identity. It did not however.
Marxism lost. Russia and Russian Orthodoxy lives on.
If you read Gibbons I don’t know how you missed the more than lengthy hsitory of Constatinople from its founding to its fall, or of Justinian’s temporary recapture of Italy, or of the development of the East West Church schism and the subsequent efforts to mend it. Or for that matter the extensive history of Christianity, which Gibbons never tried to deny.
Nice summary.
The Romans had high levels of lead in their pottery. This was a particularly bad problem in wine vessels.
Teddy Roosevelt on the Fall of the Republic
That bears repeating.
Too many people on FR genuflect to the words in the Constitution , which are fine words, but fail to grasp that liberals laugh at our devotion to those solemn words and use them against us as a weapon.
Justice Scalia intimated as much when in a debate with Justice Breyer he said: "words mean something".
“Marxism lost”
I’m not sure that many here would agree with you. You are a Russophile that is blind to the very unchristian direction that Putin is taking the country.
They also sweetened their wine with lead oxide.
You don't need to to "legitimize" the selection process. What you need are brave and honorable rulers...period.
The best goverment is a "Good Caesar". The worst government is a "Bad Caesar".
It's that simple.
Caesar Augustus
Rome fell because of...
1) decadence of ruling class
2) slavery
3) outsourcing of jobs, primarily military
4) multiculturalism
5) decaying moral character of the average citizen
Rome didn't fall, it evolved. That statement is true whether you regard "Rome" as the city, the culture, or the empire. As to the empire, it has already been pointed out that its locus of power shifted to Constantinople in 330 AD and was maintained more or less for another 1100 years. That was, after all, Gibbon's main theme, and one reason he began the "Decline" of Rome a mere 200 years before the fall of the Western empire.
I may have misspoken in using the word "culture" because the Roman empire consisted of many of those, from its beginnings as an admixture of Etruscan and Greek to its end as a blend of Greek, Asian Minor, and medieval European cultures prior to its fall. (It nearly made it to the Renaissance and it is arguable but a different topic altogether what role the fall of Constantinople to the Turks had to energize the Renaissance).
If I might point out one revealing pair of historical points, it is the period between the accession of Theodosius, the last emperor of the combined empire, and Theodoric, the Gothic king who considered himself a Roman. The commonality is the "Theo" - they were both Christians. That is, and Gibbon pointed this out, the signal characteristic of the transition of Roman culture at that point in history, the triumph of a theological cultural force that was visible in pagan Rome but so minor as to be a source of amusement. One could, in Theodosius's day, in a single Roman street, still pass by temples to Jupiter, Mithra, Osiris, and Bacchus, each with its little clutch of followers. That wasn't true by the time Theodoric came around - what "diversity" of religion that was then vigorously debated was between Christian sects such as Arian, Nestorian, Gnostic, and what later came to be termed Catholic. That is a huge change in the overall culture, not a change in diversity at all but a change in the poles of that diversity, and the later Schism between Eastern and Western churches was emblematic of the schism between the two seats of empire.
So what really happened to "Rome" the empire? Well, its manors kept by wealthy families became feudal strongholds kept by wealthy families, who held firm for a long time before the first Kings happened along some four centuries later. The transition of economies to which the author refers here are easily seen in the pottery, and specifically how much of it was for local storage use and how much of it was for export. The darkest thing about the "Dark Ages" was this temporary cessation of international economics and the pottery shows it. But all along they were still storing oil and grain and wine for the feudal lords just as they had before Caesar.
Rome is, to a very real degree, still with us, which is probably why articles as this draw such attention. The struggle for stability during the succession of government was never really solved until representative government came along - it appears to be a fundamental weakness of monarchy, not simply of the Roman interpretation of that post-Sulla or the bloody fights among the Chinese or the Persian royalty or even the Arab theocrats to follow, but the very European monarchies who trace their lineages (more or less legitimately) to Rome herself. If we, their Western heirs, have achieved a more or less orderly means of succession of government then perhaps we are not altogether unworthy of their legacy. Just my $0.02.
As long as it didn't affect the lead in their pencils....I don't see a problem. 8>)
LOL! That’s exactly what it did do.
interesting reply.
thanks.
The Romans were fat, dumb, and happy as long as their leaders kept them fed (welfare) and entertained. This produced a mind numbing affect that rendered them wussies and unable/unwilling to defend against their enemies. An uncanny resemblance to 21st Century America
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