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What was Mark Antony like? A romantic and passionate guy or a complete idiot and lout? I was looking for some history on him but, much like when I was looking at reading up on Alexander, it seems history is divided into haters and fanboys. Alexander was either a lucky brat and megalomaniac or the greatest thing ever. I find the same thing when looking up stuff about Antony. The one book I was really interested in, by some fellow named Goldsworthy but the reviews and excerpts I've seen seem to paint him as a "Antony was just kind of a jerk with no real skill" camp. Maybe that's true but how can I know it's true. I can't find anything that isn't biased as all hell. It's kind why I hate history, in spite of loving history.
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May 11, 2016 21:46
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Thump! posted:Marc Antony was an extremely ambitious and shrewd guy who got spermjacked by Cleopatra and killed himself, if Rome the television series is anything to go by. I was thinking more of the Shakespeare play. I haven't seen the HBO series. But as one might expect, such dramatizations aren't always accurate so I was wondering how the man lived up to the myth. The myths are always cooler though. I might as well stick with that. People can agree on the myth, after all. Historical facts on the other hand seem dicey at best. Augustus did his best to prove "history is written by the victors." This seemed interesting and well-researched http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=Mark_Antony_-_The_Man_and_the_Myth
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May 11, 2016 23:12
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There was this one guy who's name started with a J that the Romans had executed. A lot of people seemed to find that pretty interesting. Other than that, the end of the Republic. I say this as someone who knows very, very little about Roman history and this is the part I'm most intrigued with. As in, it's the part that has me learning more about Roman history so I can understand it better.
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May 13, 2016 06:23
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Splode posted:Yeah I think this is the best bet. Tom Holland has been hugely successful with this method, and Ancient Rome is full of big rivalries and drama that teens love. On a similar note, why isn't Antony and Cleopatra famous like Romeo and Juliet? We should have had to read the former in high school, not the latter.
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May 13, 2016 09:03
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Dalael posted:Cleopatra and Mark Anthony's love story is better romance than 2 kids who spent their nights crying at each other's balcony and literally died because of their own stupidity. I mean, this was more or less my point. History is stereotypically seen as boring but if any point in history is gonna intrigue kids, its the end of the Roman Republic. There's murder, wars, sex, intrigue.... It's this kind of poo poo that makes Game of Thrones is popular only it actually happened. Well, sort of. Perhaps Antony and Cleopatra is a romanticization of all of that but who cares. Plus, it correlates nicely to history classes. Everyone learns about Rome in history. It gives added context to the play. By contrast, when the gently caress did Romeo and Juliet take place? What sort of historical context does it have?
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May 14, 2016 03:57
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sullat posted:R + J took place in Renaissance Italy, also full of murder, wars, sex and intrigue. Wasn't that the time with the evil Pope? I mean, the really evil Pope? Still, I never learned anything interesting about the Renaissance in school. It was all about paintings and art and humanism, not the murder and sex.
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May 14, 2016 04:16
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Was the Roman Empire a plunder economy? I was recently told by a few folks that the whole thing was a teetering pile of poo poo with generals regularly declaring themselves Emperor, a special guard that mostly just let the Emperor die by either taking bribes or running away and most of all an economy based on robbing people. But then some other folks got in my face when I said this all sounded horribly inefficient and were like "no, Rome lasted forever and was great and most of the plunder was done by the Republic." So...which is it? Was the Roman Empire efficient or no?
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Dec 27, 2018 06:43
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What are good books on the Roman Republic, either from ancient sources or contemporary? I like political philosophy and Rome comes up a lot there in certain sources. From Machiavelli and Rousseau to thinkers in our time like Quentin Skinner an Phillip Pettit, the Republic is invoked a lot and I don't know poo poo about it.
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Sep 13, 2019 14:06
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Kaal posted:Check out Mike Duncan's book "The Storm Before the Storm", or alternatively his podcast "The History of Rome" Awesome, his book is even on Audible. Thanks. What about Livy's History of Rome? Should mention I have Plutarch's Lives in its totality but I haven't listened to it yet.
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Sep 13, 2019 14:18
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So not sure if this is the right place to ask this. I've never had much interest in the Middle Ages. Dunno why, just didn't. Recently though I have begun the long, slow process of learning. The first and most shocking thing to me is that...it lasted 1000 years? Holy poo poo. I would imagine a lot of things changed in a millennium. I mean, even I know dimly of some of the big changes. But what I'm curious about is this - when we speak of medieval, when you think of the most generic fantasy ever, what "era" in that huge span of time is most represented? I don't think ti's the 5th Century.
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Oct 7, 2019 17:26
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euphronius posted:Horses getting injured doesn’t surprise me I'm an uncultured nerd (and also I find military history painfully boring. I like historical politics and society and stuff) so when in the fourth or fifth book of A Song of Ice and Fire when Stannis is marching his men to their death, I felt sorry for the poor horses instead of the men. The story wants us to feel bad about the starving humans but the horses were also starving and suffering. It made me wonder just how many poor animals - not just horses - have been killed in useless was throughout human history.
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Oct 9, 2019 13:17
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euphronius posted:Nietzsche’s insanity was also precipitated by witnessing a horse flogging in which iirc he intervened He did indeed. It's sometimes interesting to read about the lives of philosophers. Nietzsche's actual philosophy gives a lot of people a vision of selfishness or at least self-centeredness. Learning about that horse incident was fascinating to me.
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Oct 10, 2019 05:33
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel, which has as its thesis the claim that Europe in the 9th through 12th centuries had an industrial revolution at least as major as the later one we're more familiar with. It was first published in 1975 which would usually make me leery but this copy is a reprinting from 2003, which means somebody at least thought the scholarship still held up. Have you ever heard of Lewis Mumford? He's sort of forgotten today but he was a pretty important American intellectual in the 20th Century. I just discovered him earlier this month. He delves into much the same topic, analyzing technology and "the machine." It's as much philosophy and criticism as it is history and I like it that way. You can get pretty much every one of his books off archive.org.
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Oct 16, 2019 21:11
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How do Greek and Roman ideas on male homosexual activity compare/contrast? And I know there were many Greek city-states that were very different and I'm guessing Rome had a lot of different ideas depending on time and location too but is there any general rule? I was told many years ago Greeks had a more pleasant view of male sexuality, especially Athenians given their misogyny. It was the Romans who had the disdainful view for you being the penetrated partner. But I have no idea how true any of this is. (Well, apart from Athenians being massively sexist. I know that was totally true)
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Feb 23, 2020 00:57
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Silver2195 posted:Greeks weren't big on being penetrated either; proper Greek pederasty involved the erastês placing his dick between the thighs of the erômenos and thrusting. What happened to Tiberius? And thanks for the info and the source.
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Feb 23, 2020 01:37
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I didn't know Julius Caesar actually wrote stuff. I was just looking for audiobooks on Audible about him and found Commentaries and the Galic Wars and now I'm curious. Are they reliable? Or just interesting?
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Mar 26, 2020 02:57
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I've never understood why everything is compared to Rome. And I really do like history and culture and tradition and think all of these things are important for how we proceed. There's nothing wrong with looking back at Rome for some inspiration or ideas, like the modern Republicanism movement. (not US Republicans, Republicanism) It's like, a few weeks ago, a guy I know sent me a paper he did reviewing and criticizing a book by Red Dreher. If you don't know Dreher, he's a fringe conservative Christian who still has some influence so he's worth keeping an eye on. Anyway,in his book, he compared our modern world to the fall of the Roman Empire. The only solution is good orthodox Christians making little enclaves of themselves to stay pure and safe from the liberal hordes. Only, his thesis is that Medieval Christian Europe (before William of Ockham hosed up everything) was the best thing ever. So, I like history but I'm not particularly good at it. Even still, I know the Roman Empire falling led to this wonderful time he was praising. So, if we are living in a similar age, surely that just means we are heading for a glorious restoration of Christianity and Christian values all over the West! There was also Camille Paglia talking about how transpeople is similar to the degeneracy that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Rome was a pretty cool place to learn about and I understand some of our Founding Fathers were inspired by Roman philosophy. Even still, the United States being like the Roman Republic or Empire in any real way seems like a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.
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Mar 26, 2020 22:55
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euphronius posted:The one big difference is that currently in the USA the military is ... pretty neutral . It supports viewpoints definitely but is not personally loyal to anyone yet How many times did a Roman general sent out to war gain the loyalty of their troops and then decide to march the troops loyal to him on Rome and declare himself the new Emperor? From what I understand they also often hadn't actually been paid by the current Emperor which probably didn't help.
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Mar 26, 2020 23:41
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I realize concepts of The West and Western History are vague but I'm right in that at least some people say the fall of Rome was the end of the Roman Empire while others say Byzantium continuing to exist means the Roman Empire continued to exist, right? I'm just curious because, while I mainly study philosophy and intellectual history, we tend to trace our origins back to the Greeks. Athens and democracy and Socrates and all that good stuff. Then comes the Roman Empire until it goes away. But we don't count Byzantium who were also Greek. So we include and fixate on one bit of Greek history while another is sort of...not neglected but categorized differently. Is that wrong? I've always heard it phrased as the Latin West and the Greek East. But we were okay with the Greeks in Alexander's time and before and they're part of "the West" so...I don't get it.
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Mar 30, 2020 00:38
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What do you all think of Emperor Julian? I learned about him in the course of my study of Neoplatonism and what a fascinating figure he was. How our world might have been different if he hadn't died so soon. He became sort of a Romantic hero in the 19th Century when the yoke of Christianity was being thrown off.
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Apr 5, 2020 05:26
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Epicurius posted:I've mentioned the book before, but James O'Donnell's book "Pagans" mentions him, in the chapter "The First Christian", which says that he was basically trying to recreate paganism along Christian lines and with a Christian aesthetic. I'll look into that book, thank you. But yeah, I had already read about how Julian and others took some inspiration from Christianity in a variety of ways. There's the organizational structures you mentioned but also there's how Porphyry, the student of Plotinus the great founder of what we call Neoplatonism, adopted a doctrine of universal salvation just like Christians did. Only, being a good Platonist, his idea was hierarchical with worship being the lowest means of salvation and philosophy the highest. For its day, Christianity was quite humane and egalitarian compared to some other faiths. A more Christianized Paganism could have been a really wondrous thing.
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Apr 5, 2020 21:51
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I'm reading a book called Spartan Women and in it the author is talking about Plutarch who held contradictory views on how he preferred things be done with regards to women, Spartan vs. Roman. Th author claims it was custom to marry girls off in Rome at about 12 so they could be molded into the perfect wife as they grew up. Is this true? It reminds me of discussions I had way back when I read A Song of Ice and Fire, people online talking about how the idea adult men were loving 13-year-old girls and impregnating them like happened with Dany is idiotic and unrealistic. I mean, the idea this was an institutionalized practice is supposedly idiotic and ahistorical.
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Aug 29, 2020 05:16
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While it might be a stretch to talk about being mainstream or known by the general population, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people knew about Marcus Aurelius now. I've often pondered why Stoicism of all Greek/Roman philosophies has a level of mainstream popularity that you won't see for Platonism or whatever. But there's frickin' Stoic Con and typical airport "What Would a Stoic Do" books right there with the Meditations.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:33
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Silver2195 posted:Platonism is complicated, and many aspects of it seem clearly wrong now. Aristotelian is even more complicated, although there is at least one simple ethical/psychological insight from Aristotle (that virtue is largely a matter of habit) that I think is worthwhile. Cynicism is too countercultural; as amusing as the antics of Diogenes are to read about, few people are actually willing to imitate him. And a lot of Epicurean ideas are mixed in with more modern philosophies to the point where they seem like "common sense" to many people rather than a distinctive worldview. Perhaps it's the lower case c cynic in me but I fear sometimes Stoicism is popular nowadays because look at the world we live in. The Stoics insistence on "you can't really do much about most things, just shut up and bear it" (to put it very crudely) can probably appeal to people living in a time of massive problems. That's the great criticism of Stoicism since the beginning, that it was a prideful egotism, all about mastering yourself and giving little care to the world or those around you. But you're probably right. Most people just read about Stoic ethics which is relatively simple compared to a subject like metaphysics which was near and dear to Plato and Aristotle. Although Greek ethics in general is refreshingly simple compared to more modern ethics.....
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Aug 31, 2020 17:21
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Grevling posted:Lots of emperors had male lovers too, that doesn't get talked about a lot. Really? I've never done an in-depth study of it but homosexuality was just a cool, accepted thing in East Asia so far as I know. In Japan at least it was a popular practice, similar in some ways to how it was in Ancient Greece, right up to the end of the 19th Century when Meiji tried to emulate Europe in most things, including hating the gays. I know some people attribute homophobia in East Asia to Christianity. Doesn't seem like a stretch given how common it was in Europe before Christianity became dominantn.
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Sep 4, 2020 15:55
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On the topic of homosexuality in Victorian England, I remember reading of a fairly famous event of two gay men crossdressing and being arrested and put on trial. Only, they were just caught in women's clothes, not actually engaging in sodomy or whatever, so they were cleared. So I guess even then it wasn't technically illegal to be gay because how do you even enforce that, but gay activity like sex with another man was the prohibited thing. Still obviously horrible but it was an interesting story I randomly came across a year or two ago.
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Sep 5, 2020 17:06
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Silver2195 posted:Spartan pederasty was supposedly such a successful social institution that Spartan women started banging adolescent girls too. As I understand it, Spartan pederasty and overall homosexuality was pretty different from in Athens. Not surprising given all the other immense differences. quote:Homosexual relationships between older and younger youths were an approved part of the boys’ upbringing (see Xen. Lac. Pol. 2.12–13, claiming that if based on admiration for the boy’s character it was “pure” and the “finest education,” but if focused on the youth’s beauty it was condemned). Though this was probably not a compulsory part of the age-classes system, a boy from c.12 was invited to form a lasting relationship with an older “lover” (erastes), who was to act as his role-model, develop his character, and encourage his adherence to the disciplined lifestyle. State approval is indicated by the rule that a lover might be fined by magistrates if his boyfriend showed insufficient endurance (Plut. Lyc. 18; see Cartledge 2001: 91–105; Ducat 2006a: 196–201; Davidson 2007: 315–343). Up until c.20, youths would eat their austere and limited food collectively, under supervision; but lovers might occasionally introduce their adolescent boyfriends into their adult common messes (syssitia), for them to get a taste of them as continuing “schools of self-discipline,” to hear political discussions, and see entertainments appropriate for free men (Plut. Lyc. 12). The expectation was that in due course a boyfriend would be admitted to his lover’s mess, when, at c.20, they would also be admitted into the army (possibly mess-members served in the same army units). I'm no expert but it seems to me when people speak of "Ancient Greek" this or that, it's a bit misleading, kinda like claiming American this or that, as if California is the same as Alabama. Even if Sparta was just weird and an outlier in the Greek city-states, Athens also seemed to have a lot of peculiar things about it. Its misogyny was apparently much greater than most other Greek states, even if not all were as "liberal" with their women as Sparta was.
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Sep 9, 2020 17:53
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I'm more of a philosophy nerd than pure history but my understanding is that the Early Modern philosophers were big on disparaging the Middle Ages as much as possible. Hence the infamous "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" That isn't to say Descartes, Newton, etc. weren't impressive thinkers who contributed important work but the Enlightenment very much defined itself as the light bearers of objective knowledge saving the world from the darkness and ignorant superstition of the past, specifically the Middle Ages. And the Enlightenment won so this narrative has been culturally accepted.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:52
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Perhaps it's my own fault for being so ignorant yet insisting on reading scholarly philosophical and historical texts but I get the feeling many of them assume you know at least some Latin. At least I'm pretty sure this is Latin. I am fluent in no languages except good ol' 'merican so in this book I'm reading on Greek political thought and its influences, I'm kind of annoyed the author doesn't translate a footnote quote he includes from the Catholic humanist thinker Erasmus who is, according to the footnote, criticizing Aristotle for departing too much from Plato on the idea of property. The footnote reads: "He writes in the Dulce bellum inexpertis (1515) that from Aristotle "didicimus non esse perfectam hominis felicitatam, nisi corporis & fortunae bonae accesserint. Ab hoc didicimus non posse florere remplublicam in qua sint omnia communia. Huius omnia decreta cum Christi doctrina conamur adglutinare, hoc est, aquam flammis miscere." I wasn't totally lost until the end there. I was actually thinking maybe it wouldn't be so hard to learn Latin, I can guess at a lot of these words, like my Spanish class in high school. But then at the end I just had tot throw up my hands in defeat.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:59
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Silver2195 posted:My Latin is rusty, and someone else could probably correct me on the details, but I think it's something like "We learn that a man would not reach perfect happiness, unless of body and of good fortune. From this we learn that it would be impossible for a republic to flourish in which all would be in common. We attempt to glue all these principles with the doctrine of Christ, that is, to mix water with fire." In other words, Erasmus is arguing that Aristotle rejected the idea of a society where all property was held in common because of the materialistic element in his idea of the good, and that this aspect of Aristotle's thought isn't really compatible with Christianity even though many Christians accept it in practice. Cool, that makes sense. Thank you very much. The book is arguing about how Greek Philosophy as we know it differed significantly from Roman philosophy and politics in a few key ways, one of them being Greek vs. Roman conceptions of property. What I'm reading now is how every Roman historian hated these "Agrarian Laws" while Plutarch, a Platonist, was hugely in favor of them. Well there was one Roman historian who liked them apparently but he came from a plebian family or something. Anyway, thanks again.
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Sep 12, 2020 00:34
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Wasn't education in most of the ancient Greek world private? Like, the education of young boys was left to slaves or tutors and basically at the discretion of families? I've always heard Sparta stood out for having a state-run educational system.
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Oct 15, 2020 05:12
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Dalael posted:Nah, lots of people are pointing to parallels to Nazi Germany (personally i think more italy and mussolini) Wouldn't we be at the Weimar stage? And even that is a pretty tenuous comparison, we have nothing like the developed mass movements of Far Left and Right they had. Bernie Sanders and other stuff has helped to reawaken Leftism in the US sorta kinda but it's nothing like how strong it was in the early 20thCentury. Anyway, I think I might have made a post about it in this thread already, asking about "why everybody wants to copy Rome, even its decline?" I might have asked it somewhere else but it's still very weird to me.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:05
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So I was curious about Germany because, I thought, Germany as we know it is a pretty modern invention but Germans and Germanic sates have been around forever. "Germany". came about in the late 1800s from what I know. As such I was gonna get his book called Iron Kingdom off Audible which is about Prussia and hopefully it would help explain Germany's creation. But then somebody told me that while Germany was politically created in the 1800s, "the Kingdom of Germany ha existed since the 9th/10th Century, like France." Are there any good books or videos on this? I'm lost.
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Oct 26, 2020 03:25
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Epicurius posted:First, get Iron Kingdom. It's a great book. It does, thank you. In fact, Italy is another one of those "it used to be a bunch of Italian states then it ended up being just Italy in the modern world." I got a book lined up to buy about the Renaissance Italian states but it's less about their history and more of an intellectual study of Renaissance thinkers because intellectual history is my main interest. I guess I should probably get a book on Italy, too... Anyway, thanks again.
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Oct 26, 2020 04:31
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 Is that line about the Roman Emperors adopting instead of just having their children succeed them true? I guess I just always assumed it was dynastic, sons got the seat of power and stuff. Granted, I have no real knowledge of Roman Emperors beyond random trivia from assorted places. So my bad for assuming. When did this habit stop and why?
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Dec 10, 2020 20:30
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And yet Plato and Aristotle were always called Pagans in spite of their systems having just one God. Well, some would dispute that but it's a common enough view. And there was a lot of syncretism or eclecticism in Antiquity. You take what clearly works or makes sense and discard the rest. Julian did that with Christianity and before him Porphyry (the student of Plotinus who is why we even know who Plotinus, the most famous Platonist after Plato, is) tried to promote a Platonic theory of universal salvation. Some theorize Christianity's appeal was its egalitarianism in this life and the next. Porphyry tried to match that by saying all could be saved via Platonism as well, but in a hierarchical way because he was a Platonist. Philosophy would equal the best salvation but less able people could make do with rituals. All forms of Platonism are absolutely fascinating to me. edit: Sorry if it sounds pretentious that I have to explain who Porphyry or Plotinus are. You all probably know and I didn't have to do that. I just don't know how popular intellectual or philosophical history is compared to other things. It's like how milhist bores me to tears but everybody loves it. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Dec 20, 2020 |
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Dec 20, 2020 19:55
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Dalael posted:No, it's not. Plenty of us are interested in history but have no real academic study therefore i highly encourage these sorts of factoids. Had no idea who Porphyry or Plotinus are Well I'm in the same boat. I like intellectual history and philosophy so a lot slips by me which is why I like this thread so much. But yeah, if you've ever heard the term "Neoplatonism." Plotinus founded that poo poo. How much his ideas diverged from Plato's is a matter of some debate - Neoplatonism is an anachronistic term and everybody back then would have just thought of themselves as true blue Platonists. Some time after Plato died we had "Middle Platonism" whose most famous representative is probably Plutarch. Famous for his Lives now but he was also a committed philosopher with a lot of theories from a Platonic perspective. But then Plotinus swept them all aside and the next big ones are Porphyry and Iamblichus They had different approaches to Neoplatonism that are kinda too vague to get into. The biggest Neoplatonist after Plotinus was Proclus who was pretty much the last great Neoplatonist pagan philosopher. His writings have had a lasting influence even to this day - Edward Butler is a living, trained philosopher who interprets Platonism as polytheistic , mainly influenced by Proclus. He speaks and writes and promotes his polytheistic views from that perspective. And of course all of them influenced Christianity to some extent. I've recently been reading a lot about Origen, one of the most important early Christian theologians, and a lot of scholars agree he was a student of Plotinus' teacher. But he and his ideas were condemned as heretical fairly early on so you couldn't just come right out and cite him, even as he influenced the great theologians to come. Funny thing is a lot of the current studies on him are from Catholics trying to distance him from Platonism and establish what a good Christian he was. If you are interested in a quick breakdown of how Neoplatonism (supposedly) differed from Plato's own ideas, check out this chapter. https://www.academia.edu/2915262/How_original_was_New_Platonism_in_the_Platonic_tradition And then there was the Renaissance Neoplatonists! Speaking of heretics... The history of Platonism is very cool.
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Dec 20, 2020 21:04
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It's kinda funny, the Roman Empire is such an iconic symbol for all subsequent Western history.... But nobody likes its first Emperor. Augustus has no impact in popular culture apart from maybe being a conniving snake. Historians I've read said there's basically nothing to like about him compared to the original Caesar, particularly in his younger, ruthless days.
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Mar 3, 2021 03:34
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Gaius Marius posted:What It's funny you mention Goldsworthy as it's him who supports my own layman conclusions: quote:Yet in spite of his remarkable story and profound infl uence on the history of an empire which has shaped the culture of the western world, Caesar Augustus has slipped from the wider consciousness. For most people he is a name mentioned in Christmas services or school Nativity plays and nothing more than that. Hardly anybody stops to think that the month of July is named after Julius Caesar, but I suspect even fewer are aware that August is named after Augustus. Julius Caesar is famous, and so are Antony and Cleopatra, Nero, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, perhaps Hadrian, and a few of the philosophers – but Augustus is not. One of the reasons is that Shakespeare never wrote a play about him, perhaps because there is little natural tragedy in a man who lives to a ripe old age and dies in his bed. He appears as Octavius in Julius Caesar and as Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra, but in neither play is his character particularly engaging, unlike Brutus, Antony – or even lesser players like Enobarbus. His fate is principally to serve as a foil to Antony, weak, even cowardly, but cold and manipulative where the latter is brave, intensely physical, simple and passionate. The contrast was already there in the ancient sources, and had its roots in the propaganda war waged at the time; it has only tended to become even more pronounced in modern treatments of the story – think for instance of the glacially cold performance with just hints of sadism given by Roddy McDowall in the famous 1963 epic movie Cleopatra. The intro to Goldsworthy's Augustus, First Emperor of Rome Augustus is absolutely nowhere near as famous a figure as Alexander or Julius Caesar in the popular imagination.
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Mar 3, 2021 04:19
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Gaius Marius posted:You didn't have to type that up man, my copy is like five feet away. Saying he's not as famous as Caeser or Alexander isn't saying much, those two are incredibly popular, they also share that they died in the middle of their project. That's why people remember them and write tragedies about them. how do you write a tragedy about a super competent dude who threw great parties, had a hot wife who let him gently caress around, funded some of the greatest poets of the latin language, had a super cool best friend, built a quarter of the stuff in rome, and then died of old age incredibly successful by every single measure. I mainly posted it because I was basically accused of making up poo poo when I was just quoting Goldsworthy. Maybe I expressed it poorly but all I was trying to say was that Rome is such a towering legacy in all Western history and culture but its first Emperor seems so much smaller. That was my reading of that intro. I wasn't saying he had no impact, just that this impact is less recognized than it might ought to be. And it could very well be exactly for the reasons you said. It's why I like Julian, what the world might have been if he lived.
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Mar 3, 2021 04:37
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