Ursus

I'm not that ambitious. I was thinking more along the lines of National Fun-In-The-Sun Day, or National Guinness Appreciation Day.

Can it be Labor Day any sooner? I need another paid vacation, and soon. The span of time from July 4 to Labor day is pretty long. We need something to break it up.

I'd say my interest in Rome lies from mid republic to early empire. The very early histories of Rome are as much myth and legend as fact, and while those stories are entertaining and vivid, who knows how much can be trusted. The history of the later empire is depressing, and everything after Constantine gets a bit dim for me. So my expertise spans mostly from the Punic wars to roughly Hadrian. Byzantine? I don't know. They called themselves Romans. They adopted Roman law and government. I'm not entirely sure what "Roman" meant by then, though. They were certainly more cultured than the Romano-Germanic lands of the fuedal west, but they also seemed to lack a certain straightforward vitality that I associate with the older empire. And the energy they spent on debating minute aspects of Christianity was simply insane. Like Skarr said, they aren't exactly the Romans of Caesar's day. I'm honestly glad we're still on the early empire. :-)

I really think this is from left field. Unless you want to get Nietzschean and say the "slave morality" of new religious cults triumphed over the master moralty of the old guard.

I seem to be one of the few people I know who hasn't had a weird encounter with the Ouija board. I and another socially maladjusted friend from junior high once tried to use it to summon the Great and Demonic spirits to see when we would finally start scoring with the babes. And you know the answer we got from the Great and Demonic Spirits? MX8JEAV I left unimpressed. But maybe they were just mocking us....

The Brits usually do a good job with this drama stuff. Land of Shakespeare, and all that. I'm looking forward to it. In retrospect it was overly optimistic to expect American network TV to do anything groundbreaking.

A year ago I might have joined but I have muted interest for organized religion these days. My current signature from Conan pretty much sums up my existential leanings. But good luck with it. :-)

This thread temporarily locked. User banned... thread re-opened [PP]

A minor quibble, Demson. let me go into a small aside from the main topic. While not being a cheerleader for Christianity, I think its blame for the Dark Ages is somewhat overstated. After all, the Byzantine Empire was exceedingly Christian and the Dark Ages there were not so dark. I think the main cause of the Dark Ages was simply the evolving and fragmented nature of the late Roman Empire and its final rupture by the barbarian "immigrants." Eugene Weber made the point that Christianity became barbaric mostly when Barbarians started becoming Christian. But the Catholic Church and its monks was the one center of learning and repository of the classical legacy in those dim times.

Nice thread that is evolving here. On the topic of American capitalist imperialism, all I can do is paraphrase what Jeffery Sachs said. Some people complain about sweat shops in Asia, but is earning a few dollars a day in a sweat shop still a better existence than being dirt poor and diving through dumpsters for food? If so, then the problem with

They should have just tried nuking them from orbit .... it's the only way to be sure, after all.

"It could have been put there to symbolise the resentment of a pagan people for their Christian emperor." Well, I guess this is a rare instance of spiteful vandalism that actually benefited posterity. :-)

People have debated the merits of imperialism since at least the Delian League. On one hand, an imperial state can lead to increased security, stability and prosperity within an international system. It can uplift cultures and plant the seeds of civilization where none existed before. It can lead to an increase in peaceful trade over war and depredation. It can unite disparate people under a common law and language. On the other hand, it can lead to the subjugation or extermination of local cultures and identities. It can lead to provinces being drained at the expense of a parasitic imperial center. The quest for universal peace and security can actually promote endless wars and militarism. Do the benefits of empire outweigh the advantages? Does the answer to the question depend entirely on the nature of the imperialists? I

There was some talk of conquering Scotland and Ireland to crush the last remaining vestiges of Celtic independence ... but the combination of bad terrain and more pressing matters in other parts of the empire meant they never got around to doing it.

Wow, it is, isn't it? Interesting.

Here's another link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_%28Roman%29

The Equites and the Senatores were both part of the Roman upperclass. There was a third group - decurions, or town councilors - but we'll ignore them for now. The Equites and Senatores both formed the upper class of Rome. There was really no middle class - anyone not an Equestrian or Senator was considered the lower rung. To be an Equite you had to have 400k sesterces, to be a Senator you had to have a million. So Senators were richer. They also wore fancier togas and had better seats in public places. The Senators were the landed aristocracy and the Equestrians were mostly the commercial class. However, the Princeps picked a small minority of equestrians to fill important civil and military posts, and this small minority of equestrians effectively had more power than the Senators. So all things being equal Senators were more powerful and richer than Equites, and Senators may have taken equites as clients. However there was that small band of Equestrians linked to the Emperor who stood above Senators and were answerable only to the Emperor. But the difference between Equestrians and Senators is quite small in relation of those two groups to the rest of the Roman population.

Not a dumb question at all. In the olden days of the citizen militia the Equites were the first order of the military assemblies: they were the calvary. Only the very rich could afford horses. But as Rome expanded the citizen militia lost its importance. Romans relied on their foreign allies for calvary. So the equites ceased to be a military class per se. But they were still rich and thus part of the ruling elite. :-)

I just found a site that goes into greater detail: http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/socialclass.html

Entry into the orders was based on wealth. Senators - one million sesterces. Were forbidden to marry freedwoman. Senatorial status passed down three generations. Senators were encouraged to reproduce and to have their sons follow in their footsteps. There was no formal legal hereditary, but obviously there was a certain informal continuation of wealth and influence from one generation to the next, much like in the upper classes of modern America Equestrian

I would say it's a cultural designation, with Roman citizenship being the duly designated entry into the political structures of said culture. Citizenship had always been granted generously (by the standards of the day) and then later was granted universally (for practical fiscal and military reasons). It might be race if we use race in the old sense of the word - a people with a distinct culture. It wouldn't be race in the modern sense of the word (with genetic characteristics). It wouldn't be a nation since many nations were under the imperial banner of Rome.

The Hellenistic East in Roman times was a melting pot of religions and ideas. Hellenized Jews living under Roman authority like Saul of Tarsus would have had one foot in a Judaic world and one foot in the Greco-Roman-Egyptian worlds. As I read cultures, the Jews were and are a people dedicated to the refinement of ethics and wisdom (as they see it, anyway). But their metaphysical explorations were not quite as developed. Hellenistic philosophy, on the other hand, has some well-developed ontology. It's been said by many how Christianity seems to be a compromise between the Hebraic worlds and the Hellenic. It has the concern for Jewish ethics and is tied to some remnant of Jewish tribal law and the Jewish tribal God (which became a universal god after the Babylonian exile). However, it also incorporates elements of Greek philosophy like Stoicism and Platonism. When John speaks of the "word" (logos, in the original Greek) of god, he seems to be tying it to the logos of centuries worth of Greek philosophy. And when Christians basically see this world as a fallen degeneration of a better, higher reality to which their souls must find communion, they aren't saying anything radically different than what Plato said centuries before (albeit Plato expressed it in different terms). Obviously Christianity grew out of an evolving pattern of Greco-Roman thought, and is therefore a part of Western civilization whether some people like it or not. But it

*cackles* Yeah, I stopped watching altogether. It's not worth staying up past my bed time.

For a lot of people, "god" and the "big bang" aren't mutually exclusive either.

That's just the thing ... our entire notions of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" are modern notions. To a lot of ancient peoples, men were allowed to have sex with women under some circumstances and men under other circumstances. It was not thought you had to be exclusively one or the other. In fact, some people would say it is only in the last century or two society has conceived the possibility that someone could be purely homosexual on a genetic level and not have any use for the other gender at all (e.g., gay marriage). Without getting too postmodern on this, I think notions of sexuality and sexual morality are cultural constructs. The Romans were obsessed with power and social hierarchies and viewed sexuality from that perspective, rather than from gender. To the Greeks, sexuality was often a creature of their polis culture.