tflex

OOOOOOOHHHHHH! Benjamin Franklin Oh, my yes, that guy was an incredible human being. Yeah, but you have to admit Frankenstein was even more incredible.

Isn't it Frankenstein? But seriously it's Franklin.

Are you accepting contributions for the emperor list? If you are, I have one or two emperors in mind that I would like to write about. I can submit that to admin once I'm done.

I'm going with the late republic, which produced great men like Caesar ofcourse, and complete fools like Brutus and Cassius. A very dramatic and rebellious period that broke tradition.

My argument with Cato was never about the Republican system being a failure as a whole, on the contrary, I think and I've said before, the republic was very much a success and that

There are American, European, Middle Eastern, Persian, Latin, Ethiopian jews etc., so they can't be narrowed down into one race. Definately agree with that.

Jewish is not a race, but a religion. I have many friends that are jewish and they are proud of their professions. Also, I'm not saying all jewish people are businessmen, doctors and lawyers, but alot of them are and there's nothing wrong with that. I agree that formal education is not related to intelligence, but Cato was saying "higher education is correlated with more income and less religion (of any kind).", which I think is inaccurate. Not denigrating, just inaccurate.

As you already mentioned, Cato was talking about higher education in general, but you narrowed it down to scientists. I admit that it's more likely that an atheist will become a scientist, just like it's more likely that a Jewish person will become a businessman, lawyer or doctor; it still doesn't prove that atheists are more educated than religious people. Sensible religious people are just as open minded as atheists and some atheists can be just as close minded as some religious fundamentalists. Check this out: http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/sciandf/contrib/clari.txt

First, this needs to be backed up by figures or credible studies, it seems more like a guess. Second, just because an atheist is more likely to be educated and rich, it doesn't mean a sensible religious person is less likely to be the same or even better. There's a fine line between being religious and being fundamentalist.

Where do you get your figures from? and how do you measure if someone is less or more religious? and whether they apply religion to their professional life or just keep it personal; You can't lump it altogether.

Thats not what I meant. All I'm saying is you can make all the excuses but that still does not change the outcome of the Battle of Adrianople and make him a good emperor like you've said; he is a bad emperor. I for one learnt alot of new facts from your informative posts, which I was not aware of before. I just don't think the info your giving clears Valens from being a complete failure. But, I definately think that we should always investigate history and get all the details.

I'm not going to get into the details, I already had this same argument in the "Greatest Roman Figure" thread of all places, it's better suited here. It doesn't matter what Gratian should or shouldn't have done, or by who the Goths were mistreated and all the great things Valens did before the battle of Adrianople. What matters is, Valens was the emperor and he personally led the battle against the goths and lost it and managed to get himself killed in the process. In his capacity as Emperor, he had the power to alter the outcome, but he made one mistake after the other, first by provoking the Goths all the way until he led his troops into disaster. Valens is responsible for all the failures becasue he was emperor at the time. All his good policies prior to the Battle of Adrianople only mean something if he was victorious or somehow avoided such a confrontation, but because he lost it, all his other accomplishments became obsolete. Going back and forth about Valens and making excuses for him is reading too much into histroy, just take the facts and you will find, based on the outcome of the battle, Valens is one of the worst Roman Emperors.

100% Lebanese. I was told my ancestors where the Byzantines and before that the Phoenicians, but thats too far out. Who knows maybe Hannibal was a great grandfather to me.

I mostly agree with your list of symptoms, I just don

I'm a Christian Lebanese myself, to prevent our extinction, we fought for 15 years against local muslims who allied with the Palestinians and Syrians to wipe us out. We resisted, but payed a heavy price in terms of human life. I'm proud of it and I'm proud of the crusades before us, they were righteous. Barbaric acts were commited on both sides, thats what happens in wars.

Happy B day, may your days be full of beer and wine.

Fascists or non-fascists, they built the greatest empire that stood the test of time.

Emperor Valens, his disastrous decisions doomed the empire.

You

In a perfect world yes, but realistically speaking

I apologize for my distant ancestor Vlad the Impaler (aka as Dracula) for implaling 20,000 turkish prisoners of war which in turn sickened Mehmed II (the conqueror of Constantinople) while he was marching on Vlad's capital city and was forced to turn back because of the awful stench. I apologize on the behalf of Dracula, he didn't mean it.

I've lost that temper a few times.

For US members, check out the History Channel tonight. They have a good documentary on Rome tonight at 8pm Eastern. historychannel.com

I love Hancock's theory about when the Sphinx was built, I don't believe it, but still very interesting.

Some pictures of my hometown of Byblos, Lebanon. It's the ancient home of the Phoenicians and has been occupied by the Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Arabs and the Ottomans. All the diverse history intermingle in this tiny port city. Byblos is considered as one of the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, archaeological excavations date back 7,000 years. An ancient Phoenician port, Byblos Crusader castle built by the Franks in 1103 AD, Byblos Roman Theater, Byblos Persian Fortifications, Byblos St. John the Baptist Church built by the Crusaders, Byblos