Kosmo

I believe that devastating wars and the suffocating peace of large empires are equally bad for development. Many periods when arts, science and technology flourished were times of turmoil and strife.

Florence, Italy If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci

"Lucy, meet Ardi. Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is the newest fossil skeleton out of Africa to take its place in the gallery of human origins. At an age of 4.4 million years, it lived well before and was much more primitive than the famous 3.2-million-year-old Lucy, of the species Australopithecus afarensis. Since finding fragments of the older hominid in 1992, an international team of scientists has been searching for more specimens and on Thursday presented a fairly complete skeleton and their first full analysis. By replacing Lucy as the earliest known skeleton from the human branch of the primate family tree, the scientists said, Ardi opened a window to

This part seems to me that is about goths who sold themselves in slavery out of hunger and were now aiding their kinsman, rather then about roman poor (of course goth slaves could be seen as roman poor but then all the goths are roman and we go round in circles)

Italy eventually became the richest and the most developed part of Europe by the late Middle Ages without enjoying too much peace.

Even more, a Lombard invasion could have devastated a gothic Italy as bad or even worse then it did to a roman one.

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Not the violence of the gladiator shows repulses me but the fact that the romans were so honest about it. They had no moral problem enjoying violence, suffering and killing. We fake violence in films, video games etc with special effects so we can enjoy it without guilt.

The consulship was awarded after Clovis victory at the battle of Vouill

It is hard for me to understand why a roman emperor is blamed for reconquering Rome. It has to do, I think, with the noble barbarian vs the corrupt byzantine stereotype rather then with the welfare of the population of Italy. The goths were already in turmoil and civil conflict and were actively persecuting catholics so roman soldiers were seen as saviors not enemies by most of the population. Justinian was a roman, latin-speaking and catholic like the people of Italy, Africa and Spain so that was seen not as a conquest but as a liberation and the recovery of the roman ancestral lands from the hands of arian barbarians.

Theodoric got some good press from people paid to do that and, as a monument to well done propaganda, it still works. Theodoric conquered Italy with war and murder, he relegated romans to second class citizens, confiscated their lands, persecuted catholicism, killed the pope and some of the senatorial elite. I fail to see his greatness. Justinian had the greatest quality of a leader: choosing great aides. His wife, the finance minister, the generals and the architects were all excellent. He conquered Africa, Italy and some of Spain proving the weakness and how unpopular the barbarian kings were and this will be again showed by the quick arab conquest of gothic Spain. If not for the plague he may have succeeded in reuniting the empire. He also built beautiful monuments and hundreds of fortifications. Conquests don't necessary spread resources they usually add them, that's why states always tried to expand. The critics of his success embrace a post-colonial revisionism rather then understating what worked at that time, it was Justinian supposed to care when Italy became an unified nation-state? Italy, Spain and Africa had been extremely rich and important for the empire and they could became again so. Recovering them was a very smart thing to do and romans did not leave this conquests without a fight, the last ones some 500 years later leaving a great legacy behind. Blaming him for events 100 years later it's absurd. The arab conquests are related much more directly to the rebellion of Phocas and the devastating Persian War.

The European Union it's the biggest and the most daring political experiment of our times. The end result it's unclear but this "reflections" don't help much. The guilt part it's the most dubious and all sounds like religious propaganda to me like the one tried by Poland when they wanted to make a mention of Christianity in the Lisbon constitutional Treaty. For sure that definition of religion it's one I agree to, but Christians, not atheists, are a majority in the EU.

Good to see you again.

Nice article. Thank you.

Constantine started a massive church building program, including the large churches have that dominated since Rome, Constantinople and the Holy Land. Such a large scale enterprise could be done only using the tastes, the plans, the architects, the decorators and the constructors that already existed at that time.

Actually Germany is north of Danube.

I cant tell you about a book but there are many mentions of traders from Amalfi, of venetians in Pera and genoese in Galata, of western mercenaries and crusaders until the day of the fall and of course about the Latin Empire of Constantinople.

The empire had many latin speakers in the Balkans, like Justin and Justinian, an later in Italy and Africa. It is only after the arab and slavic invasions that greek takes precedence. In the later period there was a community in Constantinople of neolatin languages speakers mostly merchants and mercenaries while in the Balkans lived the vlachs.

Over the entire European history peasants where the biggest group of people. Generally, they had access to plots of land as owners or as tenants and landless peasants are a rare occurrence, significant only in places like early modern England. Access to land was always a fairly complicated issue and reliable information it's scarce. Still, the rural areas of Italy during the romans had a fairly high level of well being and the poorest category of free man were the small number of urban and rural unskilled wage earners.

He maybe tested in the same way the bones of some Ephesus "civilians" for comparison. And maybe the bones told him that the gladiators were fat. Fat bleeds but not as much as a vein and an injury to it is less dangerous then a wound to an internal organ. It also serves as an energy reserve and adds weight. Weight it's an obvious advantage in some situations but also reduces mobility and speed. "They had, one may presume, empirical evidence to show that the Big Guys were a stronger show than the Little Guys." A fight between well trained modern fencers lasts several seconds. I am sure the crowd would have hated that. "Three of the Ephesus skulls had been punctured by tridents, weapons used only by gladiators. Ten had been bashed in with blunt objects, perhaps mercy blows with a hammer. Other injuries illustrate the gladiator's ideal death, finally accepting the coup de gr

I had also heard blames on romans about the extinction of some species but never that they took protection measures. Very interesting. Venatio was done often by large forces including roman legions and could have played a large role together with other factors brought by romans like the increase of population and arable land and better access to remote areas spurred by roads and pacification. Maybe Julian was nice with Jews because he was fighting against Christians, the enemy of my enemy...

Indeed the roman army always used soldiers recruited from outside the empire (that we call sometime barbarians) but after Adrianopole their number and strength grew and so did the political authority of barbarian generals. Having in mind that the end of the Western Empire was brought by the actions of the barbarian general Odoacru and his barbarian units I would say that the barbarization of the army played an important role in the fall of the West. Both the West and the East have realized this problem and tried to take some measures against it. The settlement of barbarians in the empire, especially of the victorious ones, and their often formal integration in the army makes the picture much blurry. The goths that were settled by romans in the Balkans first in bad condition and later in much better ones fought at Frigidus in the Eastern army and the raided the empire under the leadership of their chieftain/king and roman general Alaric as it was pointed above. Was he a barbarian invader with a barbarian army or a mutinous roman general?

In the morning they washed their hands and face in a pot sometimes made from silver. Then the men went to the barber. When entering a house they washed their feet and rub oil on them. Most of them went everyday to the many and huge public baths where they washed their entire body by rubbing olive oil on it then using a metal implement to remove it, there they also swim, exercise, play games, socialize, watch art etc. When eating they wiped their hands or they received pots with perfumed water to wash them. Some of the tasks were done by slaves for those who had them or by specialized people performing a public service (e.g. barbers) A common insula apartment had no bath or running water. Rome had a large covered sewer system named Cloaca Maxima from the early days. Aqueducts brought fresh water to the city that was accessed by commoners at the many fountains. That aqueduct water and rain water flushed Cloaca Maxima in the Tiber river.

Gizah would be one of them for several reasons. Cairo has grown to close of it, I expected the pyramids and the Sphinx to be in the desert not so close to hotels and gardens on one side. The place crawls with beggars, camel/horse riders etc so if your not used with oriental hustle it will be annoying. On the inside the pyramids are bare and boring, the inside space it's small, crowded and poorly ventilated so it's an awful smell. From Petra the only preserved things are the tombs cut in the desert rock. You walk for some kilometers in a beautiful desert gorge then suddenly it opens up and you see a magnificent carved hillside. That first tomb it's the the nicest and best preserved. The inside is bare and the other tombs are much less spectacular. After the great start the site it's less interesting and after the long hours spent in the bus in the boring desert it's a bit disappointing. Maybe coming from the other side it's better. Start with the city's small ruins, then the other tombs and finally the nicest one and the gorge. For a romanophile in Jordan the site at Gerasa it's heaven, huge and excellently preserved it's much better then Petra's tombs. The Parthenon was being renovated when I was to Athens so I also liked more to see the Acroplis from the city below, especially in the evening, then seeing it from close. These places are beautiful and nice to visit but maybe I placed too much expectations on them. They also give you everything from the first glimpse so there is little satisfaction from exploring them further. The Colosseum, on the other hand, exceeded my expectations but if somebody does not like it Rome has a huge number of other monuments, museums and sites to see from a unique variety of times and stiles, great weather, food, wine and places of entertainment. The person who made that list it's not very smart.

Religious change was a trend that started earlier with the introduction of this sun cult from Syria by Septimus Sever's wife. The sun god was a supreme deity rather then the only one. This sun religion was very important for 100 years before being displaced by christianity that at that time had some similar features.