Kosmo

Romans and Germans were much closer in technology and lifestyle then indians and americans. They would have competed on anything from the little arable land to grazing lands, mineral resources, acces routes etc. Caldrail I think you believe too much the roman sources about the lifestyle of germans. They had villages, agriculture, pottery, metal working, trade, ships, a large population etc. A village on the roman side up in the Vosges would have the same technological level like a village on the other (german) side of the Rhine. The difference was in cities, roads, forts, senatorial villas, use of coins, extent of the trade networks etc. For sure there was not enough land for the needs of the germans and that's why they slowly expanded where they could before and after contact with Rome. With meager resources available because of geographic conditions, as ermany beetwen Rhine and Elbe it's mostly mountains, and a climate that made crops produce a low yeld, romans taking the best land would have not gone unseen. The germans needed arable land to feed themselves and to feed their animals in the winter. So when forced to live 10 miles from the Rhine a tribe will lose the best fields, flat and rich alluvional land, the source of fish and of water and acces to the greatest communications route. I can see why scraping a living in the poor, mountainous terrain above while overlooking their empty abandoned lands would make them angry towards the Romans.

You answered 49 out of 60 correctly

@Maty Sorry, Odahl does not mention the primary source for the fate of the frankish leaders that were captured by Constantine on roman soil. Maybe that terror tactic was good but I doubt it. Armenia was the first christian state starting from the traditional date of 301 while the christians within the empire still suffered persecutions. I have no info on Saint Mesrob. @Meldavius The mention of the increase of woodland in Scotland I took from Pollen Evidence for the Environment of Roman Britain, by Petra Dark Britannia

I was refering to US foreign policy being an idealism rooted on a moral ground (a christian morality) that divides the world in good guys and bad guys and pays little attention to the greyish realities on the ground. When the US will be forced to abandon unilateralism and work in team with his allies some costly errors (like the war in Iraq)might be avoided.

I was indeed unclear here. I wanted to say "the spread of christianity outside of roman borders"

In the reply to you, above, I put the time frame to 400 years. The imperial period when the borders were stable. I never said before Christianity. It would have been absurd for the empire to promote a religion they dissaproved of. Regarding christianty I said that it was not used as a tool for romanization outside the empire (like franks or byzantines did later) in the last century of the time frame.

It seems that my wife was right, it will be a black (funny how a half-half it's black) long before a women in the US. If he takes Hillary on the ticket maybe they can do what Segolene Royale (half black, full women) did when she was defeated by Sarko (a non-PC white male), I mean divorce the party guru (you ruined me Bill! after all that I've put up with!) PS [/with a serious face] for those of you who don't understand a foreigner interest in US elections I have to tell that this interest it's born out of the US world leadership. When this unfortunate circumstance borned out of misinterpretation of the Holy Book (after some this book itself it's a misinterpretation) will end (to the benefit of the US and the rest of the world) I would care even less then I did about the presidential elections in Argentina where the (good looking, nice voice) wife of the ex-president did win (because no kenyan {luo}-american competed to exploit the guilt [that argentians don't feel] about the mistreatment of ones presumed ancestors by ones presumed ancestors) making full use of the machismo ethics that galantly give priority to ladies. PPS Did I succsefully imitated GO or I made some sense? Cpt. Bladder

Salve, K As far as I can tell, virtually no. Archeological evidence of Roman influence among non-conquered neighbours (.e, Hibernia, Jutland, Sarmatia) seems to be limited to some coins at best. Salve, A They did a little better with southern germans: alemanni, marcomanni and quadi adopted some roman clothes and copied provincial plebeian homes. That's all! The Roman Empire was a closed society. As closed as pharonic Egypt or China. To take the pearl out of the oister it needed cracking...

The Samnites and the Etruscans. Re the post that started this thread "They fed captured enemy leaders to the beasts in the arena". They did? Name one. 1. Etruscans adopted roman culture. Really! Besides being totally wrong as being the other way around (early Rome was heavily influenced by etruscans) this is beside the point that I tried to make when I was talking about IMPERIAL borders. As I said above I was talking about the space beyond Roman borders after Augustus. 2. Ascaricus and Morogaisus, the leaders of the Franks, with some of their leading worriors, where thrown to the beasts in the arena during the celebrations of the return (adventus) of Constantine to Trier in the winter 306-307. This is from "Constantine and the Christian Empire" of Charles Matson Odahl.

Because the archelogical finds in Gaul are of greek and etruscan pottery. Of course that after conquest of Narbonese Gaul the romans were the most important merchants. Anyway, I was refering to romanisation outside the roman borders (not inside the short lived roman germany) during the imperial period (hence the "imperial borders" title of the thread) and the 4 centuries when the border was on the Rhine and Danube. During this leghty period nothing much changed.

It's a boring, guffy competition that nobody cares about but that can still make news. The interesting part it's that voting shows how the general public in a country feels about other country.

Can you give me an example of another culture that adopted roman culture before the spread of christianity? Not only clothes and pottery but also laws, political organisations and ideas, philosophy, poetry etc. Gauls and britons were more influenced by Massalia and etruscans then by romans. Military rule, colonisation, tax collection and the other things that came with being a subject in a roman province were not the things that I talked about. The spread of hellenism to thracians, dacians, illyrians, italians, etruscans, carthaginians, scythians it's more to the point. Also the spread of the western civilisation (with catholic christianty) of Charlemagne in Central (Poland, Hungary, Cehia) and Northern Europe (Scandinavia) was a process that spreaded a culture without direct conquest. Thats because for much of the western empire christianity was a wierd cult, about which some very strange and horrifying stories were told. Christianity only became an official religion in the 4th century, by which time Rome was on the defensive. Early christianity wasn't as pious as it would become. Bishops of Rome were notorious for getting very wealthy off the backs of their flocks, and one wonders if that wasn't the purpose of it in the first place, since the same situation occurs in the modern day. So then, the early christian sects were inwardly flocused, being more concerned with consolidation. Later, when christianity was the state religion, it came under the roman sense of unity and expansion, and from that point seeks to bring the world under one faith, as this was the policy began by Constantine in the 4th century AD.. I was refering at christianity as the official religion of the Empire. The church busy with fighting paganism inside the borders made no real effort to spread it outside. Those who were converted outside of the empire were converted by heretics fleeing persecution like the Eastern Germans (Goths, Vandals, Longobards etc) did gradually taking Arianism. That didn't interest the average invading barbarian at all. What they wanted was roman wealth and luxury. Thats why the western empire vanishes after the barbarian coup against Romulus Augustulus. Their reign was so lacklustre it hardly registers with historians - though I accept the traditional view of the end of the west interferes with peoples perspective of that era. From a barbarian-on-loot point of view, yes, it's irelevant. For a killed-roman it's not interesting if the big guy with an axe have ever heard of Arsitotle. But maybe if the saxons had some nicer cities with lots of trade and some well worked fields home they will be less interested in moving to a dangerous shore. If the goths had better political institutions they would have been easier to make to respect treaties. If they had a strong dinasty maybe matrimonial alliances like the marriage of Gall Placida would have been succesfull. Maybe the reign of barbarians would have been better if their administration skills would have been better and their administration would have been improved by some education. Yes it's funny, the "last emperor" had the name of the founder of Rome but he had also the name of the founder of the empire.

Romans were nasty neighbours. In Scotland north of Hadrian's wall the forest gained ground over cultivated fields. On the Rhine they kept a 10 mile wide stretch of land on the german side were they did not allow people to setlle. Not even allies. On the Upper Danube they refused to let the marcomanni have boats. On the Lower Danube they moved more then 100.000 inhabitants from the North bank to the roman side. Over both rivers they kept bridgeheads to ensure their control and carried many raids. In Asia they destroyed Seleucia and Babylon in their agressive attacks on Parthia. The favorite roman border was a waste land. How did this affected the spread of more complex civilisation? They fed captured enemy leaders to the beasts in the arena and they carried punitive raids that made any form of city imposible. They did not even tried to bring christianity to their neighbours. Maybe the start of cities in Germany after the end of roman rule in Gaul can be seen as possible because the disruptive romans lost power. If roman civilisation itself can be seen as an effect of the spread of greek civilisation, the romans left their their neighbours as barbaric as they found them, or maybe worse. If the empire suffered from migrating barbarians it is also because they did not let their neighbours became more setlled, civilised and urbanised. They kept them barbarians.

The emperors chose the consuls. Sometimes they appointed themselves and sometimes others. Some like the Flavians had a monoply oner consulship while Trajan held it just 5 times. During the principate they also elected suffect consuls. A consul did not serve his entire year and a suffect consul was appointed in his stead so more people could became consuls then before. For someone outside the ruling dinasty to became consul 3 times was very rare.

Not to mention riding cangaroos in the forests of Alps...

Caesar was better then Jesus because while Jesus had all virtues Caesar had all virtues and all sins How could a man known for his sexual exceses became his own mythical opposite? I think that even in the caves above the Dead Sea people knew that the fearless, hairless conqueror was friendly with the big-nose queen of Alexandria (not only a neighbour but one that ruled over many jews). It's Priap Caesar?

Very nice to know more about you guys. Wow, you put a lot of work in this.

Yeah, right

Salve, K Obvious problem would have been that "spanish" conqueror's armies tended to have an overwhelming majority of indian allies. Salve, A You have a point here.

Thank you for the info. K1 it's the most entrataining fighting sport I've seen.

Dogs were not only useful against this light opponents but maybe as the linked source claims thay could easily tell apart the enemy because it was very different from the masters. So using them against other spaniards would have been difficult because it was confusing (not that I imagine dogs charging a tercio!) who is who. In a place where the fight was indians against europeans they could tell combatants apart.

LW those words being dedicated also to future heros, people still living or not even born yet, make this thing very sad and quite absurd. Like human sacrifice thrown in a grinding machine that never stops. Let's at least blindly hope that we will need no more heros.

Mr. Hawass likes to be famous. Anyway, the most surprising part it's that the team has archeologists from the Dominican Republic!

I have some experience with algae problems in my fish tanks. At low light its unlikely to have lots of algae and puting the light off usually kills them (and your aquatic plants too). A limiting factor it's also the quantity of nutirients in water that the algae are feeding of. In a fishtank one has soil and fertilizers for plants, fish food and fish waste. A pool made out from stone will have less nutrients while the constant change of water will keep nutrients even lower. The undergound roman cisterns I've seen in Istanbul had some fish in them but little algae made by the lights needed for toursits. In normal use, full and underground with no fish, the water would have been clean of algae. In a bath thay will have had maybe some brown slimy algae in the more sunlight pools. Not in the heated pool and probably not in the coolest one that had less light. Algae are very persistent and hard to fight against.

The water was exposed to sunlight? Algae do not develop if not enough light (and nutrients)