Kosmo

Some recent music: I love that hand movement http://media.skoopy.com/misc/japantv/

As the article said until now they found lots of rare gold pieces. This means lots of money. This gold it's not from the thesaurus of Decebal, but from many smaller finds. I think that author of the article just wanted a little romantic piece in a sad, ugly story and brought in the treasure of Decebal that we know was used 1900 years go by Rome.

The man has no high education and was arrested once for tring to go illegaly to Serbia. He was a driver of a small utilitary car for a shoe manfacture in the small town of Lugoj. He created for himself an identity of a mujahedin. His low quality web page. Hope I don't make a mistake to the rules, but I find it fascinating. http://www.torro.4t.com/about.html It's obviously copy/pasted from different sources, some of them quite anti islamic like a croatian summary of conflict with the bosniacs. He tried to blow up 2 small metane gas reservors with a mobile phone.

The part about illegal diggings it's true as I said before http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2407 But I know that the treasure of king Decebal was hidden by him and found by romans with the help of a traitor. Anyway, it does not metter they are destroing countless unique arheological sites

I don't think that this maps showing political control have much to do with ethnicity as many regions kept an overwhelming roman majority and there was no racial change due to migrations as most migrators were indo-europeans. Actually only the turkisation of the Black Sea steppe was a racial change at an unknown date. And this was outside the empire.

I'm reading a nice book, "The Scapegoat" of Rene Girard and one thing that I liked about it was his observation of antichristian and antieuropean bias. If it's ok to criticize the crusades it's not ok to call the aztec religion a disgusting bloodbath. The aztec religion it's seen just from an anthropological and historical view while christianity it's the subject of violent moral criticism from Voltaire to today, even events in her long past. The threads X vs. Y are pointless, but maybe a comparison between christianity and other religions will shed some light as we need something to compare the "good" and the "bad" of christianity. And I believe that christianity will come out nice from any comparison. Of course a problem it's how each of us it's viewing things. For example some view the Holy Inquisition as a criminal organistion while I believe that it was justified and efficient self defence.

Gauls were in Central Anatolia, not Palestine and this were orthodox christians.

A strange case, that I did not find in English media, unfolded in Romania in the last days. A romanian born christian was arrested for terrorism as he was on his way to blast a home made bomb in the city of Timisoara. He was under surveillance as he claimed on the net to be an ex bosnian fighter who had his fiance and sister killed by serbians. In fact he was dellusional about it as there is no evidence that anything was true. Before his actions he made some terrorist stile movies that he send to media and autorities asking for withdrowal of romanian army from Irak and Afghanistan, release of afgan prisoners (?) etc. I believe that the media histery and extensive cover of terrorism it's starting to transform this in a different problem. More people want to be famous and want to a part of this new, cool thing.

You are right. In orthodoxy a men does not become a priest if he it's not married or a monk. The ordinary priests must be married, the ierarchy starting from bishops it's made from the monks. Monk priests are to be found only at monastries and such. Pertinax, I'm not sure I understand you. The church stareted to get rich from the times of Constantine the Great. Are you refering to dominican and franciscan theories? It sounds like you're quoting from "The name of the Rose" . That I was thinking of yesterday ...

We discussed in here many times that romans had no ideea about racism, but valued some ethnicities a little more then others. As long there is no prove to major racial migrations during the empire I think that we can not discuss the effects of this. First which were the racial groups in the empire? Regarding language: The entire Europe, the largest part of the empire, was indo-european. Africa was hamitic with small indo-european groups (Cyrene, Alexandria, Cartage, etc.) In Asia Anatolia was indo-european while Syria was semitic. So, Africa and Syria changed the racial balance of the empire and that led to a fall? To my surprise when I saw a large group of palestinian christians from Nazareth I realized that most had blue eyes and some of them blond and red hair. Who where their ancestors? Hatti? Mittani? Persians? Greeks? Romans? What does this tell us? Nothing! Language it's a cultural factor and race can be determined only thru antrophometric measurement. Unfortunetly race was hardly a subject for science, but for wild theories. Some made race the most important characteristic of a human while other deny her existence or importance. As long it will be a political issue and not a scientific one we will see no answers. The today conflict between the european majority and the muslim minority it's racial or cultural ?

The first state to accept as offical religion christianity was Armenia. What where you doing in Egipt in the late Empire ? It's more complicated then that. The Eastern Empire had 4 patriarchs while the west had 1. Between Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Byzantion was always some competition. As christianty had a much wider base in the East that was a ground for heresy and conflict. Another factor was the rise of christianity in coptic and aramaic languages. This was combined in the east with greek and latin while the West had only latin (and later german for arians?) Aramaic literature was very important and some say that evan one of the gospels was written in aramaic. What it's called the greek byzantine church should be reffered only after Heraclius when the other patriarchs of the East were under muslim rule.

And Ramses the II it's the simbol of today's egiptian nationalism and militarism.

Catholic means universal. The oldest oficial church it's that of Armenia. Ortodox kept more of the original church while catholics were and are innovating things. Beside the supremacy of the pope there are other important practical differences between orthodox and catholic churches. The orthodox monks are not in religious orders, and ortodox priests are forced to be married. Catholics don't pray to icons and believe in purgatory. There are some churches called greco-catolic that are under the authority of the pope but keep most aspects of ortodoxy. This were created and fought by political reasons. For example most of Belarus was greco-catholic of bielorusian language while part of Lithuania in the Polish Union, but in the 1830's the russian tzars destroyed that church and forced them to russian ortodoxy. This attitude was continued by comunists so in 1948 in Romania the greco catholic church was forbidden until 1989. Ortodoxy it's not united like catholicism.In modern times each nation has her independent church led by a patriarch and a sinod. Always has been some difference between greeks and slavonic orthodox despite some medieval unity.

In the peninsula came the celtiberians that were largely celtic and later celto-romans from Britain. This late wave it's responsable for names of places like Galicia and Britona.

Milla Jovovich as Jeanne d'Arc :wub:

Hard to tell! Probably micenian greeks and anatolian populations.

Dacian was thracian and similar with the language of the getae and moesi. Thracian was probably not close to latin. Most thracian became hellenized. Latin influence on free dacians might have been large.

Many roman colonists in Dacia were from Syria and other oriental regions. This led to the romanization of Dacia and not to orientalization. Race it's less important then cultural identity.

Ramses you're making some errors. The hitites and Assyria were long gone before Rome was important.

I've read the book. It has nothing to do with real history. DISCLAIMER: Don't read THE REST OF THE POST if you don't want to know the end! To tell you a short version it's about a soldier in a restored roman legion old marian style, a magician/philospoher/doctor/teacher and a commando trained girl from Venice that, with some side characters rescue Romulus Augustus and take it to Britain, while chased by an evil barbarian officer of Odoacru, where strangely this story becames that of Arthur, Merlin etc. Yes the sword it's that of Caesar, but also Excalibur. I was on vacation on the seaside and had nothing to do on the beach! PS What i've been telling you it's from the book, the story in the movie looks somewhat different (who cares?)

romanian-english nu=no da=yes I have no ideea why. Maybe the linguists here will tell you. Slavs were present in romania from the times of Justinian. They were assimilated, but slavonic (old slav language) was church and official language until XVI-XVII century. The chirilic alphabet was used until mid XIX century. Ethnical origins of the leaders of the oldest (X century) political organizations in Romania are still debated. So, no hardnose slav conqueror is known.

Egypt put lots of resistance to Assyria, the new kingdom of Babilon and Ahmenid Persia. They put up a stiff resistance to persians and they rebeled many times sometimes with support from Greece. The last major rebellion was crushed not long before Alexander came. He claimed to be the sun of the last pharaoh from the nubian dinasty. Egipt tradition of independence and excelent natural defenses made it a place were special care had to be taken by rulers until they were assimilated in the arab islamic world. They were not a shadow, but maybe the richest, most homogeous region of the world.

"enigmatic symbols" - it get's better and better!

I think it's not about the legitimacy of roman conquest, but about the legitmacy of roman emperors and this is a very important thing.

It was the strangest way to carry a war. Not wanting to defeat a foe that it's a major threat to your country it's not wise. He created Alaric in a major player unlike any barbarian king before and Alaric gave later a terrible death blow to the West. He retreated his soldiers from the Rhine and not only Gaul was lost, but also Spain that was rich and untouched by war and that led later to the loss of vital Africa. He tried to balance the barbarians and the romans, the West and the East not to restore the empire, but to control everything by himself. I agree with you: the two young and weak emperors and the division between West and East were the most important factors that kept a soution from the crisis. Maybe if he succeded in becaming sole ruler than he could do something about the barbarians, but he only added to the problem with his actions. Why he did not had the resources? After his death the West was a shadow and this is what brought the historians "bias" against him. What was needed was another Aurelius not somebody with a weak position that tries to do tricks on a wire.