TaylorS

I live just across the Red River of the North from Fargo, North Dakota. I'm within a 10-minute walk from the river here in downtown Moorhead. I grew up in the little rural town of Ulen, Minnesota, with a population of just over 500. I currently attend college at Minnesota State University Moorhead, a mid-level Liberal Arts university.

I thought the Orthodox Christian guy calling the revived paganism a "delusion from the past" was hilarious, as if Christianity and every other religion wasn't as equally deluded. The pot calling the kettle black, "true believers" will always call the other beliefs delusion.

Roman Law. I'm pretty sure the legal system of almost every state on earth have elements derived from Roman Law. Most legal terminology in Western countries is derived from Latin.

I don't think Christianity had anything to do with causing the decline of Rome; it was a symptom of decline, not the cause. What A. J. Toynbee called "Universal Churches" tend to emerge in dying civilizations, the result of social forces operating over broad spans of time. Blaming Roman decline on Christianity goes right up there with "Decadence" in the category of "ideologically-motivated explanations."

I totally agree, we shouldn't idealize or vilify people and institutions of the past based on modern moral and ideological beliefs. The Roman Republic was basically a plutocratic oligarchy with a democratic facade, those who idealize the Republic seem to only notice the democratic facade. Those who idealize the populist strongmen forget that they were simply using the mob to enhance thier own power.

A traveling naturalist and anthropologist, writing about the flora, fauna, geography, climate, cultures, and religious beliefs I run into on my travels.

I find the period from the Punic Wars to the Social War (Marius vs. Sulla) and the period from Diocletian to the early Byzantine period (East)/Dark Ages (West) both very interesting. The first is interesting because of how a little Italian city-state expanded into a hyperpower so rapidly. The second is interesting because it shows the transformation of the Graeco-Roman Civilization into the Orthodox Christian Civilization in the East, and the fall of the Western Empire and the birth of Western Civilization out of the Western Empire's ruins in the West.

Hello everyone IMO the seeds of the Republics fall can be traced back to the Punic Wars. Before the acquisition of Sardinia, Corsica, and Western Sicily conquered cities were generally given a good amount of self-rule, their main obligation to the Roman state was in soldiers. The Roman Republic was, in effect, a sort of federation. The territories acquired in the First Punic War were governed in a new way, directly by Roman magistrates who came to treat "The Provinces" as cash cows to be milked for their own personal profit during their term of office. The 2nd Punic War ruined the Italian peasantry as a result of constant conscription keeping people from their farms as well as the devastation caused by Hannibal's invasion, a lot of peasants lost their land to aristocrats, who turned the land into slave-worked latifundia. The dispossessed peasants that migrated into the cities would come to support demagogues pushing land reform, enter the Gracchi. Since Rome's military was based on the conscription of those with enough property to afford millitary equipment (technically it was wealth, but property generally meant wealth in an agricultural society) there was a problem. Enter Marius. It was the fatal combination of provinces ran by magistrates from Rome and the Marian Reforms that doomed the Republic. It was only a matter of time before a proconsul decided to conquer Rome for himself with his personal army.