ASCLEPIADES

Salve, AIII It seems we watched different lectures:Wrigth described the progessive lessening in war density through History (a hard fact) and foresaw the continuity of such process; he attributed it not so much to a change in moral standards (as you seem to have perceived) but mostly to the developement of more intimate and universal common interests via globalisation; ie, hurting you I hurt myself (eg his joke on Japanese cars). IMHO, you missed the core of this lecture.

Paraphrasing Maty, grammar and vocabulary have always been advanced torture 101 for any regular kid at any era and any place. irrespectively of the language; believe me.

We the poor mortals without JSTOR access always enjoy such nice information pearls; gratiam habeo CC.

I can think of a few other Roman Military projects which appeared to be wasteful of resources. Towards the end of the Roman occupation of Britain - and thus nearer the 'fall', the Saxon Shore defenses display a piecemeal approach to planning rather than organised and efficient design. Stone forts such as Caister appear to have been built and abandoned in favour of better placed sites within a period which cannot have been more than a couple of years - given that these forts were among the earliest in the sequence, being built in 'traditional' style and having external towers added half way through the construction. Going back to Flavian times, Legionary fortresses such as Inchtuthill (Scotland) are occupied so fleetingly that they are still being built as they are decomissioned. Back to Hadrian's Wall, Milecastles - defended gates through the frontier - are built rigidly every Roman mile, even where there is a precipitous drop of 150 feet, thus rendering the milecastle superfluous. And these examples are just in Britain! So, it does follow that the Roman military was at times very wasteful of resources and inefficient in its planning. Wether or not this can be included as one of the many reasons for the Western Empire's fall I would not like to say. My point was not that the Roman army never ever wasted any resource; au contraire, my point is that the Roman and any other army at any place and time actually waste resources and that Mr Shenkman wasn't able to show any evidence that the Roman Army was wasting more resources than usual previous to Rome's fall (an still undefined concept, BTW) . Additionally, not knowing the specifics of each individual case I just dan't define if any abandoned Roman castle in Britain represented a true waste of resources. For one, we must consider the involved strategic implications. Just think about the fire extinguishers at your home; IMHO, disacarding them without having been used shouldn't be considered a useless waste. As I said, military engineering is not one of my strong points, so I can't determine if Hadrian Wall's milecastles were useful or useless. Maybe Caldrail would be able to enlighten us.

Salve, Amici In a site like UNRV, this can never be emphasized enough: we must first define what are we talking about, before we try to explain it. What exactly means "Rome's Fall" to Shenkman, Breeze, any of us or anyone else? For the sake of the argument, lets accept the wild idea that we agree on such definition; considering any complex social and/or political phenomena as multifactorial is hardly original. So it may make sense; but it doesn't seem Mr Shenkman was giving any hard support for such argumentation. If I understood it rightly, Shenkman's "understimated factor" or "stupidity" would be the grossly inefficient use of expensive Roman resources. Then it follows that: a ) Romans previouly used their resources in a more efficient way; b ) they were using them inefficiently just previous to their fall; c ) their enemies made a more efficient use of the same resources. Apparently, Mr Shenkman considered to have had evidence just for b ). Military engineering is not one of my strong points; but if we agree even partially with the nice posts from NN and LSG, we must conclude the Inner Moat might have had a fair rationale after all. Finally, even if we admit the Inner Moat was a stupid waste of valuable Roman resources, it would be by iyself an isolated case at best. I don't think the most successful nation has ever reached a 100% efficiency. Even worse, chronology just don't match. This baby was built at the acme of the Roman Empire.

Sort of like how the Democrats dealt with it the last 8 years? I mean, let's not be silly about this. This sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to politics. Ebb and flow baby. We entirely agree, PP

Gratiam habeo for that nice video, U! Some people just can't deal with their defeat. (Admittedly, senator McCain is not one of them)

As it may be obvious by know, I just don't trust linguistic prescriptive bodies.

Salve, K Not really, the Academy sets regulations that are enforced by countless institutions starting with mass media that is highly influential, schools, bureaucracy etc The evolution of any language is a quite complex issue that does not depend on such institutions, no matter how influential they may be. In general terms, Academies pretend to "preserve" their respective languages, mainly for nationalistic reasons. They just can't succeed; live languages are permanently and unavoidably changing (in fact, that's the main scientific basis of glottochronology). Languages cannot be designed; that's the reason why Esperanto, Interlingua and many similar artificial constructs have completely failed.

Salve, M Nope. The senate commanded Carthago to be delended three years before (DCV AUC / 149 BC). The problem was that the carthaginians didn't cooperate satisfactorily with their own anihilation.

Regarding this thread's original question: I found in Galen's The Best Physician Is Also a Philosopher: "A man cannot care for science and money both". In the same book, Galen described Hippocrates, the ideal physician (who deserves emulation but does not receive it from the ignorant, grasping, and lazv physicians of Galen's day) as limiting his concern for wealth to avoiding hunger,thirst, and cold. His Hippocrates would pay no attention to Artaxerxes and Perdiccas (that is, royalty and its retinue). He will heal the poor in Kranon, Thasos, and other small towns. He will leave his students to care for the people in Cos, while he himself will wander everywhere to observe all Hellas. Besides, Galen frequently and openly denounced other physicians' economic abuse. So I would conclude that the original unsourced quotation from GG is almost certainly apocryphal.

Salve, Amici. Hmm.. todays world is far from free of people who are devoted to and swayed by things others would say are clearly ridiculous. I have to agree with NN on this one; it's clear it was not so clearly ridiculous for them. At Classical Antiquity, people mostly lacked scientific evidence (and methodology) to explain many natural phenomena. Even so, you can easily confirm that many (MANY) people still believes in augury and dream symbols (BTW, being intelligent and/or sapient doesn't prevent it 100%) Regrettably, virtually all the extensive writings (many volumes) of Dr. Freud on the dreams issue were unscientific (ie, not based on actual research). Modern studies have fundamentally confirmed that dreams are ... just dreams. Quite possible indeed; a nice example. With the rare exception of some sporadic subligaculum or strophium, the ancient Romans used no underware.

WOW! Gratiam habeo for sharing with us such wonderful resource. Personally, I'm more attracted by their articles on slavery and othe social issues. Even so, the MT Burns' article is indeed quite interesting.

That's a nice piece of research.

Salve, NN Not as lucky as one might think. The French and Spanish are reacting against the recent introduction of foreign words into their language. The kind of people who are hoping to strip latin from everyday usage in English are trying to deprive us of something which has been present in English at least from the time of Dr. Johnson, probably earlier. And those individuals are, at the same time, quite happy to see 'street' talk which is an amalgamation of recent immigrant words and traditional English slang, given official recognition in our language. Coming as I do from a traditional working class background, I feel sickened that once again this relatively small band of middle class liberal do-gooders is meddling in something it shouldn't for the sake of us uneducated morons (as they obviously see us), who are obviously too thick to understand anything except football, popular culture and words of more than one syllable. IMHO, languages' evolution is the perfect democracy. They evolve spontaneously, on their own; period. The Academies' tyranny is just an ilusion, a mirage. If any population is introducing foreign and/or slang words, it's juts because such words are being used and are required. The introduction of such words can be reliably prevented just in dead languages; by its own nature, the use of any language is beyond any kind of control.

Salve, CC Interesting point.

Salve et welcome, T Scheidel of Stanford is a big name indeed.

Salve, Amici President elect Barack Obama won by landslide (at least 338 electoral votes). The Democratic party controls both the Senate and the House. May God bless the United States of America.

While the English language doesn't quite have an 'academy', they do have the OED...and various academics who will gladly tell you that they uphold the morals of language. (Sadly, I had a couple as professors....) I can't say a thing about the French Academie, but as for the Real Academia Espa

Salve, GPM

Salve, Amici. Actually, I think the English language is the lucky one. Other languages (eg, French and Spanish) are simply under the omniscient rule of tyrannical Academies...