Onasander

Who dominated the silk trade routes during Roman times? Was it the minority cultures or Jews and Christians, certian nationalities or tribes allowed, or what? Was there a certain type of ship they used in water travel? Certain kinds of wagons for land transportation? What were the major logistical hubs, and how were they administered? What goods went east, what went west in exchange, and was the silk road in roman days strictly east to west, or was it more a web, hitting different geographical areas?

That, and also because were're really nice people who care.

But what about all that food from the dinner in the Satrycion there weren't very many guests there.

I think they had utensils specially designed for throwing up, one of which is a long feather stuck down the throat.

I have a old latin copy of Ovid's Art of Love, think it might be in there.

NR?

Should there be limitations on what if discussions? People keep asking "What if Rome and China fought" or "Who was more elite, Samurai or western Knights?", stuff that just doesn't logically make sense to me to be asking. I have only one objection to my chain of thought, and that is the crusades and Alexanders invasion of India, two circumstances in history where nations of extreame remoteness from one another made sudden contact with one another, but in any proper discussion, discussion of Manpower comes into play. I think there should be basic parameters for how what if senerios should be discussed to eliminate, or at least significatnly reduce, the stupidity factor. Like instead of saying, who would win, we should say, how could they attack or undermind one another. By doing this, we would have to significantly research the geography, politics, and logistics involved to make a match happen.... the results of it would speak for themselves much more historically correct for a battle that never happen than a twenty page thread with people going on and on with na uh- ya ha, dey Romans blah blah blah.

Yemen was the crossroads of the ancient world, I'm sure if you were from a distant, non-hostile country without tradegoods, you could get pass the warlords with little difficulty.... but imagine how utterly pointless this would be, this was not the age of tourism. http://www.indianchristianity.org/orthodox/thomas.html

A lot of the reforms were kept, like with the civil code. The only problem was, Caesar was a Marian.

Pre-Islamic Sudan is of intrest to me, it's a little south of Berber Land.

Just found out a new member joined that just happens to belong to Elmendorf Airforce Base here in Anchorage, Alaska, which happens to border my my army base, Fort Richardson.

Hmmm, If I had a non-copywrited map, we could list all the supposed sites of the Pelasgians and try to figure out what their territory as well as internal economy looked like.

In India, St. Thomas established a branch of the Syrian Orthodox Church that thrives still to this day. He was one of the 70 lesser apostles that followed Jesus, so we're looking at prolonged Roman/Byzantine contact in India. (What made Marco Polo so special?)

Ohhh, I'm going to abuse you so much, you're going to regret making this thread. Where's that copy of Vegetius I had laying around?

There's always evil Canada, I'm sure they'll find a way to undermind the US if for no other reason than for the sake of Canadian Patriotism.

So long as the concept gets passed along, spelling be damned.

hmmm, can I submit a review for books I already read, or does it have to be books just comming onto the market?

Cool, I spawned a generation... who are in my wave?

Spent most of the month of september training up in Fairbanks (Ft. Wainwright) and Delta Junction (Fort Greely/ Camp Black Rapids) I trained alongside of some commandos from India, which was pretty cool.... well, not as cool as I would have wanted it to be, and got smoked under one of the seven modern wonders of the world, The Alaskan Pipeline. Fort Greely is Cold, even in September..... and Fairbanks is really small and pathetic looking, not really worth looking at. Back now in Tropical Anchorage, Alaska, resting at last.

I've been putting a lot of thought into this, if I was to pick any point in time/place, I would establish myself as the Duke of Alaska if the mainland was ever nuked and the U.S. collapsed. Alaska ironically, may be left untouched due to the ABMs we've built up here. If it happed today, I'd give the govenment a couple of years to reorganize, but if it failed to thrive, I'ld probably would take over Camp Black Rapids (It's a cold weather/mountain military school isolated, but next to one of the two main highways between Fairbanks and Anchorage) and barricade the road, and get a couple of buddies together to patrol the highway/tanaka river in a couple of old world war two propeller planes. My initial taxation would be from the tolls, benifiting mostly the locl villages along the highway. From them, I would enlist volunteers to take the other highway, thus severing not only anchorage from the inland population, but would make Fairbanks either attack with thier strykers down an extreamly narrow corridor where I would possess the air superiority, or give in via tribute as well as recruits. Once I control Central Alaska, I would lay claim to the pipelines and due a show of air power on the north slope, my newly mented paratroopers, using smoke jumper equipment to seize the facilities n the north slope. Anchorage would surely respond by attacking, pushing me back to fairbanks, but my Strykers, which Anchorage would lack, would do a river run south and crawl along till it got close enough to Palmer (my air superiority would have kept recon from sending word... the planes in anchorage having long ago being destroyed in my attacks) to gain a strategic advantage in holding the plains, as well as access to a port to offload oil from tankers. From this location, I'ld sally forth, periodically leveling fortifications and allowing them to try to attack me, weakening their resolve. From Palmer, after a few years raiding distant anchorage of it's technologies and weakening it's defenses, I would storm the mountains above it's plains with my strykers, reopen the silos, fortify the passes, and deploy artillary/howitzers above the city, launching a few salvos onto the mudflats next to the docks. Cut off from their food supply inland, lacking tradeable oil and their docks threatened, it would be only a matter of time before they surrender. As to my management style... Alaska being highly isolayed, rich, and militarily powerful... yet lacking the population or will to use it's military, would turn me into a isolationalist. I would maintain trade with what's left of the pacific realm, over time establishing a new republic with military owning everything, which wouldn't be too much of a cultural shock for Alaskans. My leadership style is shown from the country I have on Nationsates.net http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index....=display_nation

I thought it long and hard, and came to this conclusion... they became a bunch of pussies at the end and refused to enlist, or for that matter, draft armies of decent, hardworking men. It's was every roman males fault as well as thier leadership. Blame Joe Ceasar, he took his countrymen to ruin. Just like with what almost happened in France (WW1) with the Four Coporals, you can only blame the leadership so far before you take into account the character of the people serving beneath them, and how they fed of each other to produce disaster. Had good men served. good leadership would of emerged to meet the demands of the craft.

I have it on my laptop, but it'll cost me money to call someone's phone using it, given the room below me let's me use thier wireless signal for free (what a bunch of great guys), I can only call people already signed up, and I don't know anybody signed up for it.... so it's just an anoyance I have to turn off everytime I turn on the computer. Kazaa has it for free downloading.

I wanna talk about the monastic communities that devoloped in Egypt and Europe, and how they later influenced the middle ages in the Islamic World and Europe, as well as thier dissemination of philosophy and knoledge in general. Most people know diddly squat on this subject if their primary focus has been military or political. This site has next to nothing dealing with both Early Christianity or for that matter, paganism in the roman empire (which I'm not biased against talking about on a academic/scholarly level, just don't know nearly enough about the other side to give it justice). If I jumped in head long into some deeply theological discussion about St. Nicholas or St. Mary or Egypt, some of the not so devotely Catholic or Orthodox on these boards would get confused and fall out; imagine if I started talking out Communal relations and obscure communities or rites, it would confuse the heck out of anyone. This is a topic of great importance to any one studying roman history. I encourage pagans on these boards to go more indepth as well about thier areas of historic/theological knowledge and provide resources for greater understanding so others who don't know alot about the cult of Mithridities or Celtic Rituals can get involved too in a balanced discussion. We focus too much on the martial and political, little on the theological and economic on this site. Someone had to take a stab at it.

The Visigoth Code http://libro.uca.edu/vcode/visigoths.htm Ooops, sorry, it wasn't the Saline laws, it was Salic, my memory was wrong on that. Here's the link, it's a short read, unlike the massive, boring Visigoth code: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/salic.htm A little something for me to read once I get back home next month (I'm stuck in Fairbanks Alaska for a month, please don't delete this link till then, I found this really interesting(http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/econ/econ.htm)

The barbarian kings saw themselves as servants to the emperor, but were soverign over thier own tribe occupying the territory of Rome. It was the dawn of the Feudal Age in the west, ushered in by the Eastern Emperors who had no real authority over the kings in the west.... kinda like in Ancient China. They just got lucky that the barbarians in the west liked the old ways enough to propose a continuation of it De Jure, though the Byzantines wern't exactly in a position till Belisarius to make it De Facto. Odoacer's kingdom was recognized by Odoacer as still part of the roman empire, just as the Kurds in Iraq throughout the 1990's were part of Iraq, except Odoacer knew how to pay better lipservice to the emperor than they did to Hussein. There are a few old German AoW books from the 6th century a few years back I was trying to track down translations of, but over the last six years I lost the latin titles to them (at least it looked latin to me, I was sixteen at the time). I don't know if they deal exclusively with the Art of War, Statecraft, or just History of the state, but I know they exsist. I have long lost the titles though. They would definately be of intrest. Also, the Saline Laws (Frankish Laws) used to be one the internet(might still be), it talked about Roman/ Frankish penal code in it. I don't remember any mentions in the Visigoth Code, but then again, I never finsihed reading it.