M. Porcius Cato

First, welcome to the forums. Second, how many times do you think the language faculty evolved? If only once, what alternative would you suggest to the hypothesis that all languages also descended from a common ancestor?

So how do you explain that?

"More tender than previously thought"? We've known about bronze-age and even neanderthal burial practices for about 30 years! No surpise--humans mourn their dead relatives and care for their injured ones. Is there a physical anthropologist anywhere who still thinks that these displays of humanity are some sort of cultural innovation? To me, the remarkable aspect of this discovery is that it shows how long we've been a flower-loving species

For what it's worth, my favorite part of Gladiator was Maximus' veneration of his penates. That was a nice touch (much better than the exploding chariots!).

I'd also point out that the power of the aristocrats to reign in a monarch has almost always been accompanied by subsequent limits on the power of the state to infringe on individual rights. The Magna Carta is a nice illustration--it wasn't the Rights of Man or the Bill of Rights, but it was an important precursor (much like the Twelve Tables).

People always seem to think that the music of their generation was the greatest music ever. At the risk of sacrilege, I think the Beatles and Rolling Stones were talented and slightly novel at first, but their stuff seems awfully repetitive and boring to me. That whole stanza-chorus-stanza-chorus structure gets so old so fast--kind of like Keith Richards I guess.

Again, I can't think of ANY Roman honors awarded for dying. Tributes were for killing. The various coronae were for saving Roman lives. You could get an award for being the first to jump over a wall--but there weren't anything like Purple Hearts and that sort of thing (were there?). I think this notion that Romans believed that there was nothing so sweet as to die for one's country is a bit of Horatian death-worship that was not widely shared. The highest honors were reserved not for those who died for Rome, but for those who killed for Rome. And, ultimately, is what you want from your military anyway--not to go out and die heroically, but to go out and kill the enemy.

Nope--I regard both the New Testament and the DaVinci Code to be bad fiction. I only like Dan Brown more than the Gospel-writers because at least Brown clearly labels his book FICTION. When the Gospels get labelled 'fiction', I'd be a lot happier. And BTW it's no one's job to disprove the Gospels or any other fabulae--it's up to the Gospel-writers to convince their audience, not their audience to disprove the Gospel-writers. If any random assertion is to be held true until proven false, then we might as well forget about critical-thinking altogether.

Just goes to show that even in chains the senate was greater than that darling of Venus!

What's unusual about it. Seems to me like the view Lucretius expounded is almost a perfect match for the view that many men today would endorse--sleep with whomever you wish to get rid of your lust so you can focus on more important things. I'm too much of a romantic to buy that view, but I dare say that many moderns have an altogether cynical (and Roman) view about romance.

OK--let's go with this analogy. There's a lot that can't be on the other side of the door: square circles, frozen fire, tall abysses, triangles whose interior angles sum to more than 360 degrees, immortal fudgsicles, colorless green ideas sleeping furiously, and on and on. Contradictions don't exist--neither on this side of the door nor on the other side. And the analogy is far too charitable to the true believer and dedicated agnostic. The true believer is willing to maintain that contradictions exist; the dedicated agnostic that it is impossilbe to know whether contradicitons exist. So, to make the analogy exact, the true believer and agnostic would maintain that (for example) there is a square circles on the other side of the door, but that whenever you open it, the square circle hides from you! There is a simple answer for this kind of unfalsifiable claim: there is no difference between a negative and unfalsifiable hypothesis. There is no difference between "there is not a green dragon in my garage" and "there is a green dragon in my garage but it's never there when you look for it." God is simply a green dragon in someone's garage that always happens to be hiding whenevery you look for it--meaning, it's basically not there.

I may not win, but I can laugh and taunt. If you believe that, you might as well break your pen and cut out your tongue. If logic cannot win in an age of space travel, nuclear weapons, and the internet, the human race is doomed--and I don't believe it is doomed.

To the victors go the spoils, and to the vanquished go the honors?

Rome wasn't "Hellenized" until Marcellus' capture of Syracuse during the second punic war, even then it would have been a gradual process. Sure, it picked up very rapidly then, but compared to Carthage Rome was far more Hellenized. The influence through the Etruscans alone was significant. Think about it: Carthage had virtually no tradition of theatre, poetry, or music. But the Romans adopted all these Greek innovations from their neighbors. The first Latin translation of Homer occurred quite early. Way earlier. Cato the Elder's opposition to Hellenization came only after every other noble brat was quoting Socrates at him. And Cato himself could quote Greek literature right back at them and use Greek literature as its own foil. Also, I think Cato died as censor so the wasn't doing anything after being censor except pushing up daisies. I do agree that the second punic war put Hellenization on the fast track, but that's because it was roughly contemporaneous with Rome's adventures in the East and because the second punic war set off a baby boom precisely when there were tons of Greek slaves around to educate the Romanaculi. If it hadn't been for dropping all those future world leaders into the hands of Greeks, the Greeks would never have been able to capture their wild conquerors.

It was similar but I think it was more closed--rather like the senate of Venice or Florence during the renaissance. Also, I like to think of it as more akin to the board of directors of a corporate conglomerate--they were almost totally governed by the bottom-line because they made the habit of distributing all unexpended revenues to the taxpayers. This had both good and bad effects. Good in the sense of cutting out waste and in motivating ruthless punishment of corrupt officials (crucifixion); bad in the sense of being penny-wise and pound-foolish (e.g., they disbanded their navy when it wasn't being used, whereas the Romans kept building theirs). Part of this difference is cultural; I wonder how Carthage would have fared had they been as Hellenized as Rome.

Between the human sacrifices (rare, I know), the slavery, the marriage and divorce laws, and the infanticide, I'd go with the infanticide. Seeing a baby left on a waste heap would be tough (call me a softy).

please note it also said "sacred"-it is your solemn spiritual obligation to consume high quality beer to commune with the Divine! Wow--and there's a book proving this!? I can't wait to show it to my girlfriend! Now I'm not just a beer snob any more; I'm just doing my sacred duty...

Almost every thing written about Jesus was written long after the fact. The gospels themselves are so riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, we're not even sure whether Jesus' ministry lasted one year or three! So what difference does it make whether the fabulae are 200, 2000, or 20000 years old?

Keep in mind that we sometimes let a bit of partisanship come through in our debates/discussions. Partisanship??? When discussing Caesar??? I'm shocked--shocked--that you could accuse anyone of partisanship!

So what? That doesn't mean education and training isn't necessary. I'd rather have a well-educated and well-trained aristocrat of moderate experience than an illiterate legionary with tons of battle experience leading my army. Again, there's more to winning a war than just sword-play. If you can't feed your army, you're done for.

I find it remarkable that there are people who believe a man could rise from the dead, yet who are unwilling to believe that the same man could have sex with a woman. I guess they follow Tertullian--credo quia absurdum.

Classics was one of my majors as an undergrad. The other one is my bread-and-butter. I guess that makes roman history my jam?

I wonder if anyone has ever attempted a reconstruction of a chain to see how effective it really was. Just because no one bothered to take it down doesn't mean it worked!

How can you not love a book with the phrase "healing beer" in the title?

Good scare quotes. I'd take the petty crimes of a Verres (who was successfully prosecuted by the way) over the unpunished crimes of a Domitian or a Sejanus any day.