Apology Of The Crusades

[Primus Pilus]

I apologize for how off-topic this thread has become.

[Pertinax]

Off topic? Its achieved escape from the Earth's gravitational pull.

[Primus Pilus]

Off topic? Its achieved escape from the Earth's gravitational pull.

 

I apologize for the understatement

[Gaius Octavius]

Off topic? Its achieved escape from the Earth's gravitational pull.

 

I apologize for the understatement

 

You gentlemen don't mean a word of that. It was fun anyway.

I apologize for being so flippant. :1eye:

[Virgil61]

...

You gentlemen don't mean a word of that. It was fun anyway.

I apologize for being so flippant. :1eye:

 

My favorite apology happened off of Ft Bragg at lunchtime in an all you can eat buffet restaurant called "The Bangkok" where we were standing about five minutes. The busy waitress who we'd known for years and whose first language was Thai not English, apologized for the wait.

 

Beautiful Thai waitress: "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry about everything!"

 

Soldier with a dead-pan delivery: "Everything? World War II was your fault then?"

 

Thai waitress (misunderstanding it): "Yes, yes, I'm so sorry, please come this way and sit down."

 

Soldier to the rest of us: "Knew that g**-****ed Discovery Channel was full of ****".

[Rameses the Great]

How was information of the Cruscades off topic. If anything the thread thing is starting to get on everyones nerves. I think threads are nice and no problem. To some of you, you think that they are vastly overrated. Kind of like me my team skipping baseball practice, everyone gets sick of it after a while, except me.

 

Anyways for people who say the cruscade were not 'holy wars' they are just fooling themselves. Why did they start a 'cruscade' and the Muslims countered with a 'jihad.' You could say that they were just looking for land, but there was a tanacity behind these wars. People seeking redemption and honor for their God, in that time was more important than gold and property. You can go out and fight, but if you have something to fight for than you will fight with a sense of urgency. These wars to us now seem 'barbaric,' but to them it was saying, "hey we are going to giht to the death for our faith, and we're not going to stop until we do what we feel is right. For us to feel sorry about many years later, is ridiculous. Hte idea Christains are not allowed to fight is a bit suicidal. We had to protect ouselves for our religious beliefs and maintain them, so it would not be taken away.

Edited April 11, 2006 by Rameses the Great

[Gaius Octavius]

Rameses, that is what all are saying (and having a little fun).

[Rameses the Great]

I know, I just wanted to reiterate to what you guys said. You are very intelligent people and you guys same the same views I do. Its just for some of those people out there that do not realise the true story behind it. If they saw the reason for the cruscades it started over religion. I really like you guys because I finely found people that know their history. Remember, "those who do not know their past are doomed to repeat it.

[Andrew Dalby]

Remember, "those who do not know their past are doomed to repeat it.

 

Very sad, and very true. I wish that we were not repeating that particular segment of history -- Crusades, wars of religion -- but I'm afraid we are.

 

Had you read, Rameses, how Polybius explains his reasons for writing his history (of the rise of Rome and the Carthaginian wars)?

 

Mankind possesses no better guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past.

 

(Polybius, Histories, book 1, chapter 1)

[Kosmo]

I don't think will see again holy wars (islamic or christian). Those were made to convert some infidels now war it's made to exterminate a different group (bosnian, tutsi, serbian, south sudanese, kurdish)

And everybody apolgises and nobody cares.

History never repeats herself for her victims.

I'm glad about the low profile of the West in world politics so nobody could say that what happened in Rwanda and Sudan it's the fault of the West.

Let the japonese, chinese and indians do some peacekeeping and third world relife. So we don't have enymore guilty conscience and Save the World concerts with Bono and "sir" Elton.

[Germanicus]

Mankind possesses no better guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past.

 

(Polybius, Histories, book 1, chapter 1)

 

It's interesting isn't it, how much we question ancient Roman texts based on the bias of their writers ? I've recently read a number of intances...in Polybius and in letters from Pliny to Tacitus, when the importance of accuracy in the writing of histories is explicitly expressed as the most important thing.

 

I apologize for going off topic...what was the topic again ? Oh yes, the Crusades...nasty things those.

[Pantagathus]

Mankind possesses no better guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past.

(Polybius, Histories, book 1, chapter 1)

 

"A still greater difficulty was to preserve a strict moderation in his account of what he had seen, and despising all attempts to glorify himself by traveler

[Pantagathus]

Sodom and Gammorrah was burned for immorality and homosexuality. It never happened again in history.

 

The burning or the other stuff

[Primus Pilus]

Mankind possesses no better guide to conduct than the knowledge of the past.

 

(Polybius, Histories, book 1, chapter 1)

 

It's interesting isn't it, how much we question ancient Roman texts based on the bias of their writers ? I've recently read a number of intances...in Polybius and in letters from Pliny to Tacitus, when the importance of accuracy in the writing of histories is explicitly expressed as the most important thing.

 

It certainly is a dilemna. Are we so tainted by the idea of a political agenda that is so inherent in modern history that we sometimes fail to see the forest for the trees so to speak. Or is it just me? I think the problem is that when Suetonius makes an inference of a disparaging idea against Tiberius for example, he does so by making public an unproved notion ie... 'I heard that he might have done this'. Because it is written, readers of the time and later generations allowed it to become a fact rather than leave it as an open question. That is exactly the point I was trying to make ages ago in that Tiberius vs. Germanicus thread. Its not at all that the writings of Suetonius and Tacitus (the Agricola) should be discounted as untruths, but that we simply accept something as unprovable when the authors themselves admit that their own sources are not definitive.

 

I apologize to Suetonius for at times seemingly discounting his work, when all I really mean to point out is that he often makes it quite clear when a rather speculative piece of information is being provided.

[Pertinax]

This is very evident when looking at Tacitus on the Brigantes, one can discern grudging praise and terse sentences where an event not to his desired slant is recorded , grudging praise of other active ,high ranking combatants is at least visible. However I dont condem Tacitus -his work is essentialy a panygeric and was understood to be such.