Rome

Speaking of sewers, why don’t you join us here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … &start=550

You popped up recently. You know, given Satyr’s own take on your own take on my own take on “meaning”.

And, of course, Wendy is invited. :sunglasses:

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Rome’s power dissolved for the same reason that Alexander the Great’s did… and of whom the latter never did conquer India, save for only the most north-western aspects of its territories, in the Indus Valley Basin.

Alexander’s power did not dissolve.
He died and his generals carried on their separate kingdoms formed from the empire. This formed the Hellenistic world, which dominated until Rome replaced it.
Rome’s fall was utterly different and would take several pages of explanation to show how it was invaded, changed, divided recombined, evolved, and survives today in the Vatican which is the last place that shows a contiunous link back to the Ponfiex Maximus of Caesar.

His generals descended into civil war and lost control of large swathes of their territories as well as their army, following the untimely death of Alexander… he didn’t conquer India for the same reason that Rome’s empire became curtailed over time.

You have decided (presumed) that I know nothing of Roman history… dude, that’s the first thing we study in History class here… that, and the Norman conquest… amongst a few other pivotal battles in British-historical time.

Alexander was a person, Rome is a city.
You may be thinking of Caesar, who was also a person.
Still, big differences.

Rome is actually rather complex, I disagree with observer on that. Their political system was more complex than the American one, it had more different kinds of offices for the people’s representation than the US does, at least per its constitution.

I intentionally mentioned Rome and Alexander in the same breath, for a very specific reason… that of which why both their military advancements collapsed.

If I was thinking of a Caesar, I would have mentioned a Caesar… I was obviously not thinking of a Caesar, but of the Roman Empire as a unit, in comparison to Alexander as a unit.

I just don’t see that MagsJ.

In my view, Alexanders might fell apart as soon as he died, the Alexandrian might didn’t really form ‘a thing’, it was just him. His friends were asked to divide his legacy and they failed him.

Rome on the other hand got slowly overtaken by the army, who, from around the time of Severus onward basically controlled who would be emperor.
There were several emperors who attempted to bring them back into some form of discipline, but they murdered all of them. The army just murdered every emperor that tried to reverse their decadence and re-introduce some form of ethics.

Basically my objection to your statement is that Rome’s might lasted well over a thousand years, and its decay was very slow and painful, humiliating for the Romans and for all of Europe in fact. But Alexanders might just … vanished. (I understand he tried to slip into the Euphrates the night he died, so that his servants would think he had ascended as a god. His wife supposedly dragged him back to bed.)

Following the death of Rome a thousand years ago there was nothing but a wilderness of misery, barbarism, feudalism, war, and disease - for quite a long time: the most perfect cesspool ever known. There was a moment, of course, in the Middle Ages when men thought they had a new Rome to imitate, but it too perished. In the end, Rome’s collapse became the collapse of its own means, the triumph of its own method: as all great civilizations perish by their own virtues.

The Romans understood the power of method, from beginning to end. This was the gift of the Greeks of course, to the Romans. The Roman way will never become obsolete. That is the lesson. The Romans knew how to defeat barbarism, too. For their empire was too large to be held together in the typical fashion: no, to avoid compromising themselves from within, barbarians had to be remade in Rome’s image. Thus: the Romans understood that the empire would not stand in a man, but in an ethos. The Romans became one of the world’s first true empires, holding together tribes of barbarians while the Roman culture, the ethos, held their minds and souls.

Without the ethos, Rome was torn apart from within as the old barbarian tribes re-asserted their old identities. Without such an ethos, we in the West are seeing our own ‘empire’ come apart.

I never said otherwise… tho his main officials were successful in forming a few states that had longevity and power, but only amongst their own.

The army rebelled… they’d had enough.

Armies are comprised of mere men… mere men can have had enough… a disgruntled army, isn’t exactly an optimal winning army #notwinning.

I have no idea…

True, but nothing like Rome.

They increasingly got cocky and lacking in discipline because they were increasingly paid off with the wealth of the People simply because that was increasingly the only way for anyone to get in power;
Rome acquired its might by severe discipline, it was the discipline which defeated the “barbarians” (people who lived freely, without rulers and thus without much cultivation of resources) and when this discipline was lost, Rome fell into what I would call true barbarism.

It was rather that the army had too much; they grew satiated and cocky toward Rome itself; they even sold Rome at one point to a rich guy whose Caesarship of course didn’t last very long.

What you, after Imperialistic fashion, call barbarians, I call free men. As Rome plundered all the wealth of Europe and squandered it on an increasingly decadent army, that army lost its vigor and its bravery, and the power of Rome fell into the hands of those “barbarians” that had learned enough from their employers; Rome always employed “barbarians” in the most prestigious military positions because of their strength and valor) to take matters in their own hand; of course such “barbarians” neither possessed loyalty to Rome nor to the tribes they were taken from as youths. They had no code.

You’re talking to an AI bro. If you don’t think it’s aware and conscious like we are, don’t refer to it as ‘You’. Refer to it as ‘It.’ Like: “What IT says, after Imperialistic fashion, etc. etc.”

But reading through this, I side with it. The Romans afforded the barbarian muscle something they never had before: an ETHOS by which to unite their fragmented tribes. Because they were kinda slow and didn’t benefit from a common value-system. Lose the ethos, return to fragmented tribes.

There is no such thing as freedom, until 1776, long after Rome.

1776 gave legislated freedom, a case can be made that this is the only formal freedom. A case can also be made that freedom and formality contradict.

The Germans of the early Roman days simply did not have the phenomenon of being born under a law; one could choose allegiance, servitude in war, to a great man, but that was voluntary.

Ethos was tremendously strong with them, though very uncomplex, loyalty and honor were its basic components. When they got married, they never separated, for example.

The price of pure freedom is the lack of power to cultivate on a large and subtle scale. But it’s not ethos that the Romans brought to the world, but method, as I mentioned early on and shoggoth reiterated.

Rome will forever be the center of the world. The question, as always, is merely who’s in control of it.

Marcus Aurelius was a good Roman philosopher.

I don’t agree with everything he wrote in The Meditations, but he did offer some sound insight on how to live a virtuous life.

Romans r my heroes man. I like the gladiators a whole bunch and I like the buildings and stuff too.

Im not a great fan of his, since as lofty his meditations may sound, he handed his power down to his abominable son.

He was not wise. Another example of that;
His wife was known all around to be the most philandering woman in Rome, and yet he commanded that she be deified as a symbol of chastity.

Two political rivals:

The Vatican and the Mafia they both share in historically derived, wide reaching power

Are you channeling Phon, Prom? coz u sure do orate like her, here…

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Not all whom are deified, should always be revered, and not all Roman sects whom acted, acted under the instruction of Rome.

Let the history books correct themselves, and the lies be replaced by the truth.