Favorite History To Learn About

That movie is beyond brilliant.

 

by really popularizing the idea of aggressiveness being a good thing, which it isn't. nor was its rule all that peaceful nor democratic. almost from its very beginning rome was in a constant state of infighting between corrupting influences. it did apply many greek innovations more widely then greece ever could have, but i'm sorry, that's really the most positive thing that can honestly be said about it.

 

without rome's rise to power, there never would have been the fanatacism that created the middle ages, and without the middle ages, scientific and technological development while slower then we have seen making up for lost time since the industrial revolution, but it would have been steadier, one wouldn't have been needed, and we'd be ahead of where we are now without it. we'd have followed a different path. one less motivated by ego greed and conflict, though perhaps not entirely without them. but they wouldn't have been seen in the rose colored romantic light in which many of today's problems are a result of.

 

Question is how peaceful were the other cultures of the time? The Celts, Greeks, Persians etc. Just as aggressive and warlike, although they were not so well organized.

 

Well, first of all how in earth do you know what else would have been?

Secondly: it can easily be put that the middle ages (which is merely a label of a certain era) didn't came about because of roman fanaticism but actually came to be through the downfall of the roman empire... If the west roman empire would have lasted it could have gone either way. The downfall of it though... can easily be perceived as a reason for the decline in the use and spreading of technological advancements, as well as the rise in 'fanaticism' to put it simply and to use your own term.

 

Also aquaducts, public baths, and the Cloaca Maxima, an excellent sewer system that was built around 500 BC and is still working today.

 

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

 

In Britain the Romans introduced many things from cats and pigeons to carrots and peas. Not to mention proper houses with central heating,paved streets, grapes, rhododendrons, the calender - a long list. Also of course, Greco-Roman culture.

I'm not at all convinced that either the Romans or the middle ages were as fanatical as some like to think.

 

Not a python fan, eh?

 

Can't stand them. That's why I posted the clip

 

this is not entirely clear. what is, is that all places suffer when aggressive perspectives get the upper hand.
it does go further back, to perhaps around the beginnings of agriculture.
those you mention all did horrible things, but did they represent as much a majority of how people thought?
well i don't claim to know that either, but i do know, that by romantacizing aggressiveness, the rise and fall of rome, set human development back by a thousand years.
and it was only when the moores brought, what was then, a new perspective to southern europe, that people there began to question the morality of fanaticism,
and it was only when they did, that europe was able to break out of the poverty of repression,
enabling in turn, the industrial revolution's attempt to make up for lost time.

what i am saying though, is that the idea of aggressiveness being a good thing, was not there at the beginnings of humanity, and if it had been,
it is unlikely human civilization, to the relative degree it ever has existed, would never have come to be.

rome is over rated for a great many things it had nothing to do with inventing, but did put to previously unprecidentedly broad use.
unfortunately at the point of a sword, and largely without regard to the wishes of anyone other then its self.

 

cor, that'll teach me to only read the last three posts in a thread

 

if rome hadn't forced people, at the point of a sword, to be dependent on it, how would its downfall have affected anyone? brittain had perfectly good roads, agriculture, houses, and even a political system, long before rome came along and imposed its dictatorship by remote control. as did la tene france and gundistrop mittle europe. and even palistine had its own perfectly good shekkles before rome came along and changed the money to ceaser's.

rome was a victim of the overconfidence of power, just as the overconfidence of power is leading modern nations and economic interests to ignore the finiteness of nature's resources and cycles of self renewal, to their own likely, perhaps all but inevitable, fall.

 

Britain prior to the Roman conquest was not a very peaceful place. The country was dominated by minor iron-age chiefs or kings who were warlike in nature, and controlled their lands from well defended hill forts. They were bent on power and wealth. We don't know how the ordinary person thought. But we don't really know how the ordinary Roman thought either. We only know how a few of the patricians thought.

I just can't see how the Roman empire set things back 1,000 years. It had the very opposite effect in fact of bringing a far higher level of technology and social organization to northern Europe. After the fall of Rome, things reverted, and only started to get back to what they had been around the 15th century.

I'm not at all for romanticizing the Romans, or in fact any historical group or period. They were a very mixed lot. There was good and there was bad, same as every other culture that's existed. They made a big change in European history, and have had a very wide influence.

Although the Moors bought a slightly more tolerant society to Spain for a time, a lot of the very worse fanaticism in southern Europe dates from the time just after the Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain. The rise of the inquisition was a direct result of that, and there were also the Spanish conquests in the Americas - both of which have become watchwords for fanaticism.

Most of the innovation of the industrial revolution came from northern Europe, from Britain, Germany, France, esp. Britain. By then, the country was well on the way to becoming a second Rome, only with a far bigger empire. And one every bit as vicious as that of the Romans. And like the Romans. did both good and bad.

 

well i'm still more interested in the less traveled byways of history for their being less completely politicized. who's great great great grandfather might have sat on the same nice flat rock i might sit on, what he might have thought about and why he might have. i can't disagree with anything b^3 said, except for the roots of the inquisition actually going much further back. though it was a symptom of the conflict that was part of the process.

and while i cannot deny that the influence of rome was far reaching, it never physically reached my nice flat rock, neither on the other paw, that history could not as easily have followed an infinity of other possibly paths, a good many of which i would have found far more interesting and gratifying.

a world in which steam, in however unimaginably crude ways, could have been put to real use by what is our 11th century, and electricty by our 12th. perhaps some other long fanatical disruption could have come along since, but imagine where we might by now be, if none ever had.

christianity would have been more like buddhism if it hadn't had rome's millitance to fight. that is if it had even come along at all, or achieved so great a sphere of influence even if it had. there would have been no saul of tarsus and no burning of the library at alexandria. that's what i'm talking about.

 

Should have said the Spanish inquisition - you're right that the roots go further back.

Can't see though how technical progress was held back by Rome - it seems to me that it ended with the end of the empire. If the empire had gone on maybe we would have had machines at an earlier date.

 

nono not held back by rome,
but by the fanatacism that began with all that crap,
crap fights between fanatical factions at alexandria.
i didn't know the details and i probably won't remember them,
but what i mean was, the way it became unsafe to openly advocate or even admit to,
scientific thought, after and largely because of that happening.

 

I am interested in the epoch related to the Mahabharatha , which happened around 3200 B.C to 3100 B.C. I think it was a defining period of ancient history , signalling the end of the Dvapara Yuga or Bronze Age and the beginning of the present Kali Yuga or Materialistic Age.

Much of the present had been predicted then by the sages of those times, such as the incessant conflict and wars along with aberrant behaviour.

In the Mahabharatha war itself, weapons were used with effects similar to those of nuclear weapons. Here is a related verse ..

…a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame As bright as the thousand suns Rose in all its splendour… a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds… …the cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant parasols… ..it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. …The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, And the birds turned white. After a few hours All foodstuffs were infected… …to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.



I am interested in this period for its wisdom along with information to deduct the ongoing path of the present age.