The Roadie

To be fair to Caesar though, Augustus and Constantine had much a longer time at the top to be able to shape the republic/empire into how they thought it should have been. Caesar had his own idea's and ambitions for the future of Rome but unfortunately he was unable to fulfill them. As for the greatest Roman figure?? That's debatable, we will always argue the for's and against's of that question, but he is most certainly the greatest known Roman figure. I think that's something that we can all certainly agree on. I'd have to say Julius Caesar. For me, he is the embodiment of Ancient Rome. He rose up from his humble beginnings, and MADE his name. He embodied drive, dignity, ambition, and the might of the Roman Army. People are mystified by him because he was larger than life. He was loved by all. His infamous murder probably helped too but I think that it was mostly him in it of itself that made him great. He was all about his image and made sure that the public saw him as a great man which is the image that has been passed down to us through history. If we are talking about Roman subjects regardless of social position, the foremost "Roman" would certainly be a Galilean carpenter with a God complex (who might have been entirely a figment of fiction). As for Roman emperors, commanders and similar, Constantine is the only one who have had any impact after the fall of the Empire. Augustus come second, but his achievements did not outlast the Empire. As for the 20th century person who have had the greatest impact on the world political landscape, I would say it would be Adolf Hitler. He basically destroyed European imperialism by trying to forge the ultimate European empire and gave both the USA and the USSR to rise to superpower position. His fall meant the fall of political reaction. Since 1945, open racism, classism and imperialism have been discredited.

I do not think he was crazy at all. Rather, it seems like he made a concerted effort to supplant the republican traditions of Rome with the traditions of the hellenistic despots and Egyptian pharaohs. Hellenistic kings did often portray themselves as gods. Do not forget that Caligula threatened the senate for dishonouring his grandfather Marcus Antonius (he banned the celebrations of the battle of Actium). As a child, he had travelled in the east, and wanted to replace the western traditions with eastern autocracy.

1. Caesar 2. Hadrianus 3. Nero

Hey CN. Do you mind if I pinch your idea (and some of the replies) and use it as a basis for a lecture for the local History Group? "The Top Ten Roman Attrocities" is a title that would really pack 'em in (what does that tell you about human nature?) . . . . and bums on seats usually means new members. I could play with the number of attrocities based on time available, and finish (or maybe start . . . no, finish) with The Rape of the Sabine Women. Sounds like an attrocity, but (arguably) wasn't. I could even tell it to make the Romans sound like the good guys! Let the audience go out on a feel-good story. Is that OK? My top three would be: 1. The destruction and utter annihilation of the Dacian people, which Trajan also celebrated. 2. The Third Carthaginian War. 3. The destruction of Jerusalem and first Roman-Jewish War. In all these conflicts, probably more than a million people perished in each one of them, 4. Caesar's Gallic campaign. 5. Claudius' campaign in Britannia. 6. The treatment of Goth refugees by emperor Valens, forcing them to sell their own children into sex slavery in return for food. 7. The murdering of the Foederati families by Honorius. 8. Theodosius slaying 10 000 unarmed spectators in an arena just because a mob had killed a local governor. 9. Sulla's proscriptions. 10. The proscriptions of the second triumvirate. Note that the campaigns I listed only are campaigns where excessive force was used, killing millions of civilians.

I think he saw himself more like a sort of ancient equivalent to Elvis or Michael Jackson, and attempted to be well-liked by the people. The idea for rebuilding Rome and putting all art there was a lot a consequence of his Hellenophilia and his vision for a sort of reborn utopian ideal world. The same could be said about his plans to weep and sing for the rebelling forces. The man just wanted to be loved.

The Kaliphate was ultimately its own largest enemy. In the 8th century, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen at that point, surpassing both Persia and Rome. Yet, it lacked institutions advanced enough to administrate the Empire. The evidence is by the speed it fell to pieces. http://moinansari.files.wordpress.com/2008...pire-750-ad.jpg In 1000 AD, the Kaliphate just comprised the southern half of Iraq. It was a giant failure of an empire, but it is at the same time possibly the only world empire which has spawned an entire civilisation in such a short period of time.

This is a bold statement. The Mediterranean landscapes are determined by geography (lots of mountains, little plains) and climate (hot and dry) and romans did not change any of these two. Deforestation and land degradation could have made things worse but pastoral cultures are often worse then agricultural ones at this aspect. The fact obviously is that the Mediterranean world during Antiquity had enough economic capacity to support more "advanced" civilisations than beyond the Carpathians and the Alps, while the reverse is true for the early modern and industrial ages. It is also true that most of Iraq and the Levant during the copper and bronze ages consisted of forests. When you cut down wood in dry areas, it will take a long time before forests could root down again. One thing which is disturbing me with for example modern Greece is their way of treating what little environment they got. There is an island there which is one of the few islands where the African chameleon still is living. Chameleons are very sensitive and could actually die out of stress. The authorities have blown up several five stars hotels around the chameleon reservation, and the owners of these hotels do not inform their guests about not disturbing the chameleons, as they themselves are quite willing to sacrifice the reservation in order to build a golf field. Moreover, the lights of the hotels are disturbing the poor lizards. There are rangers, but they almost work on a voluntary basis, and are often harassed by egg thieves and common tourists who do not know better. When money and profitability is involved, the interests of an endangered species often come at second hand. Yet, no one could deny that it is a tragedy which is occurring on these islands. Greece and similar countries should work to restore the conditions which existed during early Antiquity, instead of further destroying their environment by setting up mass consumption-based hotels and golf courses.

Technically this is correct, but it is a little bit like saying that Napoleon was responsible for finally conquering the Roman Empire because the Holy Roman Empire can be seen as a resurgency of the Western Roman empire (while the Eastern Roman Empire was still in existence), and the last person to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor was Francis II, who abdicated following military defeat by Napolean. I look forward to hearing views on whether or not Napoleon 'did for' the Roman Empire. PS Yes, I was a little contentious purely to invite debate about the Napoleon thing. Tortuous link, I know. A bit tortuous yes, especially when you consider that Voltaire stated the view that the Holy Roman Empire, as a loose federation of relatively weak duchies and princedoms under a nominal 'King' which just about at the end of it's existence straggled into Italy was 'An agglomeartion that was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.' I wonder how long this current cabinet will last before it is losing most of its popularity. Cuts are never well-liked by the people. UK coalitions use to be pretty frail as well. ^^

It is of course possible that he kicked Poppaea to death, though I doubt it. Some authors mention a fever, others mention childbirth as the reasons for her death. I know some outrageous gossip about modern leaders, like for example that George W Bush as a kid liked to put firecrackers into frogs to watch them explode, or that Che Guevara was a zoophile.

Okay, I confess, I kinda like Nero. It is in fact more than that I share birthday with him and actually have facial features reminiscent of his. I think that he rather than being only a spoiled brat also was a person who held on to some sort of idealistic vision of how the world should look like, upholding the arts, music and theatre as norms for the future. It is my belief that the animosity of ancient Roman writers should be taken with a large grain of salt, especially as they themselves report that the Emperor had a large support base in the proletariat and amongst the slaves. During his reign, Nero often favoured the proletarii at the expense of the citizens and the aristocracy. It is a myth that he fiddled while Rome burned. In fact, he opened the private gardens for the people of the city. His reconstruction programme was the blueprint of what Rome is today. At the end of his reign, he fell out with the aristocrats and started an extermination campaign against them - leading to the western provinces defecting and the Senate declaring Nero an enemy of the state. Even after his death, he had a large following. Both Otho and Vitellius supported their claims on their relations to Nero, and several imposters appeared in the eastern provinces. Even amongst Jews, talmudic tradition tells that Nero converted to Judaism - which must be a sign of a certain popularity even amongst a group traditionally hostile to Roman heads of state. I don't claim that Nero wasn't cruel, but what ruler of that era wasn't cruel? So, is Nero misunderstood?

We cannot estimate its relative strength today, but say that Francia had fallen into a civil war, it could probably have survived, if it had the support from the local population. Syagrius seems to have been a competent enough commander. It would probably have been subsequently de-romanised during the centuries.

I think it was an actual law from Republican times. No one was supposed to carry weapons in the city of Rome. The Praetorian Guard was the only exception.

How did Christianity provide a more democratic theory of justice and social mobility? Democracy originated with the pagan Greeks long before Christianity, and I know one could argue that it wasn't true democracy as we know today because slaves were not part of the process, but the Christian West didn't do anything to eliminate slavery until the 19th century. As for upward mobility, the pagan Romans provided a system of laws that encouraged free enterprise, and a somewhat capitalistic or competitive outlook, though not as overwhelmingly capitalistic as was seen later in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution. If anything Christianity's attitude of turning the other cheek and spirituality rather than materialism would be inconsistent with upward mobility. I will agree with your other point that they found a way to accommodate Plato (St Augustine of Hippo) and Aristotle (Thomas Aquinas), but that was after Julian. Many Greco-Roman scholars replaced their blief in the pagan gods with Greco-Roman philosophy (Epicurianism, Skepticism, Cynicism, and Stoicism) Stoicism is considered by many the basic philosophy of the pre-Christian ruling class in Rome. They didn't need a new religion for spiritual guidance. However the uneducated had little or no appreciation for their philosophy. Christianity began by converting the uneducated: " Come to us ye who are sinners, ye who are fools or children, ye who are miserable, and ye shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven. " Celsus If Julian's reign had been two decades or more, then we could have questioned why he didn't reach out to the pagans of Rome. We shouldn't forget that his reign was very short (361-363 AD). Had he not waged war against Persia or died when retreating, he could probably have rolled back the influence of Christianity - much like how the Tang Dynasty managed to stop Buddhism from taking over all of China. Julian wasn't too popular with the nobility either, nor with the influential Diocletian bureaucracy, as he wanted to restore the privileges of the cities and towns in electing their own officials, as well as restoring the popular congresses to their traditional position, whereas the general trend during the fourth century was a gradual centralisation to Constantinople and Meidolanum, at the expense of the local economies. The progress towards feudalism had already started.

The sexual intercourse would have happened in Israel or the Two Rivers region about 60 000 years ago, and could actually just been one single encounter between a Neanderthal and a Cro Magnon. It was the first modern humans who exited Africa who came into contact with this Neanderthal, or these Neanderthals. While one intercourse seem to be very little for explaining the fact that all Eurasians have about 1-4% Neanderthal DNA, we should also remember that around 5% of the Eurasian population today are directly descended to a male who lived in Mongolia 800 years ago. In a hunter-gatherer society where most people still lived in one or just a few small communities around the Persian Gulf, the genes could probably travel with enough ease to properly "infect" most of the population of exodus Africans.

Greece, Italy, Africa and Egypt were regions heavily affected by human cultivation, to the extent that production almost became industrial in terms of organisation. Most likely, the dull Mediterranean environment, with its many tree-less islands, brown coastlines and unproductive areas are a direct result from environmental overexploitation during Antiquity. Since the Romans and other peoples in the Empire used wooden plows, the north-western parts of the Empire were spared more intense cultivation due to lower soil productivity there. The weight of the European population lived alongside the Mediterranean shores until five hundred years past the fall of Rome, following the invention of the iron plow which brought the population centre to the Low Countries, France and Normandy.

I forgot to ask what were Majorian's religious leanings? I know Christianity was now entrenched in power politically, but was he harsh toward Pagans? I know it is claimed that Marcellinus accepted his rule, and that he himself was a devout pagan, and is allegedly to have been a skilled soothsayer. Just curious. The situation seem to basically have been beyond repair after the barbaro-roman alliance against Attila. As for Justinian being Rome's last hope, lets not forget that the Byzantine Empire shrunk down to a small remnant of what it had been in the century following him. It is generally seen as that he depleted the resources of the Empire in order to re-conquer the lost territories in the west. If the Byzantines had not tried to restore all of the Roman Empire in the sixth century, they might have had a better chance against Longobards, Slavs, Bulgars, Sasanids, Arabs and Normans.