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Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

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Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#41

Post by cucumber3732842 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #22
theoeirjfb wrote: post #18

I do not get the obsession with fall of Rome being a bad thing. Look at taxation, look at big part of population being in slavery. Their military machine, roads and civilisation was basically just to crash rebelions! Today we have taxation around 30 to 70 percent. Imagine if taxes would be at 10% and we would not have to sponsor all sort of "adventures".

That's an interesting point and worth discussing. I'm not sure why you got down voted. Maybe people are perceiving some subtext that I'm not.

>I'm not sure why you got down voted

Because he questioned taxes and the weekend crowd thinks that's heretical and won't even entertain the discussion of why things are that way let alone whether they're good or bad.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#42

Post by matusp »

theoeirjfb wrote: post #18

I do not get the obsession with fall of Rome being a bad thing. Look at taxation, look at big part of population being in slavery. Their military machine, roads and civilisation was basically just to crash rebelions! Today we have taxation around 30 to 70 percent. Imagine if taxes would be at 10% and we would not have to sponsor all sort of "adventures".

The standard of living in Rome was not surpassed for more than a millennium. Large parts of the empire were at peace for centuries, allowing economy and trade to thrive. Many provinces that were peaceful and prosperous were ravaged by wars, ethnic conflicts, and plagues for many centuries after the fall.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#44

Post by vintermann »

This question depends as much on you as it does on history, because it's about identity: what made Rome Rome?

To say "Rome fell and nobody noticed", you have to have a different definition of Rome - or maybe we should say, assert a different essence of Rome - than the people who lived at the time.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#45

Post by hyperman1 »

mathgeek wrote: post #30
hyperman1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany. Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

Basically, the whole protestant faction. A sibling comment mentions Lutheran (German) and Mennonites (Dutch). There is of course catholicism from the Irish, but the Anglicans are suspiciously small.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#46

Post by satvikpendem »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #41
CoastalCoder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting point and worth discussing. I'm not sure why you got down voted. Maybe people are perceiving some subtext that I'm not.

>I'm not sure why you got down voted Because he questioned taxes and the weekend crowd thinks that's heretical and won't even entertain the discussion of why things are that way let alone whether they're good or bad.

I had just the sort of discussion you're talking about on that big thread about PG's "how to make a billion dollars article," where for some reason people couldn't even fathom that there was even a way to tell whether certain taxes are good or bad, and couldn't understand the logic of doing so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526360#48527840

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#47

Post by mike_hearn »

hyperman1 wrote: post #45
mathgeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany. Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

Basically, the whole protestant faction. A sibling comment mentions Lutheran (German) and Mennonites (Dutch). There is of course catholicism from the Irish, but the Anglicans are suspiciously small.

The Puritans fundamentally shaped American society and culture. They were English.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#48

Post by mike_hearn »

alephnerd wrote: post #39
hyperman1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

> The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK > Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany. This underestimates how Germanic, Irish, Italian, and Hispanic America is. For example - Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, e…

Disney?

> Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue in the Hermosa neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney, who was born in the Province of Canada to Anglo-Irish parents, and Flora (née Call), an American of German and English descent

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#49

Post by wahern »

userulluipeste wrote: post #35
jcranmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best answer may well be some time in the 1500s. Recall that as the era shifts from the late Classical to early Medieval, all of these people are still speaking the Roman language (Vulgar Latin, which evolves into the various Romance languages), following the Roman religion (Christianity), obeying Roman legal codes, and in many aspects, still following Roman customs and experience the same Roman economic and admin…

"The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom." The Christendom ceased to be unified a whole lot earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism

The Church of the East split in the early 5th century, followed later that century by the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Altogether they may have been larger than the Roman (Latin and Greek/Byzantine) Church.

Armenia became a Christian state before the Roman Empire did, and Ethiopia not long after Rome did. (Both churches now part of Oriental Orthodoxy. Another state church around the area of Sudan emerged, too, the last of whom disappeared only in the 1600-1700s.)

The growth of Christianity in the Persian Empire created a major source of friction between the Roman and Persian Empires (the latter was nominally Zoroastrian, at that time also a proselytizing religion), creating space for the emergence of Islam, which would later lead to the end of both empires and the conversion of millions of Christians and Zoroastrians.

Christianity was never coterminous with the Roman Empire. It just seemed that way from the perspective of European history and culture. European Christianity eventually forgot about those other Christians (I'm not sure if the reverse was true, though). Relative to modern Protestantism, all of these churches have near identical theology, Roman Catholicism included. Which perhaps bolsters the point about Protestantism representing a significant break in the European historical narrative.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#50

Post by crote »

hyperman1 wrote: post #45
mathgeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany. Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

Basically, the whole protestant faction. A sibling comment mentions Lutheran (German) and Mennonites (Dutch). There is of course catholicism from the Irish, but the Anglicans are suspiciously small.

Isn't that just because a large portion of the early English colonialists moved to the USA precisely because they weren't Anglicans?

See for example the Mayflower: they left England due to prosecution, moved to The Netherlands, then left for the USA because there was too much freedom for them and they wanted to impose stricter rules.

There's of course the obvious heritage in the sense that the Reformation started in Germany, but movements like the Mennonites have never really caught on there or in The Netherlands.

They only took off once they landed in the USA, so I wouldn't call that a change of seat.

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