Soulforged said:
Cleveland Mark Blakemore said:
I'm not sure which one you are referring to.
You got it right, but you missed the part about the Spartans.
(...)Washington and Jefferson(...)
I didn't say whether the Romans were good or evil according to your Francis Fukuyama secular humanist value system. I said that they were virtuous. They were not conflicted. Romans were very scary people in the beginning because they were damn serious at all times, were people of their word and said exactly what they meant. When they said civil servants were obligated to perform all their duties exactly as they were assigned and forbidden to steal so much as a single denarus, they weren't kidding. Romans were so honest they could be trusted with huge sums of money without graft and it goes a long way towards explaining how quickly they built infrastructure at the outset. The money for government went back into roads, buildings, sewage works and water pipes for the people, not the pockets of bureaucrats. By contrast, in the latter days of Rome they taxed their citizens blind and the hoi polloi never saw a dime of that money come back to them, ever.
I wonder how is it that you've such a confident insight on these people, I could accept your reference to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as morally superior beings, since they only lived three centuries ago and records of them might be more accurate and more numerous. But how do you explain the same references back to the romans, not only that, I disagreed with your assertion of them being "morally incorruptible" people, one because you were speaking in general, as if they were morally superior to the rest of the civilizations of their time, and two because, talking about history, you can know a lot of their philosophy, their leaders, their conflicts and wars, their monuments, but pretending to know about the average roman who lived thousands of years ago is a little far fetched, until the XIX century not a single author considered the lives of the common man to be worth the trouble of recording, the main vehicle that carried characters to the books was fascination and marvel, two things that any average person lacks. Unless, of course, you're extrapolating the little you know (though you know more than me) and creating hipotesis for the sake of sustaining your argument for this "Cycle of Decay" and its reasons.
I know you probably think like Nancy Pelosi that I'm no better informed than you. You probably think it doesn't matter if you fake it, because everybody else is also faking it.
Except I'm not faking it. I'm the genuine article. I am self-educated, except my self-education is identical to the education I could have gotten at the half-century in the public institutions.
I think that the real difference between you and I (as with everybody else) is my Aspergers. Try as you might, you will never be able to develop a perspective outside the consensus. You can't. You're a neurotypical and there is a penicillin ring around the perimeter of your head that will always prevent you from escaping your own cultural "normal" to a higher perspective. You will never be able to see the woods for the trees.
In a world where there is nobody left who can read, anybody can insist that history is unknowable. As long as there isn't one person left who
can read.
Ammianus Marcellinus (330 - 391 AD)
Appian (90 - 160 AD)
Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius) (125 - 171 AD)
Arrian (Flavius Arrianus) (96 - 180 AD)
Athenaeus (Athenaeus of Naucratis) (ca. AD 200)
Caesar (100 - 44 BC)
Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) (234 - 149 BC)
Catullus (87 - 54 BC)
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (106 - 43 BC)
Columella (Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella) (1st cent. A.D.)
Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio Cocceianus) (155 - 235? AD)
Dio Chrysostom (Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus) (ca40 - 120 AD)
Diodorus Siculus (90 - 21 BC)
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60/55 - 7 BC)
Eusebius (260 - 339 AD)
Eutropius (Flavius Eutropius) (4th century AD)
Florus (Lucius Annaeus Florus) (during reign of Hadrian)
Frontinus (Sextus Julius Frontinus) (40 - 104 AD)
Fronto (Marcus Cornelius Fronto) (100 - 167 AD)
Galen (Claudius Galen) (129 - 199 AD)
Gellius (Aulus Gellius) (123 - 169 AD)
Herodian (170 - 240 AD)
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65 - 8 BC)
Josephus (37 - 100 AD)
Julian the Apostate (Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus) (331 - 363 AD)
Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis) (47 - 130 AD)
Livy (Titus Livius) (59 BC - 17 AD)
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39 - 65 AD)
Lucian (120 - 180 AD)
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) (99 - 55 BC)
Marcus Aurelius (Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) (121 - 180 AD)
Martialis (Marcus Valerius Martialis) (38/41 - 100 AD )
Nepos (Cornelius Nepos) (99 - 24 BC)
Origen (Origenes Adamantius) (185 - 254 AD)
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 BC - 17 AD)
Pausanias (2nd Century AD)
Petronius (Petronius Arbiter) (27 BC - 66 AD)
Philo (20 BC - 45 AD)
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) (23 - 79 AD)
Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) (62 - 113 AD)
Plutarch (50 - 125 AD)
Polybius (200 - 123 BC)
Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) (35 - 100 AD)
Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) (86 - 34 BC)
Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (4 BC - 65 AD)
Seneca the Elder (Seneca the Elder) (ca.55 Bc- ca.Ad 40)
Sextus Propertius (50 BC - 2 BC)
Strabo (66 BC - 24 AD)
Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus) (75 - 150 AD)
Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus) (55 - 120 AD)
Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus) (160 - 230 AD)
Valerius Maximus (Valerius Maximus) (c.20 BC-c.AD 50)
Varro (Marcus Terrentius Varro) (116 - 27 BC)
Vegetius (Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus) (c. 400 AD)
Velleius (Velleius Paterculus) (20 BC - 30 AD)
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70 - 19 BC)
Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) (c. late 1st cent BC and 1st cent. AD)
A small sampling of authors who wrote in enormous detail about the past. They also wrote far better than most modern authors as well and they read better even in translation, most of them. There is only one non-Roman author I have ever read who reads better in translation than native authors read in English. Friedrich Nietzsche.