Et tu, Brute?

[sexdrugsmoney]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
This question is WAY too complicated to be answered in the form of a poll, and not only because the qualitative factors are not clearly defined, but...

brutus: supposedly a roman comitted to the 'democratic' process that was taken for a ride by the power hungry cassius and company, duped into the belief that their actions was something other than a power grab by the rich elite.

Ceaser: roman leader that hads REFUSED an offering of a crown/dictatorship- thus the idea that he was killed to preserve democracy is a BS cover for the disposessed powerful aristocrats like the conspiritors that were being marginalized by J's growing influence...

Agustus (octavian): brilliant statesman and general, far, far better for rome than democracy, ceaser, brutus, M antony cassius, or any other potential leader. garuenteed rome's dominance for centuries. had degenerate children/descendants- too bad.

rome: never really a democracy anyway.

Hadrian, Trajen, constantine, etc: good emperors, garunteed that the latin/western tradition would dominate european power structures for centuries

Nero, calugia, tiberius, etc: bad emperors


and so on...

[/ QUOTE ]

Some people blame Constantine and his conversion to Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire, what do you say bholdr?

[bholdr]

three things:

-the emperor Trajen was in power as rome reached it's territorial zenith... To the point of his conquests in eastern europe, aspiring roman leaders financed their rise to power through conquest. his successor, hadrian, actually gave up some territory in order to create more defensable borders. he realized that rome, due to mainly logistical and economic factors, couldn't continue to grow indefinitly... there was hardly anything else of value left to plunder... of course:

-the brutality of roman sport was, in part, designed by the rulers to keep the people of the city strong and conditioned to war and bloodshead, and those sports generally trailed off as and because christianity became more powerful... but, also,

-Ceaser, Octavian, Trajen, Hadrian and a couple others were gifted, brilliant generals, on a level with kublai kahn, tamerlane, cao cao, napolean (R.E Lee, too, imo) etc... maybe it was a lack of military talent, coupled with complacency and more advanced/skilled/numerous enemies that all came together to destroy the empier. nobody really knows, and though christianity may have played a part in the fall, imo it was definitly not the dominant factor.


just a thought: you wanna learn about an empire that's survived all of the last 2200 years, learn about china... by the time of ceaser, chinese generals had assembled armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands... china was greater than rome by almost any objective measure.

[sexdrugsmoney]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En respuesta a:</font><hr />
three things:

-the emperor Trajen was in power as rome reached it's territorial zenith... To the point of his conquests in eastern europe, aspiring roman leaders financed their rise to power through conquest. his successor, hadrian, actually gave up some territory in order to create more defensable borders. he realized that rome, due to mainly logistical and economic factors, couldn't continue to grow indefinitly... there was hardly anything else of value left to plunder... of course:

-the brutality of roman sport was, in part, designed by the rulers to keep the people of the city strong and conditioned to war and bloodshead, and those sports generally trailed off as and because christianity became more powerful... but, also,

-Ceaser, Octavian, Trajen, Hadrian and a couple others were gifted, brilliant generals, on a level with kublai kahn, tamerlane, cao cao, napolean (R.E Lee, too, imo) etc... maybe it was a lack of military talent, coupled with complacency and more advanced/skilled/numerous enemies that all came together to destroy the empier. nobody really knows, and though christianity may have played a part in the fall, imo it was definitly not the dominant factor.


just a thought: you wanna learn about an empire that's survived all of the last 2200 years, learn about china... by the time of ceaser, chinese generals had assembled armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands... china was greater than rome by almost any objective measure.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting stuff bholdr, I have Gibbon's "Decline and fall..." but I haven't had time to tackle it personally, as I have a book that apparently says Rome established a colony in western China, I believe it's called the black horse odyssey - once again, untackled.

Cheers,
SDM

[diebitter]

You forgot Claudius. He was pretty darn good.