Ah, the old boy's fond memories of his schoolboy days. Playing conkers, carrying his schoolmaster's books and whiling away the hours reading Edward Gibbons under an old oak tree near the quadrangle.

Ever been to Bankstown High?

You'd need more than moral fortitude to go there - Dutch courage, perhaps.

Karnal wrote on Apr 28^th, 2012 at 5:18pm:


I am not often critical of Australia but you point to a tremendous weakness. It is a weakness shared by other western countries, of course, but it is more starkly obvious here.

No.
The view that football - sport and leaping about in the great outdoors generally - is fulfilling and that reading the newspapers and watching the ABC are signs of a rich inner life.
Egalitarianism is a great things and its positives outweigh its negatives. Still, it is not 'all good', as the plebs like to say.

Soren wrote on Apr 28^th, 2012 at 5:56pm:


I've read all the old historians, including Gibbon and Mommsen, who compared to Gibbon is incredibly modern.  They share a certain romantic naivety and both swallowed Livy, hook line and sinker. Modern historians tend to take into account the revisionist context within which Livy operated. The same can be said of Zosimus (the primary source for the period in question) to some extent.

Now Decius himself was bestowed with the honorific, "Traianus", which illustrated the prevailing Roman ideals of conquest. They still aspired to this paradigm, although there was nothing left to conquer and loot and the empire of the time was slowly  decaying from within. They failed to update their business model. That was their main reason for economic collapse.  Sack loot and rape 101 just didn't work any more. 

The original Trajan was a classic example of the modus operandi of Rome.  Dacia and later Parthia was his source of his personal wealth and his perceived success. It had nothing to do with forming institutions and legal systems, or improved governance,  all of which the Romans inherited from the Etruscans several centuries prior. Gibbon quite liked him too. He rated him as number 2 in his top 5 Emperors.  

By the time it came to Decius (an Illyrian from the territory of  modern day Slovenia), there were no more large territories to conquer. It was all he could do  to sort out the various revolts that were breaking out across the empire. It wasn't until about 100 years later that Christianity became the official religion of Rome, and it was a very different religion, with more similarities to the cult of Bacchus and other mystery cults such as Mithraism than modern day Christianity. It just gradually became the mystery cult with the most influence (and the most thugs).   

Most of Pompeii had not even been excavated by the time of Gibbon.  Gibbon (and Mommsen) are more interesting from a historiography sense than anything else.


Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Quote:


I won't be doing so much of that from June onwards. My setting with then be more (regional) urban than rural. I'll be working for evil fossil fuel 

Karnal wrote on Apr 29^th, 2012 at 8:01pm:



I think you are a devious paki bastard, PB.
I pointed out a weakness, not the norm or standard to which assimilation is required if we want to avoid a fractious society (best represented by the places that most people who refuse to assimilate come from).

Soren wrote on Apr 29^th, 2012 at 8:06pm:


You mean those awful pleb-hating, ABCaphobe barbarians?

They come from Denmark, no?