Re: I am talking about one of the plagues not THE plague
lyringlas Send a noteboard - 07/04/2010 08:45:26 PM
I would make it not happen.
Rome doesn't resort to tactics which would result in their fall and the dark ages never happen. Europe doesn't go through the intellectual lull it did and religious dogma and irrationality isn't able to take over.
As a result, mankind is much further along today.
Rome doesn't resort to tactics which would result in their fall and the dark ages never happen. Europe doesn't go through the intellectual lull it did and religious dogma and irrationality isn't able to take over.
As a result, mankind is much further along today.
Didn't the Plauge happen several hundred years after the fall of Rome? Or am I just being an idiot and not quite getting what your saying?
In some cases, the same diseases were responsible for multiple instances of plague, and it's hard to accurately diagnose each of them hundreds or even thousands of years later. "Plague" killed Pericles and a host of others when Athens was besieged in the Peloponessian War; WHICH plague remains an open question.
I don't agree the Romes plague near the end is what killed it though; overextension and complacency during the Pax are more attractive candidates. Christian unity and the assimilation of so many "barbarian" German tribes kept Rome on life support and hid the decline for at least a century after its peak, but had the Empire been sustainable Constantinople would never have been founded.
The plague that came through Rome crippled its army, killing most of the young Roman soldiers. This eventually forced them to try and assimilate barbarian tribes and resort to the measures that kept it on life support.
Without the plague, Rome's population might have been strong enough to sustain Roman troops and a Roman identity, instead of seeding power to outsiders.
Of course, the reason Rome fell can be debated endlessly. I'm one of those that thinks it was the plague.
Either way, if Rome hadn't fallen like it did, I think we'd be better off by a lot today. But "Have Rome not fall like it did" doesn't sound like a very good reply

What are you talking about? This was how Rome thrived through its glory days: expansion, and delegation of military service. The amount of *actual* Romans from Latinum, and later even from the Italian peninsula serving in the provinces armies was negligible. The main principle of Roman military strategy was: conquer place A, take men and armies from place A and make them serve in place X, while having people from place X guarding place A. Then, after colonizing place A with people from place V, then conquer place B to give land to people from A...and continue in such a fashion to appease everyone. The heart of the empire, Rome, much like America, didn't really grasp the idea of warfare and the hardships that came with it, because the people living there were as far from the borders as possible.
I know I just did a survey, but this was too good to pass up.
07/04/2010 12:44:15 AM
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Myself: World War I.
07/04/2010 12:45:57 AM
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I don't think it's that simple.
07/04/2010 12:57:16 AM
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I see your point.
07/04/2010 01:02:33 AM
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True, one might even say *adding* a war there would've improved things.
07/04/2010 01:36:07 AM
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Re: True, one might even say *adding* a war there would've improved things.
07/04/2010 10:48:49 AM
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I had a teacher with an interesting theory related to that
07/04/2010 12:57:49 AM
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Well, at this time, it was pretty well accepted that Russia wasn't exactly a techinical power.
07/04/2010 01:04:35 AM
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The Plague
07/04/2010 12:52:33 AM
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Re: The Plague
07/04/2010 01:05:35 AM
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He must be talking about a different plague, but I'm not sure which one, either. *NM*
07/04/2010 01:37:32 AM
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Maybe; there were episodic plague epidemics before and after that time.
07/04/2010 02:05:18 AM
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I am talking about one of the plagues not THE plague
07/04/2010 02:50:25 AM
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Re: I am talking about one of the plagues not THE plague
07/04/2010 08:45:26 PM
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I'm so glad you have the time and inclination to type up these replies.
*NM*
08/04/2010 07:09:22 AM
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...?
08/04/2010 07:51:14 PM
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Sounds like he was thanking you for saving him the effort of writing a similar reply. *NM*
08/04/2010 09:28:55 PM
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OK, think this one's been pretty thoroughly covered in my absence.
13/04/2010 11:51:16 AM
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The spread of Christianity
07/04/2010 12:55:29 AM
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Re: The spread of Christianity
08/04/2010 09:29:17 AM
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But wasn't Christianity the inspiration for a whole era of art? *NM*
08/04/2010 01:41:34 PM
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Re: But wasn't Christianity the inspiration for a whole era of art?
08/04/2010 01:44:36 PM
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The product of Christian inspiration was heavily Hellenistic in origin...
08/04/2010 07:54:12 PM
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The destruction of the Great Library.
07/04/2010 01:02:59 AM
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Internet spam sucks indeed.
07/04/2010 01:08:23 AM
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We'll never know; makes for fascinating speculative fiction.
07/04/2010 01:13:49 AM
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This whole topic is wild, it's something I sometimes think about.
07/04/2010 01:17:50 AM
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"Joel captures Alexandria! The Great Library is destroyed!" *NM*
07/04/2010 01:08:35 AM
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It's crazy to think that the human knowledge base doubles every 2 years...
07/04/2010 08:49:28 PM
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Literacy and communication have literally made a world of difference.
13/04/2010 09:25:45 AM
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if the giant meteor hadn't destroyed the dinosaurs...
07/04/2010 01:10:42 AM
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"FOR" global warming? Now there's a phrase I never thought I'd here!
07/04/2010 01:16:04 AM
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The spread of Islam
07/04/2010 01:26:11 AM
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oh aren't you clever. *NM*
07/04/2010 01:47:13 AM
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There's such a thing as being right for the wrong reasons, though I'm not sure he is.
07/04/2010 02:12:14 AM
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Wikipedia is of course not a scholarly source, but all the same...
07/04/2010 11:57:01 AM
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Fair enough.
07/04/2010 12:51:16 PM
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Re: The spread of Islam
08/04/2010 09:24:31 AM
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I...do not know.
07/04/2010 07:18:13 AM
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A lot of times, you change one thing, and everything changes- even the things you don't think about.
07/04/2010 12:26:51 PM
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Amusing that the underlying expectation seems to be more along political history lines
07/04/2010 12:56:49 PM
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Here's one that'll be more to your liking...
08/04/2010 10:40:53 AM
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Re: Here's one that'll be more to your liking...
08/04/2010 11:58:27 AM
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Uh...
08/04/2010 12:11:14 PM
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Re: Uh...
08/04/2010 12:15:20 PM
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The Devil is always in the details
08/04/2010 12:29:25 PM
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Re: The Devil is always in the details
08/04/2010 12:32:34 PM
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Not really
08/04/2010 01:07:57 PM
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Re: Not really
08/04/2010 01:10:16 PM
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Only to a degree
08/04/2010 01:27:22 PM
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Re: Only to a degree
08/04/2010 01:30:12 PM
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I was into cultural and religious history
08/04/2010 01:38:24 PM
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Re: I was into cultural and religious history
08/04/2010 01:41:31 PM
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Ha!
08/04/2010 01:49:23 PM
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Re: Ha!
08/04/2010 01:51:28 PM
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Since, surprisingly, no one's pointed it out yet, prehistory/=history.
13/04/2010 09:52:19 AM
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Re: I know I just did a survey, but this was too good to pass up.
07/04/2010 09:04:02 PM
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Science getting on the ball in the 40's and making superhumans *NM*
08/04/2010 05:31:34 AM
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The spread of peanut butter and jelly.
08/04/2010 07:12:21 AM
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I think two spreads that would be better to eliminate would be marmite and vegemite (sp).
08/04/2010 05:30:26 PM
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The head of [Roman Catholic] Christianity.
08/04/2010 07:15:21 AM
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You completely missed the "pick 1" part of the question, didn't you? *NM*
08/04/2010 09:26:23 AM
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Well, techinically, I never said that you couldn't make multible posts, each discussing 1 thing. *NM*
08/04/2010 05:36:37 PM
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I'm fairly sure he was just mocking someone's earlier post "just thought it would be interesting..." *NM*
08/04/2010 08:06:56 PM
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I'm pretty sure of that too. *NM*
08/04/2010 08:33:46 PM
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