History Major. Cripple. Vaguely Left-Wing. In pain and constantly irritable.
I’m not sure about most of the details of this particular pic, but shock troops in WW1 would coordinate their attacks very tightly, down to the minute, making watches a necessity.
The square device is likely a flashlight for night attacks, similar to this one:
Only if you ignore the specifications mentioned to set the context.
Why the sack of 476 AD? Why not the end of the Republic? Why is the Eastern Roman Empire ignored? What about the Papal State? What about modern Rome that is still a nation’s Capital?
Rome never fell and dinosaurs never went extinct (birds are dinosaurs)!
Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we do not need a boundary here, we can accept that change is gradual.
Rome still exists, it is still a nation’s capital, it has been a seat of power all throughout its history (even when it wasn’t the seat of the (Eestern) Roman Emperor and durimg the era of italian city states, it was the popes’ seat), with the Vatican there is even a state with latin as its official language. And until the end of the tsars’ rules in Russia, there were rulers claming the titel of Roman Emperor.
Rome. Never. Fell. It is a gradual, probably still ongoing and neverending process of transformation. You can say the Roman Empire does not exist anymore. You might even say the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. But then it’s weird to not also point out that the Roman Republic stopped existing when Gaius Julius Caesar came to total power. Or that the Kingdom of Rome fell in 503 BC.
That’s the totality of the context. That’s it. That’s literally all of it up to that point. What fucking context there is supposed to ward me against the interpretation that you’re arguing that the Roman Empire never fell - an argument you are continuing to support in this very comment
Nor does the abdication of an emperor.
Hence why it’s an arbitrary cutoff, as mentioned in my first fucking reply to you in this comment chain. Responding that the arbitrary cutoff is invalid because “There were civil wars in the third century AD” doesn’t address the core fucking issue that the polity had degraded to the point in 476 where the former institutions no longer existed in most of the Empire, including the city of Rome itself. 476 as an arbitrary cutoff is making a fundamentally different fucking claim about the cohesiveness of the polity than asserting that a civil war is the same variety of disruption.
Again, while I can see that there are arguments for setting a arbitrary cutoff at 476, I argue that it isn’t needed and at the very least I ask if someone wants to have a Fall of Rome, they need to acknowledge that it wasn’t a sudden, catastrophic event but a long, gradual process.
You yourself conceded that I’d traced out the path of the process for 250 years, so I ask again, going back to your initial fucking response - what are you even disputing about my original comment?
I say that birds are dinosaurs because they have dinosaur ancestors. Humans do not have bacterial ancestors (this is the current working model for the domains (of life) AFAIK).
Jesus H. Christ. We’re all part of the same clade
For the I don’t know how manieth time, that was a long process and not a sudden event right after 476 because there was no Western Roman Emperor anymore. It happened gradually over decades and centuries and started way before 476!
This fucking you?
Not as a catastrophic event, but in a step of the “evolution”, a change in how the Roman Realm is constituted.
For whom? Some few high ranking politicians, nobility and stuff. Not much for regular people, like farmers, tradesfolk and such. Not even for citizens of the City of Rome. There were sacks before, nothing special.
That’s clearly not disputing the date, but disputing the idea that the fall of the Western Empire was catastrophic.
Oh, and in this very fucking comment too, you say:
But that didn’t happen in 476. The “barbarian” kingdoms that formed after the abdication of Augustulis were romanised to the point that Syagrius (kind of roman sounding name) of the Dominion of Soissons was known as “the roman king” by the Germans living in the region and his function was regarded as “governing a roman province”. Soissons was conquered by Franks under Clovis in 486. In Mauretania Caesariensis a “Kingdom of Moors and Romans” (inscription found in ruins dated to 507) supposedly survived into the 7th or 8th century. Even Odoaker regarded himself a roman citizen. He had the assassins of Nepos pursued and executed and assumed power with the backing of the Roman Senate and apparently increased the Senates power. Theoderic the Great ruled the Goth Kingdom of Italy (that extended into parts of Iberia at its height) as a patrician of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Again, no sudden collapse, no widespread catastrophe. Change.
So again, I reiterate - "The collapse of the Roman Empire led to a serious and massive regression in material and organizational culture across a broad swathe of Europe for all classes, not just the rich.
The idea that the Roman Empire didn’t positively and significantly affect the lives of the working class and peasantry which made up the vast majority of its population is not a serious position."
A sack in 410, 455 and a siege in 472. Not like the citicens of Rome never heard of the city being sacked before 476.
… there was no sack of Rome in 476.
What? No, I didn’t. And I honestly have nonIdea what makes you think that. I referred to the russian Tsardom as evidence for someone claming the title of Emperor or Rome and the Papal States as an example of Rome beimg of continued significance! How do you make that into me claiming both to be part of the Roman Empire???
If your response to someone claiming that the Roman Empire fell is to cite the Papal States and the Russian Tsardom as proof that Rome never fell (that being your core point, which you emphasized with punctuation), do you not see how that, in order to be a refutation, necessarily implies that the argument is putting forth the Papal States and Russian Tsardom as, in some way, the Roman Empire?
Not really, especially the part about the cohesiveness. That is the centuries long process I am talking about. There were civil wars, a divided Empire in the third century, etc.
Civil wars do not mean a breakdown of all the institutions of the Roman Empire.
Augustulus wasn’t even the last Western Roman Emperor, that was Julius Nepos who died in 480 while the Imperial Court was in Ravenna until 554.
Which one is regarded as the last legitimate Emperor and why is a matter of debate, but neither option matters considering that the acknowledgement that the exact cutoff date is arbitrary is one of the first things I mentioned in this discussion. You claim that you’re just arguing against this specific arbitrary cutoff date for the fall of Rome, but also say, and I quote:
Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we do not need a boundary here, we can accept that change is gradual.
Rome still exists, it is still a nation’s capital, it has been a seat of power all throughout its history (even when it wasn’t the seat of the (Eestern) Roman Emperor and durimg the era of italian city states, it was the popes’ seat), with the Vatican there is even a state with latin as its official language. And until the end of the tsars’ rules in Russia, there were rulers claming the titel of Roman Emperor.
Rome. Never. Fell. It is a gradual, probably still ongoing and neverending process of transformation.
These are not reconcilable positions you are putting forward. These arguments - both from you - are mutually exclusive.
The split into Eastern and Western Roman Empire happened long before though, dividing control already.
Again, the split between east and west does not mean the breakdown of all the major institutions of the Roman Empire.
In this case I used “you” more in a general sense, not necessarily you personally.
… then what are you even disputing? This is literally your second response in this comment chain:
That’s not what I’m doing though. I’m refusimg this specific point as a cutoff. And at the very least, we should not talk about this event as “the Fall of Rome”, because it isn’t. Because even if you want to have a fall of the Western Roman Empire, there needs to be acknowledgement and communication, that it was a long process and not a singular event.
Actually, no. Birds evolved from species in the clade of dinosaurs and species cannot develop out of a clade. Birds are dinosaurs because they’re descendents of other dinosaurs.
So now you are refusing all arbitrary cutoffs? All life belongs to one clade by most conceptions of abiogenesis, with one common ancestor for bacteria and humans alike. Are humans then bacteria?
But that is generally how the public sees it. Maybe some will say it took a few years because clouds blocked out sunlight, but compared to the tens of thousands of years the process actually took, in the minds of the general public it’s a ridiculusly short period.
Most people who are aware of the basic idea of evolution understand that it took thousands of years, not a few dozen. Arguably, more people are ignorant of the basic idea of evolution than should be, but at that point, you’re dealing with a very different issue.
For whom? Some few high ranking politicians, nobility and stuff. Not much for regular people, like farmers, tradesfolk and such. Not even for citizens of the City of Rome. There were sacks before, nothing special.
… fucking what.
The collapse of the Roman Empire led to a serious and massive regression in material and organizational culture across a broad swathe of Europe for all classes, not just the rich.
The idea that the Roman Empire didn’t positively and significantly affect the lives of the working class and peasantry which made up the vast majority of its population is not a serious position.
There had not been ‘sacks before, nothing special’ - the sack in 410 AD was the first sack of Rome in 800 fucking years.
Culture is what you make it, so let’s make it rock Indian?
That’s not what I’m doing though. I’m refusimg this specific point as a cutoff.
Okay, but you go on to cite the Papal States and then the Russian Tsardom as part of the era of the Roman Empire, which they are not in any meaningful sense.
And at the very least, we should not talk about this event as “the Fall of Rome”, because it isn’t.
It is quite clearly the fall of a formerly cohesive polity that ruled over much of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa.
Because even if you want to have a fall of the Western Roman Empire, there needs to be acknowledgement and communication, that it was a long process and not a singular event.
… I literally traced out some ~250 years of process in my comment.
That’s why I compare it to the extinction of dinosaurs. Even if you don’t want to acknowledge birds as dinosaurs, the extinction was not “an asteroid crashed into earth and boom, dinosaurs gone”, it was a process over thousands of years that includes a lot of climate related change in selection pressures, change in habitation conditions, change in nutrition conditions, etc.
Okay, but no one is going to seriously claim that birds are dinosaurs. Birds as dinosaurs is a very tongue-in-cheek trope.
The dinosaurs went extinct. That happened. An asteroid was involved. It doesn’t have to be a ‘singular event’ wherein all dinosaurs died inside of a day for all of those things to be true and talking about the mass extinction of the dinosaurs due to an asteroid collision changing Earth’s environment to be valid.
Not as a catastrophic event, but in a step of the “evolution”, a change in how the Roman Realm is constituted.
… the collapse of the Western Empire was a catastrophic event, and the counter-view that life in Western Europe went on largely unchanged or changing only by small degrees is not a position that has had mainstream acceptance since increased emphasis on archeological evidence in the 1980s.
B-Wings when
where is my space-future
Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we do not need a boundary here, we can accept that change is gradual.
Rome still exists, it is still a nation’s capital, it has been a seat of power all throughout its history (even when it wasn’t the seat of the (Eestern) Roman Emperor and durimg the era of italian city states, it was the popes’ seat), with the Vatican there is even a state with latin as its official language. And until the end of the tsars’ rules in Russia, there were rulers claming the titel of Roman Emperor.
Rome. Never. Fell. It is a gradual, probably still ongoing and neverending process of transformation.
Okay, but the refusal of all arbitrary cutoffs leads to total incoherence in discussion, and I don’t know of any serious historical current that embraces that idea. Attempting to discuss the ‘Roman Empire’ in terms of the 19th century Russian Tsardom would be an exercise in absurdity for anything but a comparative to the generally accepted arbitrary period of the Roman Empire (which, itself, would implicitly require acknowledgement that the 19th century Russian Tsardom is not the Roman Empire).
You can say the Roman Empire does not exist anymore. You might even say the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. But then it’s weird to not also point out that the Roman Republic stopped existing when Gaius Julius Caesar came to total power.
… but the change from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire with the ascension of Augustus is a commonly discussed cutoff in historiography?
Or that the Kingdom of Rome fell in 503 BC.
That’s also acknowledged?
I wonder if the Eastern empire saw the West as not worth governing/reconquering… or when they split were they more equals?
In general, the Eastern Empire was always the wealthier half of the Empire. But for much of the Roman Empire, the Western half was politically and militarily dominant. By the time of the formal split, however, the Western half was very clearly the less healthy of the two.
The Eastern Empire made some attempts to reclaim control over the West - notably during the reign of Justinian, with the reconquest of Italy and parts of Africa - but ultimately it was less that they didn’t see it as worth it, and more that the Eastern Empire (sometimes called the Byzantine Empire in its later periods) could barely hold onto what it already had. It would spend the next ~1000 years shrinking as neighboring polities took bite after bite out of it.
Caesar at 30: “FUCK I WASTED MY ENTIRE LIFE UNLIKE ALEXANDER, NO ONE WILL EVER REMEMBER ME”
Also why the later Roman Legions were so efficient - when you have the vast majority of your troops on hand and ready to campaign at any time, you can strike with incredible suddenness.
Knowing when to split your forces to ravage the land and when to concentrate to prepare for an enemy attack is also key - Caesar runs into that problem when campaigning in Gaul in his Commentarii several times.
Why the sack of 476 AD?
I mean, it’s pretty broadly accepted that Augustulus being deposed in 476 AD is an arbitrary cutoff point. But at the same time, it’s also pretty undeniable that by 476 AD the entity we knew as the Roman Empire, and the territory it ruled over, was, uh, in pretty bad condition. There’s some manner of severe change that was suffered through, and it helps to have a way to delineate that.
Why not the end of the Republic? What about the Papal State? What about modern Rome that is still a nation’s Capital?
Rome never fell and dinosaurs never went extinct (birds are dinosaurs)!
Without arbitrary boundaries, we wouldn’t have any boundaries at all - like how it’s difficult to tell where one species ends and another begins, so we make our random marks to have some manner of organizing the world we talk about. It’s just convention.
Why is the Eastern Roman Empire ignored?
GREEKOIDS OUT NO GREEKOIDS IN MY GOOD LATIN EMPIRE
“He who does not work does not eat” - Lenin
“You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work bitch” - Marxist-Leninist Britney Spears
It has some troublesome bits - the Second Amendment has bred any number of lunatics, and I have mixed feelings on the 10th. The flag, however, has always been A E S T H E T I C
IT WAS ALL THE SACK, ONCE IT WAS SACKED IT WAS ALL OVER 😭
For those who are curious about the actual details, the Western Roman Empire (the fall of the Empire as we generally think of it) fell around 476 AD, when the last Emperor was replaced by a Germanic warlord. But it was only marginally functional by then - Majorian (died in 461 AD) was the last real independent ruler, and Rome had been sacked twice (once in 410 AD, once in 455 AD). And even the sacks were not really a cause so much as an effect.
Rome went through a period in the 3rd century AD known as the Crisis of the Third Century, wherein the old institutions of the Empire as most of us imagine it were broken and brutalized by increasingly naked military rule, plague, economic crisis, barbarian invasions, constant civil wars, and a breakdown of government legitimacy. By 284 AD, with the ascent of the Emperor Diocletian, these issues were compounded by a curious mixture of centralized power and decentralized authority, necessitating increased taxes and repressive oversight from officials, including a form of proto-serfdom for the poor.
Over the course of the 4th century AD, the Empire’s fortunes deteriorated in every conceivable aspect, and when the Empire was split between Arcadius (Eastern Empire) and Honorius (Western Empire) in 395, the Western Empire was very clearly on its last legs, all-but-broke, unable to muster enthusiasm from its own population for its defense, and unwilling or unable to curtail the power of its elites even for the sake of self-preservation of the polity.
At that point, one is basically asking for the barbarians to sack the place for the nice narrative ribbon to tie around the decline. Especially with the sack in 410 AD - caused by the incompetent Emperor Honorius murdering his best general and best troops for the crime of being (checks notes) loyal while Germanic, leading many of them to join the Germanic tribes in opposition to Rome - who had agreed to not attack in exchange for a bribe that Honorius also welched on.
Get stabbed in Indochina by supporting France when they really shouldn’t have, come on
Perfidious even in loyalty, Albion is truly a menace 😔
That’s where my mind went to as well.
RETURN TO TRADITION
RETURN TO THE SEA
I’m flattered to have the comment posted here! 🙏