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Matthew Ehret's avatar

Excellent analysis Hans. Looking forward to the next part

The Hidden Life Is Best's avatar

"History is an archive of irreproducible and uncontrolled experiments performed within a perpetual replication crisis." Haha! Good one! Good stuff here! I'm still processing the idea of Rome as the paragon of morality...fascinating! Based on your observations however, I would say that we could also state "history is an archive of experiments reproduced repeatedly....thus reinforcing the hypothesis that social life is circular and not linear, and corruption and cupidity trumps (pun intended) morality" QED, just look at real news reports after reading Plutarch. Who will be our Plutarch?

ScuzzaMan's avatar

Hmmm ... The deification of moneymaking, by implication also of moneymakers, and the use of diplomacy as prelude to war.

Where have we seen this lately?

🤔

Bart Bounds's avatar

Thanks. I greatly enjoyed this.

What do you think, if anything, about the hypothesis that Phoenicians integrated into the Roman senate and are/were yhe families that fled to and developed Venice. Some conjecture that this is the origin of ‘The Black Nobility’ etc.?

Hans G. Schantz's avatar

I hadn’t heard that one before. There is a hypothesis that many converted to Judaism, too.

Bart Bounds's avatar

Yes that is part of the yarn.

Jim Healy's avatar

I have heard something to that effect as well.