Roman Ruins

(outline)

Comment Blog

Mediterranean culture of Rome:
Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, Balaeric Islands
Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus

Culinary Crescent:
Tuscany, Pisa, Genoa, Nice, Marseilles (Masilia), Barcelona

Cities inherited: Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch
Cities created: Constantinople; and expanded, Marseilles, Trier, Paris
            "castra" = -chester

Can this civilization render an account of itself?
George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral 2005
            "By the seventh century, the once flourishing Greco-Roman-Christian civilization of North Africa had been severely weakened by theological and ecclesiastical controversies that sapped its civilizational strength and attenuated its ability to 'give an account' -- to persuade itself that its civilizational accomplishment could and should be defended.  Within eight brief decades, that civilization disappeared into the sands.  It was militarily destroyed by the advancing armies of Islam, and the political/military incapacities of both the western and eastern wings of Christianity certainly played a role in North African Christianity's virtual extinction. Yet one cannot help thinking that the foundations had been eroded before the armies of the Prophet appeared" (155).

"Collegia iuvenum"
"equitas" class
Diocletian
Prefectures: Italy and Gaul (Gaul, Spain, Britain, West Rhine)
Illyricum and East (everything else)
Dioceses with vicars
Provinces and "civitates"
Battle of Milvian Bridge, 313
Constantine . . . Constantinopolis
Latifundae
Senator Quintus Aureliius Symmachus (340 AD)
Ambrose of Milan: "What you know not, that we know by the voice of God.  And what you seek by fanices we have found from the very wisdom and truth of God."