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."