Would you rather go back into the past or go into the future?

[Aurelius]

I want to hear, oh sage of Roman Imperial history.

~Simone.

No sage, just a bookworm;)

I will try to sum it up so as to avoid mistakes (like his name is spelled Elagabalus).

Elagabalus was a fourteen year old when he became Emperor in AD 218. It was soley through the political machinations of his mother, after the defeat and death of his predecessor, Macrinus. His mother basically got the Eastern armies in Syria to proclaim her son Emperor and they won the short civil war that followed.

Anyways Elagabalus (which I will refer to as "E") was Syrian, and worshipped the Syrian sun god "Elagabala", where his nickname comes from. When he came to Rome, he shocked Roman citizens by what they considered a bizarre religion alien to theirs. But that was only the beginning. "E" was very flagrantly bisexual (as other emperors were from time to time) but he took it to extremes. Keep in mind, he is the leader of the strongest empire on earth...he started to dress in very elaborate female clothing (think Ru-Paul) in his court. He would often go out, late at night, and take residence in a brothel in disguise...the next day he would proudly show others in his imperial court how much money he made. He had a male slave (described to us as having a very large phallus) in the palace take residence with him, and "married" him in an elaborate ceremony. "E" would then "cheat" on him with other male courtesans, and have his "husband" beat him like a wife for the infidelities. I use quotes because "E" was actually married to three different women in succession during this time. "E" asked his court physician to explore the possibilty of having his penis turned into a vagina, and offered a huge sum of public money to discover a way...he was told that it was impossible. All the while, still carrying on with wild orgies and bizarre elaborate parties and ceremonies to his god.
All the while, his mother was running the show, as expected. But she couldn't keep these things secret for too long. "E" wasn't just a harmless hedonist, and did even had his father-in-law murdered, so I don't feel sorry for him when the end came four years later.  In 221, he tried to have his cousin murdered, which backfired...the short story is six months later he wound up being hunted down and cornered in a latrine, where he was dragged out and beheaded, with his mother, and their bodies were dragged naked through the streets of Rome and then thrown into the Tiber. His cousin, Alexander Severus, became Emperor.

Another little story, concerning Nero...after the death of his wife Poppea (whom died after he kicked her, pregnent, square in the stomach in a rage) he became severely depressed. He found this slave boy, Sporus, who resembled his beloved. So he had the kid castrated, made him dress as a woman, and married him and in the words of Tacitus "Nero used him in every way like a woman".

Reality TV or HBO could never come up with this stuff! Long live Rome!

[lady amarant]

Gee, what healthy role-models you have.

And they thought they could hold a candle to the Greeks. Pfft! Arrogant savages.

~Simone.
       Am I hanging that sign out or what.

[Aurelius]

Role Model? No. Roman debauchery and intrigue as a bedtime story better than a the Sopranos? Absolutely!

Okay, as to your sign...even the mighty Romans dare not hold a candle to the Greeks. They embraced it, and were more Greek in the end than they were Roman (Hellenization). The Greeks won, and are still winning today. Even the early Christians heavily incorporated Greek ideas, like Aristotle, into their doctrine. Jokers like Nero and "E" aside, with their superior laws, engineering, military and organizational skills they transmitted Greek ideas and culture throughout the western world, where it stayed, and which we have inherited to this day. So like I said (for a much more valid reason) Long Live Rome!

Chris

[Melissa]

Neither.  Even though things in the past have been unpleasant, I have learned from them.  I don't really regret anything that has happened.  As for the future, I'll just take it as it comes.  There's no point in getting closer to death, because we can enjoy the life we have.  As for not experiencing most of my 20's as a female, that seems to be taken care of with the age reversal that hormones seem to have done to me.

[lady amarant]

Yeah okay, so it might be argued that Rome did some good by preserving and spreading classical greek culture ... though they had a good enough time of it destroying classical celtic culture ... and classical germanic culture ... and classical nubian culture ... and classical egyptian culture ... and ...

~Simone.
       Pretty bloody obstinate and childishly intent on winning.

[Pica Pica]

talking of antiquity, I'd like to prevent the firing of the great library of alexandria.

[Aurelius]

Yeah okay, so it might be argued that Rome did some good by preserving and spreading classical greek culture ... though they had a good enough time of it destroying classical celtic culture ... and classical germanic culture ... and classical nubian culture ... and classical egyptian culture ... and ...

~Simone.
       Pretty bloody obstinate and childishly intent on winning.

Interesting you say that...

They did not destroy Germany, Germany destroyed them...what they did was influence Germanic culture, in fits and starts, but never conquered the barbarian Germania. But with that same influence, Germany began a thriving culture and organized kingdoms of their own (Goths, Ostragoths, Visigoths, Vandals, etc). It is ironic to me that when Alaric sacked Rome, it was with a Christian Germanic army which he did it with.

Rome didn't destroy Egypt...Alexander the Great already did that three centuries before. Rome just picked up the pieces. And I don't believe Egypt was ever truly gone, and continued to influence the west in a different way.

The Celts or Picts? I think that's what that wall North of where you live was all about...I don't think anybody has ever really conquered those incorrugable Scots.
"The problem with Scotland, is that it is full of Scots"-->Edward I in "Braveheart"

All in all, I think we are both right. Rome did much good, but it also did great harm. They did destroy many cultures. Remember, they lasted for a thousand years and their child Byzantium lasted a thousand more...clearly there is no one judgement we can make on such a long history.

"Pretty bloody obstinate and childishly intent on winning"-->that sounds like, well, me!

Chris

[lady amarant]

Hehehe. Thanks for playing Chris! That was fun!

And as a final blow to my dear Greeks - Alexander was one.

Sleep well. Way past my bedtime.

~Simone.

[Aurelius]

Okay, sweet dreams Queen Simone of the Iceni, riding your chariot into the sunset:)

Chris

[Alyssa M.]

When I say, "go into the future," I mean farther than the future that is happening at this moment...

Oh, pooh. I was going to say that I like my worldline to remain causal and continuous ... and preferably without to large a second derivative (OUCH!).

But since you're being all particular, I'll say I'd like to see what the universe was like 13.8 billion years ago. Alas, it looks as though, with my current research, I'll have to settle for 13.7bya. 

[Rachael]

Yeah okay, so it might be argued that Rome did some good by preserving and spreading classical greek culture ... though they had a good enough time of it destroying classical celtic culture ... and classical germanic culture ... and classical nubian culture ... and classical egyptian culture ... and ...

~Simone.
       Pretty bloody obstinate and childishly intent on winning.

Interesting you say that...

They did not destroy Germany, Germany destroyed them...what they did was influence Germanic culture, in fits and starts, but never conquered the barbarian Germania. But with that same influence, Germany began a thriving culture and organized kingdoms of their own (Goths, Ostragoths, Visigoths, Vandals, etc). It is ironic to me that when Alaric sacked Rome, it was with a Christian Germanic army which he did it with.

Rome didn't destroy Egypt...Alexander the Great already did that three centuries before. Rome just picked up the pieces. And I don't believe Egypt was ever truly gone, and continued to influence the west in a different way.

The Celts or Picts? I think that's what that wall North of where you live was all about...I don't think anybody has ever really conquered those incorrugable Scots.
"The problem with Scotland, is that it is full of Scots"-->Edward I in "Braveheart"

All in all, I think we are both right. Rome did much good, but it also did great harm. They did destroy many cultures. Remember, they lasted for a thousand years and their child Byzantium lasted a thousand more...clearly there is no one judgement we can make on such a long history.

"Pretty bloody obstinate and childishly intent on winning"-->that sounds like, well, me!

Chris

Quite right... the romans were rather diplomatic... a lot of the gods in england were edited or converted roman gods... keeping a british flavour to the roman gods... the romans didnt destroy... they took over and worked the local people with the most effective method there was... thier own system... You know what? it was bloody effective

[Aurelius]

"But since you're being all particular, I'll say I'd like to see what the universe was like 13.8 billion years ago. Alas, it looks as though, with my current research, I'll have to settle for 13.7bya."

Make sure you wear sunscreen, it was still only what, 10 billion degrees?

I'm a layman on the big bang, but I thought we had finally figured out what things were like prior to 300k yrs after?  Or is that what you are saying...it was just very hot plasma and no vacation then?

Posted on: November 05, 2008, 05:54:22 pm"Quite right... the romans were rather diplomatic... a lot of the gods in england were edited or converted roman gods... keeping a british flavour to the roman gods... the romans didnt destroy... they took over and worked the local people with the most effective method there was... thier own system... You know what? it was bloody effective"

Yes...Civilizations and cultures evolve rather than disappear. And the Romans' primary motive was not ambition, but protection...the best way to do that was to conquer them (or bribe them, which they did often). Once conquered, they didn't care what the people did as long as they behaved themselves and paid taxes (some exceptions were, say, Christians under Nero and Diocletian and the Jews under Titus). What the Roman Empire evolved into what was not an Empire with Rome as it's head, but a commonwealth of nations mutually supporting (and sometimes fighting) each other, and this became what we know as Europe.

[Yvonne]

I already know what's in the past, so it's the future for me.
And I'm going there now, one day forward everyday.

[Alyssa M.]

"But since you're being all particular, I'll say I'd like to see what the universe was like 13.8 billion years ago. Alas, it looks as though, with my current research, I'll have to settle for 13.7bya."

Make sure you wear sunscreen, it was still only what, 10 billion degrees?

I'm a layman on the big bang, but I thought we had finally figured out what things were like prior to 300k yrs after?  Or is that what you are saying...it was just very hot plasma and no vacation then?

I was thinking a bit higher than 10 billion degrees -- more like 150,000,000,000,000,000 degrees or so -- 14 in more convenient units (TeV).

Now, 13.8bya, well, let's just say that I'll do that after I take a vacation to 100 degrees north of the equator, or 5000 miles below the surface fo the earth.

[RebeccaFog]

I've decided that I would definitely prefer to go back into the past and then come back through the future.

[lady amarant]

I was thinking a bit higher than 10 billion degrees -- more like 150,000,000,000,000,000 degrees or so -- 14 in more convenient units (TeV).

Now, 13.8bya, well, let's just say that I'll do that after I take a vacation to 100 degrees north of the equator, or 5000 miles below the surface fo the earth.

Ooooh. Things are getting interesting now.

there are theories floating around that, as our universe nears its end in heat death, an advanced civilization might engineer new big bangs, creating universes branching off from this old, dying one, and then create wormholes to escape there. Alyssa can comment on whether this would be theoretically possible, but assuming one could move matter from this universe "elsewhere", wouldn't it be cool to go back and see if that is what happened here? If so, what happened to the entities that would've attempted to escape to here?

~Simone.

[Aurelius]

I was thinking a bit higher than 10 billion degrees -- more like 150,000,000,000,000,000 degrees or so -- 14 in more convenient units (TeV).

Now, 13.8bya, well, let's just say that I'll do that after I take a vacation to 100 degrees north of the equator, or 5000 miles below the surface fo the earth.

Ooooh. Things are getting interesting now.

there are theories floating around that, as our universe nears its end in heat death, an advanced civilization might engineer new big bangs, creating universes branching off from this old, dying one, and then create wormholes to escape there. Alyssa can comment on whether this would be theoretically possible, but assuming one could move matter from this universe "elsewhere", wouldn't it be cool to go back and see if that is what happened here? If so, what happened to the entities that would've attempted to escape to here?

~Simone.

Thought you were in the land of Nod Simone?

Anyways I have no qualifications to say if any was possible. But I will say that the nearest star from Earth is several light years away, if the solar system were an inch long, the nearest star would be a something like a mile away. We are in an outer arm of a medium sized galaxy with 200 billion stars which is 100,000 light years across, the nearest galaxy Andromeda is three million light years away, which is the biggest in a family of about 40 galaxies, which is in a cluster of hundreds of galaxies which form a universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies that is near 14 billion years old...which could have contained, or contain, or will contain, millions of other civilizations far greater than us humans that we will never know of.

One universe is big enough for me

Chris

[lady amarant]

Thought you were in the land of Nod Simone.

The price of living in the sub-tropics in summer - if you are going to bed late, expect little sleep, 'cause the sun bakes you out of bed at 5 in the morning.

The universe is big yeah, but I want to know the magick behind it. Every time we think we have the basics down, a new revelation comes around and shows that what we thought we knew was just a reflection. We thought we had it at Newton, then Einstein came along, then the quantum mechanics bunch showed that he didn't have the whole story, then we moved on to string and m-theory, now we're looking for the "god" particle at CERN. THAT's the stuff that fascinates me - I mean, travel all the way to Andromeda and most likely things will be quite similar to here - gravity will still work, light will travel at the same speed, time will move forward ... but jump across to the next universe over and all the bets are off. Whole new physics, different fundamentals. I mean, how cool is that?!

~Simone.

[VeryGnawty]

Would you rather go back into the past or go into the future?

None.  The past is boring, because I already know what happens.  And the future would be at a loss without me here to shape it with what I'm doing here right now.

[Aurelius]

Thought you were in the land of Nod Simone.

The price of living in the sub-tropics in summer - if you are going to bed late, expect little sleep, 'cause the sun bakes you out of bed at 5 in the morning.

The universe is big yeah, but I want to know the magick behind it. Every time we think we have the basics down, a new revelation comes around and shows that what we thought we knew was just a reflection. We thought we had it at Newton, then Einstein came along, then the quantum mechanics bunch showed that he didn't have the whole story, then we moved on to string and m-theory, now we're looking for the "god" particle at CERN. THAT's the stuff that fascinates me - I mean, travel all the way to Andromeda and most likely things will be quite similar to here - gravity will still work, light will travel at the same speed, time will move forward ... but jump across to the next universe over and all the bets are off. Whole new physics, different fundamentals. I mean, how cool is that?!

~Simone.

Yes, Iraq and many other far-off unhappy places over these past many years were the same way...I made great strides to get air-conditioning, and in usually failing that, got used to it and slept in anyways. I can sleep anywhere now

Very cool Simone, I find it very cool. I've read a number of books on the subject, some (okay, alot) of which I admit above my head. But with the mechanics of the whole mess over my head, once I come close to understanding, it becomes more of a philisophical question for me. I always have to interpret some kind of meaning out of it...like what does quantum physics prove about reality (do things really exist, or it only because they are most likely to)? What does relative physics prove about absolute values (my clock is different than yours, and very much different than it is in a galaxy far, far away)? I only say that, because until Schroedenger and Einstein we took these things for granted, and I believe that even though scientific understanding (the what) is making great strides forward, the philisophical understanding (the why) is being left in the dust, at least for now. I know that Bertrand Russell took a shot at it, but what about everyone else? I think its perhaps because the average person, like myself, is only just now learning to grasp these grand concepts, and trying very hard to keep up with new discoveries. I worry it is also because we as humans are drifting away from the "why" towards not just "what" but "whatever".

Chris