A nice place to visit, but would you want to live there?
Comments
Open thread 9/9/21 — 20 Comments
Having seen Fellini’s Satyricon, I would prefer not to live there.
I thought the video was interesting– brought back memories of high school Latin class– but I couldn’t help wondering about the choice of Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” as background music. I found myself half expecting to see Emperor Franz Josef appear on the screen rather than Emperor Augustus.
One piece of music that would fit the subject matter (although it’s not long enough for an 8-minute video) is the fourth movement of Respighi’s The Pines of Rome, titled “The Pines of the Appian Way.” Respighi wanted the listener to imagine watching among the pine trees at dawn along the major military road leading into Rome as a legion advances toward the city. The composer included six buccine (ancient circular trumpets used in the Roman army) in the score. Lots of trumpets at the end as the legion marches upward to the Capitoline Hill.
My family would have been carving the columns or mining the marble, and I would have be growing food for them and cooking. I would have been bored–no storefronts to look into as I walked along.
all of the humanoids in the video who are walking aren’t actually getting anywhere! It would be a terrible place to live! Running in place all the time
Living in Ancient Rome was like living in the Third World today. If you had lots of money you wouldn’t feel too deprived. The lack of modern medicine at any price would be the major difference–about 1/3 of all women died in childbirth and being the Empress didn’t make any difference in those odds. If you didn’t have money, well you’d have a pretty laborious and uncertain existence.
Beyond belief. Packages being searched for contraband alcohol. I also noted the reference to Covid “contacts.” In some cases these are people who are known to have been in the same large room as someone else who has tested positive. Imagine if the “tested positive” person is asymptomatic and possibly not even genuinely infected.
I read somewhere, and probably didn’t grasp the full content, that the Australian states have traditionally had great autonomy over medical and health safety issues. So some states have an extensive governmental health apparatus with nearly limitless authority already in place.
Here come the vax mandates from the administration today. Already been quite a few stories about how bad for businesses these are.
The irrationally scared are already not going out some portion of the vaccinated middle just doesn’t want to deal with it or oppose it on principle and the the unvaxxed will just dig in harder.
All bad for small businesses.
And there is this, vax first study later. What could go wrong?
I’ve always believed that, of all the ancient civilizations, 20th century Americans would feel most at home in the Roman Empire. Remember, though, that looking at this video of Rome is like visiting The Mall in Washington, D.C.; it is/was the public face of the city. A much more accurate and personal look at Roman life can be seen in the documentaries of Pompeii and Herculaneum. I suspect that they more closely represented what life away from Rome’s city center was like.
I am wondering if this announcement was done to make the real announcement sound less radical. This would be killed by SCOTUS anyway.
Why don’t they just take the next step and deny any government assistance to anybody that won’t get vaccinated?
You know they want to.
Japanese Americans 1941= Unvaccinated Americans 2021.
I wish the video had focused more on how typical middle class Romans lived in the day. Or even upper class. This was mainly temples and government buildings. Hard to answer the question without seeing how they actually lived.
TommyJay on September 9, 2021 at 1:02 pm
It is beginning to look like parts of Australia will become provinces of CCP China even before Taiwan is invaded.
Wonder what constitutional changes and/or politico removals will occur at their next election.
In the Rome video, maybe it was a limitation of the CG portrayal, but I did not get as good a sense of the overall topography as I would have liked. Also surprised so many buildings seem to have their first floors at least one flight up, which seems to make the place maybe more crowded than it really was? That they would infill their open spaces with smaller (and to me distracting) buildings or temples also contributed to a feeling of being crowded. But of course each emperor wanted to leave his imprint on the city center.
In 2005 I had only a single Saturday at the end of a week long business trip to Rome to play tourist and visit the Vatican and environs. I cannot relate that experience to this video, although of course many buildings no longer exist as they did then.
R2L:
“It is beginning to look like parts of Australia will become provinces of CCP China even before Taiwan is invaded”
Provinces of Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan if counting the the number of raped Karen Sheilas. Certainly provinces of China if looking at who is buying up all the real estate.
There are some silver linings in the Chinese System. One being that it’s designed to catch and remove (sometimes with extreme prejudice) individuals preying upon the normal law-abiding population. You, and Australians, live in systems designed to catch and release individuals preying upon the normal law-abiding population whilst harrying you in as many ways as the system can dream up from week to week: Anarcho-tyranny. I’d prefer neither, but I’ll take enlightened Tyranny over the Church of St George Floyd any day and twice on Sundays.
The flag of Mozambique has as one of its devices a Kalashnikov. When it’s all over and done with the successor state of the USA would do well to have something similar.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Having seen Fellini’s Satyricon, I would prefer not to live there.
I thought the video was interesting– brought back memories of high school Latin class– but I couldn’t help wondering about the choice of Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” as background music. I found myself half expecting to see Emperor Franz Josef appear on the screen rather than Emperor Augustus.
One piece of music that would fit the subject matter (although it’s not long enough for an 8-minute video) is the fourth movement of Respighi’s The Pines of Rome, titled “The Pines of the Appian Way.” Respighi wanted the listener to imagine watching among the pine trees at dawn along the major military road leading into Rome as a legion advances toward the city. The composer included six buccine (ancient circular trumpets used in the Roman army) in the score. Lots of trumpets at the end as the legion marches upward to the Capitoline Hill.
Here is “Pines of the Appian Way,” performed by the United States Marine Band, which doubtless has a lived understanding of military marching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuWQUwNcQIc&ab_channel=UnitedStatesMarineBand
My family would have been carving the columns or mining the marble, and I would have be growing food for them and cooking. I would have been bored–no storefronts to look into as I walked along.
all of the humanoids in the video who are walking aren’t actually getting anywhere! It would be a terrible place to live! Running in place all the time
Living in Ancient Rome was like living in the Third World today. If you had lots of money you wouldn’t feel too deprived. The lack of modern medicine at any price would be the major difference–about 1/3 of all women died in childbirth and being the Empress didn’t make any difference in those odds. If you didn’t have money, well you’d have a pretty laborious and uncertain existence.
COVID-1984: Australia Now Confiscating Alcohol in Locked Down Areas
Beyond belief. Packages being searched for contraband alcohol. I also noted the reference to Covid “contacts.” In some cases these are people who are known to have been in the same large room as someone else who has tested positive. Imagine if the “tested positive” person is asymptomatic and possibly not even genuinely infected.
I read somewhere, and probably didn’t grasp the full content, that the Australian states have traditionally had great autonomy over medical and health safety issues. So some states have an extensive governmental health apparatus with nearly limitless authority already in place.
Here come the vax mandates from the administration today. Already been quite a few stories about how bad for businesses these are.
The irrationally scared are already not going out some portion of the vaccinated middle just doesn’t want to deal with it or oppose it on principle and the the unvaxxed will just dig in harder.
All bad for small businesses.
And there is this, vax first study later. What could go wrong?
https://twitter.com/drsimonegold/status/1435998883675578377
I’ve always believed that, of all the ancient civilizations, 20th century Americans would feel most at home in the Roman Empire. Remember, though, that looking at this video of Rome is like visiting The Mall in Washington, D.C.; it is/was the public face of the city. A much more accurate and personal look at Roman life can be seen in the documentaries of Pompeii and Herculaneum. I suspect that they more closely represented what life away from Rome’s city center was like.
Some of these new mandates are absolutely insane.
https://twitter.com/pwidakuswara/status/1436049517342830602
And here is the plan. Absolutely unbelievable. Freedom killing. Job killing. Economy killing.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan//
This. So much for your private business.
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1436058151716012033
This is plan is beyond outrageous.
https://twitter.com/jackmurphylive/status/1436061744024150021
I am wondering if this announcement was done to make the real announcement sound less radical. This would be killed by SCOTUS anyway.
Why don’t they just take the next step and deny any government assistance to anybody that won’t get vaccinated?
You know they want to.
Japanese Americans 1941= Unvaccinated Americans 2021.
I wish the video had focused more on how typical middle class Romans lived in the day. Or even upper class. This was mainly temples and government buildings. Hard to answer the question without seeing how they actually lived.
TommyJay on September 9, 2021 at 1:02 pm
It is beginning to look like parts of Australia will become provinces of CCP China even before Taiwan is invaded.
Wonder what constitutional changes and/or politico removals will occur at their next election.
In the Rome video, maybe it was a limitation of the CG portrayal, but I did not get as good a sense of the overall topography as I would have liked. Also surprised so many buildings seem to have their first floors at least one flight up, which seems to make the place maybe more crowded than it really was? That they would infill their open spaces with smaller (and to me distracting) buildings or temples also contributed to a feeling of being crowded. But of course each emperor wanted to leave his imprint on the city center.
In 2005 I had only a single Saturday at the end of a week long business trip to Rome to play tourist and visit the Vatican and environs. I cannot relate that experience to this video, although of course many buildings no longer exist as they did then.
R2L:
“It is beginning to look like parts of Australia will become provinces of CCP China even before Taiwan is invaded”
Provinces of Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan if counting the the number of raped Karen Sheilas. Certainly provinces of China if looking at who is buying up all the real estate.
There are some silver linings in the Chinese System. One being that it’s designed to catch and remove (sometimes with extreme prejudice) individuals preying upon the normal law-abiding population. You, and Australians, live in systems designed to catch and release individuals preying upon the normal law-abiding population whilst harrying you in as many ways as the system can dream up from week to week: Anarcho-tyranny. I’d prefer neither, but I’ll take enlightened Tyranny over the Church of St George Floyd any day and twice on Sundays.
The flag of Mozambique has as one of its devices a Kalashnikov. When it’s all over and done with the successor state of the USA would do well to have something similar.