/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23384638]

>christiany was one of the main reasons why the rome fell
so why it wasn't a problem for the rest of europe in the middle ages and even helped them in building their power

[Anonymous No.23384808]

>>23384638
Have you read the books? He very clearly sketches a Rome that was already crumbling and kept together by spit and shoelaces in the third century, before Christianity was relevant.
And no, I'm not asking whether you've read the Wikipedia page.

[Anonymous No.23384895]

>>23384808
no, i just wanted to read people on /lit/ discussing it

[Anonymous No.23384911]

>>23384638
The worst part of the book is how he knows very well that the Eastern half of the Empire is a dramatic refutation of this thesis, so he spends quite a bit on trashing it. Not even the goody "byzantine empire" which admittedly went to shit at some point in the 9-11th centuries but as soon as the fourth.
This man is single handedly responsible for the retardation of byzantine studies in the English speaking world for two centuries.

[Anonymous No.23385267]

>>23384638
Europe achieved its peak under one system and is not abandoning it in favor of another, thus contributing to the social unrest that affects a decline or fall.

Rome achieved most, if not all, of its great deeds under one system, it then adopted another system, which caused civil unrest that indirectly contributed to the fall of its standing.

Why do people struggle with this concept?

[Anonymous No.23385367]

>>23384638
Read gunnar Heinsohn
Rome fell because it was buried under mud

[Anonymous No.23385489]

>>23385267
Most of the unrest was caused by the centuries-long debasement of currency desu.

[Anonymous No.23385511]

>>23384638
actually it was browns and niggers

[Anonymous No.23385521]

>>23385267
Rome was a machine to create competent men, and it was clear that it was pretty much broken and rotten by the end of the Republic, it was kept working and chugging along by Imperial reforms, but it never reignited the machine

[Anonymous No.23385659]

>>23384638
It got too big and expanded too far that it collapsed on itself

[Anonymous No.23385662]

>>23384638
Is there a "The Decline & Fall of Greece"?

[Anonymous No.23385690]

>>23384638
When Christianity showed up on the scene, Rome began to fall apart. When Christianity became the national religion, Rome died.
Europe then spent around 1500 years effectively shoving its fingers up its ass debating whether Jesus is kinda holy or just sorta holy while meanwhile millions of people were being raped and murdered by barbarians in every quarter (who by the way were also Christian).
And then once the church finally gets out of the way and starts letting people do non Christian things, people immediately start depicting ancient Roman Pagan deities again and it's the Renaissance.

pic related is the first time in over 1500 years that a bronze sculptor was able to make something that wasn't just basically a turd with a crudely drawn face on it, and lo and behold, it's pagan

[Anonymous No.23385705]

>>23384911
You don't get to call yourself Rome while being hundreds of miles away from Rome, not caring about Rome, calling the latin language barbarian, and allowing your ruler to walk about with a crown calling himself king.
Any early Imperial Roman emperor would have wiped the floor against the Ottomans

[Anonymous No.23385715]

>Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you through the valleys between: in fact, his work is little else but a disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be looking through a luminous haze or fog:—figures come and go, I know not how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and, as it were, exhibited by candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!

>Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done. Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole work—their dramatic ordonnance of the parts—without seeing that their histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events.

>The true key to the declension of the Roman empire—which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work—may be stated in two words:—the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.

t. Coleridge

[Anonymous No.23385721]

>>23384638
>so why it wasn't a problem for the rest of europe in the middle ages
It was.

>and even helped them in building their power
It didn't.

[Anonymous No.23385725]

>>23385690
It was the demons that Cellini summoned in the coliseum with the necromancer that allowed him to make this. The dude was just based; saves an outdoor festival from rain by firing a cannon at the clouds.

[Anonymous No.23385734]

>>23385715
>christianity wasn't the cause of rome's decline, just a symptom
That doesn't defend roleplaying as a 13th-century Byzantine eunuch on the internet like you think it does, anon.

[Anonymous No.23386039]

>>23385690
there weren't 1500 years between the fell of rome and the renaissance

[Anonymous No.23386047]

>>23384638
Because there are more forces at work than just Christianity by itself. It was a double edged sword, the Church maintained a scholarly tradition but only among the nobility while the populace at large was far less literate (and also brainwashed).

[Anonymous No.23386404]

>>23385705
Case in point.

[Anonymous No.23386421]

>>23385662
Kinda, try Polybius' Histories

[Anonymous No.23386497]

Was christianity ancient bolshevism?

[Anonymous No.23386514]

>>23386497
bolshevism denies God, so no.

[Anonymous No.23386522]

>>23386514
>he thinks being atheistic means you don't worship ideas or things rather than atheism simply meaning the denial of the christian god in particular

[Anonymous No.23386531]

>>23386497
>>23386514
christians denied the roman gods, they were some of antiquity's most outspoken atheists

[Anonymous No.23386536]

>>23386531
An interesting definition of "atheist"

[Anonymous No.23386538]

>>23386421
>originally written in 40 volumes, only the first five of which are extant in their entirety
Depressing.

[Anonymous No.23386540]

>>23386538
I know. I'd kill to have Diodorus' full Bibliotheca Historica

[Anonymous No.23386551]

>>23384638
Europe was strong IN SPITE of Christianity, not because of it. How long will it take until you faggots get it through your thick damn skulls?

[Anonymous No.23386553]

>>23386514
>most popular among the affluent urban middle classes, especially merchants and middle-eastern immigrants like syrians
>worms its way into decaying structures with the ultimate intention of hijacking them and replacing the old elite with themselves
>hated by the lower classes for trying to destroy their old way of life, for presenting itself as something that it is not, for claiming to be for the people when they have nothing to do with "the people" and all of their actions just so happening to exclusively benefit their social class rather than the people
>whenever and wherever they do manage to come out on top and obtain power they instantly run that state into the ground and do retarded shit that results in millions dying due to war, famine and plague

I mean, the parallels are definitely there.

[Anonymous No.23386554]

>>23384808
I thought it was kept together by corn?

[Anonymous No.23386557]

>I know. I'd kill to have Diodorus' full Bibliotheca Historica

[Anonymous No.23386559]

>>23386557
Okay?

[Anonymous No.23386565]

>>23386553
Yeah, and forgot the most important - both deliberately destroyed the past and its culture in an attempt to consolidate itself whenever it came out victorious against the old order. People try to bagatellize it nowadays for some reason but christians pulled a cultural revolution that would have made Mao or Lenin blush.

[Anonymous No.23386570]

>>23386551
Yeah Europe is doing so well now that it has abandoned Christian values.
Rome died because of Roman sterility and German fertility. Go read Juvenal.

[Anonymous No.23386577]

>>23386570
It isn't falling because it abandoned christianity, it is falling because christianity set it on this part. No civilization that adopted christianity and its sickly, loathsome, life-denying creed could have arrived anywhere else than where we are right now. We are still christian, liberalism is just pseudo-secularized late stage christianity.

[Anonymous No.23386579]

>>23386577
>set it on this part
Set it on this path, meant to say.

[Anonymous No.23386581]

>>23384638
Can someone redpill me on these books? Are they worth reading?

[Anonymous No.23386587]

>>23386570
You've gotta be the most easily manipulated retard in the world to think that there must necessarily be correlation between the decline of Europe and the decline of Christianity. Just as Rome didn't fall because of Christianity, Europe isn't falling because it's abandoning it. Christianity isn't significant anywhere in this equation.

[Anonymous No.23386602]

>>23386581
The prose is great. A beautiful read. Lots of facts wrong but newer editions correct it. No serious scholar thinks Christianity was Rome's main downfall though it didn't help.

[Anonymous No.23386606]

>>23384911
>The worst part of the book is how he knows very well that the Eastern half of the Empire is a dramatic refutation of this thesis
But that isn't even his thesis. He doesn't make this case. This is something exclusively said by internet people who haven't read him.

>>23385690
>When Christianity showed up on the scene, Rome began to fall apart
Completely wrong, it started to fall apart long before Christianity had any major impact. The century preceding Constantine was a complete mess.

>>23386581
Only if you already know a fair amount about Rome.

[Anonymous No.23386618]

>>23386602
>No serious scholar thinks Christianity was Rome's main downfall
The Christians removing the Altar of Victory from the Senate is pretty funny though

[Anonymous No.23386638]

>>23386587
>Birthrate of Christians is 2.7 children per woman
>Denigrates licentiousness and promotes marriage and morals
>Promotes community and rejects materialism

Christianity was replaced with nothing. I'm an atheist but the decline of religion always coincides with the decline of civilization. Only the Middle East and Africa both religious have somewhat of a future.

[Anonymous No.23386676]

>>23386638
>the decline of religion always coincides with the decline of civilization
This was happening with Roman paganism when Christianity came along and breathed new life into their society for another thousand years or so.

[Anonymous No.23386706]

>>23386638
People have been saying things have gotten worse and civilization is in decline since the BC’s. The past is just romanticized.

[Anonymous No.23386711]

>>23386706
>The past is just romanticized
especially the roman past

[Anonymous No.23386806]

>>23386711
it's funny how literally all people on this board would need to do to break that illusion is read a couple ancient roman playwrights and poets. seriously under-read compared to how romanticized ancient rome is.

[Anonymous No.23386831]

>>23386706
This is advanced filtered.

[Anonymous No.23386845]

>>23386806
Juvenal springs to mind. He gives an idea of the everyday life of the average person, not just the mythologized figures

[Anonymous No.23387058]

>>23386570
It hasn't abandoned christian values, that's precisely why it's failing. Liberalism is just an extension of christianity.
Europe needs to abandon foreign ideologies and constructs like christianity and 'civilisation' and return to its roots.

[Anonymous No.23387067]

>>23384638
>so why it wasn't a problem for the rest of europe
It was.
>in the middle ages and even helped them in building their power
Any example?

[Anonymous No.23387078]

>>23384638
>christiany was one of the main reasons why the rome fell
Oh, great, another retard who believed retard nietzsche. Blind man lead another blind man.

[Anonymous No.23387207]

>>23385367
Gunnar Heinsihn points out that the physical archaeology of Rome is inconsistent with our accepted historical timeline. Entire centuries appear to be repeated, building styles from the 1st century suddenly start being rebuilt 600 years later, st paul is repeated 3 times as three different people,. He proposes a widespread catastrophic event took place in the 10th century that devastated roman civilisation

stratigraphy of Rome
https://www.q-mag.org/_iserv/dlfiles/dl.php?ddl=q-mag-gunnar-rome-hisjubilee.pdf
st paul
https://www.q-mag.org/st-paul-did-he-live-once-thrice-or-not-at-all.html
more articles
https://www.q-mag.org/the-1st-millennium-ad-chronology-controversy.html

[Anonymous No.23387214]

Christian Europe developed the technology and the balls needed to sail past the edge of the known world to discover and conquer three whole continents that the pagans had never even dreamed existed.

Larpagan atheists are historically and spiritually illiterate retards and about as worthy of argument with as a toddler.

[Anonymous No.23387220]

>>23384638
Academics today are so much shittier than academics in the past. Imagine the halfwitted mongrels occupying today's universities writing sometime like that, there's simply no way.

[Anonymous No.23387234]

>>23387207
it's an interesting topic to explore and many other researchers have tried to disentangle the official accepted ad chronology timeline cooked up by the vatican only a few centuries ago from what actually happened, many events have simply been pushed further into the past
https://www.unz.com/article/a-short-history-of-civilization/

[Anonymous No.23387243]

>>23387214
>doesn't know about the Vikings
>thinks the Bible tells people to go out and conquer and doesn't realize that this is simply innate to the Aryan male and Christianity pacified us
>doesn't know about the Greeks or Romans or Egyptians or basically any ancient pre-Christian people
I'm Christian to an extent but this is idiotic. Christians 2,000 years ago were like the BLM pavement ape SJW mobs from today. The Romans who educated the early Christians (literally illiterate plebs) saw how stupid they were. It sucks that Europe got this lame and gay Jew religion. Metaphysically I think Adam Green is on to something.

[Anonymous No.23387254]

>>23387243
>/pol/tard doesn't know Leif Erikson was Catholic

[Anonymous No.23387261]

>>23387214
there are far too many egyptian artifacts in america for that to be true

[Anonymous No.23387264]

>>23387243
>2000 years ago
no much less than that, civilisation got steamrolled christianity was just there talking of armageddon at the right time to be picked up

[Anonymous No.23387270]

>>23387243
>Metaphysically I think Adam Green is on to something.
he's literally a cia asset though?

[Anonymous No.23387273]

>>23387254
>Leif Erikson was the only Viking to leave Scandinavia
You must be mentally disabled...
>unironically crying about /pol/
Why? because of the word Jew? are you going to cry now? poor baby

[Anonymous No.23387275]

>>23387270
>I don't have strong enough conviction/evidence to assert a claim
>maybe if I put a question mark next to it that means I don't have to!
I hope for your sake that you're female.

[Anonymous No.23387277]

>>23386706
Hundreds of civilizations have collapsed since so they were kinda right though.

[Anonymous No.23387281]

>>23387254
don't mean to be rude here but this really isn't your safespace, man. people can say what they want here, and they might even misgender you or be transphobic towards you. hell, i've even seen people be openly antisemantic and say crazy things like White people deserve a right to a homeland like the jews or other ethnicities have, they even say that black people are likely to be stupid and violent...it's crazy offensive stuff but you just gotta have a thicker skin, m'kay buddy?

[Anonymous No.23387284]

>>23387275
It's asking why you are using him as a reference given what he is?

[Anonymous No.23387287]

Christianity isn't the reason Rome fell, it was a desperate attempt to save it. Ideally, Roman decadence would have been replaced with Catholic purity overnight, but when we think about it, only a God would be capable of such.

[Anonymous No.23387290]

>>23386606
>Completely wrong, it started to fall apart long before Christianity had any major impact. The century preceding Constantine was a complete mess.
Yeah because as we all know, nobody was Christian before 313 A.D.
All those bishops? Retcons from Nicaea.

[Anonymous No.23387296]

>>23387277
You can look at the quality of literature that the everyman was reading 70 years ago, it is so much higher than it is today. Same goes for their ability to write. In higher education, standards were much higher and there was far more rigour and discipline, it's literally alien to today's culture.

What else can you expect when globohomo tries to gaslight the entire globe into thinking that sub-saharans are actually just as human as Aryans? it's obvious that humanity and civilization have reached acute levels of degeneration.

[Anonymous No.23387304]

>>23387284
>still no proof or even an explanation
Then I don't care, blow it out your ass you stupid fucking retard. Santa is secretly real too. Mudfloods and tartaria are real things, flat earth too. Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.23387311]

>>23387296
Yeah, I think the nogs have done a lot of damage too, but I see the decline in quality of literature as linked to the passing of the old European arostocracies and upper bourgeoisie (considering that the upper classes are in general more intelligent and enlightened than the average pleb).
They have been succeeded by an upper class of materialist industrialist billionaires (Bezos, Musk) who don't care about culture, they just want to produce.
There is no going back because the type of humans that produced the culture from 70 years ago has basically gone extinct.
The materialist industrialist species like are Musk and Bezos will soon go extinct too, and after them society is going to get even shittier on the planet.

[Anonymous No.23387313]

>>23387304
>immediately resorts to calling someone a flatearther.
Anon...I really have to pity you. you didn't need to reference a controlled opposition agent, you could have just made the statement but you felt you needed to, I hope in the future you become more sensitive to these people and the agendas they are used to promote...

[Anonymous No.23387363]

>>23384638
Because europe in the middle ages fell morally and spirituality and christianity couldn't make it fall more than that.

[Anonymous No.23387380]

>>23385690
Cellini was a Christian you fucking retard

[Anonymous No.23387492]

>>23387380
Yeah because if he didn't attend church he'd get his fucking head chopped off.
No serious Christian goes around making statues of Pagan figures

[Anonymous No.23387659]

>>23384911
>This man is single handedly responsible for the retardation of byzantine studies in the English speaking world for two centuries
It already was like that before him

[Anonymous No.23387663]

>>23387659

[Anonymous No.23387670]

>>23385690
Can you explain how Christianity caused pic rel

[Anonymous No.23387678]

>>23385715
>may be stated in two words
>the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
?

[Anonymous No.23387688]

>>23387492
Did not happen lmao.

[Anonymous No.23387693]

>>23385705
You actually do, and that is the most fucking Roman thing on the planet you brainlet retard.

[Anonymous No.23387720]

>>23386570
>the victim isn't doing so well now they have removed the knife

[Anonymous No.23387794]

>>23385705
>Literally exactly the same as 5th century Rome in every way
>Not actually the same though lol

[Anonymous No.23387861]

>>23387207
>>23387234

>The book was written in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, of which Heinsohn was an ardent supporter, and contains its share of sombre meditations on “genocidal dictatorships” and “weapons of mass destruction”. … In fact, Heinsohn’s first international love seems to be Israel [where he lived from 1976 to 1978], or more deeply Judaism, seen by him as an ethical example.

[Anonymous No.23387868]

>>23387273
>>23387281

Nah. /pol/tards are literal cancer.

[Anonymous No.23387890]

>>23387296
>What else can you expect when globohomo tries to gaslight the entire globe into thinking that sub-saharans are actually just as human as Aryans?

Someone who prefers 17th century pseudoscience to modern knowledge shouldn't be lecturing on falling standards of erudition

[Anonymous No.23387892]

>>23387058
>artist's name is literally CHRISTIAN sloan hall
kek, it was over from the start, wasn't it?

[Anonymous No.23387898]

>>23387243
>I'm Christian to an extent
not sure if this is bait or what

[Anonymous No.23387990]

Christianity is the sole reason of why the Germanic barbarians did not continue their customs of nakedness, illiteracy, anti-progress and swamp dwelling. The west fell because thousands of Germanic barbarians immigrated and invaded the Empire, while the East continued because it was held together by Christianity. After centuries of warring warlords, Charlemagne united the Germanics under Christian ism and finally restored civilization to Europe.

[Anonymous No.23388072]

>>23385690

If only they were atheists like us

[Anonymous No.23388074]

>>23385690
>Rome began to fall apart
Rome fell apart by the decadence and degeneracy of its upper classes and the lack of gold.
>legions became increasing too expensive with limited gold generated by taxation
>rich people didnt have kids and just sat around bathhouses
>government couldnt raise money to pay soldiers to enforce borders and threats on all sides.

[Anonymous No.23388079]

>>23387243
>early Christians (literally illiterate plebs)
Paul was a literate roman citizenship. Most early Christians were by no means barbarian invaders who couldnt write.

[Anonymous No.23388114]

>>23388074
Does little to explain the biggest threat on all sides being on the inside, through the constant civil wars.

[Anonymous No.23388118]

>>23387861
I know he was a big judeophile and war mongerer, but the archaeology makes sense of the supposed multiple calamities and repetitions of the first millenia and there are other historians who share the same belief that written history is wrong.

[Anonymous No.23388140]

>>23385715
I need to reread coleridge

[Anonymous No.23388652]

>>23386497
>Bolshevism: All men are equal, regardless of economic class
>Christianity: All men are equal, regardless of race

Equally reductive, equally insane.

[Anonymous No.23388666]

>>23387214
>Jesus invented the multi-decked sailing ship

ACTHUALLY that was Argos

[Anonymous No.23388799]

>>23388652
In chistianity you are only equal before god and the law

[Anonymous No.23388938]

>>23387659
>>23387663
Perfidious Albion and enlightenment™ are at it again.

[Anonymous No.23389530]

>>23388652
people weren't equal in bolshevism though

[Anonymous No.23389637]

those passages are apologetics for gibbon. the reason the east was never studied is just xenophobia and chauvinism. while there were golden ages in the 8th to 17th centuries in the east, europe was largely a backwater, turning around maybe in the late 15th century and cresting the east by the 18th.

what was a golden opportunity to build an unassailable narrative history:
>look how great the east was, including the orientals, mongols, turks, persians etc
>but we managed to overtake them because of the dynamism of our people in less than 3 centuries

essentially giving the devil his due. instead became the dark ages, muh renaissance, the enlightenment - all not properly contextualized - which led to the loss of faith in history, tradition, religion, as useful tools for understanding change. so that now in the 20th and 21st century this neglect is magnified and given undue respect to the destruction and desecration of european, replacing it with orientalism and asiatic thinking. they did a giant disservice to world history and their descendants because now its 10x worse than they could've ever imagined.

[Anonymous No.23389761]

>>23388074
The Roman army was paid in kind not in coin so this doesn’t make sense