HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I LOVE THIS CENTURY!

[Suu]

And why did the Visigoths starve and rebel?

Because they were hired as foederati by the Romans, and Constantine, again, said, "No, fuck those barbarian bastards. Build me a shiny new capital, they don't need to be paid." So Rome had no fucking money for a century while they invested offshore in the Orient for more profit gaining.

...And the city of Rome was sacked like Tim Tebow.

The end.


-Suu
Same shit, different century.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Or rather, St. John and his fucking misogynistic letters to the Corinthians. Dick.

Paul of Tarsus, not John.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

And why did the Visigoths starve and rebel?

Because they were hired as foederati by the Romans, and Constantine, again, said, "No, fuck those barbarian bastards. Build me a shiny new capital, they don't need to be paid." So Rome had no fucking money for a century while they invested offshore in the Orient for more profit gaining.

...And the city of Rome was sacked like Tim Tebow.

The end.


-Suu
Same shit, different century.

While I believe that it's basic human nature to rebel when you really begin to starve, those were VISIGOTHS.

We're talking americans these days. Fat, damaged americans who can be placated with TV and anything that takes up space in their bellies. Like styrofoam.
McDonald's New Styro-Meal: they'll eat it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Or rather, St. John and his fucking misogynistic letters to the Corinthians. Dick.

Paul of Tarsus, not John.

Yep. There were three Saint Johns in the New Testament. One was tripping on something awesome and gave us one of the most metal books in the anthology.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh stella. I miss the days when i would have just dismissed you as a paranoid kook. Those were innocent times.

Speaking of those times, in a way I miss the days of being dismissed as a paranoid kook. Back then, it almost seemed like it was possible that things might not go in this direction.

But then, yeah. Here we are.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sounds like what youd want if you would want fewer people going to college. A teenage father maybe isnt going to college either. More people who are less educated. A nation of well behaved unquestioning robots.

They've even managed a workaround for people who go to college, by monetizing it and raising minimum educational expectations for entry-level positions.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's kinda disgusting, really. The Catholic Church grew exponentially as a fast way to replace the Imperial Cult, courtesy of Constantine (who was a God-Fearer, not a Christian) pushing the idea of moving the idea of a state religion away from emperor worship to that of deity worship, hence Sol Invictus. Religion could be used to extort and control without putting him in the center. The man knew what he was doing.

Though the Church in it's present form and doctrine did not exist until post-Schism in the 11th Century, because the Orthodox Rite wasn't as keen on extortion and providing ultimate power to the Pope, and the Roman Rite wasn't keen on icon worship and allowing the Roman Emperor any sort of say in anything ever when they had their OWN Emperor of the Romans who was the really real Roman Emperor because he was crowned by the Pope and spoke Latin and not Greek and...@_@



tl,dr: The power of the Catholic Church is bullshit and the result of a dick waving contest in which man conceded to the power of the Church, where as in the East, the Orthodox Church conceded to the power of man. I'm finding myself reading more and more into the events in Late Antiquity leading up to the Great Schism. This period in history is INTENSE and understudied.


-Suu
Will either be the best history professor ever, or lose her job for potty mouth the first week.

I don't know about schools back East, but out here I don't think you CAN lose your job for potty-mouth, unless you work for a Christian university... you'll be an awesome history professor!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

On the other hand... if shit gets really bad and you can't actually feed your children, rebellion might become less distasteful.

As for the restrictive religious model... moar babies == moar members == moar power/influence/money. (see also: The Catholic Church over the past 1000 years)

If you can't feed them because of the crappy job market and increasingly crippled social programs, it's YOUR FAULT, they're YOUR responsibility, so FUCK YOU, they will be taken to foster care where they'll bounce around for years getting moved to all kinds of fucked up places getting abused who-knows-how-many ways until they are ready to KILL A MOTHERFUCKER. Like brown guys. In some other country.

Sure... but this line I once heard in a documentary on the Visigoths keeps running though my head:

"When you've buried your third child because of starvation and you've already eaten the family dog... you begin to consider rebellion".

Sorry

Blame Dimo.

[Suu]

Or rather, St. John and his fucking misogynistic letters to the Corinthians. Dick.

Paul of Tarsus, not John.

Thank you, I was getting him confused with that butthurt letter John wrote to Nero known today as Revelations, also lulzworthy.

Yep. There were three Saint Johns in the New Testament. One was tripping on something awesome and gave us one of the most metal books in the anthology.

He wasn't tripping, he was pissed at the Emperor Nero for not having an audience with him. The man was certifiable and senile by this point in his life and is lucky Nero didn't just off and kill him.

Nero: Listen dude, stfu.
John: ACCEPT CHRIST OR...OR...SOMETHING!
Nero: Ugh, I don't want to kill you, you seem like a decent guy, but like...stfu. Seriously?
John: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! YOU WILL NEVER KNOW REALLY REAL CHRISTIANITY!
Nero: I'm done, go to this island and sit there until you can behave yourself.
John: *a few years letter* "Dear Nero, you suck. You won't let me have any fun. I am going to call you the Antichrist, and because medieval monks can't read Greek worth a damn, when I write '666', that's actually your name in Greek numerals, and this is going to troll the Catholics for centuries! Hugs and Kisses, John." *sends letter* (also, how the fuck did the apostle live into his 90s?!)
Domitian: So I got this letter, and it's hysterical. Nero's been dead for a few years now, I mean this is like...4 emperors later. What a cooky bastards. I'm going to kill some Christians, and then go stab flies with my pen. BRB.

*300 years later*

Constantine: Yes, put THAT book in there. Totally, oh yeah...TRUST ME. As a really real "Christian" myself, the Bible NEEDS some doom and gloom prophecy. HONEST! *snark*

The end.

-Suu
Theology done right.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And why did the Visigoths starve and rebel?

Because they were hired as foederati by the Romans, and Constantine, again, said, "No, fuck those barbarian bastards. Build me a shiny new capital, they don't need to be paid." So Rome had no fucking money for a century while they invested offshore in the Orient for more profit gaining.

...And the city of Rome was sacked like Tim Tebow.

The end.

Ammianus Marcellus begs to differ.

[Suu]

Dude wrote shit 100 years after it happened. Gotta love Roman historians. They're like fucking gossip columnists today writing about the love affairs of Abraham Lincoln. Gibbon liked him, that explains enough. Unfortunately, most of the surviving texts we have of that period are Marcellinus and Procopius, dudes who were still code strands somewhere in their great-grandfather's DNA. Marcellinus gives us a great view of what it was like to be a Roman soldier, though.

Then again, anything to make Adrianople look like less of a disaster than it really was. If it wasn't for the goddamn Theodosian Land Walls, Constantinople would have been next. Valens was a fucking idiot and the Visigoths had the Romans' number before they even engaged. That's when the world began to realize that Rome was not, in fact, immortal. The minute Valens got skewered, the Middle Ages unofficially started.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Dude wrote shit 100 years after it happened.

Dude was present.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

War with Rome (376–382)Main article: Gothic War (376–382)
The Goths remained in Dacia until 376, when one of their leaders, Fritigern, appealed to the Roman emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube. Here, they hoped to find refuge from the Huns. Valens permitted this, as he saw in them "a splendid recruiting ground for his army."[16] However, a famine broke out and Rome was unwilling to supply them with either the food they were promised or the land; open revolt ensued leading to 6 years of plundering and destruction throughout the Balkans, the death of a Roman Emperor and the destruction of an entire Roman army.

The Battle of Adrianople in 378 was the decisive moment of the war. The Roman forces were slaughtered and the Emperor Valens was killed during the fighting. Adrianople shocked the Roman world and eventually forced the Romans to negotiate with and settle the tribe within the empire's boundaries, a development with far reaching consequences for the eventual fall of Rome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigoths

Then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianus_Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus (325/330–after 391) was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity (the last was written by Procopius). His work chronicled in Latin the history of Rome from 96 to 378, although only the sections covering the period 353–378 are extant.[1][2]

[Suu]

When Nerva was emperor? Doubtful. Though we lost those books anyway. Coincidence? No, not really...we're just now starting to find a lot of fragments in random places like Morocco.

He was alive during Adrianople, but I don't think he was physically there.

[Suu]

Dacia was a nightmare for Rome from day one. The Danube cultures didn't take lightly to them shiny strangers coming in.