A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the second of a three part (I, II, III) series tackling the complicated and still very much debated question of 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' In the last part, we looked at 'words' - culture, literature, language and religion. What we found is that in these aspects, signs … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part II: Institutions
Fireside this week! The Spring semester is now in full swing and - knock on wood - so far seems to be proceeding without too much in the way of disruption. I'm hoping to have part II of "Decline and Fall?" for you all next week but in the meantime I wanted to take a … Continue reading Fireside Friday, January 21, 2022 (On Public Scholarship)
This week we're going to start tackling a complex and much debated question: 'how bad was the fall of Rome (in the West)?' This was the topic that won the vote among the patrons of the ACOUP Senate. The original questions here were 'what caused the loss of state capacity during the collapse of the … Continue reading Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall? Part I: Words
First fireside of the new year! Percy (right) had been fully hidden under the tree-skirt, but Ollie's continued investigations found him out. For this week's musing, I'm in a mind to talk about the tension between preparing for different kinds of war, in particular between counter-insurgency (COIN) and large-scale combat operations (LSCO), in part because … Continue reading Fireside Friday: January 7, 2022