Monthly topic

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Time to announce the new monthly topic! Its that thing we sometimes resort to when we wonder what else to talk about! :D[Poll #1675790]
(Feel free to suggest more).

 

Comments

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to open the discussion by saying that Marcus Aurelius deserves a dozen posts on his own.

I may even actually take some of his advice, get off my lazy arse and write one myself.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Penguin Classics had an extremely nice edition of his meditations. I don't know if it's still in print.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

For his writings, maybe. For anything he actually did as Emperor? Not at all. The man was a mediocre war leader and was a political disaster.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

[Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] meet [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]. Everyone sucks. It's how we feel good.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well, I LOVE the Meditations ;)

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Pffft. The Meditations are like the Book of Thinking by the Slovenian Emperor Joe, and we all know how that turned out.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that the Meditations are pretty good writing insofar as a Roman Emperor is concerned. His political record, OTOH, includes the Marcomannic Wars and bequeathing to the Roman Empire Commodus, after which it turned to shit.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I am surprisingly lacking any sort of value attachments to the issue of Roman governance.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You just know that Sophia_Sadek is going to be all over a Marcus Aurelius thread like a moth to a flame. ;P.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

She's too busy getting her soul-bonding on with the Truth.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but did vote?

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he also sold royal property to pay for wars and asked the Senate for permission on spending which he didn't have to do. IMO his main flaw was his shitty wife.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

LOL seems this will be an interesting monthly topic. :-D

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Do you watch Spartacus? They get a lot of Roman day-to-day history worked into that show ;)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Spartacus: Mucus And Dicks.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually his main flaw was the idiot who came after him because he felt his son should succeed him just because he was in fact his son. Letting Commodus take control of the Empire like that pretty much soured anything of his actual legacy.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Seeing as how he came to be known as one of the Five Good Emperors I'd say he did okay despite that.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

While I confess I've read much more of his philosophical works than about his actual imperial rule, I'd confess I would be surprised if you could demonstrate that claim.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Meditations were a great writing of Stoic philosophy. Even his critics should give him that much. Before the discovery of germ theory plagues were unexplainable and impossible for anyone to handle. However with the Marcomannic Wars he failed to defeat a people who were just organized enough that a competent leader could have pulled it off. His decision to go to hereditary monarchy instead of adoptive/appointive left the Emperor with an assclown not too different from today's ruler of Uzbekistan. And after Commodus took over the Empire went to shit.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I can think of a few people who do deserve at least a couple of posts dedicated to them: Vladimir Ulyanov, Mao Zedong, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gaius Julius Caesar, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hobbes. Famous does not necessarily mean their legacies were good. I think of the people on this list only FDR and the two Frenchmen could be said to have had long-term good legacies (while Lincoln's took a full century to actually mean something).

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Thats great. I can see the posts coming from here :)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'll have one on Lincoln coming up tonight.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

So, this is underlankers' month then, is it?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than it is to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. A. Lincoln, who [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] will now remind us was a terrible president, a miserable husband, a despicable person and most likely a homosexual, meanwhile what he should be doing is reading the quote and taking it to heart.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually James Buchanan was more likely to have been our first gay President than Lincoln was. Not sure what if anything that says about Buchanan......and no, the despicable people in the Civil War were William Quantrill, Nathan Bedford Forrest, James Seddon, and Jeff Davis.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I didn't say Lincoln was the first. Surely, Lincoln's political opportunism, his appallingly racist views and disgusting paternalism, not to mention the collection of war criminals he used to prosecute the war, should rank him with at least Lee among the despised.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

War criminals? Remind me when the Union authorized execution of enemy officers for political crimes and when the Union engaged in any shenanigans like what happened in Kingston and along the Nueces? If the Union had wanted to play that rough the entire Confederate leadership, not merely Wirz would be swinging among the Gallows.

And actually Lee was a great general.....for the Union.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The more you talk, the bigger the chance that you'd say something stupid. -- a local proverb

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

It always is! :)