Mary Beard Aug 11 article & response

[Hawkwood]

And I wish history wasn't seen through such a bloody lens that can only focus on black and white and where everything seems to eventually become condensed into battles and attrocities, even more so with Roman history as we have a wealth of information passed down in the written form from nearly every possible angle, socially, economincally, politically and so on. As a counter to the former thinking of this post I'm trying to recall Gibbon's quote from the first opening paragraph in volume 1 of his great work but I've forgot it.

 

[Hawkwood]

Thinking about it, nearly all text passes down as seen through a black/white lens by default--unless written by many authors or as a collection of sources--so I suppose the onus must always be on the reader to blur the lines and turn the canvas a murky grey.

 

[Imperfacundus]

Eh, all that divides the Romans and Gauls in that sense is the fact that one won, the other lost. And it's a pretty lousy genocide if virtually the entire population remains not only alive but in the same place they've always been, continuing to speak their language for centuries and switching to that of their conquerors gradually and of their own volition. That's acculturation.