Decline and fall

I guess Ancient Rome has always fascinated me.  I don't remember exactly when I first began thinking about it -- maybe in sixth grade when our social studies class had units on Greece and Rome.  But I remember my fascination, in ninth grade, daydreaming over reconstructions of the ancient Roman Forum that were pictured in our first year Latin text -- Latin for Americans.  If only I could have lived back then, I thought.  Life in Rome was so ... so ... so civilized!

This, of course, was many years before I saw the movie, Gladiator, where Roman soldiers crucified the wife and pre-teen son of a general who refused to pledge personal loyalty to the corrupt Emperor Commodus.  (I make here no allusion to anything involving Donald Trump.) 

I was fascinated by Rome, but not really obsessed.  But I do remember how my brother and I invented a game that we spread out over our entire bedroom floor -- a variation, I suppose, on our game of Mamba (q.v. 3-11-20)  -- a game we called "Rome."  No, I don't recall the details, but I assure you there were neither gladiatorial fights nor lions fighting Christians in the Colosseum.

At the university, I took a course on the history of the Roman Republic, which convinced me that we know very little about the Republic, especially the early Republic, aside from what we can read in the histories written by later Roman historians themselves.  Let's just admit that it's very doubtful that Rome was actually founded by Romulus, after doing away with his twin Remus, in about 750 B.C.

I took a refresher course in Latin as an upperclassman, in preparation for possible graduate study of the early Middle Ages, which can also be viewed as the Late Roman Empire.  I now envy my insouciance in those days regarding the question of how I planned to make a living once I had my freshly minted doctorate in hand.

All of which is prelude to my divulging that I today persuaded myself to sign up for an on-line course entitled "The Roman Empire: From Augustus to the Fall of Rome."  The course is offered by an organization whose name you probably know, but which I'll omit revealing.  The course consists of 24 lectures that will be given by a bona fide historian from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay  I can watch each lecture on-line, or play them off CDs that they will send me.

Wow, you must be paying a fortune, you exclaim!  No, no, I smugly respond.  The "tuition" has been marked down from $269.95 to a mere $35.  

Name brand luxury items are rarely reduced significantly in price, because of fear of cheapening the brand.  And this sounds a bit like an offer to sell a necklace with gems that are "even more beautiful than emeralds and rubies," for only $49.95.  But for 35 bucks I'm willing to take a chance.  

The lecture titles are listed, all 24 of them, and range from standard histories of the early emperors, through and beyond the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century, and into the Byzantine period, and "late antiquity."  An entire lecture is even devoted to the question "When and Why Did the Roman Empire Fall?"  Edward Gibbon chewed on that question over the course  of six hefty volumes; our one-half hour lecture will boil the question down to its essentials, I presume.

I hope to be diligent and listen to all 24 lectures.  If I find I love them, I'll comment on this blog.  Otherwise, I'll quietly write off my $35 investment, and we'll say no more.