Re: Anachronisms in LOTR

"Hasdrubal Hamilcar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> >
> >
> > Hasdrubal Hamilcar wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Nice of you to point that out to me, although I wonder what the
> >> 'genius' of a civilization means--you might as well talk about the IQ
> >> of the entire civilization.
> >
> >
> > The especial knack or strength of a culture. In the case of Athens it
> > was philosphical smarts and nifty literary talent as in drama.
> >
> >>
> >> In any case, the Romans produced good government and good practical
> >> engineering works, but they still did these things on a scale bigger
> >> than the Greeks.  The qualitative (ignoring the quantitative)
> >> difference between the two civs remains.
> >
> >
> > The Romans were more practical than the Greeks. Probably no non-trivial
> > mathematical theorems were ever proved by a Roman.
> >
>
> Although everybody studied them.
>
> They had the best education available to them--a Greek one, but it
> didn't make them into Greeks.
>
>
> Hasan

That's because they were Romans!
Seriously, they liked to do things their own way, and hell, why not, when
you control much of the (known) world, you can do what the 'f**k you like,
cf America.
 It was their characteristic stubbornness that set the Romans apart from
everyone else and what eventually turned them into a world power, cf Cannae,
when any right minded nation would have given up, the romans said  a big
'fuck you' to Hannibal!

Douglas