Re: The United States in Full Thrust

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On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, Laserlight wrote:

> > > Up until the early eighth century, a townsman anywhere in the
> former roman
> > > empire would be flabbergasted to be told that it had ended in
> 576AD.
> 
> John vehemently denies this:
> >  In the first place, 476 is the year of the deposition of the last
> > Emperor of the Romans in the West (proper title, thankyou).  In the
> second
> > place, all these obnoxious German noblemen lording it around and
> calling
> > themselves 'rex' and so forth kind of give it away.
> 
>    Sorry John, you're mistaken.  Oh, the people actually living in
> Rome undoubted figured it out earlier (when all the Germanic lads kept
> marching through), but there were people in the western Empire who
> would have denied that the empire had fallen.  IIRC Charlemagne was
> crowned as Roman emperor on Christmas Day in 800 -- it was the idea
> that was important, perhaps, rather than the strict line of
> succession.  (and it may have been helped by the fact that people
> aren't very observant of mere facts that fly in the face of Truth).
> Later on, the Byzantines claimed to be Romans, the German head honcho
> of the moment was in charge of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russians
> decided to call their leader "Czar"--I don't know the derivation but I
> wouldn't be surprised to hear that it came from "Caesar".

I'll have to agree here. The fall of the roman empire was a very gradual
thing, and nowhere  near the 'oh, it's 476, so the empire is gone'. It
was
much morea replacement of old leaders with new, but with most of the
intermediate layers of control and communication pretty much the same.


Cheers,

   Derk
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