Shouting into the voidDemocracy never selects the best leader
PugJesus
DoomsdaysCWThe Misunderstood #RomanEmpress Who Willed Her Way to the Top
A fresh view of #GallaPlacidia, who married a barbarian and ruled when the world power fell into chaos
by Romy Blümel, January/February 2023
Excerpt: "It was around midnight that the cataclysm began. #Placidia would have heard distant sounds of Gothic horns and growing pandemonium around the Salarian Gate in the city’s northwest; not long afterward, flames could be seen rising from the nearby Gardens of Sallust.
"The Goths had breached the walls. The British-born monk Pelagius, who was also trapped in Rome that same night, used language that echoed the biblical vision of Judgment Day to convey the horror of the moment: 'Rome, the mistress of the world, shivered, crushed with fear, at the sound of the blaring trumpets and the howling of the Goths.'
"St. Jerome, when he heard the dreadful news from Roman refugees, captured the sense of shock: 'It is the end of the world!' he wrote. 'Words fail me; sobs prevent me from speaking. The city that once subjugated the world has been subjugated in its turn!'
"For Romans, it was the beginning of the end. But for Placidia, it was just one more twist in an astonishing life saga that could have inspired a subplot of 'Game of Thrones.' After the sack, the pampered and beautiful princess would be taken from her gilded palace as a prisoner of the Visigoths. Four years later, Placidia shocked Romans by marrying one of her captors. Then, by age 26, she was back in Italy, re-inventing herself to rule as the last empress of the Western Roman Empire.
"And yet, she has been treated mercilessly by historians, who have either vilified or ignored her for most of the last 1,500 years. This has left her today all but forgotten, even though the final decades of the Western world’s most enduring empire cannot be understood without her.
#Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great — to the roster of history’s unfairly maligned women leaders must be added the name of #GallaPlacidiaAugusta.
Although her name in Latin means
'placidity' or 'peace,' Placidia’s life was anything but; she experienced more adventures than Marie Antoinette and Amelia Earhart combined. Perhaps no other figure, male or female, enjoyed such an intimate view of the Western Roman Empire’s operatic death throes or influenced events for such a prolonged period. But the attacks on her reputation began not long after her death, with authors like Cassiodorus denouncing her rule as the nadir of Rome’s fortunes. Only in recent years have scholars gone back to read the contemporary sources with more objectivity, revealing Placidia as a far more sympathetic figure, a strong-willed leader with radical ideas on how to save the crumbling empire.
"It’s part of a general reassessment of her era, known as late antiquity, once dismissed as a gloomy saga of 'decline and fall' to the Middle Ages, including a fresh look at so-called #barbarians, who were far more sophisticated than Romans alleged.
" 'Placidia had an amazingly adventurous life,' explained Paola Novara, a scholar at the National Museum of Ravenna, who has written about Placidia’s legacy, including her influence on art and architecture throughout Europe. 'She was a hostage for years. She was married twice, to a Gothic king, then to Rome’s most powerful general. She had one child who died, another who became emperor. She must have been a very strong and powerful character. But there has long been a negative image of Placidia,' she continued. 'She was not a bad sovereign. She was brave and capable. In fact, Placidia was the last significant ruler of the Western Roman Empire. She managed it for 25 years!' "
Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misunderstood-roman-empress-willed-way-to-top-180981294/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/JPuze
#WomenRulers #RomanWomen #RomanHistory #FallOfRome #History #Histodon
Not surprising...!
How #Patriarchy Undermined the #RomanRepublic
by Douglas Boin, Nov 24, 2025 2:00 PM
Excerpt: "The men of the republic, who called themselves their society’s 'Chosen Fathers,' enforced this two-tiered society through strict #VotingLaws and limits on women’s #autonomy. Heavily manipulated voting districts ensured that only the voices of the senatorial elite, Rome’s self-proclaimed optimates, or 'best men,' dominated, not progressive champions, freed slaves, or newly-enfranchised citizens. No woman could run for higher office. Women could neither sit on juries, nor exercise their vote.
" 'As soon as women become the equals of men,' the statesman and senator Cato the Elder said in 212 B.C., 'they will have become our masters.'
"Yet as Rome’s republic expanded beyond the capital city, beyond Italy, and gradually acquired its Mediterranean empire, stories of a different sort of woman reset women’s expectations at home. In the eastern Mediterranean, highly educated woman philosophers, avant-garde poets, and above all, the fearless Greek-speaking queens of Egypt, including #Cleopatra, held sway. Inspired by these role models across #Europe, #Africa, and #Asia, #RomanWoman began to challenge the republic’s inequities and ideologies and claim their voices in the male-dominated republic.
"Grandmothers and mothers taught their daughters to read and cultivate their intellectual talents. An educated girl, the new wave of educators argued, knew how to assert herself against a man who 'swaggers through the city acting like a tyrant.' Cato’s quotation comes from a pivotal moment when women and their allies poured into the streets to demand the repeal of a war-time-era tax on their savings. Other women were political leaders who earned the scorn of their contemporaries. Some were erased or forgotten. In one case, the life of an upper-class woman and contemporary of Julius Caesar, Clodia, saw her reputation destroyed by false claims of harlotry, home-wrecking, and husband-killing.
"#Clodia, an unapologetic champion for expanded voting rights for the enfranchised men of Italy, bravely went before an all-male jury in the center of the Roman Forum in April 56 B.C., as the prosecution’s star witness to testify against her day’s runway, endemic corruption. Instead of defending his client from the charges, however, the leading defense attorney, Marcus Tullius Cicero, turned the case into a referendum on Clodia’s character. Transforming Clodia into the trial’s villain, the speech, the Pro Caelio, outlasted Rome’s fall. It has been taught in high school and college classrooms for two millennia as a masterclass of rhetoric, from which countless men in business, law, and politics have learned to emulate Cicero’s #misogyny.
"Trailblazing women like Clodia have always, in the historian’s shorthand, been called “ahead of their time.” But history deserves to be told from another point of view: by pointing out the parade of men who have stubbornly and perennially thwarted progress. Rome’s republic might have survived a bit longer had its own people listened to, not silenced, its women."
Read more:
https://time.com/7326211/roman-republic-women/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/YJcBB
#RomanWomen #HistoryRepeatsItself #FallOfRome #RomanHistory #USPol #HistoryRepeats #WomensRights #VoterDisenfranchisement
The Shrimpening IIImagine eating a whole tomato #fallofrome
🔏 Matthias WiesmannWhen I was in high-school, one theory for the fall of Rome was saturnism, lead poisoning from lead plates. Strangely, the idea that some people knew that lead is toxic and were ignored as fake news never came up… #lead #fallofrome
BrewminateRome’s “fall” was really a slow transformation — and calling it a collapse is just lazy storytelling.
What if the Empire never really died… it just moved the goalposts?
https://brewminate.com/the-transformation-a-k-a-fall-of-the-roman-empire/
It's okay for #MAGA #Insurrectionists to storm the Capitol building, but watch out for those dangerous 80-year-old veterans using walkers! WTF!
87-year-old Gainesville #veteran arrested at U.S. Capitol during #protest
Police arrested roughly 60 protesters outside the US Capitol on Friday night.
By Ryan Wyatt Turbeville
Published: Jun. 14, 2025 at 12:13 PM
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WCJB) - "An elderly man from Gainesville was one of dozens of veterans arrested outside the U.S. Capitol Building as they protested against President Donald Trump’s military parade scheduled for Saturday.
"U.S. Capitol Police confirm #JohnSpitzberg, 87, of Gainesville, was arrested for crossing a police line during a demonstration on Friday.
"Officers say around 75 veterans were protesting peacefully outside the U.S. Supreme Court building. Later, a group of about 60 left and officers began establishing a perimeter.
"That’s when officers say the group pushed down a bike rack, crossed the police line, and moved toward the Rotunda steps. Officers blocked them and began making arrests.
"Video of the incident shows officers arresting an elderly veteran using a walker with wheels and a chair. The man appears to be Spitzberg.
"Police say all 60 individuals will be charged with unlawful demonstration and crossing a police line. Some will also face additional charges of assault on a police officer and resisting arrest."
https://www.wcjb.com/2025/06/14/87-year-old-gainesville-veteran-arrested-us-capitol-during-protest/
#USPol #TrumpIsAFascist #Resistance #ResistFascism #MedicaidCuts #KillThePoor #FallOfRome #Veterans
So, I wondered this a while back -- would #USTroops fight against #USCitizens? Or would they #Resist?
‘Political pawns’: #Morale among California #NationalGuard and #Marines deployed in LA is underwater, report claims
Josh Marcus
Thu, June 12, 2025
"The 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 US Marines sent to Los Angeles in response to the ongoing anti-immigration raid #protests are reportedly suffering from low morale, according to members of the veterans community, amid allegations of a chaotic initial deployment and widespread concerns of the military being drafted into domestic law enforcement.
" 'Among all that I spoke with, the feeling was that the Marines are being used as political #pawns, and it strains the perception that Marines are apolitical,' Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told The Guardian. 'Some were concerned that the Marines were being set up for failure. The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where Marines were necessary.'
" 'The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,' added Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative in an interview with the outlet."
Read more:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/political-pawns-morale-among-california-211424418.html
#FallOfRome #RomanEmpire #NoKings #Resistance #USPol #Resist #ResistAuthoritarianism #ICEProtests
