L.B. Jeffries: "In summing up the first section of this little talk, an FPS is something that could not, at any point, have been rendered bias."
Based off that standard, the U.S. isn't real?
I should rephrase my definition then:
An FPS is a source that could not, at any point, have been rendered bias.
The USA can be looked at today - in that sense it's real. Seeing is beleiving.
I never said Rome didn't exist - I actually write in the OP that I consider that undeniable, I hope you Read the post... - my point here is that if you boil ancient Rome down to bare facts, then the pickings are scant, and what we study is revealed to be heresay - not 'wrong', but still not 'factual'
Aardvark: Man has only existed for about a hundred and fifty years. Our history, everything we know today, is a complete fabrication by forces unknown to us.
Alien forces, or an illuminati like conspiracy organization?
I'm left to ponder what you want out of history. Nothing, I don't care about history, I just like keeping my brain sharp while waiting for uni to restart - and history is one of my favorite subjects We can never be sure what actually went on unless we invent a time machine and go back there and tape it in your view. I actually went over what could be used to glean facts - forensics and genes etc
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I honestly think that your definitions of evidence and what constitutes factual evidence falls flat when it comes to actual inquiry into the past. They are imply not workable. In my OP I pointed out that it's bloody hard to trace back genes etc - and that maybe not until future developments will we be able to accuratley know what happened
L.B. Jeffries: "In summing up the first section of this little talk, an FPS is something that could not, at any point, have been rendered bias."
Based off that standard, the U.S. isn't real?
I should rephrase my definition then:
An FPS is a source that could not, at any point, have been rendered bias.
The USA can be looked at today - in that sense it's real. Seeing is beleiving.
I never said Rome didn't exist - I actually write in the OP that I consider that undeniable, I hope you Read the post... - my point here is that if you boil ancient Rome down to bare facts, then the pickings are scant, and what we study is revealed to be heresay - not 'wrong', but still not 'factual'
I read your post and thought it was interesting, I was just poking a little fun at that tiny quirk in it.
Cousin_IT: Take one written source. Compare its content to archaeological & anthropological findings. Extrapolate for "truth."
All facts are biased, since all facts are deductions based on subjective human understanding of their environment. Don't think too hard about it, otherwise your logic will lead you to argue Apollo 11 never landed on the moon; 9/11 was an inside job; & there was no holocaust.
j-e-f-f-e-r-s: Well fuck me, and here I was really enjoying The Anaeid...
Always thought it paled in comparison to the Greek Odyssey and Iliad. The fact that the Romans celebrate their independence from the Gods by having Aphrodite be the patron of Aeneas alone made that one painful to sit through. "And then, fearing for Aeneas's life, Aphrodite made his face beautiful to behold" What the Hell man, how is that badass or manly compared to Achilles clogging the river with dead bodies or Odysseus having Athena make him a ninja badass all the time?
One of my Latin pals claims Virgil demanded they burn it when he was dying because it was still just a rough draft. Makes you wonder.
Cousin_IT: All facts are biased, since all facts are deductions based on subjective human understanding of their environment.
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The OP's approach to ancient Rome implies dismissing all "evidence" on the basis that it comes from human sources & therefore is unreliable. Perhaps my examples were choices, but by the OP's logic you cannot use human sources as evidence for something, or to give a "true FPS" context because again its bais' would distort the fact. In all three examples the only side that can claim "the facts" would be the one that can, without relying on human inference or contextualizing, prove their sides case. In all three cases thats impossible (as it is with everything), so thats how you could deny the holocaust etc.
For the first part of the quote: A fact cannot be biased - it would not be a fact if it were bias. If we go into the depths of human perception then this argument becomes boring - let's just say that in a world relative unto man, facts cannot be biased.
For the second part: You got the idea right :D That's a first. You got the Holocaust part wrong though; carbon dated skeletons and tissues with traces of the gases used in the gas chambers would be proof.
Ah but if the only evidence for those gas chambers, their function & who was killed in them came from nonfactual records (be it lists of the dead or blueprints of the machines), then how can they be linked to the evidence found from "factual" forensic analysis of human remains? FPS' would give you dead bodies & rubble; not the holocaust. Which I suppose is your point. Relative to your definition of "fact," very little can be proved & nothing can be given context beyond simply observing what the "fact" is.
Ah but if the only evidence for those gas chambers, their function & who was killed in them came from nonfactual records (be it lists of the dead or blueprints of the machines), then how can they be linked to the evidence found from "factual" forensic analysis of human remains? FPS' would give you dead bodies & rubble; not the holocaust. Which I suppose is your point. Relative to your definition of "fact," very little can be proved & nothing can be given context beyond simply observing what the "fact" is.
I understand what you're on about - but just like with crime scene investigation, one can peice together an account of events without an original source.
In fact, that might even be the best way to make history - rework it with unbias forensics (if possible)
Well to tell the truth you can argue about the factual accuracy about anything. You can claim that all info was fabricated or whatever you want. There is an unlikely possibility that they may be right, not that I believe it.
I'm left to ponder what you want out of history. Nothing, I don't care about history, I just like keeping my brain sharp while waiting for uni to restart - and history is one of my favorite subjects We can never be sure what actually went on unless we invent a time machine and go back there and tape it in your view. I actually went over what could be used to glean facts - forensics and genes etc
...
I honestly think that your definitions of evidence and what constitutes factual evidence falls flat when it comes to actual inquiry into the past. They are imply not workable. In my OP I pointed out that it's bloody hard to trace back genes etc - and that maybe not until future developments will we be able to accuratley know what happened
grats about 200 posts :)
You put me in a hard position as I actually agree with you a lot of the way there. I think my issue is with the somewhat (in my mind at least) counter productive dismissal of textual evidence out of hand. I truly think that much information can be extrapolated from the account we have left. But that being said, you are also right. Dammit. :P
But if we completely disregard texts as factual evidence we still can use them to gain insights in what went on in their minds. If we look at Tacitus for example we can see how an upper class of Romans regarded the christians as annoying critters that was a problem to the stability of the empire (a bit over the top but I don't feel like going into details atm). Or we can read, hell I dunno, Horace to glean some insight into the desillusion felt by the people before the treaty of Bríndisi in 43. These may not be "facts" but I do think they tell us a lot about the mindset. And if we are allowed to put it together with all the evidence we can draw a picture of a republic torn by a half century of civil strife and social unrest.
What about Latin? Surely someone would NOT have the ability to find all the common links in many a European language and then fabricate another language based on the newer languages ideals?
Ah but if the only evidence for those gas chambers, their function & who was killed in them came from nonfactual records (be it lists of the dead or blueprints of the machines), then how can they be linked to the evidence found from "factual" forensic analysis of human remains? FPS' would give you dead bodies & rubble; not the holocaust. Which I suppose is your point. Relative to your definition of "fact," very little can be proved & nothing can be given context beyond simply observing what the "fact" is.
I understand what you're on about - but just like with crime scene investigation, one can peice together an account of events without an original source.
In fact, that might even be the best way to make history - rework it with unbias forensics (if possible)
That would require the past to be a science, which now I think about it is what your after. By which I mean there being no evidence without "objective" observation & experiment; but from which Theories that explain the evidence & can predict things that havent yet been observed can be derived.
Ok, I think there is something to be said about the logic thought here. You're questioning very grounded facts based on the "what if?" You guys are questioning the validity of the documents and evidence, but the main thing is that you guys don't have counter evidence or documents. Is there any proactive reason to believe that Rome doesn't exist? If not, then the current view is at worst comparatively more valid since there's actually some evidence to suggest it does. Further, however, I'd say that no author can be purely unbiased, so their bias doesn't automatically render them false. However, since multiple writings say the same about history, it's the most logical and conclusive to say that these things did exist.
j-e-f-f-e-r-s: Well fuck me, and here I was really enjoying The Anaeid...
Always thought it paled in comparison to the Greek Odyssey and Iliad.
Well that goes without saying. In terms of epic, Homer is THE man. I still found parts of it genuinely moving though, particularly the romance of Dido and Aeneas. Maybe I'm just a sucker for tragedy, but there's something about the whole 'doomed romance' thing that gets me everytime...
The fact that the Romans celebrate their independence from the Gods by having Aphrodite be the patron of Aeneas alone made that one painful to sit through. "And then, fearing for Aeneas's life, Aphrodite made his face beautiful to behold" What the Hell man, how is that badass or manly compared to Achilles clogging the river with dead bodies or Odysseus having Athena make him a ninja badass all the time?
It isn't. It does, however, make him El Pimpo Supremo. Seriously, who wouldn't want Venus/Aphrodite as their patron god?
Though having said that, I can imagine it getting very awkward coming home and seeing your mother in bed with a different guy, day in, day out. Hell, half of them would be gods themselves.
"Mum, is that Adonis who's raiding the fridge for beer and cheese?"
"No dear, that's Ares. Adonis is Thursdays."
"I thought Hephaestus was Thursdays?"
"No dear, Hephaestus is lucky if he gets it every other month."
One of my Latin pals claims Virgil demanded they burn it when he was dying because it was still just a rough draft. Makes you wonder.
I heard the same from my classics teacher. It's actually got some pretty big inconsistencies in it somewhere, though I can't exactly remember where. Still damn good in my opinion. The final chapters particularly are brutal.
I never said Rome didn't exist - I actually write in the OP that I consider that undeniable, I hope you Read the post... - my point here is that if you boil ancient Rome down to bare facts, then the pickings are scant, and what we study is revealed to be heresay - not 'wrong', but still not 'factual'
Yes, that's what history largely is. Nobody who knows what history is would deny that, unless they had some ulterior motive.
Speaking of ulterior motives, what is the motive of those who hypothetically did write all these documents which corroborate each other, corroborate archaeological evidence and all point to a similar, if not the same, thing? You can't dismiss written sources out of hand simply because they could have been falsified. That raises the questions of who, when, where, why and how, which all have to be answered in a way that fits everything we know.
It's one thing to say "The Roman Empire may not have existed", it's quite another to come up with an alternate hypothesis that is more plausible than the one we currently have. Like it or not, written testimony is not completely useless, untrustworthy, unreliable. If nothing else, they prove that there was an author, who must have been around at the time. Or they could have been written centuries later, but then you have to come up with a reason why.
undeadcow: Is there any proactive reason to believe that Rome doesn't exist?
No hard feelings here but i don't think you read my original post or the posts since - we weren't talking about whether rome itself existed or not; in the OP is said I believe it's undeniable that Rome existed.
But if we completely disregard texts as factual evidence we still can use them to gain insights in what went on in their minds. If we look at Tacitus for example we can see how an upper class of Romans regarded the christians as annoying critters that was a problem to the stability of the empire (a bit over the top but I don't feel like going into details atm). Or we can read, hell I dunno, Horace to glean some insight into the desillusion felt by the people before the treaty of Bríndisi in 43. These may not be "facts" but I do think they tell us a lot about the mindset. And if we are allowed to put it together with all the evidence we can draw a picture of a republic torn by a half century of civil strife and social unrest.
Herein lies History's saving grave; might you agree with a definition of history being:
"The study of all records of the past, factual or here-say in nature, with an aim to gleaning some version of a vague truth"?
One might say it's like painting a picture based on other people's (probably themselves biased) recollections. Classical art has many examples of how hilarious things can get when one person's interpreting another person's interpretation of a third party's report of a primary source's mother's account :P
History is one thing - a version of a vague truth; that's all well and good; but as we're clear on now: We're not after a version of the truth, we're discussing just how much evidence from Rome there is, in a hope of finding some pure truth - if only the truth that we don't know what many people might have been lead to believe we did.
j-e-f-f-e-r-s: Well fuck me, and here I was really enjoying The Anaeid...
Always thought it paled in comparison to the Greek Odyssey and Iliad.
Well that goes without saying. In terms of epic, Homer is THE man. I still found parts of it genuinely moving though, particularly the romance of Dido and Aeneas. Maybe I'm just a sucker for tragedy, but there's something about the whole 'doomed romance' thing that gets me everytime...
The fact that the Romans celebrate their independence from the Gods by having Aphrodite be the patron of Aeneas alone made that one painful to sit through. "And then, fearing for Aeneas's life, Aphrodite made his face beautiful to behold" What the Hell man, how is that badass or manly compared to Achilles clogging the river with dead bodies or Odysseus having Athena make him a ninja badass all the time?
It isn't. It does, however, make him El Pimpo Supremo. Seriously, who wouldn't want Venus/Aphrodite as their patron god?
Though having said that, I can imagine it getting very awkward coming home and seeing your mother in bed with a different guy, day in, day out. Hell, half of them would be gods themselves.
"Mum, is that Adonis who's raiding the fridge for beer and cheese?"
"No dear, that's Ares. Adonis is Thursdays."
"I thought Hephaestus was Thursdays?"
"No dear, Hephaestus is lucky if he gets it every other month."
One of my Latin pals claims Virgil demanded they burn it when he was dying because it was still just a rough draft. Makes you wonder.
I heard the same from my classics teacher. It's actually got some pretty big inconsistencies in it somewhere, though I can't exactly remember where. Still damn good in my opinion. The final chapters particularly are brutal.
Homer, of course wins the epic contest hands down with The Iliad. But Vergils epic is also very very good, as you seem to agree on. And the latin makes for some wonderfull language, if that's what interests you. The part about Venus being Aeneas mother also serves the purpose of making her her an ancestor of both Caesar and Augustus. Aeneas son Iulus is the first of the gens Iulius (I think he is the son at least. Lemme look that up). Anyway, it's a nive piece of propaganda serving to justify the hegemony of Augustus.
Um, again--no: that's not the definition historians use for what a primary source it. That's a primary source that would be considered unbiased, unedited testimonial evidence.
In singular response to your jaw-wagging about my not knowing what sources are, i'll ask you to please look again at what I wrote; I defined (however incorrectly) what a primary source is, then said that I was actually looking for what I termed 'FPSs' - Factual Primary Sources, which is a term I made up and I gave a definition for. With that in mind I think all your nitpicking about how what I say doesn't fit in to the definition of a 'primary source' should find itself irrelevant, as I was not in the first place trying to find 'primary sources.'
It's not nitpicking, it's keeping people from getting confused. If you want to introduce a new concept, why not introduce a new word that goes along with it, to keep everyone from getting confused? Why use a word like "primary" over again, when it has no relation to what you're trying to express, and will only confuse people?
Um, no--Caesar says he besieged Alesia, we can excavate the area and find evidence of the fortifications he says he built. The myths of Hercules say he obtained Hippolyta's girdle, yet we haven't found any girdle or artifacts consistent with the Labors of Hercules now, have we?
I don't think "Um, no" is required, do you? That's a bit nasty. Hurt my feelings...
You, same as everyone else, are missing the point. Sure we have real life evidence of Caesar's seiges etc, that confirm his writings, but when it boils down to it, how much can we tell from ruins and debris what really happened?
A lot more than we can tell about what really happened with the Twelve Labors of Hercules; let me remind you, you made the statement:
"There is no apparent FPS that proves the existence of Julius Caesar any more than there is an FPS that proves the existence of Hercules."
We've got evidence that *some* person conducted sieges in Gaul. Maybe it was really Culius Jaesar, but it was somebody. On the other hand, we have no evidence that anyone ever obtained Hippolyta's girdle, so when we say "Hercules" we're referring to something that possibly didn't exist, even under another name like 'Culius Jaesar' or 'Orange Julius' or 'Biggus Dickus' or 'the triumvirate that conducted those sieges' the three men known as Culius Jaesar, Orange Julius, and Biggus Dickus.
Speaking of ulterior motives, what is the motive of those who hypothetically did write all these documents which corroborate each other, corroborate archaeological evidence and all point to a similar, if not the same, thing? Thanks for bringing it up; human nature is powerful, and the human subconscious is by implication equally powerful, and many ancient record keepers had no qualms about bending the truth for their own ends - sure we are lead to believe that Rome was a high state of high ideals, but all of those assertions on our part are gleaned from the renaissance, where people completely re-invented ancient Rome, making it seem like a haven of culture. In reality, Tacitus was probably trying to make himself seem filthy rich and such, even if he wasn't doing it on purpose, but rather at the behest of his subconscious You can't dismiss written sources out of hand simply because they could have been falsified Yes you can - I'm afraid one drop of wine in this glass of water will turn the whole glass red, something cannot be fact if there's a chance that it is bias. That raises the questions of who, when, where, why and how, which all have to be answered in a way that fits everything we know. well, forgive me for being kind of matrix about it but: would you rather know the truth, or what ever truth fits best?
It's one thing to say "The Roman Empire may not have existed" You too? If you read the OP, it says that I think Rome existed
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Like it or not, written testimony is not completely useless, untrustworthy, unreliable. from a purely fact based point of view it is - I'm not saying i don't appreciate it as a source of insight into the way humans think If nothing else, they prove that there was an author, who must have been around at the time the [incorrectly named] da vinci code's spawn - the secret dossiers - is an example of how a document is no proof of it's own birthday, unless it is put to carbon dating or something. Or they could have been written centuries later, but then you have to come up with a reason why. personal gain; the subconscious's power
undeadcow: Is there any proactive reason to believe that Rome doesn't exist?
No hard feelings here but i don't think you read my original post or the posts since - we weren't talking about whether rome itself existed or not; in the OP is said I believe it's undeniable that Rome existed.
But if we completely disregard texts as factual evidence we still can use them to gain insights in what went on in their minds. If we look at Tacitus for example we can see how an upper class of Romans regarded the christians as annoying critters that was a problem to the stability of the empire (a bit over the top but I don't feel like going into details atm). Or we can read, hell I dunno, Horace to glean some insight into the desillusion felt by the people before the treaty of Bríndisi in 43. These may not be "facts" but I do think they tell us a lot about the mindset. And if we are allowed to put it together with all the evidence we can draw a picture of a republic torn by a half century of civil strife and social unrest.
Herein lies History's saving grave; might you agree with a definition of history being:
"The study of all records of the past, factual or here-say in nature, with an aim to gleaning some version of a vague truth"?
One might say it's like painting a picture based on other people's (probably themselves biased) recollections. Classical art has many examples of how hilarious things can get when one person's interpreting another person's interpretation of a third party's report of a primary source's mother's account :P
History is one thing - a version of a vague truth; that's all well and good; but as we're clear on now: We're not after a version of the truth, we're discussing just how much evidence from Rome there is, in a hope of finding some pure truth - if only the truth that we don't know what many people might have been lead to believe we did.
Yes, I can agree on your definition. The degree of vagueness can vary, but I agree.
I think that the amount of evidence for Rome is huge. There's archaeological evidence, coinage, accounts from other people than the Romans themselves, linguistic evidence and some laws were used later that originated in Rome. Can't recall the details atm. I can look it up tomorrow and pop in an edit here or a new post if it feels right.
urprobablyright: You got the Holocaust part wrong though; carbon dated skeletons and tissues with traces of the gases used in the gas chambers would be proof.
Just to nitpick, you can't use carbon dating on something that recent, it needs to be a few hundred years old at least.
It's not nitpicking, it's keeping people from getting confused. If you want to introduce a new concept, why not introduce a new word that goes along with it, to keep everyone from getting confused? I called it an 'FPS', granted, some people might have thought i was talking about first person shooters, but i didn't abbreviate it until i'd used 'factual primary source' for a whole paragraph Why use a word like "primary" over again, when it has no relation to what you're trying to express, and will only confuse people? primary, at the very least, means that it is the 'first' in a line of sources, taken, if you'll pardon the confusing word choice, from the source of the information. I don't think anything in the world of literature or here-say is more pure than evidence used in forensics
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A lot more than we can tell about what really happened with the Twelve Labors of Hercules; let me remind you, you made the statement:
"There is no apparent FPS that proves the existence of Julius Caesar any more than there is an FPS that proves the existence of Hercules."
We've got evidence that *some* person therein lies the rub; there is no evidence that proves the existence of julius caesar anymore then there is evidence of the existence of quetzalcoatli - I do not accept written testimony, and even corroborating physical evidence as fact - physical evidence is what defines truth, not written statement. A book using physical evidence to become fact is like a human using a picture of a bird to say he can fly.
The Byzantine Empire also preserved some Roman (and Greek, mostly Greek actually) texts and incorporated part of Roman law and culture within their society.
urprobablyright: You got the Holocaust part wrong though; carbon dated skeletons and tissues with traces of the gases used in the gas chambers would be proof.
Just to nitpick, you can't use carbon dating on something that recent, it needs to be a few hundred years old at least.
Not to nitpick even further, but you could. The problem is it only has an accuracy of +40 or -40 years, so it would just indicate the skeletons are from somewhere between the 1900's and the 1980's...
Not to nitpick even further, but you could. The problem is it only has an accuracy of +40 or -40 years, so it would just indicate the skeletons are from somewhere between the 1900's and the 1980's...
It's more like a hundred or so either way isn't it?
EDIT: Ah, I get what you're saying...yes, it can tell you its not hundreds or thousands of years old but for giving a meaningful answer in this context it is useless.
I think that the amount of evidence for Rome is huge. There's archaeological evidence, coinage, accounts from other people than the Romans themselves, linguistic evidence and some laws were used later that originated in Rome. Can't recall the details atm. I can look it up tomorrow and pop in an edit here or a new post if it feels right.
Rome really did do itself a favour (wtf, i set my mac to english (australia) and spellcheck still thinks 'favor' is correct) for the ages with it's extensive coinage system. The coins of ancient Rome would defiantly be quite good proof of the existence of these beliefs at the time of each coin's being made; but remember again that this is a different world we're talking about - take away the film of the renaissance and it doesn't seem so implausible that a culture that said it spawned from two lupophile babies might also say it's leaders were titans; and commemorate minor skirmishes as great victories (i can imagine Rome as being a hotbed of propaganda - though they would have just thought about it as 'useful lies' i think) <- long sentence
Well I think my point has been well made that in the end we can't really trust any man-made evidence (except for man-made wounds, excrement, etc), though it's still useful to a point and undeniably interesting.
Not to nitpick even further, but you could. The problem is it only has an accuracy of +40 or -40 years, so it would just indicate the skeletons are from somewhere between the 1900's and the 1980's...
It's more like a hundred or so either way.
If you guys get proof of that then i'll concede it; but i could just change my stance a little and say 'we won't truly know what happened until technology hones carbon dating etc to a fine detecting tool'
PersianLlama: The Byzantine Empire also preserved some Roman (and Greek, mostly Greek actually) texts and incorporated part of Roman law and culture within their society.
the byzantines are actually my favorite empire - have been ever since age of empires 2; and i think they had the most beautiful architecture of the empires in europe (granted they weren't really in europe, the point stands)
Not to nitpick even further, but you could. The problem is it only has an accuracy of +40 or -40 years, so it would just indicate the skeletons are from somewhere between the 1900's and the 1980's...
It's more like a hundred or so either way.
For the first 10,000 years your standard deviation is 40. Any further back and it gets a bigger value, after 60,000 years it's just plain pointless.
EDIT: wikipedia agrees with me on the 40, which means...absolutely nothing.
Not to nitpick even further, but you could. The problem is it only has an accuracy of +40 or -40 years, so it would just indicate the skeletons are from somewhere between the 1900's and the 1980's...
It's more like a hundred or so either way.
For the first 10,000 years your standard deviation is 40. Any further back and it gets a bigger value, after 60,000 years it's just plain pointless.
EDIT: wikipedia agrees with me on the 40, which means...absolutely nothing.
Thats only one standard deviation, it needs to be to three to be considered scientifically robust (depending on the distibution curve of the results of the specific test of course)
EDIT: Sorry that wasn't very clear, standard deviation is just the average deviation from the mean of your results, it doesn't cover the entire range of values, depending on the distribution of results it could be fairly meaningless.
Speaking of ulterior motives, what is the motive of those who hypothetically did write all these documents which corroborate each other, corroborate archaeological evidence and all point to a similar, if not the same, thing? Thanks for bringing it up; human nature is powerful, and the human subconscious is by implication equally powerful, and many ancient record keepers had no qualms about bending the truth for their own ends - sure we are lead to believe that Rome was a high state of high ideals, but all of those assertions on our part are gleaned from the renaissance, where people completely re-invented ancient Rome, making it seem like a haven of culture. In reality, Tacitus was probably trying to make himself seem filthy rich and such, even if he wasn't doing it on purpose, but rather at the behest of his subconscious You can't dismiss written sources out of hand simply because they could have been falsified Yes you can - I'm afraid one drop of wine in this glass of water will turn the whole glass red, something cannot be fact if there's a chance that it is bias. That raises the questions of who, when, where, why and how, which all have to be answered in a way that fits everything we know. well, forgive me for being kind of matrix about it but: would you rather know the truth, or what ever truth fits best?
It's one thing to say "The Roman Empire may not have existed" You too? If you read the OP, it says that I think Rome existed
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Like it or not, written testimony is not completely useless, untrustworthy, unreliable. from a purely fact based point of view it is - I'm not saying i don't appreciate it as a source of insight into the way humans think If nothing else, they prove that there was an author, who must have been around at the time the [incorrectly named] da vinci code's spawn - the secret dossiers - is an example of how a document is no proof of it's own birthday, unless it is put to carbon dating or something. Or they could have been written centuries later, but then you have to come up with a reason why. personal gain; the subconscious's power
I'm not led to believe that Rome was a state of high ideals. In fact my studies of it have made it come across as highly decadant.
Ok, so you don't trust any written sources whatsoever? Then who wrote them, why did they write them, when, where and how were they written? Give me some concrete answers to this that corroborates what we know. Saying "well, they might have been falsified" is not good enough. The fact that they may all be bogus in no way indicates that they are in fact all bogus, and the fact that they all point to the existance of the Roman Empire as we know it lends a lot of credence to the theory that the Roman Empire was at least somewhat as we imagine it to be.
Stop giving vague answers to specific questions. Back yourself up. What personal gain? Be specific.
I'm fully aware that you think Rome existed. But you are maintaining that the possibility exists that it did not, and basing your reasoning on the fact that no written testimony can be trusted at all as any kind of evidence whatsoever, simply because it might have been falsified. You could be right. But if you were to make the claim seriously, you would need to back yourself up. Yes, you could be right, it could all be forged.
As to your question, the truth that fits best is as good as we can get. I would rather the truth; I'd also like world peace and an end to all poverty. It's not likely to happen, unless we get a time machine. Give me an explanation that makes more sense than the current hypothesis, back it up, and I will support it. But before I lend any shred of credence to the theory, I need more than a possibility that my one is false.
Graustein: Ok, so you don't trust any written sources whatsoever? Then who wrote them, why did they write them, when, where and how were they written? Give me some concrete answers to this that corroborates what we know. Saying "well, they might have been falsified" is not good enough. The fact that they may all be bogus in no way indicates that they are in fact all bogus, and the fact that they all point to the existance of the Roman Empire as we know it lends a lot of credence to the theory that the Roman Empire was at least somewhat as we imagine it to be.
Stop giving vague answers to specific questions. Back yourself up. What personal gain? Be specific.
I'm fully aware that you think Rome existed. But you are maintaining that the possibility exists that it did not, and basing your reasoning on the fact that no written testimony can be trusted at all as any kind of evidence whatsoever, simply because it might have been falsified. You could be right. But if you were to make the claim seriously, you would need to back yourself up. Yes, you could be right, it could all be forged.
As to your question, the truth that fits best is as good as we can get. I would rather the truth; I'd also like world peace and an end to all poverty. It's not likely to happen, unless we get a time machine. Give me an explanation that makes more sense than the current hypothesis, back it up, and I will support it. But before I lend any shred of credence to the theory, I need more than a possibility that my one is false.
I don't think I can really give you a satisfying answer.
You've pretty much shown that u know what my point is; though you're not fully appreciating the power of it.
The point is, truthfully, that, as you said, no written sources can be held as fact. You don't need to get more specific. I'm not being black and white here - I'm not saying I don't want Rome to have existed, I'm not saying that overwhelming opinion doesn't describe a vague truth (as mentioned in a previous reply to something said by teh_gunslinger) what I'm saying is, if one were looking for facts (like me), then one could not trust written sources. The nature of my argument is vague because the nature of history is vague - especially about the non-events of ancient Rome. It doesn't matter how wrote them, how many people wrote them, etc, the ironic fact is that they are not factual.
There is no certainty that yours is false, but I think my logic is undeniable (not being pompous about it, for how can someone be pompous for pointing out obvious truths?)
I did not say there's a possibility that rome didn't exist - i know it did. Again, i refer you to the OP.
One cannot back oneself up other than by appealing to your logic, and imploring you to think laterally.
I don't consider Ancient Rome to be a pure truth (obviously) and i consider it to be a study in myth as much as a study of events, but I still recognize it as a great area of study, that can give us alot of insight into how humans work, I don't take it as truth because there is no real truth, i just take it as something that pretty much happened - it doesn't matter if it really happened or not; it affects us, and everything is relative.
I should rephrase my definition then:
An FPS is a source that could not, at any point, have been rendered bias.
The USA can be looked at today - in that sense it's real. Seeing is beleiving.
I never said Rome didn't exist - I actually write in the OP that I consider that undeniable, I hope you Read the post... - my point here is that if you boil ancient Rome down to bare facts, then the pickings are scant, and what we study is revealed to be heresay - not 'wrong', but still not 'factual'