War

The citizens of Capua were consulted

As it is well known, the Athenians invented back in the fifth century BC. the democracy or political system in which the citizens, the people, the “demos”, chose their rulers. This grandiose fact, whose most advanced development only exists in a few present Western countries, does not allow us to ignore the great limitation of that original democracy: only the citizens, a minority among the inhabitants of Athens, had these rights; Nor women, nor slaves, nor foreigners could vote.

Neither should we ignore the ease with which the people were “manipulated”, impressed, to make damaging agreements even against democracy itself, when there emerge the “demagogues” who even impose “tyrants”.

Some Roman public service contractors were fraudsters

In ancient Rome, and from Republican era, it is leased to private the exploitation of land and resources of the state, which were all conquered by the roman legions, and even strong companies of investors were established for it. This activity generated a space where it was easy to confuse the private with the public and produced some episodes of corruption which to some extent remind current events.

At the gates of the Roman Empire / At the gates of Europe

The History does not repeat itself but sometimes some events occur at different times and the have some similarity. See article http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/cervantes-world-book-day.

In these present times they appear occasionally comparisons of the fall of the Roman Empire with the present time of tensions between East and West. More specifically similarities are seen between the events of the year 378 which end with the defeat of the Romans at Adrianople, present-day Edirne in Turkey at the current borders of Greece and Bulgaria and the death of Emperor Valens in battle and the wars in Iraq and Syria, which move millions of displaced fugitives from one place to another.

Summum ius, summa iniuria. Rigorous law is often rigorous injustice

The meaning of this Latin phrase, which has become a proverb, is warning of how an application of the law strictly to the letter can become a huge injustice.

The eclipses announce extraordinary events (I)

Man has taken thousands of years, from his appearing on earth, watching the sky, sometimes impressed by the thousands of bright spots, around 1,500 naked eye, moving or standing still, and other times frightened by the influence which the sky can have on their lives.

The episode of Ajax of The Iliad inspired Cervantes

Cervantes tells us on Chapter VIII of the first part of Don Quixote , among other things, the story of the sheep, attacked by D. Quixote, who saw them in his madness as two powerful armies of enemies. The dust raised by the meek quadrupeds was the trigger for his madness.

War destroys everything, including culture and art

The war is the domain of the adversary first by destroying the people, whom it kills without mercy, and then everything that gets (although not opposed) passing. The most valuable losses are people, of course. Then an irreparable loss is the art and culture sometimes accumulated over centuries and millennia, that some “warriors” qualify euphemistically of “collateral damage”.

Octavian Augustus in Hispania (in its two thousandth anniversary)

Finally the hot summer has given way to sweeter autumn . The summer lasts June, the month of the goddess Juno, the homologous Roman of the Greek Hera, to September, the seventh month of the initial year of ten months. Between the initial month and the end of summer the months of July and August are threshed day to day. July first was called “Quinctilis”, ie, the fifth month, and August “Sextilis”, ie, the sixth month. The general or “imperator” Julius Caesar gave his name to the fifth and his nephew and first emperor Octavian Augustus gave the name to the sixth.

Library of Alexandria (5) Did the Library of Alexandria disappeared by a grand fire?

According to tradition thousand times repeated, the famous Library of Alexandria disappeared in a great fire. It seems that this is the tragic end sooner or later to which all libraries are doomed.

The accounts of the great Publius Cornelius Scipio African Major

Known and frequent is the expression “the accounts of the Great Captain ” to refer to a lack of justification or outrageously ridiculous justification of expenditures .

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