Join the weekend edition where Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc talk about the Harris-Walz talk and Harris’s speech, the Israel ceasefire, the military parade in Kabul, a ruling against UCLA’s treatment of Jewish students, and a discussion of Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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I do not understand how anyone that is Jewish could vote Democrat.
It must be habitual voting?
These candidates will not prosecute violence against Jews. And they seem to turn a blind eye to it. The solution they have for Israel/Gaza will only perpetuate the war.
Why did the Eastern Empire (aka Byzantium) persist for 1000 years after the Western Empire fell?
Well, without two critical Byzantine innovations–Greek Fire and the Theodosian Walls–the East would have fallen multiple times.
Each of the following attacks would have destroyed the East:
* 626 AD – Sassanians and Avars attack. Thwarted by Theodosian wall.
* 675 AD – Arabs attack under Muawiayah. Defeated by Greek fire
* 717 AD – Arabs attack under Umar II. Defeated by Greek fire
In fact, even with his heavy artillery, Mehmet II barely succeeded and was nearly at the point of giving up.
The East’s earlier successes rested a lot on a single general–Belisarius.
During a recent church service the letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians was read – I imagine most people might thing the apostle Paul was writing to first century Greeks – but wasn’t the city of Corinth completely destroyed and a few decades later the city was reconstructed and settled by retired Roman legionnaires? So Paul’s audience would have represented a much different cultural society?
Kamala Harris is clearly not prepared to be President of our country. It is very sad that so many citizens might vote for her, no matter their rationale…..
Had it not been for the bubonic plague, Byzantium might have completed its reconquest of the Western Roman Empire and been a bit stronger when Mehmet attacked. Then again, if Catherine of Aragon had a living male heir England might have remained with the Roman church.
Dr. Hanson, I agree with you that Gibbon’s prose is beautiful, especially those long but well proportioned and balanced sentences. About 40 years ago, I divorced; and my wise father gave me the unabridged Decline and Fall for my birthday, probably hoping that I would read it rather than “run the roads.” I read every bit of it, and ran the roads as well for a spell, I’m afraid. I regret the latter, but thank my father for the former, and from time to time, I go back and re-read GIbbon for pleasure and edification.