I find it pitiful that one should wish to defend & conserve their nation's borders. If borders really must exist, then one should only seek to expand them.
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Not sure about the rest of Europe but, the Ottomans surely did not give an iota of a fuckhttps://twitter.com/byzantinepower/status/974297570557259778 …
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This is the most Roman thing about the Ottomans imohttps://twitter.com/byzantinepower/status/974295011746598913 …
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But at the same time the Romans had some sort of an obsession over borders, especially when declaring war (is it not interesting that a declaration of war entailed an opening of the temple of Janus' gates?), with complex, archaic rituals recounted by Livy.
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I think, and I haven't fully searched this out, this how the Latins were able to incorporate the Hellenic soul. The latter was birthed behind the walls of ancient cities, but found its genius at the limits where heroes would tame the wild and return its spoils to the city.
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The city-states were nodes on a vast web that was ever-ensnaring morsels of the wild a-political world. Pothos-driven Alexander was the pinnacle of this spirit. In a generation he alone expanded the web, but caught more than it could handle, so it frayed.
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The Romans worked in the same model, but the City gave them a grounding for expansion. Every new province was a new world to be tamed, that demanded that the borders of the City itself be reassessed. Triumphal arches represented a sanctified breach in the wall, hence the ritual.
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Limits not only kept barbarians out but kept in those that had yet to be Romanized. But it was only a matter of time before the borders moved again. This is how Virgil (himself born near the imperial borders) can hear Jupiter saying such things like "imperium sine fine dedi".
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I suppose the Romans figured out a way to make the City itself the hero that ventured into the wild and took on the bestial aspects of that which it tamed. This is a great mystery.
End of conversation
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