The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [298]
[33] The main ship of this war was the quinquereme which had five banks of oars. This ship was larger than the trireme which had three banks of oars and had been the mainstay of the Persian Wars.
[34] These figures are difficult to compute. A legion was six thousand men, so four legions would be twenty-four thousand troops; however, the Romans also had auxiliary troops to assist the legions, and they may have numbered another twenty-four thousand plus supply units. At any rate, a lot of people died.
[35] One ship was purported to be 400 feet long. Such large construction requires great expertise in ship building.
[36] Originally, the head of each clan making up the Roman Republic would comprise the Senate. As time went on, the power of the person was as important as the clan he or she came from.
[37] Another widely used unit, a century, consisted of 100 men led by a centurion. Note that every centurion Jesus encountered in the Bible was an upright man of great personal character. Maybe that is the fundamental reason Rome lasted so long.
[38] p. 200, With Arrow, Sword, and Spear . . . , Bradford, 2001, Fall River Press.
[39] In the city of Rome, the poor constituted a huge percentage of the population. Politicians had given patronage to these poor for years in return for their votes; thus, from the start, the wealthy had gained and maintained power through buying votes from the poor. The net result was Rome was ruled by a few wealthy families who could pay the patronage. Hannibal added to the problems, because as he ravaged the countryside the rich bought up the land of the destitute farmers sending them into the city to join the poor while the rich grew ever richer. After the defeat of Hannibal, the rich used slaves to work the farmland on their massive estates thus increasing their wealth further and driving up the number of poor in Rome itself. Caesar had made a name for himself redistributing land to the poor, so he was one up in the bidding war as crossed the Rubicon.
[40] Caesar lived from 100 BC to 44 BC. His life was ended by murder in the Roman Forum.
[41] Modernly, someone who has crossed the Rubicon has committed himself to an unalterable course of action.
[42] Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, last of the Ptolemies, played a role in this part of the drama. She was impregnated by Caesar, had his child by caesarean section (note the name), and returned to Rome with him. None of this endeared him to members of the Senate. After Caesar’s death she returned to Egypt, became the lover of another famous Roman general, Mark Anthony, had twins by him, and committed suicide after her armies were defeated by Octavian in 31 BC. Who could make this stuff up?
[43] Caesar began to mean prince or king, and the words Kaiser (German) and Czar(Russian) came from the word Caesar.
[44] This the only major religion started by a penniless dead man, with no children, and zero followers remaining out of only twelve to begin with, one of which had sold him out to the authorities.
[45] Nero liked to burn Christians lashed to poles along the streets at night as street lights. Imagine the smell. If no one complained the city must have smelled pretty bad beforehand.
[46] It was under the Emperor Trajan in AD 117 that the empire reached its greatest geographic extent. After Hadrian took over he began to reconsolidate the empire and went over to the defense.
[47] The fall of the Western Roman Empire took decades, so the date of 455 is somewhat arbitrary, but by this date the governmental protections (army) and bureaucracy (administration) were gone forever.
[48] Some philosophers say the world outside our brain cavity is nothing but chaos, and we mentally impose order