Empire-Builders

imperium sine fine // curated by @davemagne // powered by @getlexapp

[Modern Caesar @ModernCeasar]

In the late Roman Empire Romans stopped reading.

Nobility began seeing learning as an inconvenience for their careers and daily life. They rather chose to go through short cuts, abandoning rhetoric, philosophers like Socrates, Homer’s works and history.

Ammianus Marcellinus, a 4th century historian notes, that nobles began regarding reading as poison. They only engaged with light satire, but abandoned classical works.

This resulted in decline of libraries and 99% of ancient sources.

Once nobles stopped patronizing book copiers, the old works that constantly required to be rewritten to survive papyrus, began to erode.

And as Romans struggled with their culture, their Empire began to slip away.

Today’s article is about why Romans stopped reading, what consequences it brought and what can we do to avoid the same fate.

Only on our newsletter:
https://t.co/OEOApkHGL0

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@ModernCeasar :(

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

Are polls broken or something @nikitabier

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

Bad news folks. Ron Chernow is all booked up promoting his new book about Mark Twain. He won't be able to sit down with us to chat about Washington.

However, there's a brand new Washington biography that we could binge read. It's called American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington by H.W. Brands. I think the author would be open to a conversation where I ask him all your questions.

So we have two options. Read a second Washington biography or vote on the next biography. This time I will try to choose a selection where I think we have a reasonable chance of getting a hold of each author. Otherwise, we'll have to improvise. It would be nice to have some kind of debrief after every read, and not just have a totally asynchronous reading experience.

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

Here’s the poll

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

Here’s the poll

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

This is the book we could read next. It just came out last month so it should have new information. We could do a highly selective read and focus on what Chernow never got to.

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

This is the book we just read for the Empire-Builders book club (substack link in bio).

[The Bull Moose Project @BullMooseProj]

Priorities

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@AmericanGwyn Are the Judge, Anton Chigurgh, and the Huntsman all gnostic archons 🫢

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@romanhelmetguy 10th event should be MMA

[Aaron Gwyn @AmericanGwyn]

Five favorite American authors:

1. Cormac McCarthy
2. William Faulkner
3. Herman Melville
4. Wallace Stevens
5. Denis Johnson

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

Theodore Roosevelt read every single day

Even on his wedding day

Even while exploring the Amazon

Even the day he charged up San Juan Hill

He read 20,000 books in his lifetime

"I am part of everything I have read"

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

James Garfield could write a sentence in Greek with his left hand while writing the same sentence in Latin with his right.

At the same time.

Before politics, he was a classics professor. Spoke seven languages. Read theology, philosophy, and mathematics for fun.

Four months into his presidency, he was shot.

The smartest man to ever hold the office.

American Exceptionalism 🇺🇸

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

You're joking, right?

"For this can be said of men in general: that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocrites and dissemblers, avoiders of dangers, greedy for gain..."

His general contempt, or at least deep and abiding distrust, for mankind is literally the whole basis for why it is better to be feared rather than loved.

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

Misanthrope.

I appreciate his writings but that’s just how it is.

[Niccolò Machiavelli | The Prince ⚔️ @NiccoloDaily]

Machiavelli in one word.

Let's hear it.

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@NatureInMotionX Bad AI bot. This is possibly the most compelling, romanticized take on war ever put to paper.

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

"Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all."

―Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy (1985)

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

This is probably one of the greatest lines ever written:

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@aisling_kenahan "The child is the father of the man."

On the first page of this book, echoes Wordsworth

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

@Urus_Lunar Christian Bale would have been (could be?) worthy

[Empire-Builders @EmpiresPod]

It's the obvious thing to point to but it also seems a likely culprit. At the same time I tend to think we're at the tail end of a great (digital) renaissance, and that the outpouring of human creativity on YouTube, X, and elsewhere will only come to be truly appreciated in retrospect.