Rome fell because they went Woke !?

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#Maiorianus

[OttarErOsom]

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who are familiar with it are doomed to watch in horror as others repeat it.

[coolapple]

Not sure about whether you saw my last comment but there is a chanel named "Zeitlose Geschichte" who is reuploading your videos. Not sure if it is you because I'm terrible at such things so I thought I should note you

[Peter-joyu]

Confederates were rebels who threatened to break apart the United States. And their entire rebel government was formed to preserve and expand the abominable practice of slavery (which many people even at the time recognised as immoral, just see how many abolitionists there were). Such slaveowning rebels who killed tens of thousands of United States soldiers don't deserve statues. Germany doesn't honor its dictator with statues. I don't see why the Confederates need to be honored with statues and monuments when they stood for oppression, death and destruction.

[kaiserquasar]

Before I even watch the video, the simple answer is: no. The Roman empire collapsed due to a bunch of factors, from a failing economy making soldier life less rewarding and thus weakening the empire's ability to raise troops, to the mounting intensity of barbarain invasions, civil wars, plague, famine and more. Being gay or jewish isn't what broke the empire. The byzantines lasted a 1, 000 years and they were more urban, rich, prosperous and thus "softer" than their western counterparts, though, again, they did better. To use as few words as possible, the Romans collapsed just as all empires do, but no model that postulates a significant relationship between "wokeness" (which didn't exist at the time, the closest you had was Justinian being based and doing vaguely "woke" stuff because of pressure from his equally based wife, and yet if it weren't for factors beyond Rome's control like plague and the belligerence of Persia this era would have been IMO the peak of civilization up until the industrial era) and "weakness" or "societal/civilizational collapse" or whatever word one may use cannot account for what actually happened. That's it.

[matthewdancz]

The problem with the fall of an empire is that nobody writes about the fall until after it has already fallen.

[mathetes]

Rome was being fleeced by a greedy elite called the Optimates who were monopolizing land with usury (high interest rates) & slavery, these elites were migrating massive numbers of slaves to do the work at super low wages, work formerly done by free Roman citizens, (sound familiar?) this drastically drove down the price of labor & ended up pushing native Romans off their land/jobs & into the cities, mostly Rome itself. These same elites would then give high interest loans to the unemployed Native Romans, which put them into massive debt=slavery. Rome swelled with the influx of disgruntled veterans, Native Romans & newly arrived immigrants. All this formed a jaded underclass, while the elites lived in a slave supported super luxurious lifestyle. The war veterans would return back to Rome after fighting for years for Rome, just to find their families pushed off their own land & jobs, unemployed & broke, & often their jobs taken by the very people the veterans had been fighting against! Again, sound familiar? Caesar was one of these elites but he sided with the Native Romans, he was known as a populist, perhaps one of the worlds 1st. Caesar used the people as a force to push back agaisnt the elites to drive true reforms. After 2 decades of Civil war Caesar came out the winner, but in the end was ruthlessly assassinated by the very elites he was once a member of.

[JM-mhpp]

Constant civil wars, wave after wave of invasions, famines,
- Do you know what our problem is Julius?
- Not enough food? Breakdown of the economy? Unsustainable growth model based on slave labour? Constant civil wars that destroy our armies WHILE we are being invaded?
- No, it is this new strange religion.

[AlvorReal]

Freedom of religion is hardly a Roman value. Freedom to worship in a way that the Roman State approved of is far more accurate.

[fnansjy]

"Rome would have stayed together if it used Flextape to stick the empire together as flextape is unbreakable " Billius Maysisus 479 AD

[MatthewTheWanderer]

Comparing Woke Extremists to Early Christianity would make a LOT of people, especially Conservative Christians, very angry, lol! I even find it surprising.

[barnacleandy]

Rome fell because someone pushed her over

[tirionfordring]

It's funny to see the irony in your own point: you keep talking about how Christians were so awful and destructive and that the predominantly pagan West fell once it accepted the Christian laws and values, but you didn't even mention that at the same time in the predominantly Christian East the Roman Empire kept on going for another millenia. I don't think you made the point you wanted to make.

[mango]

During Stillicho's government, a Pagan general called Genneridus was appointed to defend the provinces of Dalmatia, Raetia (Switzerland) and Noricum (Austria). He was quite effective but when Stillicho was dead, Honorius removed him from command. An example of how the army was affected by the persecution of Pagans.

[palikariena]

What really happened is the senators cut the soldiers out of the sharing of the spoils of the system: they couldn’t vote for their leaders (consuls, tribunes); and they no longer got land after mustering out, making their interests further detached from those of the senatorial class. So the soldiers slowly turned their back on the religion of their leaders; and the people slowly turned their back on the opportunity to become soldiers. Eventually, the military took on Christianity and took over the state by appointing their own emperors. So the real reason for the decline is the complete shutting out from the levers of power of the people.

In the East the dynamic was a bit different but this is a different discussion.

[thenotoriousmilo]

This is why Men always think about Rome.

[krimozaki]

Wasn't the reason for the decline of the Roman Empire present before its conversion to Christianity? Such as political corruption, military rule, and the struggles of Roman generals over power. Also, many Italian Romans chose a life of comfort and extravagance instead of military life, leaving it to non-Italians, especially the Balkans.
It is possible that Christianity caused some disturbances, whether with the pagans or even among the Christians themselves, but the Roman Empire was heading for collapse since the death of Marcus Aurelius
Also, the barbarians, especially the Germanic, began to learn the military organization from the Romans and became a real threat in the north, and the Persians in the east became more aggressive, and this is another factor

[SquireWaldo]

Woke is the modern religion for many people.

[Procopius]

Typical atheist take, blaming Christians for the fall of the Empire. I would place the blame with the ruling class, who was engaging in constant civil war to the point where they could no longer keep the barbarians out, and then just ceding territory to them. It's not like the Roman Empire had elections, where the most popular guy got voted in, or the guy with the best policies. Also, comparing Christians to woke leftists (which are actually communists), is just an insult no matter how you spin it. Communists don't have a non-aggression principal; it's a might makes right ideology fueled by jealousy and desire. Communists, just like the Roman rulers for the first 3 centuries AD, are another group which butchered Christians as a matter of policy. Some pagan temples were smashed up, or converted into churches. Most of the statues and buildings, however, got destroyed by barbaric invaders, or quarried for stone in later ages. Also, not talk about Islam, which destroyed the Eastern Roman Empire and quarried the ancient buildings (Roman and pre-Roman) for stone.

[UnisRapper]

"Give the people HRT and estrogen. And they will not rebel."
-Woke ceaser

[schedelworld]

I do think that the notion that Christianity had less of a division between church and state than traditional Roman religion, as stated near the beginning of the video, is a bit of a specious idea. Church and state were fused from earliest antiquity, and Rome was no exception (thus Augustus's portrayal of himself in priestly robes on statuary, the building of temples by central authorities, the eventual integration of Caesar as Divus Julius and other emperors' deification after death, sacrifices for the Emperor before the gods, etc) and a large part of the rejection of Christianity by Roman authorities stemmed from the Christians' refusal to participate in state religion, which smacked of a rejection of Romanitas itself. Also, characterizing earliest Christianity before Constantine as a religion fused with state is prima facie ridiculous; they had no state except the notional Kingdom of God, which was not (at the time) seen as an earthly power. I'd almost say that the difference between early Christianity and Roman state religion was that it was NOT connected to the state, and proposed a power dynamic outside of the state, and a derivation of ethical and moral notions that did not depend on centralized power or even the recognized religious power of traditional Judaism. This obviously changes completely with Constantine and never goes back. That's just a critique of one line of the video, I love your work and enjoy your videos!