Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 October 11

= October 11 =

family
to whome this may concern i have been trying to find information about my father and his family my mother realy dont no much i no my father was born in 1902 he said he came to pass christan ms when he was 17 i no he dame from purto rico hi mother name was petra delgado and his fathers name was pancho levy i hope you can help me i have tryed every thing to find out that side of my family history if i can get a pitcher  or any thing i would be so gratful i have tryed anstry that didny help.its like my fathrt never exzisted please help me i no he married my mother in june 12 1964  my name is toni james thank you i hope to find something soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.180.80.228 (talk) 00:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * If you know that he lived in Pass Christian, Mississippi, then your best option is to find the records department at the Pass Christian town/city hall and try to find him on the rolls, for example paying local taxes and the such. At the minimum, he should also have birth records for his children, things like that.  You could also try U.S. Imigration records, and U.S. census records, both of which are freely availible if you know who to ask.  -- Jayron  32  03:06, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You might find something useful here. Alansplodge (talk) 16:13, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Assuming that your father has passed away, it might help to track down his death certificate from the Mississippi Vital Records Office.  A death certificate will normally list the person's date and place of birth.  Assuming that you are correct that this was in Puerto Rico, you could then look for records of his family in his place of birth in Puerto Rico.  Here is a link to the public records office in Puerto Rico, from which you could request a birth certificate for your father, which might have a little more information on his parents.  To use the site, you will need to understand Spanish or find someone who does.  Marco polo (talk) 01:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Why have the rich been acting against everyone's interest?
In economies with robust consumer spending, the net present value of assets is much larger than in societies where the middle class is shrinking, even when the nominal value of assets is increasing. Why do the rich tend to increase their nominal wealth instead of their net present value wealth? 208.54.5.71 (talk) 00:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * As Thorstein Veblen pointed out long ago, what rich people are really trying to increase is their social status, by and large. Which of these measures do you think would correlate best with social status? Looie496 (talk) 03:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So how is the problem addressed? Lowering the status of those who forgo net present value for lesser nominal wealth? Satire? IRS audits? Actuaries canvassing luxury stores? 208.54.5.71 (talk) 07:24, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, Veblen argued that it was a natural human urge to increase personal leisure time (status increase was more a Weberian concept). increases in leisure for one, obviously, invariably means in increase in labor for others.  -- Ludwigs 2  05:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Variably: the average hours in a work week can be lowered to restore lost economies in inefficient employment markets. 71.198.176.22 (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * To answer your second question, because people are placed in the category "rich" according to their nominal wealth, and NPV wealth is not measured for that purpose? So its just a matter of definition? Where do you get your information from, by the way? Please also explain the logical connections between your first question and the two sentences in your text - they seem to be non sequitur (logic), unless you have hidden assumptions that you have not revealed. I doubt that the assumption of your first question is correct. 92.24.189.189 (talk) 11:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Rising Tide 71.198.176.22 (talk) 17:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's go back to the assumptions in the original post: where exactly is the middle class shrinking? DOR (HK) (talk) 09:03, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I am working on a map. I need Hans Rosling's and his peers' help! 71.198.176.22 (talk) 07:52, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

The Great Depression
what were relief boots and who wore them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.86.167.133 (talk) 01:03, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't find any reference whatsover to anything like that. Looie496 (talk) 03:40, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * They were "running shoes," worn by poor children. Rather than leather shoes with leather soles, they could be canvas shoes with rubber shoes, like tennis shoes or basketball shoes. See . Think of any clothing which allows assholes to claim they are better than you because they don't have to wear "relief boots" or any other charity garment, because their Dad hasn't lost his job (yet). Edison (talk) 03:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sort of the footwear equivalent of Government cheese. -- Jayron  32  04:47, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Average Life Expectancy of African-American Single Mother
How do long do the average African-American single mother live up to? What is their life expectancy? 99.245.73.51 (talk) 04:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you tried looking at http://www.census.gov ? They have a wealth of information like this availible there.  This page has a document titled "Expectation of Life and Expected Deaths by Race, Sex, and Age: 2004" and is availible in both Microsoft Excel and PDF formats.   -- Jayron  32  04:45, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

pauline bienvenue "free men of color buying slaves in 1860 in new orleans"
I'm looking for information on Pauline Bienvenue and her connection to free men of color buying slaevs in 1860 in New Orleans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.113.202.120 (talk) 04:53, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I can find nothing on a Pauline Bienvenue in either google OR google books. I change of spelling turns up a Pauline Bienvenu in google books,, however her name appears in the records of the French National Assembly during the French Revolution, apparently the government authorized a payment of 120 livres (pounds sterling) to her for mending some drapes.  Doesn't sound like your girl.  Otherwise, I turn up squadoosh in a google search.  Sorry.  -- Jayron  32  05:06, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * BTW, Livres were the currency of pre-Revolutionary France although it has a common root with the Pound Sterling (i.e. originally a pound (weight) of silver). Alansplodge (talk) 12:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Not on this woman, but Wikipedia's art:::icle Free negro, does describe the practice of free blacks owning other black slaves. There are some references at the end of the article, numbers 6, 7, and 8, which appear to have some related information.  That may give you some leads.  -- Jayron  32  05:10, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

1930s Depression, 1950s abundance
How did the USA get from the great depression of the 1930s, as illustrated by The Grapes Of Wrath, to the abundance of the 1950s? In historical terms it seems rather quick. Or was the depression and abundance illusionary and not universal? 92.24.189.189 (talk) 11:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * World Wars have historically proved to be rather lucrative for the USA (at least that's what they told us at school in the UK - stand by for a scholarly debate). This page has some details. Alansplodge (talk) 12:10, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * A starting point is that in the 1930's, unemployment was a major problem. After the wars, it was common for households to have both parents with full-time employment. --  k a i n a w &trade; 12:47, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It is interesting to note in the references cited by Kainaw that the US economy went from one with a relatively small federal government which did not collect income taxes and spent comparatively little, to a vast tax/spend/borrow governemnt. Tea Party speakers claim that it is impossible for the government now to improve the economy and reduce unemployment by collecting taxes and spending money and borrowing. The UK also went through war conversion, but I understand that the British people still did not get adequate food in the 1950's, that heat was limited and that electric power was somewhat erratic and inadequate. Did the UK not have a postwar boom of household abundance in the 1950's? Edison (talk) 12:54, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Certainly the UK had a 1950s boom, but it took a while to get going. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:56, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Because our infra-structure was bombed to bits (there were still large numbers of Brits living in prefab houses in the 1970s); we were only saved from bankruptcy in 1946 by a huge loan from the US while other Europeans were getting Marshall Aid, and a massive defence bill due to the Cold War and the retreat from Empire. Alansplodge (talk) 15:51, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Harold Macmillan's successful slogan for the General Election of 1959 was "You never had it so good!". And compared with the Slump, Wartime Austerity and even-more-severe Postwar Austerity, he was right and the electorate agreed with him. The Labour Government of 1945-1951 was credited by the voters with introducing reforms like the National Health Service, but remembered negatively for the continuation of rationing and shortages like those of the dark, cold, winter of 1947. Macmillan and R.A. Butler, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, were "red Tories" and stone-cold Keynesians of a type that would make true Tea Partiers and U.S. Libertarians shudder. —— Shakescene (talk) 13:08, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In the 1950s few women worked outside the home. The 1960s and the advent of feminism changed all of that.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 13:10, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There were two reasons for the US recovery from the Great Depression: a very large fiscal stimulus (WWII) and a rise in inflation. During the depression, the economy was crippled by an enormous amount of private debt, but because of inflation this debt was much diminished, relative to the size of the economy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.166.72.254 (talk) 14:37, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * According to statistics I find online, the female workforce increased from 1950-1960: 9% increase, 2 million women more in the workplace by 1952, by 1960, 38% of women worked... -- k a i n a w &trade; 14:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * All very good answers, and certainly the second world war had a lot to do with it.
 * Now, there's tea on the talk page you know! And I am certain that you ladies would be most welcome there, "too"... :) Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  16:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Water supplies during the Berlin airlift
How were the allied-controlled parts of Berlin supplied with water during the 1948–1949 Soviet blockade? —Mark Dominus (talk) 13:14, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Berlin gets all of its drinking water from deep wells. It currently has 9 waterworks and exports water to Brandenburg. I would suspect that at least some of these wells and works are in West Berlin. Given that the Havel and the Spree also flow through West Berlin, water is not a vulnerability. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:10, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you! —Mark Dominus (talk) 15:34, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

costs of things
how much social security money has been spent on Irag and Afghanistan wars —Preceding unsigned comment added by Parpar47 (talk • contribs) 15:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, from "Social Security" I'm going to assume you're a U.S. citizen. The total expenditure on activities in Iraq and Afghanistan since the September 11 attacks has been ~$1.1 trillion ($1,100,000,000,000) (ED: Fixed from my earlier £ notation) according to the Congressional Budget Office. However, obviously nowhere near all of that money would have gone into social security had it not been spent on the wars. For example, between 2000 (before this whole mess started) and 2009, U.S. Defense spending rose from $294b to $690b, while spending on social security rose from $409b to $431b.
 * Would social security spending have risen more had it not been for the inflating Defense budget? Probably, but who knows by how much, and maybe it wouldn't have at all. Personally, I suspect that spending wouldn't have increased all that much more, but the U.S. would have a much lower national debt than it's currently bearing, and would have had a bit more leeway in dealing with the economic crisis, which in all likelihood would have taken place, foreign wars or no. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 16:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There is another angle to this. Apparently, the Social Security Administration invests most (or all) of the social security system surplus (and yes, there usually is some!) into the Social Security Trust Fund, which uses it to buy special US federal government bonds. So the social security system does finance a significant part of the US deficit, and hence of the government spending. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * (e/c) For the Americans in the crowd (such as myself) that's $1,747,418,586.18. I'm happy to pay off the 18 cents myself, but I could have sworn the mid-east wars tallied up to a good bit more than that - I seem to remember a figure of closer to 3 trillion dollars.  Is the CBO report excluding some costs (interest payments, payouts to non-governmental contractors, stockpile consumption, or other implicit expenditures)?  -- Ludwigs 2  17:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The source document GeeJo quotes is American, and uses US dollars exclusively. The relevant deficit was $1.1 trillion, not £1.1 trillion.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:03, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * My apologies for the typo. Not all that used to thinking in dollars. Corrected in my earlier post. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 08:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Social Security has run a surplus for quite some time now (since 1983, as pointed out in the Social Security Trust Fund article), though that's predicted to change in the next couple of years (2017, according to this 2005 article). Basically, the surplus money is invested in U.S. government bonds (seems like a safe investment, right?).  Of course, the government's using the money to cover its deficit, just like it does for every other bond it sells.  In that respect, social security's no different.  However, when the government's essentially loaning money to itself, there becomes a temptation to not pay things back when the time comes to do so (I guess that Chinese investors are pushier than bureaucrats whose jobs depend on the people you're loaning money to).  It used to be that there were no physical bonds held, that everything was just kept track of electronically, or in a ledger.  Someone wanted something physical that the social security guys could wave around, so now we have things in a file cabinet in some office building somewhere.  Even so, I think that there's a pretty good chance that the legislature isn't going to want to redeem those bonds when they're due.  What that means for social security isn't certain, but let's just say that I, a U.S. citizen in his 20s, am not including social security payments in my retirement plans. Buddy431 (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Lookup ancestry.co.uk ?
Who was Mary Arbuthnott who married 1990 Ran Laurie father of Hugh Laurie? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  17:53, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The source quoted in the article for the marriage doesnt actually say Mary just Eveline M Arbuthnot. She may have been Eveline M. Morgan who married Ernest D Arbuthnot (note with one t) in 1939 but that is just guesswork. The death index for 2004 gives her middle name as Mary. MilborneOne (talk) 19:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Perfect answer. Good guesswork which is spot on. Thank you. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  01:40, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Was the misspelling of words, use of non-words and lack of apostophes intentional in this book? I finally started writing words down to look them up after thinking I was coming down with Alzheimer's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.10.65.145 (talk) 19:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't remember that at all (I think I've given my own copy away, alas). It's certainly not Ulysses in that regard. Jonathan Franzen not withstanding, modern works very rarely are printed with major editing errors. Can you list some of these un-words? -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:31, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * McCarthy does it on purpose; it creates a certain mood or tone distinctive to his writing. Faulkner (and the two are often compared) did the same sort of thing.  Our article mentions his grammatical style very briefly: "'McCarthy noted to Oprah that he prefers 'simple declarative sentences' and that he uses capital letters, periods, an occasional comma, a colon for setting off a list, but 'never a semicolon.' He does not use quotation marks for dialogue and believes there is no reason to 'blot the page up with weird little marks.''"Which doesn't really convey the quality of the actual literary result, but given the kind of writer he is it would seem okay to assume that he probably knows what he's doing... :)  Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  19:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 68.10.65.145, I just flipped through my copy and didn't really see any misspelling or use of non-words. It's the apostrophes and quote-marks (or rather lack of them) that really stand out in McCarthy.  Would you mind listing a few of the words you wrote down – and how did you look them up if they were "non-words"...?  Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  23:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I've skimmed my copy of All the pretty horses. He does have some stylistic quirks, but they're all there to speed your reading. The thing about not having quotation marks for speech, and omitting the "he said, she said, he said, ..." from dialog-heavy parts is unusual but certainly not unique.  Hubert Selby Jr. uses this extensively in Last exit to Brooklyn; in the introduction for that, Selby says that he strove to get the text out of the way of you reading it - to give each character a sufficiently distinct voice that you just know from reading the text who's saying what. All the pretty horses uses a lot of Spanish loanwords (unsurprising given its milieu), and there's a bunch of topic-specific vocabulary that wasn't familiar to me (most people don't talk about a hackamore in their modern lives); The Road should do less of this, but McCarthy isn't afraid to use a word you might not know, if it suits him better. Lastly, when McCarthy writes phonetic dialog, he does seem to omit apostrophes when showing omitted letters - ridin rather than ridin'. But the accent is a lot less thick than Huckleberry Finn (which, as a child in Scotland, read to me like it was written by a Martian) and a heck of a lot less than How late it was, how late. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

The Big Clunking Fist
In his final Prime Ministers Questions of his premiership, Tony Blair made a speech in which he described his successor, Gordon Brown, as a "big clunking fist", a heavyweight who would knock out the flyweight David Cameron. We are looking for an audio recording of this speech - do you know where such a recording would be available, ideally online? Such a recording does exist as it has been used in a programme after the resignation of Gordon Brown, which unfortunately was not available to "listen again". Any such advice any of you could impart would be most gratefully received. All the best, Artie and Wanda (talk) 20:58, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

http://www.kewego.com/video/iLyROoaftmm0.html or http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6240000/newsid_6245400/6245442.stm?bw=nb&mp=wm but for some reason neither are loading probably so can't find if they include the comment you refer to. ny156uk (talk) 21:32, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Roosevelt and the Depression
I remember reading somewhere that during FDR's economic stimulus projects the economy began to turn up and Roosevelt decided to cut spending which immediately resulted in a massive downturn that he had to solve with even more spending. Does Wikipedia have an article, and if not What year was this, how much was cut? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.78.167 (talk) 22:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * See Roosevelt Recession, a.k.a. Recession of 1937–1938. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

how did rome fall
how did the roman emire fall. was it fast or pesefull

how did the roman emire fall. was it fast or pesefull —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.5.150 (talk) 23:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Barbaric invasions I believe caused Rome's fall. ScienceApe (talk) 00:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It could be considered to start with the Crisis of the third century and end in 1204 (4th crusade) or 1453 (fall of Constantinople), so it wasn't really too "fast". A classic work is The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire... AnonMoos (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * During the late 200s, the Roman Empire was divided into two parts, the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire, to make it easier to govern. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for more 1,000 years in the form of the Byzantine Empire, which had a very gradual, but not a peaceful decline. Its final collapse in 1453 was the result of a military siege and therefore not peaceful.  The Western Roman Empire, on the other hand, had a fairly rapid decline and fall during the 5th century (400s). A recent work that has won some critical acclaim—The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins—argues that the Western Empire was reasonably prosperous and mostly peaceful as late as the year 400.  According to his account, it was a series of invasions by mostly Germanic tribal armies, beginning with the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 and the Sack of Rome (410) that brought the empire down.  These events weakened the empire, which suffered a series of additional invasions, until a Germanic military leader named Odoacer overthrew the last Western Emperor in 476.  So, the fall of the Western Empire occurred during the span of a single human lifetime, and it was certainly not peaceful.  Marco polo (talk) 01:09, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * One could always argue that the institution of a Centralist regime versus the Democratic form of government was the initialization of the fall of Rome. The Roman Republic, as far as I know, was fairly stable with a good series of ups and downs, but no bottoming out. The Roman Empire, however, was ridden with Civil War and fights over succession to the throne. schyler (talk) 03:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, the reality is likely much the opposite. The republic was NOT terribly stable, especially in the later years, the centralization of power in the Imperial government provided some much needed stability.  The last century or so of the Republic, starting with the Gracchi reforms and down through the end of the Empire, was one major upheaval after another.  In the last years of the republic, you had two military dictators Sulla and Julius Caesar, both of which occupied the city of Rome militarily.  You had open civil war amd war with Egypt after Caesars' death.  By contrast, the first several decades of the Empire were relatively peaceful.  There were some upheavals, mostly due to the lack of a concrete succession plan (which is ALWAYS a problem, everywhere and at every point of history).
 * To answer the OP's question, it is fairly complex. The Western Empire's fall was largely due to several factors.  First, the Western Empire was much poorer, in terms of resources, and in terms of more dispersed population, than the Eastern.  The Eastern Empire had a long, relatively stable border with a highly organized state (Persia), so negotiating peace meant negotiating with ONE government.  The West, on the other hand, had a long, hard to defend border with no single organized state.  Instead, you had dozens of warring bands of Germans, who were frequently at war with each other AND with Rome, and were impossible to make peace with, since there was no one really to negotiate peace with.  If you made peace with the Visigoths, that pissed off the Gepids.  If you made peace with the Gepids, the Vandals took umbridge.  Etc. Etc.  So, for many centuries, the West was always in a precarious position.  Even before the Empire was formally divided into east and west, many Emperors prefered to rule from Constantinople, rather than Rome.  By the end of the 4th century, the western Emperors were also pretty inept.  Nearly all of the last half-dozen or so died violent deaths, either assinated or lynched by their own people.  The western Armies were under the control of Germanic generals (Ricimer, Gundobad, Odoacer), and they held the REAL power in the west, the various emperors were just their puppets. So, what brought down the Western Empire was the following factors:
 * Poorer, in general, than the Eastern, including
 * Less natural resources
 * Less urban, more dispersed, and lower population
 * Less developed infrastructure (outside of the Peninsula of Italy, it was quite poorly built and maintained)
 * Long, undefendable frontier with warring tribal peoples
 * Generally weak, ineffectual emperors under the control of their Germanic generals.
 * The last of these Generals, Odoacer, finally gave up trying to rule the Empire through the various Puppet emperors, and declared himself King of Italy, and thus an end to the Western Empire.
 * The Eastern Empire lived on for another 1000 years, it had several more centuries of prosperity, though after the Siege of Constantinople (1204), it was basically nibbled away by Latin crusaders from the West and from migrating Turks from the East. It dragged on as a "rump" empire for almost another 300 years after that, though it was finally put to rest in 1492, as the Ottomans seized control of Constantinople.  After 1492, there were various claims to the Third Rome, such as the Russians (as the sole defenders of Orthodox Christianity) and the Ottomans (as the rulers of Constantinople, the second Rome).  -- Jayron  32  04:24, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Small correction, it was 1453. 1492 was another tragedy ;-). As for the original question, scholars (and others) have spent ages speculating on why Rome "fell". Apart from the fact that the Empire was absurdly overstretched, given the manpower and communication methods of the time, I think one major reason was its own prosperity. It was always more attractive to try to fight for control in Rome than to fight against its enemies - Rome was simply the larger price. That lead to many civil wars. Diocletian's reforms that ended the crisis of the third century did so at the cost of imposing a much stricter, top-down administration. It worked in the short term, but lacked the resilience in the long term (where, of course, we have to keep in mind that Rome's decline even in the west lasted longer than many current states exist - it's a bit like us feeling superior to the Dinosaurs, because they only made it for 160 million years). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:03, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I’d like to mention Joseph Tainter’s interpretation of the collapse of Western Rome (which is very much on the lines already suggested by Stephan above): to Tainter, it’s just another case of overshoot and collapse. The empire never really had the productive base to support its own weight. It grew on conquest and plunder but then had to be maintained with ever higher taxes. The yoke was too heavy on the peasants’ shoulders, and the collapse was inevitable. But here’s the thing: they couldn’t very well scale down either. They just kept doing what they’d always done – centralizing the government, raising taxes and pouring money into the military, until their economy was kaputt, their coffers were empty and they couldn't even retreat any more. In the end, the west caved in while the eastern half, being much richer to begin with, managed a transition to a less centralized system.


 * And pace Ward-Perkins, Tainter maintains that in many places in the west, the barbarians were actually ”greeted as liberators” by the downtrodden peasantry. A peasant’s life in late western Rome was serfdom, hard and unrewarding. No wonder the Roman Church was so harsh on suicide and so big on ”the sweat of thy brow”.--Rallette (talk) 09:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * And remember that the "barbarians" had been in contact with Rome for hundreds of years, and were heavily Romanized themselves. Adam Bishop (talk) 19:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Not only had the "barbarians" been romanized, they had totally bought in to the romantic notion of the Perpetual Empire.  Consider that the two important successors to the Western Emperors, Odoacer and Theodoric the Great, were both German "barbarian" military leaders who saw themselves as defenders of the Empire, not as its conquerers.  The both voluntarily ruled Italy as viceroys of the Eastern Emperor, not as independant kings in their own right.  -- Jayron  32  01:31, 14 October 2010 (UTC)