People on twitter have had big debates about when the Fall of Rome was-was it when the Goths took it , viz. Romulus Augustus, in the late 400s AD? was it in 1453 when the Ottomans overran Byzantium?I don’t think so in either case.
I think it was when the Flame of Vesta was extinguished , by order of the Christian emperor / his lot and Roman religion was suppressed. because, quite literally … they stopped bieng Roman when that happened. And in antiquity that element aroudn the Flame going out – well, that woudl, overtly, be viwewed as the life of the city … extinguished. At least till relit. They stopped being Roman and then tottered on for a few more decades till the Goths.
What Macaulay wanted to do to Hindu India was done to Roman Rome. When it came to the Flame of Vesta – there was a procedure,straightforward if .. not someting one wanted to have to do. To rekindle said flame from the Sun. However, to re-light the flame of a .. wel, a religion, a people,that is not so simple. Once it goes out,once it is allowed to gutter and dwindle and turn to ashes and ember it is very difficult to go the opposite way -Curwen replied to themself a warning, therefore, to – well, we do not take our religoin and its heritage, its multi-millennia unbroken span , for granted but yes, were it to be as … suppressed as the Romans wound up , or the Germanics wound up a devil of a time getting it back. even without the .. thousand yeras, thojusand five hundred … of additional time to forget that those two spheres have had .
Of course, this brings me to antoher thought. Basically it was rathert noted that POland, being a country / realm , located on a bunch of flat plains on the main invasion route eithetr direction in Eastern Europe was therefore in perma-danger of being overrun and overriden – overwritten in fact and usualy taht would mean the potential .. end of the thing except in amidst the rising great powers , and the realization that it was likely taht .. basically Poland was going to get overrun and ‘incorporated’ , sooner or later ,,, the Poles decided to try something different sow the ‘seeds’ , embed the ‘roots’ of Polishness in such a broad and deep fashion amonst the people rather than just an assimilatable – or executable – elite and Poland would still be around, Polishness would still bre around for such time , one day in the perhaps distant future when those great powers were battened back down again, and there would be scope for Poland, the (nation-)state to spring back into existence. And lo … thoug hit took .. what, four centuries? it worked.
padmavajra 