It doesn't seem to me that the Teutons and Vikings developed in a way that should be inspiring to anyone but rapists and brigands.
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The Romans, in the course of building their empire, and in the effort to maintain it, pillaged, raped, destroyed and generally behaved like well disciplined brigands.
The Teutons and the Vikings, in the course of their own raids, wars and feuds, pillaged, raped, destroyed and generally behaved like dedicated brigands.
And yet, the typical view is that the Romans were more civilized, more developed and, of course, better than the tribal peoples they subdued.
Doubtless all those lovely and stately ruins, those roads that last till the present day, the histories and commentaries, written by Romans, along with the entertaining 'toga' films in which everyone with a West End London accent is Senator this or Proconsul that and all the servants and barbarians have working class or faux Slavic speech patterns, have something to do with our beliefs.
It is easy to look at the ruin of the coliseum, note that the Teutons left no such structure, and conclude that the Germanic tribes were lacking in the cultural area.
But then when you recall that the coliseum was used, at least part of the time, for blood sports you see things a bit differently. Take away the nice, engineering and architectural wrapper, and you have behavior no better than whatever similar entertainments the Teutons might have enjoyed (if any).
Our continued and stubborn admiration for the Romans says more about our attraction to technocratic beauracracies and discomfort with tribal arrangements than it does about the cultural superiority of the Romans over their subjects.
There are contemporary examples of this prejudiced game of comparative culture, in which the ones with the nicest buildings, the shiniest gadgets and all the rest of it gain bonus points - regardless of the many, daily barbarisms that are evident.
Finally, I believe that much new archeological work has been done in an effort to get a non-Roman picture of the Germanic tribes (and other groups absorbed by Rome). I believe it may be time to update our view of slavering, animal skin wearing wild men versus clean shaven, law and technology bearing Roman sophisticates.
DRM
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