I have no idea, but I have an *Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day*, “a time-traveler’s guide to sightseeing, shopping, and survival in the city of the Caesars”, which is great fun and an instructive read.

Wait, I was wrong. There’s a *The Romans for dummies*, but I got no idea about the quality.

I think Gibbons is a great independent read at any time. However, true, it may not serve as a primer. Do they have a “Roman Empire for Dummies?” I’m not kidding. Those books are great starters.

Lewis is fine. A bit “academic and dry” but we are not children, right?

How can one possibly live in Switzerland – just mountains, good chocolate and cows. Couldn’t live surrounded by cows.

He is at his most sarcastic when he discusses the early Christian church.

It will not last. Things ARE about to change soon.

I know this had to be the American Century. It will not be. As Fareed Zakaria *once said*: it is not defeatism, it is math.

So the myth of the white race will fade away.

This angers those who don’t think in terms of humankind, of helping one another and of love for cultural diversity.

Nazism (more than Fascism in my view, but now they are getting closer) – which has nothing to do with the US, who defeated Nazism and Fascism with the help of the Russians – is there to provide the most angered [and moronic] with its ideological abomination. They must be fought and crushed.

PS
Obama, a BLACK president of the US, in this respect, after the Bush era, angered them so much (the birthers and all that bunch), I imagine their faces when he was elected – making the rest of us sooo happy, no matter what Obama’s policy is.

Yes, at this point, and from a world’s point of view, what Obama accomplishes really doesn’t matter that much.

PPS
Pardon my verbosity Paul

Rosaria, I visit you because I appreciate you as a person and as a writer.

How do you mean ‘your best behaviour’ Rosaria?

Myth and history – there’s always connections to figure out: the Roman Venus born around Lavinium (where many Spaghetti Westerns were shot btw) not by chance, since Aeneas, who there may be landed, was son of Venus. The original shrine of the goddess was in Lavinium, so everything fits: Aeneas, the goddess, the location of her cult, which is historical of course, and the Romans, sons of Venus, and their pleasure of living, transmitted to all Latin countries.

Not that today myths are dead: Elvis, Marilyn, the UFOs. I prefer to mythicize the Greco-Romans frankly.

I loved ‘La vita è bella’, parts of it shot in charming Arezzo, where I often go for family reasons.

The Romans were the only folk who made a myth, a religion of Rome herself. This gave them additional power.

And the Jews were not different – Lichanos might correct me -: they mythicized their folk and nation, thence their resilience.

Unfortunately the hideous and totally false myth of a superior blood or race – of a negative, the Jewish race, and of a positive, the Aryan race – has brought immense tragedy in the 20th century.