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Showing posts from October, 2006

Roman coins

A mixed lot of Roman coins arrived from an eBay seller today. Six of them are in terrible condition, with only the faintest remnants of a profile or text to suggest that they're Roman at all, but I think the other four have enough text to allow for some kind of identification. VCRC , here I come...

Historical hobnobbing

Last week, I went to the opening lecture of a conference on St. Augustine. My history professor, who suggested that my fellow students and I attend, leans over to me at one point, indicates a guy walking towards his seat, and says, "There's Peter Brown ." If you don't know who Peter Brown is, here's a very, very brief explanation: Up until our generation, give or take, the dominant view of the fall of Rome was that barbarian hordes descended upon the place in the 5th century and wiped out the Western empire, burying our civilization in the "Dark Ages" for the next several hundred years. In 1971, Peter Brown put out a book that focused on the Eastern empire, which fared much better during that period. He said, in essence, "yes, there were barbarians, but a lot of really cool and really important stuff (especially stuff involving the infusion of Christianity into society) happened during that time and it deserves to be studied." He referred to t