Here's another 'ironic item';

I once read that, after the 'barbarians' occupied Rome (I believe it was the Ostrogoths w/ Theodoric in charge) &, finally, decided to forget about the Roman Empire & set up their own kingdom, they  proceeded to put an end to the gladiatorial games cuz' it was too "barbaric". The article also mentioned that, for some reason, the romans thought that witnessing mortal combat actually enhanced the civic strength of the community!

On Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 9:29:33 AM MST, Catherine Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


Yep, Carthaginian human sacrifice is thoroughly addressed in the book I referenced, in the broader context of Phoenician and Carthaginian religion -- which syncretized with Greek and other Mediterranean religions in fascinating ways. Of course, human sacrifice was pretty common worldwide, though some societies practiced it more often or on a larger scale than others. And a civilization that uses murder as entertainment hasn't much of a leg to stand on in criticizing the use of murder as religious ritual. Similarly, the Spaniards were aghast at Aztec human sacrifice just as heretic-killing was really catching on back home. Pot, meet kettle.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 7:11 PM Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
on Monday, April 15, 2019, 1:01:02 PM MST, Catherine Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: that wirnessing


That's part of the beauty of the Traveller background material, in my view. It's rich enough to be immersive and interesting, but there's enough ambiguity and missing information that you can create a 3I that's anything from an old-school Star Trek Federation of honorable heroes fighting for truth and justice, to a dark dystopian fascist regime slightly veiled by effective propaganda, to an overextended barely functional stopgap against the forces of dispersion, to...

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OTU 'canon' long ago suffered the (inevitable?) fate of the 'too many cooks' syndrome.
Nowadays, it possible to find just about anything anyone would want somewhere in there.
Heck, now there's even two timelines!

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Of course, real history is much the same way. I'd always thought of the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian heirs as "other", somehow more barbaric and bloodthirsty, and certainly less honorable, than their Greek and Roman neighbors. I recently read an amazing book on the history of Carthage, and discovered that we think of Phoenicia and Carthage that way because they were annihilated, and the victors went on to make them scapegoats for the next two millenia. Every story has multiple sides.

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I had first heard the same from my 7th/8th (same lady) grade history teacher in JrHigh (in HS we really only studied the USA & it's gov).

But, one thing to keep in mind when considering the old saying, "the victors write the history", is that the 'victors' aren't always wrong.
Case in point;
One of the worst calumnies against Carthage was that they sacrificed infants to one of their gods by throwing them into a deep pit.
I can't count the times that was characterized as a "can't possibly be true" slander.
Until, one day, I read an article where it was disclosed that a scientific expedition had FOUND THE PIT!
Full of infant skeletons!

Another item concerned the idea that the Druids sacrificed humans by "burning them in wicker" (Burning the Wicker Man).
Well, some years back the 'History Book Club' had as one of it's selections a book written by a professor of history who asserted that this really did happen.

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