Political Memes

But who is Britannia? The Britons, who still led several uprisings trying to oust the Roman invaders?

Bruh, Britannia hadn't had a major native uprising in over 300 years at the time Roman Britain was abandoned.

Do we follow the Roman lead of stopping the borders of Britannia arbitrarily at Caledonia and Hibernia and declare the people of those lands as being without value because they had less tribute to extract?

"Britannia" as in "The Roman province of Britannia", guy.

Or do we look only at the accounts of the handful of British tribal kings who were willing to appease the Romans in exchange for preferential treatment, enough to be more positively written about in their surviving history?

...

Fucking what.

Beyond Britannia, was Rome great for Judea?

Before and after the Jewish-Roman Wars in which religious fanatics attempted to murder everyone who wasn't their coreligionist or was their coreligionist but in the wrong way, yes. During them, not so much.

Did the tribes of Germania enjoy being invaded every time some emperor wanted to improve their legacy and try to one-up their forebears?

See, now this is a potentially legitimate point. I would counter, though, that most major cross-border incursions into Germania by Rome after the campaigns of Augustus were provoked by attacks and raids on Roman land and allies - Germania remained unconquered for the same reason that it was not really all that great as a target for loot and plunder - it was dirt poor. Rome's primary reason for expeditions against the Germanic tribes was defense of the borders - the Germans were neither prestigious nor prosperous targets.

Now, Persia? Persia was a perpetual dream of Roman conquest, and they were probably quite glad to hear half of their enemy's empire had collapsed.

Did the remaining Gaulish tribes miss Rome after the fall, if only because they were the only ones left alive after Caesar’s conquest?

Yes. Unironically.

And, perhaps most importantly, was life in Rome great for all of the people enslaved by it throughout its history?

No, but was life as a slave of a British chieftain or a Spanish warlord great? It seems an odd question to level considering the ubiquity of slavery in the ancient world.

I really do get what you are saying, but keep in mind that Rome was a great place to be a Roman—it wasn’t so great for everyone else.

No, man, this is pop history shit viewing the Roman Empire through an extremely modern lens of imperialism and exploitation.

There was violence and strife during its fall, but so was there in its rise and later stagnation.

This is like saying there was hunger in the medieval period, but there's also hunger in developed countries today. It entirely misses the fucking point.

It’s mainly just lucky for Rome that they were the best record keepers of their time, to have written so many one-sided perspectives about how great it was, which certainly gave later Europe a wonderful ideal to miss after it was gone.

Huh. I wonder why Romans were such great record keepers and were so keen on writing about 'how great it was' (since you think it's self-praising pamphleteers that we get our view of the Empire from) while everyone else utterly failed to do so. I guess it was coincidence.

But the foundations of that empire were nevertheless built on a brutal cycle of conquest, exploitation, and enslavement.

The idea of the Empire's foundations being built on a cycle of conquest, exploitation, and enslavement is insane. That's plunder economy shit that hasn't been taken seriously in nearly a hundred years.