The Essence of Missionary Christianity

By |2015-10-21T01:02:01-05:00October 21st, 2015|Categories: Christianity, Christopher Dawson, Christopher Morrissey, History, Religion, Rome|

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio “When Greece was captured, she captivated her wild conqueror, and introduced the Arts into savage Rome” — Horace, Epistles, II.1.156 (trans. Laura E. Ludtke) Christopher Dawson has identified Six Ages in the history of the Church. In Dawson’s First Age, we witness a unique encounter of [...]

A Teaching for Americans: Roman History and the Republic’s First Identity

By |2021-04-21T15:59:43-05:00October 19th, 2015|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Essential, Featured, History, M. E. Bradford, Republicanism, Rome, Timeless Essays|

What did Rome mean to the original Americans? What counsel did its early history contain? And what must we conclude about our forefathers from their somewhat selective devotion to the Roman analogue? The Federal District of Columbia, both in its formal character as a capital and also in its self-conscious attempt at a certain visual [...]

The Essence of Rome: A Tale of Three Cities

By |2019-09-24T11:16:19-05:00September 29th, 2015|Categories: Christopher Dawson, Christopher Morrissey, Culture, Europe, Featured, History, Religion, Rome|

Leo Strauss liked to call to our attention the creative tension between Athens and Jerusalem. With Remi Brague, I would like to refocus our attention onto the apparent mediation of this creative tension that was accomplished by Rome. Now, I say that this accomplishment occurred by the apparent mediation of Rome, only to nod to [...]

How Livy Predicted the Fall of America

By |2021-02-10T23:57:08-06:00February 16th, 2015|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Civilization, Featured, Livy, Rome|

Can you imagine a Roman republican, reborn, walking the streets of Philadelphia in 1776? Or how about Lexington in 1775? Or perhaps Boston in 1765? What would he think of the American fondness for Rome and her republicanism? What would the Americans think of him? I am guessing that an American republican would be much [...]

To Orchestrate A Renaissance

By |2023-05-08T12:53:43-05:00July 20th, 2014|Categories: Classics, Culture, Featured, Music, Roger Scruton, Rome, Virgil|

The purpose of cultural traditionalists ought to be to orchestrate a new renaissance for live classical music, to ensure that the dawn breaks on symphony halls that rise like polished temples in our midst rather than like ruins on abandoned hilltops. Sed me Parnasi deserta per ardua dulcis raptat amor. 1 —Virgil Perhaps our modern [...]

Eternal Rome and Her Easter Churches

By |2023-04-08T10:40:47-05:00April 20th, 2014|Categories: Architecture, Beauty, Catholicism, Culture, Rome|

During the Easter Triduum, the faithful are invited to ponder Christ’s passion at Helen’s Holy Cross in Jerusalem and to continue the meditations of Holy Saturday at Constantine’s Lateran Basilica of Christ the Savior. But the joy of Easter morning is proclaimed in a special way at the church dedicated to the Mother of God, [...]

The Fall of Rome

By |2021-03-21T11:33:06-05:00November 7th, 2012|Categories: Family, Featured, Rome, Will Durant, Wisdom|

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential cause of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.—Caesar and Christ […]

R.A. Lafferty: The Sack of Rome

By |2016-11-26T09:52:14-06:00May 23rd, 2012|Categories: John Barnes, Quotation, Rome|

Brad Birzer’s article A New Dark Age mentioned the 410 sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the event that prompted St. Augustine to pen City of God. Brad’s article brought to mind the closing passage from one of my favorite works of history: by R.A. Lafferty “There is a term placed on everything, even the world. [...]

A Teaching for Republicans: Roman History and the Nation’s First Identity

By |2019-09-19T13:10:16-05:00May 7th, 2012|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, M. E. Bradford, Republicanism, Rome|Tags: |

The Federal District of Columbia, both in its formal character as a capital and also in its self-conscious attempt at a certain visual splendor, is, for every visitor from the somewhat sovereign states, a reminder that the analogy of ancient Rome had a formative effect upon those who conceived and designed it as their one [...]

Will We Learn from Rome?

By |2021-04-14T12:15:57-05:00January 25th, 2012|Categories: Family, Featured, Rome, Will Durant, Wisdom|

The rise of Rome from a crossroads town to world mastery, its achievement of two centuries of security and peace from the Crimea to Gibraltar and from the Euphrates to Hadrian’s Wall, its spread of classic civilization over the Mediterranean and western European world, its struggle to preserve its ordered realm from a surrounding sea [...]

Among the Ruins of Carthage

By |2018-10-16T20:25:14-05:00January 20th, 2012|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, RAK, Rome, Russell Kirk, St. Augustine, Western Civilization|

Nowhere are Roman ruins thicker than in Tunisia. For this, from the days when Scipio took Punic Carthage until the Vandals broke into the city, was the Province of Africa, wondrously rich and populous. St. Augustine was born in Carthage—of a patrician family—and died in neighboring Hippo, when the Vandals were at the gates. I [...]

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