I have finished reading the book, "Barbarians" by Terry Jones and Alan Ereira and then watched the DVD's that were part of the book and then shown on the History Channel. The premise of the book was challenging the ideas that the Romans were not civilized but they were the Barbarians not the other nationalities that the Roman's conquered and then the Romans considered them to be barbarians. The nations that surrounded the Roman Empire were in more ways more civilized then the mighty Roman Empire. The best example that exemplifies the point is the Roman coliseum and the thurst for the blood that the Roman nation satisfied there. Nowhere else in any other nation was the killing of innocent people by lions, or by gladiator’s to the amusement and enjoyment of the Roman people that filled the coliseum. I remember studying the Roman Nation in one of my Humanity classes and that my professor said that near the end of the Roman Empire the coliseum was in use 260 days out of the year. That is allot of death for the amusement of a nation. No other nation that surrounded or that was conquered be the Romans made death a national past time.

The Romans also treated knowledge from other cultures as either relevant to their needs or irrelevant so it was discarded, which means they burnt libraries. Rome was an Empire for 1000 years and in that time so much general knowledge was lost because it did not serve the Empire. The Catholic Church also bears so blame because when it came to power as the Holy Roman Empire beginning with Charlemagne if the knowledge did not benefit the Church, or in a act of holy rage to stamp out paganism; burn the libraries.


I had always wondered what caused the "Dark Ages" and I think that I stumbled onto one possible answer. The Roman Empire and the Church burnt the world’s libraries that contained the world's knowledge which resulted in man having to rediscover information and ideas that were lost for hundreds of years.


In the TV show a Roman boat was discovered in the Mediterranean and some artifacts were recovered but one artifact was thought insignificant until someone decided to x-ray the artifact. It was then discovered that there was an intricate gear formation that the x-ray revealed. Once the machine was recreated it was discovered that the motion of the planets and their position to each other could be revealed with this device. Here is a machine that was created a number of years ago by the Greeks that the plans were no doubt in some library that was burnt by the Roman Empire.

Burning books is not right even if you do not agree with it, you have the power to accept it, or reject it, but burning a book is not an option.