{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4028",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 4028,
    "subject": "Rome and Alexander the Great",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-06-17T18:34:35+00:00",
    "last": "2003-06-17T18:34:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0306-3477@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-06-17T18:34:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Rome and Alexander the Great",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Crush wrote:\nIt is true that Latium is not numbered among the armies of Xerxes. This is\nnot surprising. In 478 BC, Rome's republic was about 30 years old -- Rome\nwas only about 100 years beyond an age of legend. 150 years later, Rome was\nnot even considered worth the trouble for Alexander the Great or his heirs\nto conquer."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Not to give you a hard time, and granted there is always argument between\nhistorians, but I just read a book, THE FATES OF NATIONS: A BIOLOGICAL\nTHEORY OF HISTORY (1980), where the author Paul Colinvaux wrote that\nAlexander avoided Rome as too tough (and possibly \"too poor\"?) for a proper\nvictim of a war of aggression.  According to Colinvaux, the war of\naggression requires that the aggressor have a technological edge over the\nvictim, and the victim must have a resource that the aggressor wants.  The\nMacedonian phalanx famously carved up the Persians, showing the edge; the\nPersian empire had land and wealth.\n\nOh, I see I'm not really arguing with you after all!  Since I put in the\n\"too poor\" part it falls under the rubric of \"not worth the trouble\" in\nyour message.  I.e., it would have been trouble, since the technological\nedge favoring Macedonia over Rome was slight if it existed at all, and the\npotential rewards were much less than those offered by the pesky Persians.\n\nIn other news, I've just started a new round of auctions for Lexicons and\nboxes of uncollected Wolfe stories.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/\n\neBay Auctions\nhttp://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=mr.sirius"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}