Being a person in the middle ages and seeing the ruins and influence of Rome everywhere around you must have been surreal.It's nothing unusual that there were cultures that were eventually surpassed by yours.But imagine seeing a culture that was actually superior to yours and died and Europe is full of its legacy. Imagine seeing these majestics ruins everywhere.That's some fantasy tier RPG shit.
>>18480130Some people thought the Roman ruins around them were the work of giants
>>18480130The average illiterate farmer wouldn't have given a shit, and the learned people who did knew what they were and where they came from.
>>18480130they weren't ruins yet back then
>>18480567anon, I...
>>18480130Historicism wasn't invented yet. The average person thought the ruins were the work of Moses/King Arthur/giants/faeries, just like many modern simple Muslims do about Roman ruins because they have no concept of history.
This boggles the mind. It also make me more likely to believe the theories that 1200 years were just mistakenly added to history books at one point and that it was all just one contiguous line: the Roman ruins were as much to the medievals as an abandoned 1920s Detroit steel mill is to us today. It's not thousands of years removed.
>>18480130Yeah, Rome was mentioned in the bible and they were still using the same roads, not possessing the means to construct more of the same quality in dead straight lines.It kind of disappoints me that we don't do the same. We now calculate how long a structure will last if we use so and so construction method and choose the cheapest method that will last 40 years plus a 10 year margin of error or something like that. The Romans built infrastructure to last the way you'd build a Cathedral, they were monuments as well as practical tools, a credit to whatever patrician was funding the project. You'd know his road was literally the quickest way to get from one city to another, he has shortened the travel time as much as physically possible for all time. The pains of your labors and costs of travels reduced, people brought closer together where there had once been dangerous muddy tracks beset by barbarian raiders. A symbol of civilization. Now a disposable tampon.
>>18480671And he would go bankrupt in 2 seconds flat if he owned a construction company in the USA and tried to implement those standards for random suburbs. He would never ever recoup those costs and would be operating at a loss, basically a charity.They still make buildings to last for the rich, the elites. You're talking about an elite's pet project. Back then, houses for goyim were even shittier than they are now. They essentially lived in huts or basements. No one gives a fuck about poor goyim and slaves. Building houses across the North American continent in the span of a couple centuries necessitates vast quantities of economically efficient materials. You cannot apply this to some ancient elite's pet project. You have no idea how any of this works.
>>18480644>The average person thought the ruins were the work of Moses/King Arthur/giants/faeriesExactly what I'm talking about. The world was more magical and mysterious. Imagine walking 2 hours north of your shithole village with no toilets and you suddenly stumble upon fascinating roman ruins that you never saw and can't explain.It was like living in an elder scrolls game
>>18480694>They still make buildings to last for the rich, the elites. And under Imperivm Romanvm the patricians would fund infrastructure, their "pet project" was their country and future generations rather than Epstein island or Mar a Lago.>You have no idea how any of this works.It is you who do not. If the world ran on a market economy to sate base hedonism we'd go extinct. It runs on people who take an interest in higher goals and seek excellence. The happiest I have ever been wasn't when nutting in some thot or high, although I have some interesting memories, it was when someone came across designs I had submitted years ago and actually headhunted me for a position where I'd get to build it for real. I was always wondering if I was actually good enough, if something that fascinated me mattered along with my countless hours of study and work. I'd love to brag, but I actually don't want to give away too many details linking me to this shithole.
There was nothing surreal about it. The medieval mindset in Europe was all about believing that mankind was in a fallen state. Mankind fell from Grace, was kicked out of paradise, and mankind peaked in his glory and advancement as well before this too was lost. The fall of Rome and the loss of its marvels of engineering was considered part of the natural descent of Man. It's part of why around the end of the first millennium AD there were so many apocalyptic cults since people believed that surely the world had reached its absolute nadir and the end times were going to begin any day now. And this attitude kept cropping up throughout the high and later periods in no small part thanks to events like the Black Death. It was only with the Renaissance you start to see people ditch the backward-facing mentality and start thinking about progress, rather than a state of perpetual decline. It didn't really catch on til the humanists of the Enlightenment, though.
>>18480718>rather than Epstein island or Mar a Lago
>>18480567They were pretty well ruined by the medieval period, centuries without maintenance or people stealing masonry for their own buildings will do that.
>>18480694The point of these vanity projects wasn't to "recoup costs" it was to build a lasting legacy. That's usually why they had the name of the patron chiseled prominently into whatever they paid to be built. Those impressive Roman letters you see on old buildings are literally just giant BIGUS DICKUS PAID FOR THIS signage, so everybody forever knows what an upstanding guy you were. Romans cared a lot about their individual legacy.
>>18480719>It was only with the Renaissance you start to see people ditch the backward-facing mentality and start thinking about progress, rather than a state of perpetual decline.Only until Nazis ditched the progressive thinking and returned to the perpetual decline view, which is the correct one.
>>18480532not true at allit's called a metaphorpoetic licence, if you will
Being a person in the modern times and seeing the ruins and influence of Europe everywhere around is surreal.It's nothing unusual that there were cultures that were eventually surpassed by yours.But imagine seeing a culture that was actually superior to yours and died and the world is full of its legacy. Imagine seeing these majestic ruins everywhere.That's some fantasy tier RPG shit.
>>18480718Building roads so that the economy can actually function is more noble than larping
>>18480719read somewhere it took until the 1800s to reach the living standards of the Roman Empire.
>>18480130Roman ruins? In Pomerania?
