by Marius on Tue Mar 22, 2005 7:28 pm
Avete amici,
I checked 'em out a little bit, a couple nights ago. [BTW, the 'About' link on the home page will take you to their mission statement.] Potentially worrisome: All the recent articles were written by the same guy... OTOH, they do have some excellent information on the Legions. I shall have to bump it up against my own research to see if any of my Edumacated Guesses has been improved upon. (Hey, it happens!)
Info in some of the other areas is...adequate; it has the flavor of 'received wisdom' at times. You know, the stuff that "everybody knows", and which is repeated, with scarcely any change of wording, in generation after generation of textbooks and summaries? (In biology, pro exemplo, the Dawn Horse Eohippus is almost always described in textbooks as being "about the size of a Fox Terrier", even though most people too young to have seen The Thin Man have probably never laid eyes on a Fox Terrier?)
But I barely scratched the surface of the site the other day, and only really went in-depth on the thing of special interest to me. So, on the quality, I'd say: Provisionally Good; Potentially High. More as I further my explorations!
But why are we so quick to think in terms of "allies" or "competition"? That's an OP mindset. It reminds me of the talk over there when I put up the previous edition of the Roman Outpost. The Powers-that-Were feared that I was setting up a rival organization, and that every pair of eyeballs that looked at the Outpost was a loss to the OP. Neo-Roman friends (yes, I had some) had to point out that the OP was a young nation, whereas my humble Page was simply a Web site about Rome and Bein' a Roman. What could be wrong with a Roman looking at a Web site about Rome?? One wants this thing, if one is healthy; one expects it. The more the merrier, nonne...?
Apparently not. The OP has, I understand, taken on much of the character of a cloistered order of assassins in the last few years. The e-List is closed to non-members; you cannot even lurk or read the Archives before joining. And once you do join, it seems you need permission to set up your own Web site, e-List, Bulletin Board or what-have-you. My Page was already the subject of Senate debate; heaven help the poor schmoe who actually does join another Roman-interest group--because all other organizations are "rival" by default. (Any corrections to these admittedly sweeping assumptions are welcome.)
Still, true or not, that line of thinking has followed us here. I did not expect this; I thought better of you, and still do. But we have to overcome it, to get it out of our vocabulary and out of our systems for good and all, before we can claim we're that much better.
Competitors? --Allies? ....Howzabout "fella-Romans"? And, given our history as a People, wouldn't that encompass all of the above? >({|;-P
In fide,