"Good" is related to Act, and "One" is related to Potential. — Metaphysician Undercover

Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action to the One. Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer potentiality without which nothing could exist. So no, the one is not related to potential.

I'll pm you an awesome source if you want. — frank

Of course, any new knowledge is always appreciated.

Plus if you want to read some Plato together, I would be up for that. — frank

Oh my friend, pick the book and lets go! :grin:

How did you get interested in Neoplatonism? — frank

My first contact with Neoplatonism was through the study of Christian philosophy and theology - more specifically, Early Christianity - and somehow, I knew that the concept of the Trinity had been stolen - like all other Christian concepts - from some other group of people, or of a specific individual. It was then that I came to Plotinus and his philosophy, read and tried to understand his works -and contextualize them in the period of his life - and concepts.

If I may ask the question, why are you curious?

I like Stirner's ideas about self-empowerment or actualization and his wariness of ideology. — praxis

:up:

And everything, yes? — praxis

No, because everything emanates from it. Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action to the One:

"It is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God."

Plotinus, Enneads

I do value those "old-school" views. — ssu

So we are two.

Perhaps the problems of the Roman Empire can be thought with alternative history: What would have it taken for the Roman Empire to survive, perhaps until this day?

Could we have avoided the De-globalization of the Middle Ages, but just continued from Antiquity to Renaissance? The love affair Renaissance had with Antiquity seems that this could have happened. Could entrepreneurialism have been restored, perhaps creating proto-capitalism? Or for the Roman Empire to survive, would it had needed a technological edge with the Romans replacing their ballistas with culverins and cannons? The East Romans had their nafta throwers that were potent against ships, so they did innovate a bit. Would the Romans have needed some innovation in ship building and then go on to conquer the World ruling the waves of not just the Mediterranean? At least they would have the drive and the correct attitude to do that, when thinking about the martial culture of Rome. — ssu

I - speaking my personal opinion now - find it inappropriate to talk about "alternative scenarios" because any change made to the scenario that has become history - fact - would completely change the whole story in the long run. It is as if you are creating a new timeline. The instant you created it, it appears to be as straight as the original, however, as it expands - into the future - it curves further and further away from reality. It's very improbable that the Roman Empire would stay static in its borders if it survived its fall. Maybe we would have a Christian Roman Africa? I don't know, and I think it doesn't matter because it didn't happen.

In my view, the study of Roman civilization, is to compare with ours and to repair errors so that they do not repeat themselves, and victories, so that they are redone. But anyone who's a person with an intellect slightly above average will see that the same mistakes are being made, the same decadence, the same nihilism, the same thinking.

The right way of thinking for me its this:

Rome fell right? Yes

Why did it fall? - Insert causes here -

Our society could fall as Rome did? Yes

So let's study it to prevent our society's collapse.

If that's what's being explored I'm interested. — Hippyhead

Now it is.

If you divide something, let’s say a piece of clay, into two pieces then you will no longer have One piece of clay, you’ll have two pieces of clay. — praxis

The point is that the One of this hypothetical "clay" would be the entire soil of the Earth.

Rather, Gus seemed to be saying that The One is other and inaccessible. — praxis

I'm not saying anything, Plotinus is saying that the One is inaccessible for anything other than himself.

What’s there to argue, the One cannot have an other. How is it at all reasonable to claim otherwise? — praxis

You're not making sense. Please clarify.

No idea what this means either. — Hippyhead

Plotinus can explain for me:

"Once you have uttered "The One" add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency."

The One.

If everyone everywhere understands Plotinus in his own words, then translations would be unnecessary, agreed. In such a case, you might as well post Plotinus's writing in full, and leave it at that, no need for discussion. — Hippyhead

The purpose of this discussion was practically to resolve why people confused the concept of the One of Plotinus with the theistic concept of God. The discussion followed a path that seems to seek to refute Plotinus. That is not the intention.

Praxis does fall victim to a bit of lazy snarkiness sometimes, and I know, having invented that myself. :-)

But here I think he's just being concise. I'm appreciating the lack of clutter and use of everyday language. — Hippyhead

The use of a more indirect language is ok, but he seems to be purposefully making tired and unfounded statements simply because he doesn't want to expatiate more on his views - that are wrong about Plotinus's views -. This is not a discussion then.

This is one of the most startling statistics in history ever: the population of the city of Rome: — ssu

This represents very well the state of regression that Europe passed from the 5th to the 9th centuries. Only Constantinople would remain with a population that could be considered metropolitan with 800,000 inhabitants between the 9th and 11th centuries. It is not surprisingly that the most urbanized cities of the medieval period - Constantinople, Tessalonike, Athens, Adrianople, Syracuse, etc... - were still under the control of the Roman State - already known as "Basileía Rhōmaíōn" or "Monarchy of the Romans" -.

I think the problem was that for rapid economic growth Rome needed to conquer new territories, plunder them and when Rome could not expand anymore, when it had no loot to bring back to Rome and new slaves to us, the whole huge standing army needed to defend the borders became a huge burden. Soldiers manning a wall in the middle of nowhere are an expense. — ssu

This view strongly agrees with the theories of Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke:

"The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had available. The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on riches from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed elite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.

An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power. The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile, the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end, due to economic failure, even the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces."

Indeed, so how can there be an Other as Gus seems to claim there is? — praxis

Yeah Praxis, you really didn't understand anything, and worse, you don't even try to argue for your wrong point.

Ok thanks. So the first challenge we face in understanding Plotinus is that few if any of us likely have any idea what that means. — Hippyhead

This part is less complex than it appears to be. Plotinus is claiming that the "proper name" - if I may put it so - of the One is enough to conceive all of its abstraction.

"The One".

Without more, without less.

My translation would be, anything expressed in language will immediately fall victim to the divisive nature of thought, which by it's very nature can not express whatever lies beyond division. — Hippyhead

It is a good description of the same concept that Plotinus is conceptualizing, but I think it unnecessary- here, speaking from my personal opinion - this adaptation to the "new times". If I got - and I'm pretty sure that I got - the concept right with the proper words of Plotinus, anyone can do it.

I would assert that it is the divisive nature of thought which conceptually divides reality in to mental categories like "divine" vs."non-divine". — Hippyhead

The "Nous" - intellect, logos, etc... - is already imperfect, then, rationalizing what Plotinus said about everything emanating from the One, it is obvious that the mind would be something, as he says, deficient.

You're not wrong about the mind, but you forgot that the very nature of the intellect is already something less than the One, so we cannot fully comprehend it.

“Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.”
- Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

Not at all. I claimed that it's not some other thing and you appeared to suggest that it is some other thing, that it’s Other, and One is not the Other. — praxis

Sorry for the comment, but I can't have a discussion with you when your argument is simply:

"I said that, and you got it wrong."

Ok Gus, would you like to further explain Plotino's view on Praxis's claim above? I hope this is a relevant quote, perhaps you'd like to expand on it?

There is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. His "One" cannot be any existing thing, nor is it merely the sum of all things, but "is prior to all existents".
— Plotino — Hippyhead

The One, as comprehended by Plotinus is a "metaphysics of radical transcendence that extends beyond being and intellection." The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world, but not through any act of creation, willful or otherwise, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable "One". Plotinus argues instead that the multiple cannot exist without the simple. The "less perfect" must, of necessity, "emanate", or issue forth, from the "perfect" or "more perfect". Thus, all of "creation" emanates from the One in succeeding stages of lesser and lesser perfection. These stages are not temporally isolated, but occur throughout time as a constant process.

"We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one."

If allowed, I would compare Plotinus's the "One" with the primordial singularity of our Universe. It Is the singularity, it was not and cannot Be, because these concepts apply only to existing things, which, being existent, are already less perfect than it and were "emanated" - using Plotinus's terms - from it. I would rather not even use articles to talk about "One". Instead of saying:

"The One Is"

Just simply say:

"The One"

For the mere fact of attributing it to a finite concept - Is - we are no longer talking about the One, but to something less than it.

I agree that in agreeing with Praxis I'm just offering my own view of such things and not an interpretation of Plotino's view. My own view is that the observable physical reality around us is a single unified phenomena, and it's the divisive nature of thought which conceptually divides reality in to things, parts, being and non-being etc. That is, the divisions we perceive are a property of the tool (thought) being used to make the observation, and not a property of that being observed.

How might you compare this theory to that of Plotino? — Hippyhead

Superficially considered, Plotinus seems to offer an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo - out of nothing -, although Plotinus never mentions Christianity in any of his works. The metaphysics of emanation, however, just like the metaphysics of Creation, confirms the absolute transcendence of the One, as the source of the Being of all things that yet remains transcendent of them in its own nature; the One is in no way affected or diminished by these emanations. Plotinus, using a venerable analogy, likens the One to the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby diminishing itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected.

The first emanation is Nous - Intellect, Logos, Order, Thought, Reason, etc... -, identified metaphorically with the Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus. It is the first Will toward Good - the One -. From Nous proceeds the World Soul, which Plotinus subdivides into upper and lower, identifying the lower aspect of Soul with nature. From the world soul proceeds individual human souls, and finally, matter, at the lowest level of being and thus the least perfected level of the cosmos. Plotinus asserted the ultimately divine nature of material creation since it ultimately derives from the One, through the mediums of Nous and the world soul.

I'm still trying to come to terms with you being so dogmatic. — JerseyFlight

For once, we agree!

The One is not the Other, obviously. — praxis

So you can joke?

We should consider too, the theories of both Michael Rostovtzeff and Ludwig von Mises about the economic collapse of the Roman Empire:

"Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency - i.e., the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze - led to inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below their free-market equilibrium levels."

Have to comment here. The biggest change from the Roman Empire and Antiquity is the collapse of the "globalization" of agriculture, which made large cities and advanced societies impossible. If Rome had been fed from Northern Africa, Constantinople had been from the Nile delta. Once these places were lost large cities as Rome and Constantinople simply couldn't be fed by the local regions and the city populations withered away. Might have some impact on Roman culture and the rise of feudalism. — ssu

Completely. The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Two diagnostic symptoms of decline are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both the domus and the public basilica, and encroachment, in which artisans's shops invade the public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in the souk - marketplace -. Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by the attraction of saintly shrines and relics.

The city of Rome went from a population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production. What was once a "globalized" world, became a isolated fragmented continent - people living in Italy didn't have any notion or information of how was life in Egypt from the 6th to the 9th century, contrary to the roman period, where distant information was easily accessed -. These long distances knowledge only became the norm again after the 10th century onwards.

No worries. I did not take that personally, just so you know. Rather, I just wanted to be clear about my intentions here.

Cheers! — creativesoul

:grin: :up:

Understood. I've no where near enough knowledge of Plotinus to be of much help here. Just seemed like Spinoza successfully accomplished(contrary to his own aims) what Plotinus seems to have set out to do. So, I wondered if you agreed to that, trusting that you are familiar with Plotinus. Hence, my initial reply. If I had more time, I would spend some researching Plotinus, for the notion of monism interests me, despite not being able to agree with it.

:wink:

My own position demands a plurality of things. Beyond or 'beneath' that, I've no reason to believe that it is even possible for us to know much at all more about the origens of the universe. So, I stop when I've reached the limits... — creativesoul

I have the impression that you took my previous comment personally, but it was not focused on you and in fact, on anyone. I just mentioned that Plotinus can easily be distorted and misunderstood. And yes, I agree that Spinoza continued - but not accomplished - from where Plotino started, however, in a different way to how Plotino first conceptualized- The One is not God -.

:grin:

Yes, this goes along with point 3 in my theory. However, I think this gets less tenuous as you went more North and East in away from the big Roman cities. In that case, I would gather it is more a case of 1, 2, and 4. Would you maybe agree there? — schopenhauer1

Yes, I fully agree with you. Roman culture, even though it was rooted in the north - like Gaul and Britain -, did not have enough time to take root completely - as in the cases of Iberia, and Italy -. Also, since contact with the Germanic tribes was much more aggressive and chaotic - Gaul and Britain were border provinces, while Iberia and Italy were not - it was to be expected that the borders would be those that would be most affected and culturally disrupted.

Is there something else I have not mentioned that could be a factor in the de-tribalization into that of a more hierarchical feudalism? — schopenhauer1

Perhaps economics have to do with it as well. The agricultural practice of the three-crop rotation system spread from southern Europe to North, replacing the more pastoral into an agrarian, land-based one. — schopenhauer1

These are probably the most solid facts we have. Starting from here, I suppose we would enter the realm of psychological and environmental theories and hypotheses - like the Little Ice Age" between the 5th and 9th centuries that could have affected both the fall of Rome and the European social structure of the following centuries -.

Reminds me of Spinoza's Ethics, aside from the fact the Spinoza aimed at God as the source of all creation(I think) and Plotinus seemed to want to avoid all that. Seems also that Spinoza's results are in line with Plotinus' aims. — creativesoul

A person who does not have an in-depth study of Plotinus' philosophy would easily have confused the concept of the One with God; it is a very easy mistake to make. But, yes, Plotinus tried to abstract all the "divine" perfection of a transcendental Being and put it in a type of non-characteristic "object" that was a central point of study of this metaphysical concept of "absolute". Apparently, his attempt was not successful, because decades later, Christians would use his concept of "hypostatic substance" to give more foundation to the concept of trinity - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are nothing more than Christian versions of the One - The Father -, the Intellect - the Son - and the soul - the Holy Spirit -. Spinoza was from the time where the Christian version was already - for more than a thousand years - the norm, so its not impressive that he would try to aim at God rather than another thing - as the One -.

Many of the claims in your article are rather wild, disjointed, unsubstantiated and I was curious about what was behind them or inspired them. — praxis

As I told you in other discussions:

"It is difficult to find qualities in someone or about someone when you don't agree with them."

Obviously you'd find and bring forth only the parts you seem to dislike and that you think has flaws on it.

This does not impress me at all, as I could never have the pleasure of having a productive discussion with you.

- NOTE: Please, let's not fill the publication of my article with personal disaffections. If it is approved, a discussion will start promptly, and there you can argue as you wish. -

It’s not like it’s some other reality or metaphysical dimension that we don’t have access to. — praxis

This is practically what Plotino claims the One is. If you disagree, that is a matter of opinion, but if it is about Plotinus' philosophy, it is a misinterpretation.

Nor would I agree that's it's essential that we understand what Plotinus meant. He's another writer on the forum. He's said some things which have sparked interesting discussion. All that's good. To me, the bottom line is, how useful is that discussion to participants? — Hippyhead

In this discussion, it is interesting to try to understand Plotinu's philosophy, as one of his philosophical aspects is the center of the argumentation.

If people are here, investing their time to respond and try to refute, or argue about the One, for these people, this matter is important. Obviously it will not be "useful" for all the forum participants, however, for this same reason this discussion is restricted to about 5 people.

This way the One was complete but the Good remained a metaphysical puzzler — magritte

Plotinus uses "the One" and "the Good" interchangeably.

For what it’s worth, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the OP until I read the wiki page on Stirner. — praxis

Glad that you were motivated to go after the context to understand my article. :up:

Hadrian's war against the Jews killed hundreds of thousands. Ceasar's conquest of Gaul led to an estimated 1 ml deaths. But Charlie is the bad guy because he killed 4500 Saxon warriors? — Olivier5

In no way am I claiming that he is the villain of the story. I am claiming that he was the first post-roman monarch to try to remind the masses of the origin of their entire civilization - Rome -. He was not an innovator, a revolutionary; he simply knew how to use the fragments of the Roman heritage that still remained.

Many of these barbarian kings were already Romanized to a degree, eg Theodoric. His Roman subjects loved his rule. — Olivier5

Even Theodoric knew that only being romanized they could prevail:

"An able Goth wants to be like a Roman; only a poor Roman would want to be like a Goth."

Theodoric's quote.

Theodoric "Kingdom" - better named as an Empire - at its height.



And if he had the time, he probably would try to restore the Western Rome - he was raised on Constantinople, wrote and could read Greek and Latin, was well versed on Roman law and customs, so he was probably the last good chance of restoring Rome as it was known back then -.

So as a path to an answer, I would say we can start somewhere in the reign of Charlemagne and the beginning of the "Holy Roman Empire" as to how Germanic tribal identity and culture were eventually replaced with feudalism. It is obviously complex and hard to pin down, but here are three things I think should be considered:

1.) The Catholic Church had no interest in competing with tribal chieftains for power and conversion. Local chieftains often had the backing of tradition (including pagan religious practices) to keep them in power. Wherever a chieftain converted to Christianity, so went the tribe. Thus converting to Christianity, often stripped away tribal privileges and rites to Christian ones, taking away local identity and replacing it with a more universal one.

2.) Charlemagne's own policies unified Germanic tribal identities. His court was filled with key positions from leaders of different tribal affiliations. He can have Saxon, Gothic, Jutes, Burgundians, all in the same court. This intermixing led to slow dissipation over probably 100 years of keeping tribal affiliations intact in favor of hereditary identification only.

3.) Roman Law- With the integration of Germanic tribes into the Roman political and military system, these Germans became more Romanized. This in itself, could have diminished the identity with tribe for identity with a territory or legal entity. Thus various Germanic "dux" (dukes) within the Roman Empire were already in place along Spain and southern France (as were ancestors of Charlemagne). Being incorporated in a multi-ethnic Empire itself could diminish the fealty towards local affiliation with any one tribe. With the Church's help in keeping records in monasteries and libraries, these leaders retained Roman law far into the Holy Roman Empire's reign.

4.) Nobility transfer by kings- Since the unification of Charlemagne, there was a conference of land and title from top-down sources. As local tribal kings (chieftains?) were quashed during the wars of Charlemagne, he then doled out titles of land (dukes and counts) to those he favored, thus diminishing the local identity of leadership further. — schopenhauer1

It is a fact that the barbarian germanic tribes eventually assimilated to Roman culture. The point is that they simply made this culture theirs:

"Over time, the Lombards gradually adopted Roman titles, names, and traditions. By the time Paul the Deacon was writing in the late 8th century, the Lombardic language, dress and hairstyles had all disappeared. Paul writes:

The Lombards live and dress as if all the land they currently inhabit - referring to Italy - was their native land: We are from Lombardy! Some would have the courage to shout - referring to the Lombards who called Italy as Lombardy -."

My point is that Charlemagne was the first European monarch, after the fall of Rome to really bring to public knowledge to the masses, that everything they had was the legacy of a fallen civilization - remembering here, that for the ordinary citizen of the 8th century from Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire was seen as the "nation of the Greeks" -.

The only real barbaric people who were completely assimilated and tried to maintain Roman order during the fall of the Roman Empire and afterwards, were the Visigoths. The Visigoths were romanized central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube Valley. They became foederati of Rome, and wanted to restore the Roman order against the hordes of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD; therefore, the Visigoths believed they had the right to take the territories that Rome had promised in Hispania in exchange for restoring the Roman order - and they tried -.

are you just demonstrating to frank, how bad it feels to get downvoted, and normally you wouldn't post plain thumbs? — Jarmo

Do we really need to explain?

I think it might be beneficial if up and down voting were added to the forum so people could get a better sense of how their posts are perceived by others.

If only temporarily? — frank

:down:

Good Luck, It's a well-written piece of work and in the end I did agree with you — TheMadFool

Thank you - This publication was the first time I made it public, and I am honored to have the first positive feedback from someone other than from Brazil -. :smile: :up:

Even among humans there's a gradation in intelligence that matches the gradation in morality. Apart from the familiar trope of hyper-intelligent super-villains in comics and movies, most philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, most scholars, who make up the brains of society are, well, good people. When was the last time you heard of a scandal involving a philosopher? Even if you did, it's rare, very rare indeed.


The greatest virtue should be your own well-being.
— Gus Lamarch

At this point I'd like to call on stage the notion of altruism by which I mean taking an interest in the well-being of others. There are two forms altruism can take that don't differ in terms of outcomes - both forms manifest as being good to others - but they're different nonetheless - different in their rationale.

One form of altruism I'll refer to as my altruism - she is my wife, he is my friend, this is my family, community, town, city, state, country, world, and last but not the least, universe.. This type of altruism is a case of one's ego expanding itself to include other things like those I mentioned above. In essence this is still egoism because the other people/things you care about have value only because of their association to you.

The other kind of altruism is what I call your altruism - I am your husband, I am your friend, I am your son, I am your citizen, your tenant (of the universe). In yours altruism you submit yourself to someone else's ego and this type of altruism can be taken to the extreme - to the point where your ego completely disappears from the set of equations that describe reality.

Since the outcomes are indistinguishable betwen these two varieties of altruism, from a consequentialist standpoint, egoism seems compatible with virtue and morality and if you really look at it my egoism makes more sense than your egoism because in the former case everyone benefits but in the latter there's someone who doesn't, viz you. — TheMadFool

My point with this publication is to be approved and my article to be edited for the articles section of the forum. The discussion can start after that moment.

The more we try to define unity the farther we travel from it, because definitions are by their nature divisive. — Hippyhead

This is not what Plotinus said. He said:

"Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency."

Ancient texts is just some guy like us sharing his opinion at a time now long past. — Hippyhead

With the originality and attitude of having read Plato in Greek and trying to write in Latin and in Greek. If you want to read a work, you have to look for the context and the meaning that the writer wanted. Transforming this into another type of language simply to fit the current view is not translation, but revisionism.

The reason I suggested using the word space to describe "The One" is that doing so translates an abstract religious sounding concept in to a tangible property of the natural world. Much of the language traditionally used to discuss such things was developed long before science came to dominate our culture. Translations may be helpful in reaching modern audiences. — Hippyhead

Classical texts have already been adapted to contemporary vocabulary by translation into English and other languages. Adapting the vocabulary to the standards of the "new generations" is to distort the content and the message that the writer wanted to convey. The new generations that should adapt and try to understand the old texts, not the other way around.

Oh is that why he went to Rome to be sacred emperor by the pope? You're being ridiculous. — Olivier5

Rome - in the times of the great emperors like Trajan and Marcus Aurelius - had a population of 1 million people. The population of the city had fallen from 800,000 - during the sack of the Visigoths in 410 AD - to 450–500,000 by the time the city was sacked in 455 by Genseric, king of the Vandals. Population declined to 100,000 by 500 AD. After the Gothic siege of 537, population dropped to 30,000. But yeah, the flame of Rome hasn't extinguished in 800 AD... Please man...

Charlemagne lived in a period that even the ashes of the ancient flame of Rome had already been forgotten; — Gus Lamarch

By the masses. Of course the aristocracy still had the knowledge.

We're exactly at this stage now, I think: the system is already dead but we can't see it yet. — Olivier5

The imperial Roman system died with the ascension of Diocletian in 284 AD. If this happened now in our era, we have at least 100 more years, but you never know. The Roman Empire did not collapse during its crisis, we can.

I am not talking about widespread extermination of the Roman population. What I say is that with the Roman population growth decreasing since the 2th century, and with the growth of the Germanic population, and soon after, with the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, the culture, values, morals, traditions, taboos, etc. of the Romans died and were supplanted by medieval Germanic European culture - Charlemagne lived in a period that even the ashes of the ancient flame of Rome had already been forgotten; the Byzantine Empire was already seen as a "Greek Empire" and not important at all for the events in Western Europe -. Independent Roman culture died at the end of the 4th century with its Empire.

Why do you think Charlemagne was recognized as "Pater Europae" and "Augustus Romanum gubernans Imperium" - "Father of Europe" and "August Emperor, governing the Roman Empire" respectively - Because he rekindle that lost memory that the whole land where they lived - the Germanic barbarians - had once been something incredibly glorious and splendor, something that had been completely forgotten by the masses of the barbarian population. — Gus Lamarch

@Olivier5

The Salian Franks, of which Charlemagne was a descendent, fought on Rome's side against Atilla. — Olivier5

And then they invaded the province of Soissons of Syagrius - the last roman Dux of Gaul -.