We talked about many subjects, from history, to politics, to myth, to religion. Gabriele knows a lot about history, especially western history. I was asking him many questions that I had, and he was replying like an online encyclopedia, while revised in real time as we luckily had Francesca!
I learned that the Roman Empire theoretically lasted about 1000 years, from the 6th B.C. to the 4th A.D. In the beginning, it was not an empire---not having an emperor. It was the Roman Republic, until Julius Caesar turned it into an Empire in about 60s B.C. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Augustus, his nephew, founded the empire. Just good to keep in mind, mainly for myself, that Augustus was the founder of the empire, he is not the one who recognized Christianity as the main religion all over the empire. That one was Constantine!
In the words of Fracesca and Gabriele, there were plenty of crazy Roman emperors who took the power during about four centuries. Nerone, infamous one in Iran, was one of them. When I asked my friends whether he really burnt Rome to make a poem ("how beautiful, Rome, you burn!"), they said that it is not really clear. The story that Rome was burnt is true. At that time, the houses were wooden, so any small fire could produce a huge burning in the city. However, the historians who reported that Nerone did this brutal act were senators, who had constantly been opposing emperors of their time. So, this story might be a fallacy, as especially we read in history that Nerone contributed to the reconstruction of the city afterwards.
I learned that the "Middle Ages" or "Medieval Period" lasted about 1000 years, starting from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and ending in the 15th century; that is, it started with Christendom, or the Christian world, and ended with the fall of the Christian Byzantine Empire, which was overthrown by the Ottoman Empire. In Middle ages, all artistic and scientific works were dedicated to theology (ringing a bell!). The church collected many art works from all over the country---for example, marbles in the Colosseum---and put it into churches.
The story that why the church was so opinionated about the physics of the earth and the sun movement is also very interesting. As written in the bible, Giosue (
How could all these art works develop during the Middle Ages, regardless of their dedication to the Church or the society? Originating from the book "Eat, Pray, Love", my explanation was related to the reaction of powerless people to their corrupted governments or foreign invaders: Italian people have learned that they cannot change their political system, instead, they should be perfect in what they sense. They have felt the urge of producing fine paintings, beautiful architecture, and delicious foods, so as to compensate for faults, intrinsic to their political system. But, Francesca and Gabriele just replied: "This is too poetic!"
They explained that it has not passed a long time since Italy was united in 1861. Before the unification, every city was almost an empire! Every major Italian city had its own government and rules. Constant fights and consequently competitions prevailed among all these small governments. The competitions were in art and wealth. Thankfully, these competitions have resulted in such fine paintings, beautiful architecture, and delicious foods.
These competitions also encouraged people to have more educated children. Though the Church had disregarded science by then, thanks to Arabs---as Gabriele said---who had preserved western ancient science and philosophy. Around 14th, 15th, the Islam empire had overcome the remaining eastern Byzantine Empire in Turkey and Greece. This interaction with Muslim scientists and merchants gave back to the western countries their ancient science, even more developed by then. So, around 15th, the western culture was reborn. Those ages are called the Renaissance. The word comes from "renascere", to be reborn, while "nascere" means to be born in Italian---in the formal Italian forms that I usually have to fill in, the word "nato" means the date of birth.
Beside all these fascinating stories that we exchanged about Italian history, we talked about more modern philosophy, the neglect of history in modern and post-modern life, and even we foresaw some possible future changes in Iran! It was really a fantastic evening. I am grateful for having such amazing friends.
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PS: Thanks to Francesca and Gabriele for correcting my wrong belief about Giosuè (the acute accent in the end marks the stressed vowel in Latin). As Gabriele explained to me, Giosuè and Gesù (respectively, Yoshua and Jesus in English) refer to the same Hebrew name. But, they were differently translated in Latin to distinguish the two biblical characters: Giosuè refers to the successor of Moses in Exodus--the second book of the Old Testament of the Bible, which tells the story of the Exodus, the journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land, made by Moses and the Israelites; on the other hand, Gesù refers to the prophet of Christians.
Wow, I told you that Gabriele is an encyclopedia! ;)
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