Written by Paul Siluch
August 18th, 2023

“There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.”

• Bertrand Russell

Written by Paul Siluch
August 1st, 2023

“Money makes the world go round” is a lesson learned many times throughout history, and one we are about to learn all over again.

When Rome fell to the barbarians in the year 476 A.D., it actually only half fell. Rome had split and moved a second capital to Constantinople – modern-day Istanbul - decades before because that was where most of the empire had moved.

The Eastern Roman empire was not without its own problems. It was a crowded neighbourhood, with Persians to the East, Slavs to the west, and barbarian hordes to the north. All of them tried hard to topple the New Rome over the centuries. A Prophet named Mohammed and the emergence of his huge new Arab nation, plus the bubonic plague, nearly accomplished this. Byzantium - as the eastern Roman Empire came to be known - almost vanished by the late 700s. What remained struggled. It could barely pay its soldiers and corruption was rampant.