About Rome

 

I am reading Livy's history of Rome. The Israelites had wo tables of law, Rome had twelve. Livy describes the development of the Roman religion, how they consulted the will of Heaven, by watching the birds.

Illustration: Emperor Nero through the coins. He grew very fat as he aged. 

Rome was built on a worthless swampy piece of land. The marketplace, the Forum, was a wetland that had to be drained to be habitable. When the malaria mosquito appeared in Italy, Rome was doomed. 

It was climate change allowed the northward advance of the mosquito, sickening and successively emptying Palestine's coastlands, Greece, and then Italy. The center of gravity moved to France and Germany.