Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic

Currently Reading: Rubicon. The last years of the Roman Republic. My knowledge of the civil wars between Caesar, Cicero and Pompey is poor. Tom Holland writes on the difficulty of Roman history;

One day perhaps, when the records of the twentieth century AD have grown as fragmentary as those of ancient Rome, a history of the Second World War will be written that relies solely on the broadcasts of Hitler and the memoirs of Churchill. It will be one cut off from whole dimensions of experience; no letters home, no combatant's diaries. The silence will be one which the ancient historian is all too familiar.

Roman history is absent of the lives of noble women, ordinary men and women, soldiers and slaves. He continues:

In Roman history to search for details of anyone outside of the ruling class is to pan for gold.

Archeology is a better record of normal existence than the written record.
Tom Holland, "The fate of the Gracchi had conclusively proved that any attempt to impose root and branch reforms on the [Roman] Republic would be interpreted as tyranny. Programs of radical change, no matter how idealistic their inspiration, would inevitably disintegrate into internecine rivalries. By demonstrating this to the point of destruction, the Gracchi had ultimately stymied the very reforms for which they had died."

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Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix

Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for Phoenix, Scottsdale and Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area. This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most; My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are AZ88, Postinos, Bomberos with Grazie, Humble Pie, Orange Table, The Vig, Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on phoenixeatsout.com

Most Popular Hikes in Arizona

Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak. For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in Tom's Thumb and Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.

Alternate Australian Constitutions

Between 2004 and 2009 this site, southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues. One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome: The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.

Archives For South Sea Republic

South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then; The articles are ordered by views.

Who Is Cam Riley

Cam Riley I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident. I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end. I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now. The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.

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Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;