Re: XY in DosBox (XP)

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Patricia M Godfrey  on Thu, 1 Apr
2004 10:19:52 -0500

> As for ≪like pure orientals. Tossing their lives away for glory -- how
> dumb.≫

> What, pray, were the men of Maldon? "Courage has got to be
> harder, heart the stouter,..."

What about them? Weren't they responding to a Viking invasion (men originally
from the East, 400 years earlier), and (blustering stout poetry
notwithstanding) didn't the Saxons (also Teutons from the East) in fact buy the
Vikings off? Sure, people do suicidal things when the situation is hopeless
(there was no escape for the Vikings either, had they lost -- reminds me of
Cortes in Mexico, who burned his boats to deprive his men of any alternative
but to press on). Look, I'm talking about Catullus and the society he reports
and reflects, which is utterly practical and hard-nosed -- just like us. My
point is simply that our culture finds its first real mirror in Rome. When
Catullus sees a professional soldier like J. Caesar, he mocks him -- "you big
bad general, you" -- and publicly condemns his pedophilia (an incredibly nervy
thing to do). Hell, Bush talks about "sacrifice" and "heroism" in Iraq, but
that doesn't mean anyone on the ground sees it as other than a sacrifice of
lower class men and high cost materiel for the sake of Oil and the worldwide
cultural conquest we've been prosecuting since WW2.