I have been watching your videos for free, so I bought one of your books today. I love history and Greek/Roman history is my favorite. "Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants:" Thank you!

NOTE. I watched this video on a cellphone, I think many people does it. The names of the buildings is so small that it makes for a hard reading. Please, next time, make it larger.

That feeling you're evoking is the exact same emotion I felt when I first read the Foundation series as a teenager and it's why I've been fascinated by history ever since! I envy those who live in cities like this today, surrounded by a fascinating past.

This feeling you've described I too recognized in myself years ago. I was fortunate enough to earn a degree in history and my favorite class was Roman History. It's a mysterious feeling that is triggered, at least for me, by the notion of the vast sweep of time passing and all the great and small people, the cultures that develop and change, and political entities that rise and fall, and much more than that, happening in the never-ending wake of history. I find thinking about scenes like you describe to be exciting and overwhelming. As I started this video I imagined (as I've done many times about many places) the Forum evolving from an anonymous patch of marsh, into what it must've looked like at its height. In time, it will evolve back into just another inconspicuous plot of land with no hint to inform a passerby what once took place there.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. As great as we are, as great as we were, as great as we will be will soon be but a distant memory of forgetten lore.

"Look on my works, ye mighty and despair! Nothing besides remains".

It would be naïve to call Rome "the greatest empire the world has *ever* known", it might be the greatest we currently have knowledge of but given how long men have been politicking and screwing each other over, it is almost a certainty empires greater than Rome existed in the past.

Yes, it is a tradition..

When visiting the Parthenon and its outlying monuments I noticed flowers and pomegranates laid at the altar of Hecate, now just a piece of very weathered rock. Pagans are still around I suppose, they’re really very quiet about it.

@@TarpeianRock We all pray to the Alfather.

@@GHST995 I found something on Allfather but this seems to be Odin. Hecate is not Odin is suppose ?

@@TarpeianRock Allfather = Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, Sol Invictus. All the same.

Indeed. All things must fall. Time spares no one and no thing.

Fallout.... a video game franchise handles this subject.... baseball stadiums are turned into little villages....

be patient, it will happen soon =)

hopefully that and not nuclear wasteland

thats how it started, washington was preplanned as a capital city and built up over time

This is the most mind-blowing thought for me too. Thinking about all of the incredible history that happened in the forum since the founding of the city - the contiones, the triumphs, the conflicts, the gladiator fights, the beast hunts, the feasts, the festivals, the senate meetings, etc.- all but forgotten. The footsteps of the greatest and most infamous men of Rome in the epicenter of the greatest empire the world has ever known - now nothing more than a pasture for cattle to graze. It is hard to comprehend.

Putting the same value on the past, and especially on the physical relics of the past, that we do is a very recent thing.

People had become poor, the wealth of Rome had passed. Even if they did remember all the amazing things of Imperial Rome and the Empire, food and shelter were more important. People didn't have the time or excess wealth to enable them to wonder about the past, they had to work all the time just to survive. There's a lesson to be learned in this - governments should not impose wealth, prosperity destroying and inflation inducing policies and regulations on their people. And they must be able to defend their country (another reason why Rome fell, it couldn't defend itself).

So we should spend more money on the army but not tax people? Ironically, I think you're describing the decline of Rome.

I have some videos on lesser-known monuments in Rome planned for the "Scenic Routes" channel. Stay tuned...

I hope you also got a chance to walk the Caracalla Baths. Being there gave me a powerful sense of just how absolutely massive and amazing Ancient Roman buildings could be

@@Meadras 😭 the day i was going to go the cases multiplied 100 fold in milan and we were sent home immediately. in hindsight an overreaction but you can’t really blame it at the time :/

I think China did have the same equivalent, but the insane CCP trashed most of it in the past century

I think you forgot about 2000 years......

​@@Blackadder75 No, Caesar's been dead for well over 70 years!

Yeah, I bet hardly anyone who knew him is still alive so most of the flowers are from complete strangers!

@@timothymiller6426 very well over indeed!

I didn't even know he was sick.

It's AI, buddy.

How did you get tickets to Vatican museum?What do you recommend to see?We are going to Rome in two weeks.I would like not to do mistakes and see most important places.Thank you very much

Pay your taxes kids

those were just the ones that didnt get scrapped for bricks in the middle ages

Same. One day in the past, someone was the last person to walk inside the doors of these buildings. The next day they were abandoned. Hard to comprehend.

@@peterlv68 I've thought about this too. I wonder if regular, common folk, walked through the palaces on the Palatine Hill sometime after the fall of the Western Empire, a place that would've been off-limits only decades before.

They're only buildings, once the political and religious ideologies are gone the buildings themselves aren't worth shit to people simply getting on with their lifes.

Our bodies yes, not our souls.

My pleasure!

Me too! When I was visiting I was a teenager and I feel like I seriously couldn't comprehend what to make of those ruins... I would love to go back again now that I understand it more :-)

Much appreciated!

Thanks for reminding me that this word is not spelled "segway" 😆

@@pipadoepa Yea, I had to look up the actual spelling myself before I'd put it in writing because it remains a weird word haha.

Rip Superbus

Check out Dam Square, Amsterdam. It has a palace, a gothic church, several posh warehouses and hotels, and all kinds of cultural buildings and offices . I think it's also quite small, like the original forum romanum , and not as massive as other modern squares in Paris or London or Berlin

Although the Roman forum had specific buildings and functions of its time that no longer exist I still perceive continuity with other types of main squares of our cities. Almost every city here in Italy (and in many other countries) has its main square at its center. A void in the urban fabric. Pretty often there are 2 or more squares connected in close proximity. Usually the cathedral and the buildings of the secular authority face these squares and, at least in northern italy, one or more sides of the square have almost always porticoes with shops and bars.. when we hang out with friends we often meet there or walk around these squares and the main streets of the center. Most of the life and nightlife is in the city center near these squares. One or more days of the week there is market in the squares (in my city on monday and friday) and often there are other events. Tomorrow night I'm going to a concert and it's there in the main square. Today religion is surely way less important here so, even though the cathedral has a crucial role in the space, religious functions here are not as important as they were in the past. Politics is also probably less present. rallies are rare. The mayor, other institutional figures or politicians sometimes have speaches in the square but with internet this is way less important and needed compared to the past. Also justice is no more administered there nor there is public display of punishment. No more heads of cicero. Although in cruel and less democratic times it still happend up untill ww2.. It seems to me that the Roman forum is the greco-roman interpretation of the main square. The urban void that is present and still lived in many cultures around the world. I perceive it as familiar. Our square is more or less our forum with our stoa (the poticoes with bars and shops), our temple (the cathedral), our curia (the municipality).

And Christians stole the marble for their churches

Imagine a theme park that’s just a complete accurate historical reconstruction of Rome circa the late republic

I think pre-WW2 a few cities could give Rome a run for its money. Maybe Paris is the closest of what's left. Not just in Europe either, old photos of Chicago sure do make the place seem grand. Soldier Field looked a bit like a classical Roman stadium before progress dictated that it was butchered a few years back. (I'm not from Chicago or the USA btw, I just appreciate architecture).

AI enhanced virtual reality will make time travel feel real in your lifetime

Humans have existed for 300,000 years and you lads honestly think that the stuff that happened essentially two weeks ago is our entire history?

@@JohnDaubSuperfan369 ??? maybe reply to wrong message?

@@Blackadder75 Nope

So you’re upset because Rome’s buildings were recycled and broken down for then contemporary use, or just that it was done by Christians?

What do Christians have to do with the earthquakes and floods that eventually brought the buildings down?

@omalleyshepherd2936 I am bothered by both those things.

They disrespected the buildings and what was left of the buildings. There would be so much more of Ancient Rome left is it wasn't for them.

it is a bit sad, but on the other hand, most of it would have been destroyed by natural causes anyway (entropy is a bitch) so with the marble they pillaged, the catholics at least build new marvels of architecture that we can enjoy today. Lot's of cathedrals are just evolutions of roman architecture anyway and very impressive

Methinks he learned ecclesiastical Latin. Dunno. Maybe that's what most people are familiar with, so that's what he went with.

And while we're making up things, it's amazing how many human remains from antiquity are actually aliens!

@@theodorekorehonen Oohhhhhhh I just realised... People like you are why ancient folks used to do so many human sacrifices!

The immortal problem, my man.

And you know by not posting it sooner, you are missing the Goldilocks zone of viewers.

Defeat your impulse to make comments

@@scoon2117 says the man... with a comment!!! 😆

I feel this

They did what they were told