Most of them aren’t even meaningfully injured, except for the queen who loses her sight but somehow suffers no other ill-effects and requires no medical attention. Galadriel’s hair is barely mussed. The only casualty seems to have been my suspension of disbelief.

The defensive solution for Rings of Power, of course, is to argue that the two timelines are not actually moving together, that the expedition has in fact been in motion for weeks or months.

operational aspects of combat, especially logistics, communications and transportation, from the story of battle.

a rotating cast of short-lived junior officers nonetheless found an assortment of other motivations to slog forward, ranging from patriotism, to professionalism, to personal honor, to compulsion.

solidarity among a small primary group of four or five men was essential for holding units together under the stress of combat, with these interlocking social bonds constituting the overall cohesion of the unit.

Because the United States isn’t the king or general of the status quo coalition, it’s the ‘team captain.’ If it proves to be a bad team captain, the team may well choose a new captain, or disband altogether, with catastrophic implications for American interests.

now the cost of that acquisition is higher than simply buying the stuff. War is no longer a means to profit, but an emergency response to avoid otherwise certain extreme losses.

These are precisely the countries that ought to be eager to balance against the United States in order to open space to push their own interests.

sitting out the Big Containment War can have catastrophic consequences for the folks sitting it out on the benches.

European politics from 1500 to 1945 followed this pattern, with shifting coalitions forming to contain any power or alliance that seemed on course to achieve a ‘breakout’ from the competitive system.

weaker powers benefit from the relative independence that continued competition in the system gives them. Consequently, small powers want to avoid anyone ‘winning’ the game, since a singular winning power would be able to dominate and possibly absorb them.

it is an apparent effort to concentrate the public decision-making power over matters of war and peace in particular – given the unique competences of this assembly – in the men who had served or who would serve in the military. I think this goes a long way to explaining why this assembly, but none of the others, so aggressively disenfranchises the poorest Romans.

Cicero is, in fact, explicit that this was the design and in fact argues that the balance of the number of centuries was ideal because it both allowed the lower classes to vote (“lest there be danger of arrogance”), without assigning them a decisive role except when the wealthier centuries were divided (“lest they be too strong”). Indeed, Cicero goes so far as to note this is a system, “so that the largest number not have the greatest influence”

voting seems to stop after a majority is reached, meaning that centuries later in the process will only vote if the vote is close.

one of the centuries of the iuniores of the prima classis was selected by lot and designated the centuria praerogativa (‘the century asked first’) and it voted first.

18 Centuries of the Equites, which are in fact the equites cum equo publico, a subset of the very wealthiest Romans selected for the special distinction of serving with a ‘public horse.’ These are the only centuries that consisted of 100 members each. 70 Centuries of the First Class (prima classis) of the Infantry (pedites), which will also include the growing number of equites wealthy enough to fight on horseback but not selected for the public horse (these are equites cum equo suo). These centuries are split evenly between iuniores (men 17-46) and seniores (men 47+).

it’s purpose was not to provide a place for the democratic expression of the people’s will, but as an exercise in elite consensus building, an opportunity for the already dominant Roman elite to get the people ‘on board’ with what they wanted to do anyway.

Once convened, the assembly does not have an ‘open’ agenda, rather it is convened for a specific purpose: to approve (or not) a specific action proposed by that magistrate. The assembly does not debate, but instead offers and up-or-down vote (or chooses from a set of candidates if the agenda item for the assembly is ‘hold an election’) and the decision offered is final.

Romans understand these as distinct communities under the imperium of the Roman people, not as constituent parts of the res publica.

imperium – literally the power of command – is the power to use legitimate violence on behalf of the state, either in the form of raising armies (external violence) or organizing courts (internal violence).

It does matter for religious purposes and being a patrician from a famous family is a nice status marker to have, but elite plebeian families are not rare in the Middle Republic.

much larger scale and at a much higher quality of construction, the Romans really did do something new and in some parts of their empire, something unique in the pre-modern period.

in Etruria, after the pax Romana ended, settlements moved away from the roads and back up to more secure hilltops.

Movement through the empire, when it was not done by sea, rapidly became an exercise in following Roman roads, as the genre of itineraria – travel guides – attest.

Rome tended to employ a large number of mid-sized field armies, stationed up and down the frontier, until the Crisis of the Third Century, rather than dispatching massive expeditionary forces from a handful of key administrative centers

That kind of evidence is always hard to interpret: on the one hand it means cracking down on this kind of corrupt abuse was a meaningful priority for the emperors and their agents, but on the other hand it also means such abuses were never eradicated

just as the Roman ‘allies’ (really, subject communities in Italy) each in theory had a bilateral relationship with Rome (which left the smaller allied communities, in theory, atomized and thus much weaker in the relationship) so too they had a road to and from Rome, but not necessarily to and from the other regions of Italy.

hub-and-spoke network (with Rome at the center), but the wheel

But they were also very direct expressions of Rome’s growing control of Italy, the construction of a physical geography which linked Rome key settlements in what was rapidly becoming Roman Italy

(though some are!).

And doubtless it was also not lost on anyone that such a visible series of public works – even if the roads were not always paved and had to be repaired after heavy rains and such – was also an exercise in legitimacy building, both a visual demonstration of the Great King’s power and resources but also a display of his generosity and industry.

On top of the physical infrastructure, there was also a system of way-stations and stopover points along the road. These were not amenities for everyone but rather a system for moving state officials, messengers, soldiers, and property (like taxes). While anyone could, presumably, walk down the road, official travelers carried a sealed travel authorization issued by either a satrap (the Persian provincial governors) or the king himself. Such authorizations declared how many travelers there were, where they were going and what the way-stations, which stocked supplies, should give them.

Preference

criminal

I really needed that.

omped about,

A child’s dresser had been dragged to the windowsill, whereit was surmounted by sandbags, transforming it into a sniper’s perch.

Suddenly, Zlatan was overwhelmed with patriotism

Hey, boss—” he said, pointing at Zlatan, “the beggar says that that poor bastardis good at fixing things.”“What do you mean?” said Zlatan. “I can fix some things, sure.”“We’re in need of an engineer . . .” said the seated man, drumming his fingers on

Iwant to have some fantasies!” Judith said. “I want to live a life of adventure!”

of the forest

lip-clop sound of Sandra b

he saw the black-hoofed legs of a deer

ell into his arms and embraced him

nstinctually, as a defense

bewitched

It was easy to go crazy when you’re by yourself for so long.

He met Sandra on a night with a new moon

well-timed bomb

It was as cold as death in that chamber.

hirty-two gallon trash can full of corn,

ell into his arms and embraced him

instinctually, as a defense

He met Sandra on a night with a new moon,

devoid

ll of corn,

onsequence of the game of cat and mouse

It

y people who don’t want them,

well-timed bomb

t was as cold as death in that cha