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Re: Trump invokes "Emergency Powers" to build border wall
Quote:
Originally Posted by pip08456
It did when the Builders manned it.
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It stopped large scale attempted incursions, because the Romans could mass the troops (from the posts along the wall) when they were attempted - it didn’t stop small groups crossing.
This was an opinion piece written nearly six years ago, about the HS2
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog...ake-so-is-hs2/
Quote:
I live not far from the line of Hadrian’s Wall and I often take visitors to marvel at its almost 1,900-year-old stones. That the Romans could build 80 miles of dressed stone fortification, 15ft high and 9ft wide, over crags and bogs with a small fort every mile, is indeed a marvel. It was one of Rome’s most expensive projects.
Yet I often ask visitors as they marvel: did it work? The answer is no. The Roman garrison was too strung out to defend the whole thing at once. Within 30 years it had been successfully attacked by the barbarians; within 40 it had been abandoned for a new wall in Scotland; when that did not work and Hadrian’s Wall became the boundary again, it was overrun by barbarians several times. Did it exclude or pacify the tribes of northern Britain? I doubt it.
Ah, say the historians and Latin teachers, but you misunderstand the purpose of the wall. It was never meant as a Maginot Line. It was a sort of extended customs zone to control the border region. Or, goes another theory, “it was simply a psychological demonstration of Roman imperial power, intended to cow the natives into submission and provide a lasting monument to Hadrian himself”.
Sorry, but we are supposed to justify one of Rome’s most expensive building projects — costing, let’s say, 50 billion denarii — on the grounds that it might have impressed a few woad-stained, hairy organic farmers? Or to manage queues at immigration while selling them duty-free otters’ tongues?
There is no getting away from the fact that Hadrian’s Wall, marvel thought it was, was probably a bureaucratic blunder. Confronted with raids, a peevish emperor naively suggested building a big wall, nobody dared to tell him it was mad, a bunch of toga-clad Sir Humphreys gave the contracts to their relatives, and the local Nimbys were brushed aside.
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A bit tongue in cheek, as it’s an article against the HS2, but it makes salient* points.
* see what I did there... 
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Last edited by Hugh; 02-03-2019 at 09:47.
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