QUESTION: Hi Mr. Armstrong:
I’ve been following your blog, and I’m an activist in a local city called Baldwin Park. On a municipal level, I’ve seen everything you’re predicting happening.
Here’s my question. You often make reference to the fall of the Roman Empire. The most famous book on the topic is the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. I’m wondering where you’re getting your sources for the fall of Rome. I’d like to read these sources too.
Keep on the good fight. I’ve had my problems with govt. too. You’re a hero to us all.
Cheers,
Read about how the ex-City Manager got caught forging the budget.
http://alchemistcook.blogspot.com/2013/12/city-manager-caugh-for-forging-budget.html
Read about how the new City Council fired three administrators. http://alchemistcook.blogspot.com/2013/12/baldwin-park-city-council-fires-its-ceo.html
Read about how the boxers stood up to the corrupt city.
http://alchemistcook.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-baldwin-park-grand-showdown-boxing.html
ANSWER: Edward Gibon’s Decline and the Fall of Rome is quite good, but flawed in that it tends to get a bit too much into the religious aspects that is where his bias tends to show. Other sources are fragmented insofar as time. There is Suetonius, Virgil, Tacitus just for starters. But concerning the fall of the 3rd century, I would recommend Historia Augusta. Keep in mind that my sources are all contemporary of the period. There are many, many other authors such as Titus Flavius Josephus. These historians are all for specific periods writing during their own times. You have to bring them altogether.
This is one of the books I hope to have out this year. It is a project of pulling together the various contemporary historians and laying it all out. You can see how I use the ancient sources in the piece I did on Julius Caesar and the Debt Crisis. The monetary system is my own original research and was put together building perhaps the largest collection of ancient coins for the sole purpose of reconstructing the monetary history of the entire world. It cost tens of millions of dollars to produce this single chart. It is the product of my passion. I wanted to see how Rome collapsed was it like a 747 coming in for a landing, or was it what I called a Waterfall Event. To my shock, things happen much faster than people would ever suspect.
