Post #3344157

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz Right. Thank you for correcting the year I misremembered. The astronomer whose name I misspelled was Sosigenes and he may or may not have been from Alexandria (which in any case was leading in science in those days, of course). Yes, the late Roman Republic was in a lot of trouble, including what you rightly point out. It is not for nothing that Julius Caesar and others after him took power as autocrats. Even besides Italy and England, the Roman Empire was way more than coastal. Its territory included: All of today's France and Belgium (i.e. Transalpine Gaul). All of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal). All of Switzerland and some pieces of today's Germany (on the left bank of the Rhine). All of the Balkan peninsula, and for a while after Traianus, a big part of Wallachia (today, the southern part of Romania). Outside of Europe, all of Asia Minor and the Levant. For a while, Mesopotamia as well. I'd say coastal only in North Africa (except Egypt). Thank you for clarifying your point about the alphabet. I ascribe greater importance to the contribution of the Romans in terms of its spread, but that probably is a topic for another time. I'll just add two things: The ultimate origin of these alphabets, if I recall correctly, is in particular that specific flavor of Egyptian writing that was adapted for administrative purposes (it doesn't look like hieroglyphics at all). The Cyrillic alphabet is a younger "sibling" of the Roman alphabet, directly derived from the Greek alphabet (with quite a few letters added, because the phonetics of Slavic languages is rather different from Greek phonetics). @ohir@social.vivaldi.net @spaf@mstdn.social