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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 8581711, member: 72790&quot;]For those who feel that we of today are moral people in the sense that we are enlightened by religion or culture, it is more accurate to say that we have been acculturated to accept things as right or wrong because few of us ever really challenge the mores we are raised to accept. If people are raised in a society where slaves are all around them, doing mundane tasks and nobody seems to object to this we soon find nothing too objectionable about having slaves around. The fact that we are repulsed by certain behavior, say sacrificing human infants (Carthage) or crucifying criminals (just about everywhere in the Ancient World) or having criminals fight it out to the death as entertainment (Rome) means nothing more than we are born into and acculturated to see these behaviors as &quot;wrong&quot;. Conversely it also means that some of what we do today and think of as quite permissible may some day be seen by a majority of people as reprehensible, degrading, ,inhumane or just plain disgusting and we may be blasted and labelled as a cruel people because we did or believed these things (slaughtering and consuming animals). Are we a cruel people because we do that? Will today&#039;s livestock farmers be viewed as we view the lanistae (Rome&#039;s slave dealers)? As much as I wish that certain behaviors did not happen &quot;back then&quot; I have to keep in mind that this can be not just futile but fatuous as well. Perhaps NOT allowing your first born son to be sacrificed to Moloch or Tanit&nbsp; or maybe NOT having criminals publicly or violently executed was the sin or failing of that period. Like it or not most of us accept what everybody around us does and those who do not are the misfits, curmudgeons, sick or incendiaries of their time and place. Was Julius Caesar immoral for having ravaged his way across Gaul to achieve his fame and fortune? Not by the morals and mores of his time and place. No more so that I am for enjoying a hamburger in my time and place. And to remind us what site we are on, let me ask readers if this man, Trajan, was a great ruler, a model to be emulated, a man worthy of deification, and blessing (may you be as successful as Trajan) or was he a war criminal, massacring his way to [ATTACH=full]1512173[/ATTACH] infamy? Depends, doesn&#039;t it?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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