Astral Codex Ten

Gaul

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Gaul

Article

Gaul is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 06, 2021 and February 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “the Mediterranean regions of Gaul (modern France)”; “either by conquering Gaul”. It most often appears alongside 320 AD, 476 AD, Africa.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: May 06, 2021
  • Last seen: February 07, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Through The Eye Of A Needle
May 06, 2021 · Original source
City Based Empire. In the introductory chapters, it was sometimes difficult to know whether Brown was describing how society functioned in the 4th century alone or how it had functioned over the past 500 years. He describes a Mediterranean world built around cities. There were some 2,500 cities in the Roman empire. In the west, the most densely urbanized areas were central Italy (including Rome), Sicily, northeastern Africa (including Carthage), and southern Spain. In those regions, cities were no more than 10 miles apart. A larger, less dense area where cities were located around 25 miles apart includes northern and parts of southern Italy, the Dalmatian coast (modern Croatia), the Mediterranean regions of Gaul (modern France), most of modern Spain and Portugal, much of north Africa within 60 miles inland. Brown refers to each city as a little social pyramid. The most massive pyramids were Rome, Carthage, and the center of the imperial court at Milan (the capital of the western empire was relocated to be closer to the frontier during the 3rd century). Rome and Carthage especially were massive cities with between 500 thousand to 1 million residents at their peaks.
You Don't Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write Books
February 07, 2024 · Original source
No! Obviously it’s selecting on memoir-writing! There are probably some acceptable times to write a memoir, like when you’ve just conquered Gaul. But usually memoir-writing means you think your True Self is absolutely fascinating and your experiences are worth recording and analyzing at book length.
If you’re a particular type of bad person (which I am) then you will interpret a popular memoir as a claim to status. Such a claim needs to be backed up - either by conquering Gaul, or at least by being so good at writing that you can elevate the humdrum existence of Whole Foods shopping trips and FaceTime sessions into transcendent poetry. And if you’re a particular type of bad person (which I am), your bar will be so high that nobody meets it. Then you’ll be left feeling vaguely offended by this person and their dumb annoying Whole-Foods-shopping, FaceTime-session-having ways. And if you’re bad at attributing your emotions, you might think you hate FaceTime as a communication protocol.