All Roads Lead to Rome

It's been a really good week at our house and the two things I'll highlight this week are Briana's preparations for TeenPact and our study of Ancient Rome.

As I've previously mentioned, Briana is heading to a four-day government class at the state capital on Monday. In preparation for this she has spent hours on homework, including several pages of vocabulary terms, becoming familiar with our state's vital statistics, analyzing bills, writing a proposed bill, reading the constitution and writing a few paragraphs explaining the Bill of Rights. She also read the book "Real Citizenship", wrote letters to her representatives, and memorized I Timothy 2:1-3 and Romans 13:1-2.
She is so excited for this opportunity and had all her homework completed, printed, and organized in page protectors in a three-ring binder by Wednesday. I'm really proud of her for being so responsible and organized--especially considering if *I* were the one going, Sunday night would be a crazy, stressful night of getting everything ready at the last possible minute!

Our study of Rome this week has been both fun and challenging. We studied Rome's many scientific and architectural accomplishments including bridges, roads and aqueducts. Briana found it especially interesting that they borrowed many of their ideas from the Greeks and Egyptians, yet were so practical and physical that they implemented their ideas and technologies in order to improve their lives. She insightfully observed that the Greeks were thinkers and the Romans were doers.
Destry was fascinated with the 53million miles of roads the Romans built, many of which are still in use today. My plan was to make a small-scale model in a pie plate to demonstrate how the Roman roads were fashioned . Alan and the kids had a better idea. Since we have worn a path through the yard going around the deck to get to our back porch, they decided we could make a "Roman road sidewalk" (I'm rather inclined to make a road sign labeled "Appian Way" giggle).
So they dug a hole to make the foundation of the road, then broke bricks into large gravel to partially fill the hole. By turning bricks vertically they created curbstones, then filled the rest of the hole in with small gravel and sand until the depth was just right for laying the cobblestones (for which they used bricks laid flat). This was their application of the description of the road-building process given by first-century poet Statius.

The first task here is to trace furrows, ripping up the maze of paths, and then excavate a deep trench in the ground. The second comprises refilling the trench with other material to make a foundation for the road build-up. The ground must not give way nor must bedrock or base be at all unreliable when the paving stones are trodden. Next the road metalling is held in place on both sides by kerbing and numerous wedges. How numerous the squads working together! Some are cutting down woodland and clearing the higher ground, others are using tools to smooth outcrops of rock and plane great beams. There are those binding stones and consolidating the material with burnt lime and volcanic tufa. Others again are working hard to dry up hollows that keep filling with water or are diverting the smaller streams.

They completed just this small section, and then it snowed again. They have the ambitious plan to finish all the way around the deck and I think it will be really neat when they are finished. This sort of learning project is just perfect for Destry, who much prefers physical labor to bookwork!
We have also thoroughly enjoyed our continued reading of Whatever Happened to Justice. As we've examined the governmental systems used by the Romans, we've learned about the rule of law--when a society realizes they must be ruled by a written law instead of by an imperfect human who is selfish and inconsistent. We've also learned the value of a limited government and the principles of common law: do all you have agreed to do and do not encroach on other persons or their property. It has been fascinating to read and discuss this book, and I just love the way it worked out for us to study this right before Briana goes to TeenPact! I'll close this post with a few quotes my children have highlighted from this book.

• Always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to experts. This person may be trying to shut you out. You can understand anything.
  
• In my opinion, in America today we place far too much emphasis on intelligence and too little on character. Intelligence is great, but only if used in honorable ways.
  
• If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson
  
• If once they (the people) become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors shall all become wolves. --Thomas Jefferson
  
• The abortion question is terrifying to me. The eventual resolution will very likely come through a constitutional amendment. And, pro or con, the answer will be important, but not half as important as the method of answering--through political means. A right-to-life question will have been decided by majority rule. Could anything be more dangerous? Once a right-to-life question has been decided democratically, then fourteen centuries of common law reasoning will be swept away. The right to life--yours, mine, and everyone else's--will be regarded not as a given, not as a gift from the Creator, but as a gift from the voters. The victory of political law will be complete. Nuremberg will be gone, and no one's life will be safe. Our legal system will be sitting squarely on the same foundations as that of Nazi Germany.
  
• Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. They seem to have an insatiable desire for leaders who will tell them how to think and act. Individualism is rare.
  
• The America I love is the America of principle, not of geography, and not of politics.
  
• If you want to understand what is happening in your world today, study the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The French went after democracy; the Americans went after liberty. The French got mob rule and the Reign of Terror; the Americans got the most free and prosperous nation ever seen on earth.
  
• Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them. --Thomas Paine Common law was our way of discovering legal principles. Now it is gone, but our high-tech civilization continues moving forward without its guidance. We are left without a rational way to answer legal questions about abortion, animal rights, artificial intelligence, assisted suicide, child theory, euthanasia, fathers' rights to children born out of wedlock, surrogate motherhood, etc.