Lights at Lake Lafarge

Happy New Year, Hivelanders. Here is wishing you all a super upcoming year. You are looking at the photos from our trip out to Lake Lafarge. The Lake boasts the largest outdoor light display in Vancouver's Lower Mainland, Port Coquitlam. It is a bit of train ride to get there from Vancouver, but it was well worth the trip.

The lights were extensive and gorgeous, with several themes and motifs, from butterflies, to Alice in Wonderland, and even Pirates and Canadian indigenous animals. It took us about 45 minutes to stroll around the lake, and we accompanied it with a cup of hot chocolate for me and apple cider for Minime.

The Roman Empire

We have took up our study of European history once again. We will be revisiting the same eras as before, but this time from a governmental point of view and not a religious one. Have a look at this Khan Academy video on the Roman Empire. We took notes on the first half and up to the sacking of Rome by by the Visigoths.

From our studies ...

After Pax Romana (27BCE - 180CE), a relatively peaceful time for the united Roman Empire, at least in Rome and its surrounding countryside, things got worse with the death of Marcus Aurelius. Then there is a string of less competent emperors. The empire becomes more corrupt and less stable.

In 235CE, the emperor Severus Alexander is assassinated, and the Empire falls into crisis, the Third Century Crisis. Over the next 50 years, there would be 26 claimants to the throne in Rome. The empire is temporarily cut into three separate states and there were attacks from outside.

In 284CE, the crisis ends with Diocletian taking the throne. Diocletian was a strong emperor and the last emperor to persecute the Christians. He also split the Empire in two from an administrative view, into east and west. He decides he will rule in the East, with a co-emperor in the West. Diocletian still had veto power over the other emperor, and the Roman Empire remained one empire.

After Diocletian, the next emperor of note was Constantine, circa 357CE. Constantine embraced Christianity and made it legal in the Roman Empire. He moved the capital to Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople. He was baptized on his deathbed and became the first Christian Emperor.

Over the next 200 years, the empire would further erode and fragment. In the fourth and fifth century, the Huns, from Central Asia, invaded and threatened the Roman Empire. They were warring nomads. They pushed the German tribes across the Danube. Many Gauls and Goths took refuge in the Roman Empire and joined the Roman legions. As new immigrants, they were often treated badly and they did not, wholeheartedly, develop a Roman identity and identified instead with their particular military leader or general.

At Adrianople in 375CE, the Visigoths, the Western Goths, awe able to defeat and kill the Eastern Roman Emperor, Valence. In 410, the Visigoths sacked the City of Rome.