This has probably been asked before but I'm curious nonetheless.

It seems throughout European history that many of the trading or naval powers of the Baltic and/or Mediterranean had republics. Such as Venice, the Hanseatic League, Genoa, and so on. Are there any theories as to why this is or even if there is a correlation in the first place?

I have been reading about Cicero and can't quite get my head around this: What, if any, additional rights does the consul receive? Does it suspend the normal legal procedures completely or are there checks and balances? Or is it simply a declaration of support?

More specifically, I don't understand why Opimius in 120 BCE was acquitted of any wrongdoing having executed C. Gracchus and his followers, while Cicero had to go into exile for doing the same thing after the Catiline conspiracy. Does it have something to do with the victims (not) being hostes? Did the SCU's meaning change over time?

Thank you for your help!

The civil war is often credited as being the first modern war. One of the key differences in warfare before and after the modern warfare was the efficiency of weaponry. Did that efficiency lead to higher casualty rates in short time spans?

Did the Nazis care more about the race or the religion? Did Nazis have a way of finding out who was Jewish when the person was not ethnically Jewish?

The Roman army that fought at Cannae was at least 40,000 strong in the assessments I've read, and after it was wiped out, Rome was able to raise further large armies to fight in Italia and Hispania simultaneously not too long afterwards (it was also, as far as I'm aware, composed almost entirely of Romans and socii).

By contrast, Belisarius reconquered Africa and (some of) Italy with armies of less than 10,000 men, including a good number of mercenaries recruited from outside the empire, and who were hired at the expense of keeping up payment to limitanei. Despite the loss of the West, the Roman Empire at the start of Justinian's reign still controlled a lot more territory than the Republic at the time of the Second Punic War, so why were they only able to raise much smaller armies?

EDIT: Thinking about this after posting it, I realise that a useful answer might have to be very broad and vague indeed - something like 'here's the social structure of the Republic in 200 BCE, here's the social structure of the Empire in 500 CE - compare'. I suppose what I'm wondering is whether there are some broad reasons why the two states differed in their ability to raise armies, such as population density, the attractiveness of a military career to young men, the ability to take a higher or lower percentage of national revenue in taxes without leading to resentment and unrest, etc.

I'm currently sitting in a greyhound bus staring at the Midwest pass me by. I was considering differences between different means of travel. The jobs of airline pilots (and flight attendants) seem to be perceived as a relatively high status job in popular media (especially in media depicting "the golden age of air travel").

Were bus drivers, who do a very similar job, ever considered this way? If so, why did it change? Did the advent of cheap air travel lower the perceived status of these jobs? Or was it never glamorous in the same way? (Maybe it harkened too much to carriage drivers?)

If not then why is there this difference in perception of these similar careers? Are there historical reasons airline pilots ended up "on top"?

I have done some research on the German Air force in the Interbellum Period (1918-1938). Could anyone point me towards academic monographs regarding the development of the French and British Air forces? Especially regarding the Strategical level. In advance you have my many thanks! As I speak only English Dutch and German, these are the preferred languages of the material.

One thing I have learned from history is that salt was extremely valuable before refrigeration because it was the only way to preserve food.

Especially in ancient times I have been told that salt was sometimes as valuable or more valuable then gold.

But in my view salt should be easy to obtain through boiling sea water.

Couldn't someone set up shop anywhere on the coast and boil water to obtain all the salt they want and sell it for a great profit?

Did people do this and I have not heard about it? Or was it not possible for some reason?

What was the main way that people obtained salt in the past?

As far as I know there are two main ways to get salt, mining or boiling and boiling should be easier then mining (at least without modern machinery)

any information is appreciated, thanks.

People tend to talk more about communists, but at the time I've read that the Russian revolution was called the Bolshevik revolution.

Why was this so, and who were the 'Bolsheviks' compared to the 'communists'?

Were they also quite ethnically similar, or was it all about ideas?

Mny thks

Is it also interesting if those codes were broken by the allies themselves, like the British being able to read the Soviet messages and so on.

My History teacher assigned me to make a project about Axis and their slow, but methodical fall from the ever so desired victory. I'm assigned to talk about secret operations, interventions executed from the Allies to make the Axis dream crumble into little pieces.

An example of such an operation is the double agent who intentionally misled the Nazis into thinking that the bombs which are supposed to land on London are landing there, but in fact are landing just short of their target - or the operation where the Allied leave a "Classified" document in Portugal (correct me if I'm mistaken) which the Nazis found that contained information about where the Allies were going to strike next, thus creating a diversion and fooling the Nazis into the shrewd plan that was influential to the flow of the war.

Operations and interventions like these are what I'm looking for, not something that is already known in history books (especially for high school standards), so what better way to learn something new than to ask fellow Historians?

With that being said, I thank you for taking time of your day to read this post, I appreciate it a lot.

Pardon for my English as it is not my native language.

Have a nice day!