Ursus

I think they were just meant for fun, not complete scientific accuracy.

You are 71% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 71% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant. You are the Sociopath! As a result of your cold, calculating rationality, your introversion (and ability to keep quiet), your brutality, and your arrogance, you would make a very cunning serial killer. You care very little for the feelings of others, possibly because you are not a very emotional person. You are also very calculating and intelligent, making you a perfect criminal mastermind. Also, you are a very arrogant person, tending to see yourself as better than others, providing you a strong ability to perceive others as weak little animals, thus making it easier to kill them. In short, your personality defect is the fact that you could easily be a sociopath, because you are calculating, unemotional, brutal, and arrogant. Please don't kill me for writing mean things about you! Personality Defect Hmmm.....

Speaking for myself, I've never found historical revisionism very entertaining, especially if there is a political agenda behind it (as there usually is). Yep. And Hollywood is one of the most active political forces around. A politically correct white wash regarding Western foreign policy against the Islamic world. Can't help but think this has something to do with recent real world events. And god(s) forbid anyone should mention that Islamic hordes invaded Europe first, and don't always conform to the "religion of peace" that is the mantra of tolerance activists everywhere. In many circles you can paint Christians as evil, bloodthirsty imperialists, and this passes without comment. If one says the slightest thing against historical or modern Islamic forces, this is derided as intolerance, ignorance and hatespeech. I'm far from being a right wing Christian conservative and even I can see this is bogus. There is an agenda here. That's the whole point of the critique. The movie isn't exclusively about entertainment - it has something of an agenda of its own and is far from being balanced itself.

Critics say "Kingdom of Heaven" distorts history to portray Arabs in best possible light. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../18/wcrus18.xml

I think it depends on how one defines race. The ancients seemed to define race as we would a culture. From that perspective, the ancient Greeks and Romans may have been "racist" insofar as they asserted the superiority of their culture over others. But if we define race in the modern usage, by certain physical characteristics and especially skin color, that form of racism seems to be largely absent from their mentality.

Spartacus has always been my favorite as well, mostly for Olivier and Ustinov's performances. But Douglas' idealistic Spartacus is way over the top, as was the opening prologue about the "tyranny of Pagan Rome." And the guy who played Crassus' henchmen - named Glaborus, I think - really couldn't act worth a damn. Most people would diminish next to Olivier, but they must have found that guy off the street. What were they thinking?

Lately I just wait and borrow other people's DVDs. If the movie stinks I'm only out 2 hours of my life. I hate the theatres anyway. Screaming kids running out every five minutes to to the restroom or the food stand. The talkative morons who feel compelled to deliver running commentary on the movie to their neighbors. Filthy people who fill the air with their body odor or flatulence. The incessant cacophony of a nearby obese person who rummages through $50 worth of food candy bars and popcorn. And my favorite people of all - the ones who come in 30 minutes late and make commotion while they frantically search for the few remaining seats. Yeah, wait to borrow the DVD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_toad

I was just informed of an article that might go well with this topic. From my acquaintance Kallistos, who joined the site but never posts : http://www.well.com/user/davidu/cultural.html The article traces the effect of Hellenistic culture on religion and identity (culminating in the triumph of Christianity), then declares an even more powerful trend is working on us in the cyber age which might contend with religions like Christianity. Interesting reading, just use a grain of salt.

Hey, I think there is usually truth in myth. Just not a literal truth. A metaphorical truth dimly remembered from pre-history. A cultural truth that stands the test of time. The "truth" about the Roman foundation mythology is that Romans were generally willing to incoporate other people into their society when they found them useful. The "truth" is that an offshoot of Indo-European tribes collided with the Mediterranean types already living there, and either through conquest or peaceful co-option merged into a single culture. The "truth" is that the Romans would repeat the process throughout their history and turn other people into Romans when it suited their purpose.

Roman polytheism was fairly tolerant of other religions, but the Romans did have certain cultural standards they enforced. Pagan Rome was neither secular nor relativist; religion infused very aspect of life, and there were definite cultural standards. It just wasn't a religion or culture that proscribed very detailed ethics for every situation such as the Jews had. I do see what you are saying, though, and I kind of agree with it. The central Roman virtue was duty - duty to the state, duty to one's gods, duty to one's family. By rendering one's duty, one achieved dignitas. By serving one's community through military and political office, one achieved fame, glory and honor. I think that's really the heart of Roman paganism and culture. A concern for this earthly life, a concern for one's community, a desire to achieve fame and glory by makiing one's community strong and being faithful to one's gods and family. The classes that weren't fully benefiting from Roman culture came to become disenfranchised with the traditional view of things, and turned to cults and gods and ethical systems that promoted their interests. While there were some off color pagan cults that promised these people solace, Christianity was more effective in delivering its message and providing a cohesive social unit to these people. Many modern governments have taken over one of the aspects that made Christianity popular - charity, in the form of welfare benefits and funded social services. There is less incentive to join a religious cult for its charitable services and social cohesiveness when the welfare state already provides that. The "enlightened" ideal these days seems to be serving the government - not for glory, honor, and military and political supremacy, but for the alleged welfare, comfort and equality of the masses. And since the government and its cronies can supposedly deliver these goods without few of the moral hang ups of a strict ethical system like Christianity, it's an attractive proposition to many people. "Christianity without the tears" as Huxley put it. The secular state is Christianity's biggest competitor in the Western world. But honestly the "state" as we moderns know it is nothing like the 'state' the Romans knew. So in that respect I don't think we've come full circle.

No, that's the temple of Janus. Jupiter shared a temple with Juno and Minerva on the Capitoline Hill.

Red = Jupiter's color Eagle = Jupiter's bird Lightening = Jupiter's weapons Since Jupiter was the patron god of the state and the god of victorious generals, it was appropriate. :-)

Rome Athens England (specifically London) Toronto (I hear it's a nice city) The playboy mansion

There are debates in the temple forum about the role of Christianity in the collapse of Rome. Certainly the rise of a new religion dedicated to erasing other religions and ceating a new cultural reality placed certain stresses on society. But the Byzantine empire which was Christian to the bone survived quite well as a political and military power, so I don't think Christianity was instrumental in the collapse of Rome. To the extent that barbarians adopted Christianity, one could say it became an instrument of Roman or Byzantine power...

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=70132005

Recent archaeology is suggesting they were highly paid sportsmen who rarely fought to the death, but who were backed by important financiers and entertained the crowds with mock shows of combat.

Prostitution wasn't automatically condemned in pagan societies, nor was it automatically considered a crime. In fact, in the Greek city-state of Corinth, the temple of Aphrodite often employed Courtesans. This serves to illustrate a point. When moderns look back at Ancient Rome, they are usually doing it through an ethical perspective that the Romans themselves didn't have. This may be further complicated by the fact that Rome's alleged vices left to history may have been exaggerated by hostile contemporaries like early Christians. The exact nature of "social decay", in other words, depends on the ethical framework of the observer. ;-) Conservatives were decrying Roman society in the Age of Augustus since Roman society and its mores had evolved somewhat since the early Republic. Yet if we look at the political, economic and cultural power of the Augustan age, Roman society was by no means decayed. For my own part, I think the western empire disintegrated from exhaustion. Constant internal strife, increasing absolutism from government, increasing external threats, plagues and famines, people paying increasing taxes to an increasingly dysfunctional government. They were probably just rather weary of the whole thing, which fed into some of the problems you mentioned above.

Latin is part of the Indo-European (sometimes called "Aryan", though not so much since the Nazis abused the term) languages. And Roman culture and religion have some broad things in common with other IE peoples, so an offshoot of the ancient Proto-Indo European peoples went into the Italian peninsula to become the Italic peoples. The homeland of the Indo-Europeans is in dispute, but it probably is somewhere in the Russan plains. Wherever Indo-European tribes went, they either conquered or peacefully melded with other peoples already living there. Roman religion and culture also betrays signs of a general Mediterranean culture. So Romans are probably a mix of people, Indo-Europeans and various Mediterranean peoples. And their foundation mythology may have truth in several tribes coming together to populate the seven hills.

It's an area around Asia Minor that was settled by Greeks and thus Hellenized to some degree. Mithradates tried to control the area to create a commercial empire based around the Black Sea trade routes. Hellenes dissatisfied with Roman rule sided with him. However, it only lasted as long as Rome was distracted. Once Rome got its act together the "empire" was taken over by Rome and divided into districts, and was later part of the Byzantine sphere of influence. Beyond these simple facts, which you probably already know, I can't find more information. It doesn't seem to be terribly important except as a sideshow to the power struggles of the late Republican warlords.

Welcome.

Peter Ellis, the Celtic scholar, says the Celts used chariots and cavalry to attack the flanks with speed, causing panic. They would also use them to transport foot soldiers to the front lines, as the Greeks did in Homer's time. The Celts had a system of wooden roads which seems to have facilitated the use of chariots.

In polytheistic religions its quite possible to belong the several different cults at once. There is seldom a belief that honoring one god necessarily precludes you from honoring other gods. Soldiers in pagan Rome would quite often be involved in several cults at once: * the cult of the legion's standards * the cult of the emperor (imperial genius) * the cult of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (the Capitoline Triad of Rome) * the cult of local gods and spirits in the lands where they were stationed, your Egyptian link being a nice example. The officers might also belong to the cult of Mithras, and the grunts might honor Isis (especially if they were in Egypt).

Hmm. Well, from what I know of the Celts and the Germans, combat was more along the lines of tribal honor rather than duty to the state or social advancement. For instance, the Celts sacked Rome because Roman ambassadors had violated international law in dealing with Celtic expansion into the Etruscan Po valley. Once the Celts had extracted a hefty sum from the Romans in retribution for insulting their honor, they left without further thought of conquest or martial glory. Celtic and German values were more along the lines of defending your honor and serving your tribal chieftain than abstract notions of duty to the state or building empire. The Egyptians were never a very war like race. Under the New Kingdom they did have a small empire, but martial glory was never the chief value of Egyptian culture. Peace and stability were. To the Greeks arete, or excellence, was a central value. Warrior arete did count for much in all Greek city-states. But unlike Rome, Greek culture allowed men more avenues for honor and advancement. A man could gain honor by winning an athletic competition, or writing the best play. I

In addition to what the others said, keep in mind the central reason for military conquests other than security was honor and glory for the general. To promote themselves above their peers, ambitious politicos needed social capital, and in Roman society that meant serving the state through military victories. Foreign policy and domestic policy were always entwined from that standpoint. The very logic of Roman cultural values suggested expansion and conquest, in other words. And I would agree this reached a climax in the Punic Wars over ultimate control of the Mediterranean.