Ursus

Congrats to the winners.

Oh. Spiritus, I'm not going to get into an argument about which spiritual force (if any) influences history. But I don't see the Romans as being any more cruel than any other society. Arena games aside, Roman imperialism was less bloody than many empires before or since.

I've been interested in Ancient Greece and Rome (and related ancient cultures) since I was a little kid. But it's only been in my post University days that I've made a committment to serious, scholarly study of it. Three things got me into it: 1) Mythology and religion 2) Politics and history 3) Architecture and culture

You do enough for the site as it is, PP. You have a nice little summary of Roman history going. A treasure trove for students and Romanophiles everywhere.

You can download books in the public domain for free from places like Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10657 It's not a bad idea, fellows. I hope I can squeeze it in with all the other reading I am currently doing.

What?

This thread actually inspired me to read a book by one of the world's foremost Celtophiles. I'll leave the review here rather than in the Media forum since it's not Roman based. Oh, Happy St. Patrick's day. The Celts: A History Peter Berresford Ellis I have always been woefully ignorant of the Celts. In a desperate attempt to remedy that malady, I bought Ellis' book. There is also a certain overlap between Celtic and Roman histories, and I felt as a Romanophile I needed to know something about the other side. Ellis first tackles the subject of the Celt's alleged illiteracy. He then outlines several sectors of Celtic society. He then offers some examples of Celtic high cultural achievements. Finally, he gives us a sketch of Celtic history from distant origins to Christian conversion. Ellis writes in a clear and organized manner, and I had no problem digesting all the unfamiliar information he was throwing at me. There are times when he goes unncessarily the extra mile to drive home a point, but I stop far short of calling his style pedantic. Indeed, he manages to cram much information in a book that is suprisingly short and light. There are also some pictures and illustrations buried throughout the book, and suggestions for further reading. I am now better acquainted with the Celts, and more respectful of their achievements which have been underrated by society. I have even developed an interest in furthering my studies on the matter. In that sense, Ellis achieved his aims, at least with this reader. However, I am not going to bestow this work with an unqualified rating. There are some serious issues in the manner in which it is presented. For one thing, since most writings on the Celts come to us from Greco-Roman sources, there has always been an issue of how much we can trust the alleged biases of a people who were often at war with the Celts. For Ellis, there seems to be a double standard. When the classical authors say something about the Celts that make them seem smart and cool, he readily embraces their views. When the Classical authors say the slightest negative thing about the Celts, Ellis dismisses them as evil propagandists. How convenient. The author waxes eloquent about the achievements of the Celts and is always comparing them to other ancient societies, usually the Romans for whom Ellis seems to sneer in high contempt. As a Romanophile, I can see Ellis' own biases and prejudices against Roman society. Does being a good Celtophile mean despising the Romans? I don't think so, but then I'm admittedly biased myself as a Romanophile. I would have loved Ellis to devote more time to the fascinating subject of Celto-Roman society, where the cultures and the religions of the conquerers and conquered co-existed more or less peacefully and the Celts became valued members of Romans society. Ellis seems to largely gloss over these centuries of history. Again, conveniently. Let's take the Celtic achievements in perspective. The Celts did build roads and buildings. But they built them with wood, which is prone to rotting. This is why few Celtic constructions have survived today, and why most people don't associate Celts with engineering feats. The Romans, on the other hand, built with stone and marble, which is why many of their creations are still around and why we marvel at their works. Ellis points out the Celts could write when they had to, but otherwise frowned on doing so as the Druidic caste did not want to lose its intellectual control over the people, or have its knowledge stolen by enemies. Fine. But the fact remains that the ancient Celts didn't write things down. Which means most of their legacy necessarily comes to us through the eyes of hostile Greek and Roman contacts. Let's not complain that Caesar slandered the Celts in his writings; if the Druidic caste had not been so paranoid and parochial, they could have let the Celts speak for themselves, and we wouldn't have to rely on Caesar's biased accounts for our knowledge of Celtic society. The image the Romans left us of the Celts as being illiterate, savage warriors may not be totally accurate. But all in all I do find that Ellis overstates his case in trying to correct the image. The basic theme of the Celts being less advanced than their Mediterranean and Oriental peers is I think still deserved on the whole. The contributions that the Celtic peoples made within the framework of Romanization would make a fascinating subject, but neither Ellis nor many other Celtophiles seem especially interested in the subject. Ellis dissmisses academics critical of Celtic society as having an agenda against modern Celtic nationalism. I wonder if Ellis has his own agenda in the opposite direction. As I said, I have a greater appreciation for the Celts and am inspired to learn more about them, and I thank the author for that. But I do feel there is some sort of agenda here to make the Celts the greatest thing since sliced bread, and conversely to turn Rome into the boogeyman of the Ancient World. The Celts lost the war with Caesar; get over it already

Well, Caesar and Augustus are honestly my favorite. :-) But to name someone not so well known among the general populace, I would say the semi-legendary Lucius Junius Brutus, the crafty first Consul who executed his own sons for betraying the Republic. Whether the story is history or legend, it does convey the steel of the Roman soul. We see in Brutus a lot of the guile, strength and honor by which later Romans would be judged.

Those who defied Roman authority? Do we mean external foes who held their own in pitched military battles against the legions, or do we mean internal groups who had ongoing cultural and religious issues against Imperial society?

The "occult" was frowned on by the authorities, who banished or even proscribed the death penalty for certain practices. Having said that, there were certainly people who believed in astrology, curses, and so forth. I really don't know why your friend suggested Romans as the basis of the Occult. When I think of cultures for whom "magical" practices were culturally widespread, I would think of Egypt or possibly the Celts, but certainly not the Greeks or the Romans.

"Yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world. And now lies he there with none so poor to do him reverence." Shakespeare Gaius Julius Caesar, or Gaius "The Hairy" of the Julian clan. Consul, Imperator, Pontifex Maximus, Dictator for Life. Conquereror of Gaul. Invader of Britain. Lover of Cleopatra - and many, many other women (and men). Deified icon of ambition. Alexander The Great wanna-be. 100? BCE - March 15, 44 BCE.

It's hard for me to imagine the Roman world without Caesar, but sometimes I do wonder what would have happened if Antony rather than Octavian had gained the upper hand in the civil war that followed. The center of the Roman world would have shifted to Alexandria. Antony and Cleopatra would have reigned as Osiris and Isis (or Dionysus and Venus) on earth, and subjected the Roman empire to the worst excesses of Oriental Despotism. Western culture would have been steeped in Oriental mysticism and Oriental/Egyptian motives. And if Christianity still developed, it probably would have taken on a more Oriental/Egyptian flavor than what prevailed in the Western Europe. And Cleopatra would have become simply the most influential woman in history. I guess for me Caesar is the one who took the penultimate step to empirehood, but the exact nature of the empire was entirely in the hands of his successors, which makes the struggle between Octavian and Antony one of the most important in history. If Antony had won I'd think the West would have been a very different place.

From what I've read, the power of death held by the paterfamilias, while en vogue during the early Republic, became increasing theoretical as time went on. The late Republic and Empire saw a lot of break down of the austere morality and rigid social codes from the early Republic (which is why the conservatives were always harping about it, for better or for worse). It seems to me the most important division in imperial times was social class/ wealth. A woman of wealth could assuredly get away with more than a humble male peasant in imperial times.

This might be nitpicking, but ... since all freeborn males were granted citizenship after 212 or such, the urban British were Romans in a sense even if they didn't come from Italy. So even if the legions left, I'm sure there was still - in the urban areas at least - a sense of Roman identity and culture. In the countryside I'm sure people still thought of themselves as Celtic, or British or whatever. So after the legions left, it would be a matter of Romanized urban dwellers coping with the non-Romanized rural population without having the legions to enforce order, and all the while various "barbarian" elements starting to pentrate society. What we have is more a clash of cultures than ethnicities per se. No offense, but a lot of the people (especially Europeans, it seems) on the site seem to think of "Roman" primarily in ethnic/genetic/bloodline terms, when really in imperial times "Roman" is a cultural and geopolitical designation. I'm not sure how much bloodlines are useful here. For instance, most of us say that "Germans" and other "barbarians" invaded the empire. By the later Empire, much of the empire had been heavily Germanized anyway, with semi-Romanized Germans (and semi-romanized Celts) fighting non-Romanized German and non-Romanized Celtic elements. Thus to use ethnicity as a prism of history doesn't seem to be very useful; culture is more relevant. And when we say "Roman" we mean people who had some allegiance to a certain cultural and geopolitical paradigm no matter what tribal ethnicity they happened to have.

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They did gain the right to divorce their hubands with most of their dowry intact. This is a right that upper class women in imperial times seemed to have used quite often. When Augustus took over, adultery and divorce in upper class society were rampant. He tried to curb it, but not very successfully. Semi-emancipated upper class women no longer played by quite the same rules. In fact, quite a few of them became rather influential in behind-the-scenes manners at the imperial court. One scholar I have read insinuates upper class women had earned for themselves a considerable degree of social freedom by imperial times. Certainly not "women's rights" as we understand them today, but in comparison to some cultures like Greece, Roman women (at least wealthier ones) were not exactly chattel. Lower class women were just that - lower class. It wasn't much fun to be poor in imperial Rome, no matter the gender. Christianity, the great proletariat religion, appealed to them even though it still treated them like second class believers.

In the US system the President can veto legislation and is therefore a combination of Consul and Tribune. In any event, the House of Representatives is supposed to be the popular voice of the people. In theory, anyway.

Southern Britain was actually a model province. The north, however, is where most of the touble came from. When empire's collapse, the most distant outposts are the usually the first to go. Cut your losses, shorten your supply lines, hunker down in your bunker, etc.

Even in laws, England and its former colonies are often more directly infleunced by Anglo-Saxon common law than Roman jurisprudence. Anyway, would you agree with the school of thought that Rome's principle contribution was in building the necessary infrastructure which preserved and transmitted the legacy of Hellas?

I admit I have some interest in the interplay between Romans and Celts. So if you find any great revelations, please let us know. For possible sources, I direct you to a group that is very much into scholarship on historical Celts. Here is their reading list.

Just the tourist quarter and the wealthy suburbs. The rest of it is a slum known for high murder rates.

Rome is often painted as one of the foundations of Western society. However, some scholars have pointed out the limits of Romanization. The East had an older and in some respects more advanced culture, to which educated Romans generally conceded superiority. The East did not take much in the way of Latin Culture, while educated Romans internalized to varying degrees Eastern culture. In the West, Romanization had limits. The Romans were not interested in mico-managing the lives of their subjects as long as they behaved. Romanization was primarily confined to a few urban centers and their immediate territories. The provincial elite would have fused into Roman society, and those greatly affected by the Roman military or Roman economy would have been Romanized to some degree. But again this was an urban phenomenon; those living in the great mass of countryside in the West would have largely retained their native cultures, and Rome saw no need to bother with them as long as they behaved. Some scholars go onto to say that when the Germanic hordes settled in the West to carve up their kingdoms, the populace became more thoroughly

I believe Moe, Larry and Curly formed a triumverate to rule Rome, and the Republic quickly went downhill afterwards. Or I could be thinking of something else.

I recommend _The Roman Soldier_ G.R. Watson, which summarizes Vegetius. Marching: a march of twenty miles in five hours, later accelerated to twenty-four miles in five hours (Roman miles, mind you, not American miles). Physical training: running, jumping, swimming, carrying heavy packs. Swimming: more for allied troops than Roman soldiers, but still part of the physical conditioning. Weapon training: first they used wooden weapons. Then they progressed to real weapons. Finally they practiced individual combat with each other. Horseback training: even the infantry was taught to mount and dismount while armed. Finally, everything was brought together, and the recruits were taught to march and fight in formation using their real weapons, armor and equipment.

I think the "eternal flame" might have been the sacred flame in Vesta's temple. It was predicted that if it ever went out, disaster would befall the city. When it was finally extinguished in Christian times, the end of the western empire wasn't far off.