Ursus

The Scandanavian cultures are a bit off topic for the forum, though. Here in the forum peregrini we try to discuss cultures that had a direct impact on Rome. The Goths, Saxons and Franks would be on topic given their importance to the later empire, but the Swedish and Norwegians would be much less so.

For me there is nothing worse than a leader who doesn't want to lead. Power is a gift, authority is a mandate, leadership is a calling. Use it or get out of the way and make room for those who will. If the sources on Tiberius are accurate, then I would have to condemn him. An empire under Sejanus might have been the better alternative. If the sources on Tiberius are less than accurate in their depiction, then that is a whole other discussion.

I would dearly love to hear Latin with a musical Welsh accent.

So it was here that the Eastern Empire finally broke with its Roman past and morphed into its own political and cultural entity.

Philly? Cool. Another Pennsylvanian.

Very interesting, AoS. I especially liked the second interview.

Interesting, CiceroD, and thank you. I have read a grand total of one full sized academic book on the Byzantines, so I am bit fuzzy on the details thereof.

As for me, grade school history introduced me to the subject, if somewhat superficially. And I had always been a fan of Greco-Roman mythology. But it is only in my post college days I really took up the subject in great detail. After college ended I needed something to keep my brain occupied, because I found post-educational life not as engaging as I had hoped.

Thank you PNS, very informative and interesting! The imperial praetors peformed much the same functions, only on a smaller scale. It would seem the aediles and censors passed into irrelevancy and oblivion, with most of their functions transferred to praetors and consuls. Do you mean under the "Byzantines?" The Western Empire had Consuls for as long as there was a Western Empire. After tenor of their office they commanded the senior province in a given diocese.

Through various other polls and just generally keeping track of the folders, I've determined that the politics & personalities of the Late Republic is the most discussed aspect on this site. The early-middle Republic as well as the early Empire roughly tie for second place. So I suppose you could say a general historical narrative from 500BCE to 200CE comprises the vast bulk of the site. The military in general is also a steady source of interest. What is interesting is that when I first came to the site in 2004, the smallest details of the Legions seemed to overwhelmingly dominate discussions. Especially those ridiculous hypothetical X vs Y threads (e.g. "Could a Roman Legion defeat a Mongol Horde?") Once we outlawed those threads, it seems topic discussions became broader and more intelligent (or at least facilitated a trend along those lines already in place).

Under the Empire, when the princeps was not a consul himself, he recommended the candidates. The Consuls held office for a few months before resigning in favor of suffect Consuls. After their tenure of office, a Consul could become Proconsul in Africa or Asia, or legatus pro augusti in the imperial provinces. Even under the Dominate, the Consulship continued officially and was used by the Dominus to mark out men who would command the senior province in a given Diocese. The consulship was therefore a largely honorific position. But what did they do, precisely, for the few months they were in office? Even the praetors still had official duties at Rome. I can't find much mention of what the Consuls' official duties were. According to wikipedia they organized and financed high level public games, but they don't list sources for this.

I use Firefox now, and I have to agree it is pretty sweet.

I guess we'll wait and see whatever results there are. As a cautionary note to all, let us not slip into the danger of using this thread to discuss the internal veracity of Christianity or any other religion. Thanks.

Welcome to the site, BK. We hope you like it here.

I think it largely does depend on how you define it. Urban living and literacy should be counted as indicators. And while libertarians may object, I think the invention of government (beyond tribal chieftans and village witch doctors) is also a large factor.

Since we now have a "Celtic & Germanic" subfolder, how about we complicate the discussion. Some people hold to the theory that the Continental Celts and Germans are essentially the same in culture if not so much in language. The theory holds Caesar simply decided the Rhine would divide Celts from Germans, but this is an artificial dichotomy that has been wrongly upheld ever since. If true, this further complicates matters to assign identity to Iron Age European tribes.

Congratulations. Do you have your 12 lictors picked out yet?

Yes, but qualities NN listed as a psychological disorder were still shared to some extent by the Roman aristocracy, and indeed by most of the pre-Christian aristocracies in the greater Indo-European world that I am aware of. We could say then one of three possibilities 1) Pre-Christian concepts on such things are outdated or immoral as per modern sensibilities 2) Pre-Christian concepts on such things are valid, and modern sensibilities are the ones in error 3) Relativism applies, and every culture and age has its own internal set of values that are not externally applicable. I would take a stance somewhere between 2 and 3. Caesar's "crimes" along these lines were ones of degree, not of substance. Vainglory was not in and of itself wrong - it was that Caesar merely took it beyond normal social limits (but then given Caesar's extraordinary gifts his vainglory was more than empty posturing). Stoicism held a certain influence in educated circles (and Epictetus was an educated slave of Greek extraction), but calling it the dominant worldview is a bit of a stretch. The central Roman cultural value that held Roman civilization together for its many long centuries was the dignitas and auctoritas one derived from military victory and political administration. That was what motivated the upper classes in relation to the rest of society. Even Aurelius spent most of his career soldiering. It was that and not the soporific musings of the Stoa that built the Roman Empire. I know you're a Hellenophile, but I think you overestimate the effects of Greek philosophy on the deepest Roman cultural values.

Mainstream Greco-Roman paganism allowed for many things which today would be considered fanciful. But Pythagoras' particular mystical cult was considered fanciful even by the normal religion of the day. Whether or not he had supernatural gifts is, I think, beside the point. He created a closed cult, outside of normal civic religion, which was then used as a weapon against the established socio-political system. Even the mainstream pagan societies at the time considered this illicit.

Some modern psychologists may call this a personality disorder. In ancient Rome, most people, especially among the power elite, would have called this normal cultural values. Caesar's quest for glory, fame, power and legacy, and his faith in his own abilities (and his own perception of his family's supernatural origins and destiny) differed from the average Roman patrician only to the extent to which is was plied. Caesar's boasting of his descent from Venus was considered excessive by his peers, but he was not considered inherently dangerous or crazy because of it - such things are ultimately sanctioned by a pre-Christian worldview. To judge the historical and cultural context in which Caesar's personality operated, I think we have to throw out some of the "moral" presumptions of the modern world forged by mainstream religions, philosophies and psychological analysis.

While obviously biased in some respects, Caesar's record of the Gallic wars is a rare insight into the look of ancient warfare from the perspective of one of its principle leaders. In Caesar we also find the best personal observations on the ancient Celts and Germans, two cultures which are otherwise poorly documented thanks to their own distaste for literacy. And all of this written in a simple, clear prose that is largely devoid of the moralizing which infests other historians.

Eat, drink and be merry.

-- Nephele Heavens, no ... I was a pervert long before I met raptor.

But the question is, over the course of 400 years, did the benefits of occupying Brittania equal or exceed the costs? In so many words, was the occupation profitable? Were the resources worth the three legions stationed there? I suppose it is impossible to do a detailed study where all the pennies (excuse me, sesterces) are counted and placed in debit and credit columns. But the fact that Britain was so quickly abandoned during the troubles of the fifth century is fairly telling. Pure economics aside, it seems that culturally Britain was never really a secure part of the empire, not producing the empire with many Senators or Equestrians.