phil25

Where does the position of the Praetorian Prefect come from? I mean in terms of sources. I'm just a little surprised that he takes precedence over consulars and other Senatorial magistrates. And what did the hierarchy actually mean in terms of practical use? Phil

In my contributions to this thread, I am not particularly interested in assessing the motives for Suetpudding writing, but rather their value and relaibility as historical sources. If what you say is true of the former, I find it reduces their value as the latter. phil

I think ideology CAN be transmitted clearly through buildings and their imagery. The Forum of Augustus in Rome and its scheme of statuary was widely copied in Italy - the building of Eumachia in Pompeii reflects this (to give just one example). Domitian's Palatine Palace is also a forward step that reveals a clear and relatively new statement about the position, role and relationships of the ruler and his subjects. The whole design - I have developed this argument on another thread - is different in nature from anything Augustus (for instance0 would have approved. It also clearly fits like and hand and glove, with Domitian's conception of his role - Dominus et Deus! Now the Palatine exercise may have drawn much inspiration from the earlier Domus Aurea (which Domitian would have known). Again, I have qritten elsewhere recently of the need to consider the Domus as more than simply a residence - but as an exercise in Government conveyed in marble. Roman building was often political in import and message - the temple of Claudius at Colchester is an example; so too probably was the palace at Fishborne.. As for Hadrian his villa at Tivoli is surely an expression of his vision and of an Antonine view of empire. The Temple of Venus and Rome (the pun on ROMA/AMOR only works in Latin) clearly includes political and ideological messages. I would argue that the whole Forum Romanum was a massive exercise in ideology which ran through almost the whole of Roman history - why would Caesar put so much emphasis and expend so much time on restructuring it? he did not just restore damaged buildings - he repositioned them. To me a clear statement of a change in the political structure at Rome. Staying with Caesar - surely his Forum is a complete political statement and was intended as such - Trajan's similarly at a later date. In haste, but hoping for a deeper analysis, Phil

I know and like Massie's work very much. His research is usually good. I must admit that I had forgotten his caligula - read some years ago - though a copy rests on my shelves. Thanks for reminding me - I'll haul it down and re-visit it. Phil

Which rather shows how misleading Suetonius can be!! he certainly wasn't an eye-witness to events or people in the early principiate, and I doubt very much that he knew anyone who was. True he may have had access to sources, documents and archives lost to us, but his conclusions must be his own. I am not sure I consider Suetonius biased, either - except in so far as, like tacitus - he is seemingly pro the Senatorial view. I would rather say he distorts facts and positions by focusing almost entirely on the sexual and the superficial. He may well capture and record some genuine traits and events, but they are, IMHO, lost in the amount of mud he flings. A modern comparison would, I suppose be Michael Moore - witty, incisive, has a point - but would you rely on him to write a history of the Bush regime, or say he gave a rounded, full account of the personalities or events concerned? Phil

Excellent point, Ursus. Maybe Newton, Einstein, the archietects of the nuclear bomb and various philosophers ought to be on the list too. Phil

No idea - but Gaius had a huge ship that brought the obelisk from Egypt that is now in front of St Peter's - it weighed quite a lot. Claudius sank the ship to create a mole/breakwater for his new harbour facilities at Ostia. I watched a TV news report today of a HUGE new cruise ship, and bigger are to follow. THEY float!! All we know is that Gauis' pleasure ships at Nemi worked, at least for a time. Didn't Cleopatra supposedly have some huge galleys at Actium too? Phil

Can we please have a "none of the above" choice? It is a completely impossible question. For one thing the list is utterly random and euro-centric in approach (I assume that in this context the US is western). There are no African figures, few Russian, and no South Mezo- or Latin American. Where is Cortez or Pizarro, even if you don't know or cannot spell Aztec or Mayan names? Mohammed is missing as is the Buddha, what of Mahatma Ghandi? Some of these figures were influential in their culture but not in wider historical terms. Some have been admired (Lincoln) but their deeds did not necessarily have much wider impact except by extrapolation. For instance, did the US come to the aid of the old world in WWI and WWII because washington was first President, or Lincoln held the Union together? What of Jefferson? or Franklin? Can you indeed tell me what the scientific basis of your selection was i.e. the criteria for choice? Or was it just those that came into mind as you decided to post? Phil

Perhaps - given that we now know from the Vindolanda tablets that the Roman had a word akin to "wogs" to refer to the Britons (Britunnculi??) - maybe they had a word meaning what Quisling does to us. A "Cogidubnus" anyone? Phil

I thought it was probably a slip (I know your usual accuracy PP), but I thought I'd put it right for the record. By the way - and my real reason for responding - does anyone know anything about the festival of Anna Perenna and what it would have meant for the City on that day? Does it mean Antonius' escape would have been through unusually deserted streets? Could it have been a reason why the Liberators did not get their message across (no audience) and even a cause why the particular day was chosen for the deed? Phil

I was thinking about this subject while doing my weekly shopping today. I wonder how, in 2,000 years time, the sga of Prince Charles, Diana and Camilla might be told? One could easily imagine the Suetonian approach - and books have already been written from that angle (just think of how future historians might interpret events if one of the more lurid, but popular biographies were all that survived?). No doubt Charles would be seen as an unfaithful cad - not to mention as weak and a little addled, Diana as a persecuted if troubled saint, and Camilla as the other woman. Yet is that the real story? It ignores the fact that actually Camilla was the love of Charles life and (in a sense) he has always been faithful to her. It does not take into account the way Diana presented a possible new approach to monarchy along the way? Or her manipulation of the press? It does not take into account changes in morality, attitudes to marriage/divorce in the UK over 20 years or so... nor the role of the media in creating stereotypical images that may not reflect reality. The portrait of Charles certainly would be distorted. His interest in off-beat subjects (environment; architecture; holistic and homeopathic medicine are all very much part of his character. He has successfully raised non-party-political issues up the public agenda. His Trust helping disadvantaged youths is a great success. How much of that might survive 2,000 years? One can already see the same process at work with Charles' great uncle the Duke of Windsor. The painting of individuals as black or white - Mrs Simpson in particular - is a crass over-simplification of the facts. Emphasis on certain elements of the story - the romance, for instance - over (say) the political (Edward's fascist interests; his unsuitability and personal concerns about being King; the constitutional difficulties of his desire to marry a twice divorced woman in the moral climate of the day; the background of impending world war... Suetonius might be fun, but I think the modern examples i have cited indicate how much more may lurk beneath his anecdotes. All subjective, of course, and just my humble opinion as ever... Phil

...Pompey's Theatre (which had temporarily served as the forum and was interestingly outside the pomerium)... I don't think the theatre of Pompeius ever served as the or any sort of forum. The forum Romanum remained in use, as far as i am aware, throughout the restructuring of the Tabularium end by Caesar. The Curia Hostilia was destroyed in Clodius' funeral, and rebulit as the Curia Julia on a different site with a different orientation. If an alterative Forum had been required, Caesar's new one already existed close at hand. That said, the Senate often met elsewhere at times, and for some purposes. Pompeius' theartre included - at the opposite end of the huge peristyle to the theatre/temple itself - a purpose built curia. It was there that Caesar was killed. Part of the rear wall of that part of the complex can still be seen. I am not sure, but off-hand the Senate may have met in the Curia Pompeii as the Ides of March was the festival of Anna Perenna (as I recall) when citizens traditionally left the City to picnic. Phil

I doubt she thought "Quisling" precisely, Pertinax - even in celtic. The word was not coined until around 1940!! But i take your point. It used to be claimed Boudicca was buried under Platform 8 of King's Cross station (roughly where Harry Potter chatches the Hogwarts' express!!) though on what basis I was never clear. As for the british Empire - I for one am not ashamed of it, its story, legacy or those who gained and maintained it. It was a US newspaper that once hailed it as "the greatest force for good the world has ever known". Happy to debate that in another thread if anyone feels strongly. Phil

The question is then, why try to show the battles at all? If you cannot afford to do them well, have them happen off-stage. Caesar's tent, with his servants or staff officers during a Alesia; Pompeius' during Pharsalus; could tell us a lot more through dialogue than a half-baked attempt to visualise it. Stay in Rome and focus on the politics, while fighting goes on in Gaul or Greece. Yet the script kept setting up the battles, and an expectation that we would see them. There is a mismatch here. The recent Hannibal on TV had its faults, but it was better than ROME on the bit set-piece battles IMHO. Phil

He's a flawed hero to me. I find him much more human as a character than Octavian/Augustus; but there are aspects of his character than repel as well as attract. I like his pragmatism; his flexibility; his many-sided talent. I regret the way he died at the hands of purblind, self-interested, shallow, jealous and narrow-minded fools, none of whom came up to the laces of his senatorial boots. Phil

I enjoy reading tabloid newspapers in the UK (sucas The Sun, or the Daily Mail) from time to time. They are very cleverly written, for a particular audience. But as a student of international politics, I would not for a moment take my source material from them alone, if at all. They seize on the sensational and the scandalous, and are often wrong - sometimes seriously so. I learned to read by using books aimed at early readers - they were valuable and useful, but I have moved on to more adult (and sometimes more serious and sophisticated) reading material. I like your analogy Caldrail; like you I will keep Suetonius on my shelves and continue to read him. But I now try to have a perspective that looks beyond his level of analysis, to what it seems to me (from Tacitus say) as more likely to be the reality of those times. Shall we say I take him "with a pinch of salt". Good one, Phil

I have posted several times recently suggesting that we need to look again at Gaius and Nero, and reassess their reputations. However, I would not agree for a minute that "...we're finding out that Caligula and Nero did not deserve a lot of the cruel treatment that has been heaped upon their names in the past." To do THAT would require new evidence, and I am unaware of any.All I argue, and I cannot, of course, speak for others, is that we need to LOOK again at the evidence that does exist. But that is interpretation and essentially subjective. If people agree with me, that's fine - but please do not think that the material has changed, only the patterns we might perceive them in. Phil

I really don't think there is very much daylight between our views, Germanicus. Phil

Germanicus - I am not questioning infidelity - this thread is about Julia's alleged extreme promiscuity. I can myself cite plenty of cases of affairs, but Messalina apart - and I would also question that evidence of extreme promiscuity - and the younger Julia, I see no basis for the argument. Phil

Whatever Paul was before his "Damascus experience", he certainly wasn't "a strict Jew" afterwards, given his views on diet and circumcision. There is nothing in Acts to say he personally killed Christians - he was present at the stoning of Stephen we are told (a different thing) and went to Damascus to arrest Christians - no mention of their being killed. Whetever Paul's message - it appealed to people. If what you say about it being dependent upon the weight of jewish tradition behind it - why were these people not being converted to Judaism? Paul's mission and message was clearly to a different - Hellenised - community in Asia, and it clearly worked. His "persecution" as he went, by others, suggests his effectiveness. I think your arguments work against your case, not mine. Which teachings are you talking about? Read ACTS. It is clear that the message here is put across more metaphysically - mystically? - than Jesus did - no parables, less homespun wisdom. I talk about some of this in a previous post. Finally, common sense suggests that there could not have been anything like "vast multitudes" of Christians in Rome by 64AD. What do you define as a vast multitude anyway - give me a number that the words conjure for you? Pewrsonally, I think we have events from later times - perhaps Domitian, perhaps later, transferred back by later Christian writers to add drama to the deaths of Peter and Paul, which probably did take place around this time. I'm not saying Nero did NOT persecute the followers of Chrestus, but I think numbers were probably in the hundreds at most, more likely less. If you think more - where did these come from, when were they converted and by whom? Let's be practical please. Phil

Where is the evidence for all these claims that aristocratic Roman women were promiscuous? I'm aware of juvenal and Martial, of course - but the women they refer to are of a lower class than Julia. I'd just like to comment on sources, which at the moment are invisible. Phil

Paul. Paul's first letter was written about 20 years after the death of Christ. Not a lot of time for "influence" of any kind to seep in. A huge number of people who knew Christ were still alive. Facts could be checked. Except for Paul himself as the influence!! Truth is, the epistles are all FACT-light. Jesus' message - if Pauline Christianity has any link to it - is spiritual and mysticised (moved away from Judaism), with hardly any mention of Jesus' life or deeds. The whole thrust is to make the teachings attractive to and amenable to the Hellenised thought. I find a good deal of believability in the idea that Jesus and his immediate disciples (as far as we know Paul never met him) were concerned with traditional Jewish ideas (if revolutionised and put over in an innovative way) and perhaps with Jesus as the traditional idea of Messiah. Paul changes this, and seems to come into conflict with the Jerusalem "Christians" (note under James the brother of Jesus, NOT Peter) over his message. he promotes changes (dietary, circumcision) that divorce Pauline chritianity from its Judaic origins. It was also in Antioch, not Jerusalem, that the name Christians appears first to have been applied to the sect. The mystery religeons to me were a way of thinking and in interest in such things as resurrection, as about ritual and practice, symbolism or creed. It doesn't really matter if Christianity was influenced in such things until later - the "Hellenised" thought, the driving curiousity, for me comes in with Saul/Paul of Tarsus - a Roman citizen, from Asia Minor. He gives a metaphysical spin to Jesus' ideas - seems to pick up on the more mystical ideas of Jesus - initiation transforms the individual, takes you into a new world, allows healing - and runs with those alone. Paul uses the term Christ Jesus a lot - promoting the divine above the human - rather than Jesus Christ. At least, that's how it seems to me. Phil

Peter Brook did a production at Stratford in about 1958 with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Frank Thring (Ben Hur, The Vikings) played Saturninus . Olivier's performance transformed the play and made people look at it again. Leigh's performance was NOT critically acclaimed - one observed that after being violently raped, having her tongue pulled out and her hands cut off, her experssion suggested she would have preferred a mattress!! I think the play is only regarded as lesser (among the Bard's work) because it lacks the sophistication and exceptional writing of the great tragedies etc - Hamlet, Lear. But it was well thought of in its day, and is one of 9if not the only) play of Shakespeare's of which we have a drawing of a performance from his time. I always think of it as similar to a martial arts filmscript written by an author who then goes on to win an Oscar for some deeply moving and psychologically penetrating screenplay about relationships. The first might do better business at the box office than the latter. But Hamlet ends up with almost as many corpses on stage at the final curtain as does Titus. So William did not entirely desert his roots!! I wholly agree your idea of a Kurosawa Titus. That would have been amazing. Do you know his Throne of Blood (Macbeth, Samurai style)? Phil

Genuine togas are HUGE and very difficult to wear without practice. they are heavy, made of wool originally, and it is the weight that in part kept the folds in place. essentially a toga was a not quite rectangular piece of material - the exact shape is subject of scharly debate - but around fifteen feet by seven for someone five none tall and with an average waist. You could probably make a stab at a toga by using a double-sized bed sheet. Place one end over the left shoulder, so it dangles in front of you to at least the knees - you'll have to experiment because it will depend on your size and that of the bed sheet. Next, bring the rest of the sheet behind you, across your back and under the right arm, then drape it across your front and throw the other end over the left shoulder. Arrange the folds to look neat and right. You might need to pin the folds on the left shoulder - I would suggest a large brooch (perhaps the sort Scots use to fasten the plaid in place). Linen or a light modern mterial is unlikely to stay in place by itself - but you can help it by using the left hand to grasp the sinus - the part of the toga that crosses your chest diagonally. NOTE: I am totally unpersuaded that this would look right, nice, stylish or be practical under an academic gown. Hope this helps though, Phil

In my view, MPC, it's not about anyone being SMART, it's about the practicality of being discrete in a Roman domus. Caesar was promiscuous, but clearly pretty open about it. His affairs were an open secret - only those like your namesake were in the dark (at least about Servilia!! Antonius was a notorious whoremonger. But I doubt whether the princeps' own and only daughter, could have kept much secret. Indeed, clearly she didn't. And the "cargo" remark could apply to two lovers as much as 80,000. Phil