phil25

Thank you, Ursus. From what i have seen so far, it looks promising. Phil

I have been to Ostia Antica three times, it has NEVER disappointed. I have recommended friends visiting Rome to go there - all have come back amazed. Whether it is "better" than Pompeii I don't know. I would put it this way, I think: Pompeii shows us a fair-sized Italian town of the early empire - and allows us to wander its streets and understand something of its dynamic. (We can see the distribution of brothels, temples, markets, large and small houses and learn a great deal about the experience of life in the first century AD). Herculaneum gives us an insight into daily life, because of the wood and other objects preserved - the half-timbered house; the suburban baths; the paintings in the guild-hall. Ostia, on the other hand is Rome itself, with its tenement blocks (insulae) and warehouses, theatre and main-street. The period is later than Pompeii, society had changed, and this is not small-town Italy. Each provides us with a wonderful, separate and miraculous insight into a past time. But I would also urge those interested to visit some of the cities in Jordan - for instance Palmyra (you'll find out what Herod's temple in Jerusalem may have looked like); or Ephesus (some wonderful houses found recently); or Dura Europos in Syria - again a different experience and much later in time. We are SO lucky to have so much that has survived. Our job is to understand it. Phil

OK - let's try something "off the wall". Caligula was not mad, just misunderstood!! It was Constantine whom history records as first seeing that the empire could not be ruled from Rome, but that the centre of government needed to be more to the east. That was where the grain supply for the west came from, and where the most real and organised threat, Parthia, lay. But actually, if one prises back the Augustan myth, one can glimpse something of the same in the thinking of Antony and Cleopatra before Actium - an eastern empire ruled from Alexandria; and a dynasty of quasi-godlike beings. this, to me, was the actuality behind the so-called and controversial "Donations of Alexandria". Now Gaius Caligula was a direct descendent of Antony - Antonia (Gaius' grandmother) was Antony's daughter. Is it possible that the Antonian "dream" or vision of empire descended to Gaius? I see a good deal of method also in Caligula's assuming absolute powers as Caesar - perhaps seeking to move the principiate towards an Empire in terms understood in the east. He had seen Tiberius attempts to shrink from the full titulatur and powers of the monarchy; to rule with the Senate. He had seen Augustus' hidden empire and new it as a sham. As a young man with the prospect of many years of rule ahead of him, Caligula may have determined to set what to him might have seemed a more honest, workable, pragmatic, and potentially successful course. He was the first Princeps to grow up under the principiate and to know nothing else - don't forget Tiberius' father had been a republican. His vision may have been different - as Antony's was different from Octavian's. It also seems that Gaius had a keen sense of humour - perhaps ironic, perhaps sarcastic or punning. I think the Cincinnatus as Consul story/and perhaps the huts/seashells one too, were misread or distorted examples of jokes. As for the invasion of Britain, Claudius too was faced with mutiny. Gaius may have had to put a brave face on a similar circumstance. As for the manoeuvres in Germany which Tacitus (? or was it Suetonius?) ridicules. They sound to me like getting an army into shape and perhaps punishing some units who had not been up to scratch. Practical not laughable, in other words. Did Caligula have an illness which changed him? Maybe? Did he have incest with his sisters? Again maybe - Agrippina the Younger was no saint it seems - but maybe it was political propaganda. the remaining children of Germanicus had suffered a few years that must have been frightening under Sejanus - the elder brothers imprisoned and killed; their mother exiled. Were they just close? And brother-sister marriages were a norm in Egypt even under the Macedonian/Greek-born Ptolomies. So back to the Antonian dream. It can be argued that he and Cleopatra intended to marry Caesar's son, Caesarion, to their own child Cleopatra Selene. Was Caligula thinking of a similar approach for the future of the Julio-Claudian's? Was it so far fetched? Look at the way Augustus inter-married his relations - Julia to Agrippa; Agrippina the elder to Germanicus (who's step-grandmother was Augustus' sister Octavia. Was not this keeping it "in the family"? So, as with Richard III, Caligula will probably never lose the evil legend that attaches to his name. But i do think other interpretations are possible. Phil

Can I be controversial, and suggest that Germanicus would have been an appaling Emperor/Princeps? I think we need to separate his myth from his known actions - he appears to have seriously mishandled the mutiny of the Rhine legions, becoming emotional and excitable. His career suggests to me a weak man, seeking to emulate his dead father Drusus, and much under the thumb of his wife who seems to have inherited her father's determination and brains. I suspect that if we knew, we would find Germanicus' career was aided and guided by some capable subordinates (as Octavian had Agrippa and Maecenas. I see no evidence, bar sentimentality (drawn largely from later sources) that would have made him a better Emperor than Tiberius. Leaving myth aside again, and treating the sexual depravities as tabloid fabrications of the day, I see Tiberius as a capable ruler, hard-working and experienced in every facet of government, who sought to diminish his own role and to try to breath some life back into the Senate to aid him. I think he was probably difficult, an intellectual and a poor communicator, and this weighed against him. he also came too late to the job and in his old-age he relied to heavily on Sejanus 9the evil-genius/eminence gris0 of the reign. Livia also sought to interfere. But I think Tiberius was a good emperor in the main, perhaps seeking to put into practice the hidden principiate that Augustus and Agrippa had developed in his youth. He was right to suspect Germanicus, and lucky that he was either killed or died when he did - not least after Germanicus's unapproved trip to Egypt. In the terms of his day, if Tiberius had Germanicus killed, he was probably being sensible. Radically, and with apologies if i have ofended anyone's hero, Phil

Gibbon (I think) said that the best time to have lived would have been under Marcus Aurelius, and as long as one were to be wealthy, I see no reason to disagree with that. Perhaps to have been born under Nerva, and to have lived through Trjan, Antoninus and marcus and then to expire early in the reign of Commodus might have allowed one to live in relative security. As an historian, I would love to be able to go back to around the crossing of the Rubicon and follow the events through to Augustus final settlement. To see Caesar, Octavian, Antony, Pompey, Livia, Cleopatra etc as they really were, and to understand their motivations and why they made certain decisions, would be fascinating. Phil

Can the Antonines really be called a "dymasty"? I think the principal of adoption of heirs was one of the most sensible and the bravest experiments in the history of the empire (and it is a large black mark against Marcus Aurelius that he broke the system). I also know that historians for convenience think of the Antonines as a dymasty - but to me that is rather notional. I doubt really that, if a blood-line is to be used to determine a dynasty, then the Julio-Claudians must be the front-runners by almost any means. We have more sources on them, Suetonius hasgiven them a treatment that spices up the scandal and sleaze!! We know about them in more detail and seemingly can almost reach their personalities and characters (though that is probably a delusion). What a cast too - Caesar himself (one of the great geniuses of world-history) who was all conquering but ultimately failed; his bloodless, cunning, ruthless but long lived heir Octavian/Augustus (who lived long enogh for his early reputation to be replaced by a more gentle myth, and who was probably one of the most consumate politicians the world has ever known - he changed it!!). Tiberius, one of the great enigmas. Caligula - a madman, or a visionary with a sense of humour and a new idea for how empire should be governed? Claudius - the ultimate survivor. And finally Nero, again a ruler capable of varying interpretations. Hollywood and fiction writers (Graves, Massie and others) have seen the potential in this line - to me it has no rivals. The nearest would be Septimius Severus and his brood - Caracalla (of the brooding bust) and then the strange young successors like Elagabalus and Alexander Severus and their dominant female puppeteers.racy stuff indeed. Just to correct any impression I might have given of dismissing or even not liking the Antonines, nothing could be farther from the truth. They fascinate me. marcus Aurelius and Trajan are among my heroes, and I think that a radical new interpretation of Commodus may emerge one day - though I think he was probably mentally disturbed. (I do not adhere to - though I enjoy the idea of - the theory that he was an illegitimate child fathered by a gladiator. But as the first man in Rome ever born to the purple and to succeed genetic father-to-son, I think his mind may have turned. (Note Titus and Domitian were young men when Vespasian became Emperor). Phil

Whooops, sorry 'bout that Germanicus There is nothing like Roman Iconography!! Another great site is insecula.com Joe Geranio Roman portrait sculpture is a fascinating subject. Wherever I travel I try to seek out examples in museums and galleries. The Room of Emperors in the Capitoline Museum in Rome and the nearby room with unidentified portrait busts always hold me for ages and I have many many photographs of the busts and faces found there. While we all know that Roman portrait sculpture was not about character as we might understand it, I can still find pleasure in seeking to put character into these faces. There's one head in the british Museum that comes (I think) from Cyprus, in white marble, of a young man - and the impression is (to me at least) one of chillingly and implacable coldness (the face of a Roman Heydrich perhaps!!. He is always the villain in the Roman novel I keep working at - the remorseless and vengeful enemy of the honest young hero. I also love the collection of full length statues in the Naples Museum which are said to be of the Nonii Balbi from Herculaneum - they include two equestrian portraits said to be of father and son. I have read that a "new" head of Marcus Nonius Balbus was found near the suburban baths in Herculaneum a few years ago - but I have never seen this published. Does any other poster here know of it, or of photos of it? I also enjoy studying the late (in date) mummy portraits from the Fayum and elsewhere, which seem (again probably falsely) to bring life back to these long dead people. Anyone else here share my fascinations? Phil

As I recall Serapis was a construct of Ptolemy I Soter, sp-ecifically designed to please his Greek/Hellenic subjects, because the traditional animal-headed Egyptian gods did not appeal to the new rulers.

Hello everyone - my first post on what looks an interesting site. Please bear with me if the veterans have discussed this before - but I thought "ROME's" take on Ptolemaic Egypt, though interesting and a contrast to Rome itself, was a little Pharaonic and unsophisticated for the Alexandria I imagine. I always picture Cleopatra's Alexandria as wholly Hellenic, a city of Grecian columns and town planning, bustling port and light, airy peristyles. Mankiewitz's Cleopatra (the Taylor/Burton one) caught it well for me - the costumes of Theodotus, Pothinus etc combined Greek and Egyptian themes in a believeable way. ROME, by contrast, seemed to want to play up the African qualities - the rope-like wigs and facial painting (anyone know whether there was a historical basis for THAT style of decoration at the time? Interested to know what others thought of Alexandria, and the portrayal of the Queen herself for that matter... Phil