Valerius

I have read that there are over two hundred references and descriptions of gladitorial combat from ancient authors but only 19 record that one of the gladiators died. The famous chariot race in the film Ben-Hur seems to have been lifted wholesale from the "Memoirs of Diocles" and real charioteer said to have been the first man to win 1,000 races. Death does seem to have been more frequent at the circus. P.S. I have a great book on the subject - probably the best ever written - called "Those About to Die" by Daniel P.Mannix. Originally published in 1960, it was reprinted by Panther Books in 1970 and, as far as I know, has not been reprinted since. I saw it recently for sale on ebay at

I'd go with Augustus. C.Julius Caesar finished off the Republic and changed the history of Rome, but seems to have no real idea of what to do next. At the end of the day his civil war was simply an attempt to protect his dignitas and establish himself as the first man in Rome. It was Augustus who founded the Principate as a political alternative to Republican government and ended the cycle of civil wars sparked by individuals simply trying to be the dominant figure of their time.

The "father of all lies" quote comes from a book called "Jesus, The Evidence." - I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the author. I have, in the past, devoted a considerable amount of time to the study of early Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other middle eastern religions and was struck by two things - first, how closely they resemble each other and, second, how nonsensical they are. The roots of Christianity go back a long way and can be traced from early Mesopotamia in "The Epic of Gilgamesh," through ancient Egypt, especially from the heretical teachings of Akhenaten, the worship of Uzura-Mazdah in Persia and on to Jewish religious thought. As a clue to how all this relates you only have to consider the origins of our name for God - Jehovah. The Jewish version is Yahweh, the Arabic version is Allah, the Roman version was Jupiter or Jove - all having the same liguistic root. Christianity evolved in the same way as our name for God, from a venegeful and rather primitive God (he even had a wife in very early Jewish religious texts), to the more forgiving God of the New Testament. Once you begin to see where Christianity, Islam and Judaism have their common roots and how they have diverged fron one another as people's thinking has changed, you can see all these religions as the artificial constructs that they are. Interesting from an historical point of view, but having very little to tell us today.

The reason I repeated this story was in answer to the original question - did the Romans try to improve or change their tactics? The answer is yes, but did not always succeed. The problem with military planning is that the other side refuse to do as they are expected - no plan survives very long after contact with the enemy is made. The other point I was trying to make is that battles are never won - they are lost. Each of the opposing generals goes into battle with a plan to win - the loser is the one who cannot adapt his plan to circumstances. Roman battle tactics changed very little in terms of the basics between the 1st century BC and the end of the 2nd Century AD, though their equipment did evolve to a certain extent.

More power to his elbow! It's about time the Christain church was made to explain why we should take any notice of that particular Middle Eastern religion as opposed to any of the others. What the sayings of 1st century AD Jewish Rabbi have to do with us I can never quite understand. It was purely by accident that it became the official state religion of the Romans, while the original church in Jerusalem was aghast at the idea of their religion being preached to gentiles. According to them Paul was "the father of all lies" and they couldn't understand why he took the message of a man he never knew to a people for whom the message was not meant. I disagree with him of the central tenet of his argument - it is plain that Jesus existed, he just wasn't talking to us.

I'm doing some catching up after a break over Christmas and came across this discussion and I couldn't resist posting a reply. The original quote seems to be quite correct - the Romans did not share our view of sex at all. To them it was a completely natural thing and was hardly worth commenting about. They had no concept of pornography, for instance, with graphic representations surrounding them on a day to day basis. Though sex was not thought of as a private activity as it is today, having sex in public (despite BBC/HBO's Rome) was considered as bad manners but nothing more. The concept of pornography was basically invented during the 19th century as a classification for "certain materials" that scholars believed should not be shown to the lower classes. Much of the material found in Pompeii and Herculaneum was housed at Naples Archaeological museum in a "secret exhibition" only open to scholars who, it was felt, would not be corrupted by it. Strangely enough quite a trade developed in copies of the material which were bought and sold between "scholarly" collectors.

There are two sources for Arthurian material "the Complaining Book" by Gildas and "History of the British" by Nennius. Gildas was a neo-contemporary of Arthur and probably knew him. However, Arthur was apparently not popular with the early Christian church in Britain and Gildas does not refer to him directly. He talks about "tyrants" and one he describes as "the charioteer of the bear." The bear in latin would be rendered Artorious and it is believed that the king Gildas is describing was a follower of someone called Arthur. Not far from where I live in the West Midlands of England at a place called Atherstone (Arthur's Stone) a stone inscription was recently found which seems to mention Arthur directly. However, curiously enough the stone has been completely ignored by Arthurian scholars in England and, apart from a short article in a magazine, it has not been mentioned since. Several books have been written on the subject but, in my opinion, the best remains "The Quest for Arthur's Britain" edited by Geoffrey Ashe. Going back to the name Arthur, in Cornwall the constellation of the Great Bear is known as "Arthur's Wain."

Marcus Licinius Crassus came up with a novel way of coping with the Parthians who were famous for their archery. He sat his army down in the middle of a plain and waited until the Parthians used all their arrows up. Unfortunately the opposing Parthian general arranged for a constant re-supply of arrows sent up by camel train. Crassus was finally compelled to give up and retreat, losing three eagles, his son and his own life in the process. One of the surviving officers took command and led the remenants to safety - Gaius Cassius Longinus, on eof the future assassins of Caesar.

I agree with Ursus, though expansion was used as a means of avoiding further political convergence and, as such, was not a mistake but a means of avoiding hard decisions. I see the EU in the same terms as I do the future of mankind - we haven't got one. Clever enough to contemplate voyages to the stars, we're not even clever enough to restrain our own leaders who care only for money and the interests of the greedy. The EU, like our civilization in general, is doomed to choke on its own waste materials while strangling everyone else as we fight them for scarce resources. It's just another self-interest club like all our other politcal structures.

I voted for the Principate on purely utilitarian grounds. By the time Caesar was assassinated Republican government was little better than outright anarchy and the Principate of Augustus at least gave Rome the peace it needed to recover. Admitedly, many of the succeeding Emperor's were a bit off but the Romans had a quick and sure way of retiring their least popular leaders. Men such as Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius demonstrated what a good Emperor could achieve and compared to many of our leaders today (who shall go unnamed) even Caligula, Nero, Commodus and Caracalla were pretty harmless.

I saw the feature length episode that marks the end of the present series last night. Oh Dear! So Caesar was assassinated because of the machinations of Servilia, with Brutus, Cassius, Casa etc all sitting down hanging on her every word. Given the patriarchal nature of Roman society which excluded women from the political process that seems a bit unlikely. Octavius was not in Rome when Caesar was assassinated but in Illyria. Caesar was not assassinated in the Curia Hostilia as the programme potrays but in the theatre of Pompey which was being used for Senate meetings while the Curia Hostilia was being refurbished.

Whoaaa Cato - you certainly live up to your name! As for evidence, I suggest you have a look at some of the more recent archaeological evidence from Britain. There is a great deal of evidence that the decline of Roman civilization was more gradual than was widely believed a few years ago. The period of transition lasted between 50 and 100 years depending on which site is considered. Wroxeter is a good example, while a recent Time Team programme looked at a Roman town that survived well into the Saxon period and was systematically dismantled by its own inhabitants. As to whether there were any guards at the frontiers - that was a symptom not a cause. If you look at the Roman army at its height you'll see a well disciplined machine designed around the tactics of infantry close order drill. This compares to the army in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, in which the tactics of close order drill have been abandoned in favour of cavalry tactics and the shield wall - both dominated by defensive tactics. If two Roman legions could take on 250,000 Britons during the Boudicca revolt of 60 AD and win, the question you must ask is what has changed by the fifth century? The answer seems to lie in the wholesale adoption of fighting methods more usually associated with the barbarians. And the reason for this? Many barbarians were recruited into the service of Rome and fought as complete units, using their own fighting methods. Essentially the Roman army was colonized by barbarian units and, as recruits into the citizen army of Rome dried up, they gradually replaced them. By the time of Romulus Augustus, there were no legions fighting in the old manner. The older legionary methods called for a high level of discipline, something completely abscent amongst the barbarian units that replaced them. Now, as for your objections concerning hoards of barbarians pouring across the borders and cutting a swath through the Empire. The evidence from Britain, and I might add from other parts of the Empire as well, is somewhat of an eye-opener. Rather than wholesale movements of people, it now seems that the barbarian incursions consisted of elite bands which were quite small in number. Many were attempting to carve out a piece of the Empire for themselves without necessarily trying to destroy it - gooses and golden eggs etc. The ordinary people tended to stay where they were, accepted the new barbarian elite and gradually absorbed them. Case in point - the Franks were a Germanic barbarian people who settled in Gaul. However, the French are not a Germanic speaking people but retained their former Latin based language. Nor is English quite as Germanic as many people would assume but is more of a fifty-fifty split. The same is true of Spain and Romania, both using a Latin based language. And I reiterate what I said before. The Western legal and political system is closely modelled on Roman standards and norms and even our military systems owe much to Roman ideas about close order drill. St Augustine - what can we say about this? Did Christianity have any discernable role to play in the fall of Rome? A difficult one to answer, but I point to that evidence which suggests the Roman state changed very little under its influence. As a case in point, the last games were held at the Colosseum in 549 AD under a barbarian king. Christianity had not stamped out the games and they came to an end only when they proved too expensive to maintain and well after the Western Empire had already fallen. If you look closely at Roman society then you see more similarities with ourselves than you do differences. And this despite 1500 years of development dominated, if we are to believe the thesis you propose, by people and cultures from outside the Empire. If what you say is true, then why don't we have politicl, legal and social systems dominated by the ideas of the Alans, Franks, Lombards, Huns and various other Germanic conquerers of the Western Empire. Is it all just a Victorian resurrection of Roman ideas? I think not - Romans we were and Romans we remain. As a P.S. There is no evidence, other than from the Church, that any meeting between the Pope and Atilla ever took place. It is far more likely that Atilla's army found it couldn't operate in Italy successfully because of the lack of grazing for its cavalry. You'll find that, throughout history, cavalry-based barbarians encountered extreme difficulties in maintianing their cohesion west of Hungary where the last of the Steppe grasses run out. It is no coincidence that the Mongols only got as a far as Hungary and were then forced to turn back.

Here's a few things to think about. Spartacus wasn't the man's real name-it was stage name used when he appeared in the arena. He probably wasn't from Thrace - "Thracian" referred to his mode of fighting and the type of armour he wore in the arena. He wasn't born a slave but served in the legions where he was condemmned to the arena for some unknown crime. He wasn't crucified for his crime because he was a Roman citizen and such punishment was forbidden for a citizen. All in all, it is quite likely that Spartacus was a Roman himself and it is clear that he had a great deal of experience in terms of Roman tactics. Quite likely he was a centurion or perhaps of even higher rank. At the time the Roman themselves speculated as to who he actually was. Their failure to recover his body is very suspicious since there were many left after the final battle who could have identified him and the Romans themselves thought that he may have slipped away before the end of the battle. Looked at closely and with less Hollywood hype, Spartacus emerges as a somewhat murky figure whose motives, actual identity and ultimate fate are far from clear.

Boy this claim sets my teeth on edge! All I can say is read the chapter "The Disappearance of Comfort" in Bryan Ward-Perkins' book, "The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization." The coin counts, pottery quality, tabulations of roof tiles, and livestock weights indicate a precipitous drop in quality of life with the arrival of the Germanic hordes in the Western empire and with the Slavs in the Balkans and Greece. Anybody here read Augustine??? The guy was falling over backwards to defend his religion from the widespread charge that Christianity weakened the empire and let it get overrun by illiterate, thieving, raping, baby-splitting barbarians. "Morphing" is the last word anyone would have used. Sorry about setting your teeth on edge, but I maintain my stance. All the things you mention are material things. Even today Western Law is based on Roman law, as is the judicial system, literature, poetry, politics. I was especially amused by one question put forward by another contributor - "Would democracy have been possible without Christianity?" I hate to say this but democracy was invented by the Greeks without any help from Christians, while the development of the religion during the Medieval period was a direct offshoot of the development of kingship. Compared to what came after Rome was a democratic paradise! The term morphing is certainly a better description of what happened in Britain than the alternatives. The evidence for the gradual collapse of the Roman infrastructure is quite clear. British historians have often been guilty in the past of over-dramatising events and seeing the invasion by the Anglo-Saxons as a clear-cut and dramatic event. Recent research clearly shows that the English were represented by a much smaller population than previously thought while the indigenous population has remained largely unchanged for ten thousand years. As for Augustine - methinks he doth protest too much! He saw everything in terms of his religion and gave it a significance out of all proportion to its real importance. I really don't see the Roman legions sitting around and philosophizing about the morality of warfare while their Empire was being overrun. The main problem seems to have lain in the Romans diluting their armies with barbarian auxiliaries and forgetting the tactics of close order drill. They probably had the same problem we have today with recruiting their own citizens. Most people today would prefer to stay at home and earn money rather than join the army! I include myself in this.

Absolutely right. Brutus was, in fact, not a military man at all and his only venture into that realm ended in disaster. He was regarded, even among his contemporaries, as a light weight who would have become merely a footnote in history if not for the assassination of Caesar. However, Caesar seemed to have little idea as to what he was going to do with Rome once he'd won his civil war. He seemed content to return it to Republican rule and was set on leaving as soon as possible to conquer Parthia. It was Octavian (Augustus) who finally killed off the Republic and established the Principate. By the way, if you want to read the best and I mean the very best novelliseed account of the end of the Republic look at Colleen McCullough's books the "Masters of Rome" series. There are six titles - "The First Man in Rome," "Fortunes Favourites," "The Grass Crown," "Caesar's Women," "Caesar," and "The October Horse." You will never find a better set of novels about ancient Rome I guarantee. The work is simply outstanding and uncovers things about the period that will leave you speechless.