Kosmo

They did not wanted to discuss Beck's claims, they wanted to refute what he said, so your balanced point of view was not very useful for them.

The article lists many major roman sites abandoned and/or closed!

The East coast of Africa with Axum and the ports further south described in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, in today Eritrea and Somalia were important for roman trade. Roman pottery was found on the island of Zanzibar, even further south. I found this on the net: Article: The Swahili and the Mediterranean worlds: pottery of the late Roman period from Zanzibar "Article from: Antiquity Article date:March 1, 1996 Author: Juma, Abdurahman M.Mortimer Wheeler famously tied together the worlds of ancient Rome and ancient India by finding Roman ceramics stratified into levels at Arikamedu, south India. Late Roman pottery from far down the East African coast new permits the same kind of matching link from the Mediterranean to a distant shore, this one in the Swahili world. Introduction The islands of Zanzibar are situated off the Tanzanian coast, south of Ras Hafun (Hafun on FIGURE 1). The pottery under discussion has been excavated from a site on the southern part of the main island of Zanzibar, called Unguja Ukuu, where a sandy harbour is located at one of the closest points to the mainland and is the best anchorage in the southern part of the island. Until well into the 20th century it has been a place for arrival from the mainland coastline. The archaeological deposits cover about 16 ha. In the deepest areas including a mound, the cultural deposits are nearly 3 m deep. According to present knowledge, this is the oldest site occupied on the islands. Alongside enormous quantities of material of East African provenance from systematic excavations that I directed, appreciable quantities of broken imported ceramics and other exotic articles are recovered. Some few exotic finds recovered from the earliest level are unusual on the east African coast; they include ceramics. Here, I would like to discuss only two types: Pots A and B from excavation Units L and J respectively [iLLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 2 & 3 OMITTED]. The units are about 100 m apart. Radiocarbon determinations on charcoal samples were obtained from other units (but not from these); they confirm the primary occupation of the site spanning from the late 5th century to about 1000 AD. In TABLE 1 below are shown the earliest determinations for the site (Stuiver & Becker 1986). The pots have been excavated from the lowest levels; their date is deduced by correlation with material from these other units supported by such determinations. Pot A (FIGURE 2) This dish-shaped pot is small with a wall about 0.4 cm thick. The clay is medium coarse-textured and fired to orange, but the pot has an un-oxidized grey core. Inclusions consist of small sandy grits. The flat base rises in a roughly triangular shape; it juts out slightly from its low flaring wall. On the underside it has a relatively broad groove, resting the vessel on a sagging floor. It measures about 0.6 cm thick and has a diameter of 14 cm. The rim is somewhat expansive with an outer edge slightly curving downward and gives a triangular impression. It is about 0.7 cm thick and 1.1 cm broad. The outermost diameter is 15 cm. The vessel height is about 2 cm with an internal depth of only 1.3 cm. The vessel is burnished with a matt red slip" For more you need to log in http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-18299485.html

Thank you. It was fun.

Both the roman flexible legion and parthian strategy (and cavalry) were answers to the hellenistic phalanx and not very good against each other.

Nobody can accuse the Americans of becoming more tolerant and rational thinking Anyway, if the comparison with the Americans is far fetched, the reality is that those fanatics look a lot like their Orthodox descendants I see everyday. The ortodox church (es) takes pride in the fact that it never had something like the Inquisition or engaged in large scale religious prosecution but that was because it was always subject to the political power to a much larger degree then in the West. The head of the church was the emperor and even today orthodox churches are to a large extent parts of the state administrative machinery. They were such even in communism when they pray for the atheist leadership. The orthodox are not tolerant by choice but because they usually did not had the power to show their true feelings, so they persecuted their enemies only when the political power allowed them to do so.

Nice! The worst part of the crisis was over by 500 AD but the recovery took 1.000 years.

These are valid arguments. Still Marcus could have done what Hadrian did for him when he was young, pick an old, experienced, childless co-emperor, like Antoninus Pius have been, to act like a quasi regent. If Commodus was as bad as the stories make him probably it would have not mattered and he would have shown his true colors anyway. But if he was just caught in a bad pattern of conspiracies and repression, like other emperors before him, an experienced co-emperor would have helped by both improving the quality of his administration in the early years and by deterring conspiracies like that of Augusta Lucilla, his sister. This first conspiracy occurred 2 years in his reign, before Commodus could be blamed of anything and suggests a high degree of unrest not necessarily correlated with the abilities of the emperor. I think a 2 emperor system could have worked because Commodus has never shown much interest in administration. The troubled reign of the first purple-born emperor is a very good evidence of how little romans cared about dynastic loyalty.

The romans did not have an officer corps because that, in modern sense, becomes the norm only during Napoleon's wars. In all societies commanders were political appointments and even now they still are (see the firing of gen. Stanley McChrystal, the satrap of Bactria, for the latest example) but the pool is restricted to career officers these days. A roman legion had only a handful of "officers" and they were not really important as Sylla proved when he marched on Rome without them. Only the absolute commander, the one that received imperium over a group of soldiers was important. The legions were faithful to Rome but less faithful to roman political leadership. That is not surprising because the romans never managed to recreate legitimacy for their government after Marius and Sylla. The civil wars were less about the Army marching against the Senate but more about one army marching against other army and this pattern continues until the "byzantine" end of Rome.

Is that certain? And if yes then why? The recent defeats were not on the scale of what a less populous Rome suffered in the Second Punic War. I believe that even widely exaggerated as they are they could not be believed to have altered Rome's demography enough to force a change of recruitment.

In history and even in our time violence against the civilians is a part of war. In WW2 not only nazis did that but the Western Allies carried terror bombing raids while the Red Army engaged in massive scale rapes, massacres and ethnic cleansing. Much closer to us is Srebrenica. The current conflict between jihadis and the West is maybe unique by the way the islamists see civilians as their main target and glorify the killing of unarmed non-combatants. My point is that violence against civilians is and was often employed as an official policy, but more then that it is something that armies, especially those with weaker discipline, will do even against orders. The looting and massacre of the inhabitants of a city taken by storm was not only a tradition that was employed on a large scale as late as the 30 Years War and the English Civil War, but was something that commanders had little chances of preventing. Things happened even if there was no battle and one example is the looting of Moscow by Napoleon's Grand Armee. What romans did was largely unexceptional. The only thing they stand out for was the custom, during the empire, of using POW's as gladiators or throwing them to the lions.

Now even Maureen Dowd mentions the book and Cleo: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinion/14dowd.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp

The reforms were not a necessity, but it is interesting to speculate why they were enacted after all. My opinion is that the small land owners that have been the backbone of the legions that conquered the world were not extinct but they were not interested in playing soldiers anymore and the aristocracy was happy to see them go. The farmers that have rallied against the invasions of Pyrhhus and Hannibal were hard to convince by primitive propaganda that they must defend Rome against the natives of Spain or North Africa. If patriotism fails then they must get paid for the job, but why pay a troublesome class when you can buy some poor people that will depend on this job and hopefully be more obedient? It was an excellent solution that made everyone happy: the elite hoped for an obedient army not one of citizens, the small land owners got away from military service and the poor got access to fabulous loots and military careers. The political effect of the reform was visible in a few years when Sylla marched on Rome and while the next century makes for a fascinating read the naked truth was that the power belonged to the army. Which faction of the elite got to use it against another, the name of the charismatic leader or what demagogic promises were made it's less important.

There are some bearded and smelly characters there and also some horny ones.

I liked how the forum, actually agora, of Alexandria was depicted in the movie Agora. The agora from Agora. I think it was realistic because it showed the space cluttered with statues and monuments and we know that cities often rewarded outstanding services from citizens with statues and also erected statues for kings/rulers/emperors. Also they displayed monumental decrees, edicts, charters etc Even taking in account destructions and recycling of monuments the result of centuries of accumulation would have been clutter in the forum/agora.

This is a shocker. That thing looks too pristine for a 2000 year old delicate piece of iron. Forks were supposed to have been invented in the High Middle Ages. Also that type of connection between metal pieces (I don't know it's english name) it's supposed to be more modern. Is this legit?

Unbelievable. The mismanagement and the absence of proper funding are constantly ruining the ancient monuments of Italy. With the crisis and at least 2 more years of Berlusconi things are not going to improve soon. If this happens in a wealthy country that takes pride in it's roman past while making money out of this monuments what can we expect for the future of antiquities in areas like the Middle East?

Iron was really expensive. Firecrackers would make a strong impression. Would have an impact: high heels, push-up bras, hair bleach and colorants, depilatory cream, make-up and the best thing, a true mirror. For soldiers along the Northern frontiers boots and modern materials like goretex and polar fleece would be handy in the cold season. For night guards cofee or Red Bull and for long marches and battles crystal meth.

Of course, but they had to bring somehow gladiators in the story. There was also some weird mention of slave killing but this type of articles have to many errors to bother pointing each one of them.

Razors for shaving, medicine and various drugs, alcohol, teflon pan, glasses. An ancient spaniard might like toothpaste

"The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled From the start Cleopatra

Nice! From the same source Romans made a big fuss about straight roads

"The great waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists reported Sunday, as did a third plague outbreak that struck less harmfully in the 19th century... ...The Black Death is the middle of three great waves of plague that have hit in historical times. The first appeared in the 6th century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, reaching his capital, Constantinople, on grain ships from Egypt. The Justinian plague, as historians call it, is thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe and to have eased the Arab takeover of Byzantine provinces in the Near East and Africa. The third great wave of plague began in China

Yes.