Kosmo

I believed that when I wrote itt. Now I've checked and believe it no more. Sorry.

Worshiping the simbol of an ideea is, for me, by far the strangest thing romans did. Imagine to go and worship the statue of Disciplina Augusta!

Pirus made mixed units of phalanx and italic manipuli, but this is mentioned only about his wars with Rome, probably to use more efficient his local allies.

I have a map of Constantinopole/Istanbul as my desktop that shows another chain from the starting point of the Golden Horn chain to the Tower of Leander and then to Skudari (Chrisopolis) on the asian side. It sais "Barrier chain (1433)" I do not know anything about it. I think that these chains were very effective, other wise what was the point of draging a fleet over land if you can just break the chain?

The hellenistic kings had a very dionyisiac mind set. They were expected to be aggresive and extreme and if they did not go to war they could be thrown from power by the armies. If roman expansion was slow and carefull the kings wanted Alexander style conquest and ruled with absolute power until they lost their kingdoms. I think that are many similarities between imperial Rome and the Hellenistic kingdoms.

The knights of the fourth (1204) crusaide told the vlahs that they, thru Rome, have rights on the Balkans as trojans! The etruscans is very likely to have anatolian roots and this can give a historical base to the roman claims of trojan ancestry . I have no ideea about Elymians and I always belived that Eryx was a Phoenician/Carthaginian city.

Greatest advances were made by the use of zero and of + - = . * /

My favorite not so famous roman is Lucullus for his brilliant campaigns in Asia where he defeated all his opponents only to have his glory taken by that worthless Pompei Magnus. He crushed Mithridates VI Eupator and captured armenian capital of Tigranocerta puting an end to armenian ambitions and he was the first to fight and defeat the parthians. If emperors are not all famous my options will be Hadrian and Aurelian.

Yes, all had stone walls and, probably all, a wall defending the acroplis. A link (not great) about Histria that had several walls from arhaic period to late roman era. http://www.cimec.ro/Arheologie/web-histria...cetarea_eng.htm

Cavalry was an expensive weapon for which you need a lot of training from an early age. Difficult to get this in ancient times except for aristocracy. The shock power of cavalry was much less then later because of small horses and no sadlle/stirrup to take the shock. Romans had decent cavalry themseves, but the glory went always to the legions that were the simbol of roman power.

Dacia was a complex and advanced society with many cities, fortifications, a national religion and a good military. It had little cohesion if we apply the term to the entire Romania of today. Present day romanian historians refer to "daco-getic" civilisation because the name dacians was used by the romans for those in today Transilvania and the greek called getae for those in Moldova and Valahia. Moesians shared the same language with dacians and gets. All this tribes were united by Burebista who conquered all his neighbours including greeks and celts and controlled an area from Bratislava in Slovakia to Olbia North of Black Sea and to the Balkan mountains in the South. After his death the area north of Danube was split in 4 kindoms with distinct coinage only to be again unified by the time of Decebal. After roman conquest large areas inhabited by free dacians continued to exist until they became mixed with the goths during hunic invasion. The best known of the free dacians were the carpians from which the name Carpathian mountains came. They made several large raids in Dacia and Moesia from Moldova and they were quite romanized. Some of the free dacians settled in the province of Dacia after the aurelian withdrowal of army and administration. PS 1 Some romanian political groups, includin historians, try to make the dacians more then they were, so, carefully check the sources. PS2 there is a huge quantity of information from arheological finds. I don't know how much is published in English. PS3 Most say that bastarnae were german, but is little to prove this. Their modern fame is far larger then in ancient times. Nice to google their name to find several "articles" copy/pasted on lots of sites with the same huge errors.

I voted for infighting because this was the direct cause, but economic decline because of overspending for public works, army, plebeans and lavish ceremonies combined with a demografic decline, huge external trade deficit and little tehnological inovation was a great problem. Causes are connected. A new emperor with no money to start after a devastating civil war had to pay lots of money to the army, make donations and celebrations putting pressure on economy thru taxation and confiscations. Another factor was the reduced internal trade as various "innovations" spread thru the uniform empire from East to West and South to North. If wine was an important trade item for Gaul and Rhine regions coming from Italy thru Massalia and Narbonne after the roman conquest this areas became large producers themselfs exporting wine to other regions. Glass was produced in roman Dacia, so only high quality glass come from other areas. As a result of this uniformisation the regions became self sufficient and less money came from trade. Other factor is soil erossion in the vital meditteranean areas caused by deforestation and intensive agriculture. Sicilly entered a slow decline after the civil wars, while Greek agriculture was in a decline since the time of Alexander. Possibly a climate change influenced this.

From the northern people is sure that dacians had good siege abilities in the times of Caesar as they razed several greek colonies in western and northen Pontus/Black Sea (Histria, Olbia and another one?) and controlled the rest when they were ruled by Burebista. I believe that dacians were the most advanced of "barbarians" because they recevied influence from greeks, south tracians, celts and scyths and later from the romans. Several campaigns in the area by macedonians gave them modern tactics knowledge. This added to ample natural resources made them quite good warriors. I don't believe that gauls had, at any time, siege weapons and tactics.

The deadliest enemy of the romans were the romans. The Danube border was the most dangerous region of the empire where more legions were based then in any other area and hardest battles fought many of them lost. Dacic/getic invasions of Moesia and the long wars with the marcomans and scyths/sarmats and countless others combined with harsh weather and poor areas made this the dangerous spot where first the goths and later the huns will strike.

I have to disagree with you. Racism is an atitude of prejudice against another race. A race is a grup with distinct phisical features. If you say that northern europeans and mediterranean are distinct races you see something that ancient romans did not see. Roman women were makings their hair blond and lots of historical figures are described as blondes. They liked very much whow northern europeans looked and they were not very different from them as indo-europeans.

Venetia was a part of the Roman Empire that remained in the hands of the romans even after most northern Italy fell to the longobards. The title of duce/doge was usual in byzantine Italia and all Italian cities had a large autonomy. In the begining both had a close mutual beneficial relation as Venetia was supporting the emperors against arabs and normans in South Italy and had benefits in trade and in Dalmatia. Milan was an important city in late roman period and it was for some short time the capital of the West before Ravvena.

All antique writers are falcifiers. They write things as they see fit. A lot of the history books are made to glorify someone and others books to villify someone. Which book of Procopius of Caesareea should one belive? When Justinian looks like a saint or when it looks like puppet? If Caesar says that he killed one million gauls, and captured one million we should believe him? Or, should we believe Herodot description of Babylon with a wall 27 meters thick and 40 meters high, but no Garden of Semiramis when we know the size of that wall from archeology? We should always be careful about what they say like we are with today tabloids.

I did not say that a state could have a maximum of soldiers, but there is a natural limit to the size of a field army. At Philipi were 2 roman armies. So, if the "army that drank rivers dry" it's estimated to be 10 times smaller, we can think that the army of the cimbri was much smaller. And we don't have receipts of their pay checks either. We have better info about romans and greek then about the barbarians.

It is possible! I'm no specialist and I don't care much about this but... http://www.users.drew.edu/ddoughty/Christi...ns/tacitus.html http://www.users.drew.edu/ddoughty/Christi...ns/tacnero.html I don't say that Nero was a good guy, but he was villified by many.

It is true the legions did not disappear in the third century, but were small (about 1000 men) units relegated to garrison duty. The backbone will be from now on the elite cavalry units. There is no mention of legions after the middle of the 5 century.

Not even this persecution of christians is certain as the fragments about this seem to be christian era fakes.

It's based on the biggest roman army that is well documented, that of Cannae. They used more soldiers sometimes, like Traian in Dacia and Mesopotamia, but in separated columns like Napoleon did. A nice example of the problem of the number of soldiers is here: http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/warso/...4.htm#Heading14 Better related to the topic, but lower quality http://www.gaugamela.com 8 Army

Is worth to mention the fact that many of the dacic fortifications are very well studied by romanian arheologists but you can find very little about that on the internet. This fortifications are really impressive and they played an important role in this war.

The legions dissapered sometime in the late third century. In late empire the romans had a garrison force, largely infantry, on the limes and a strike force of cavalry in key positions behind them. Roman army always had a lot of mercenaries like the gauls used by Caesar and Crassus or the numids used by Traian in Dacia. In the late emire had less to choose from as germans were on most borders. They were not barbarians and knew the empire well.

All this numbers are, of course, unreal. We should remember that history was not a science, but an art. Look at the persian army that invaded Greece with 1.200.000 soldiers! that's more then Germany had in 1940 campaign. How was a 200.000 men army supplied? How it moved with almost no roads? How many people made the nation/tribe/state that could muster this force? How big area had to control to feed so many people with low yeld agriculture. 80.000 is the biggest army that we have some proof about and I think that most large armies were around 30-40.000 men.