caldrail

Well - fighting between human beings isn't unusual. Its actually normal behaviour, although generally it rarely goes further than pushing and shoving. We do that for dominance, sexual rights, or simply because we're angry at someone. On a macro scale there are other factors. Cultural survival, monetary gain, leadership/ambition, etc. In roman times, to pick up a sword and fight was considered something manly, not something mundane perhaps, but definitely an activity that a fit and healthy roman male should not shrink from. The greeks were no different. Nor were most of the barbarians Rome encountered. That was how you did business back then. For that reason, combat isn't going to have such a long-lasting effect. Where Rome differed perhaps is the extent they trained their personnel. As dehumanised soldiers there is a parallel to the modern day, and we know from the historical record just how violent and cruel legionaries could be. Modern training does exactly this. By harsh regime and strict repitition, men are moulded to a desired behaviour against their normal human instinct. We're getting very sophisticated about this mental preparation these days, but not so good at sticking plasters on these men when the fighting is done. Especially since we prefer a less rambuctuous society where ordinary violence is met with juducial sentences. In roman times therefore, men who had served as soldiers might be troublesome and potentially violent, but that was expected even if the romans didn't really understand the consequences of these factors. Today we do, but putting humpty back together again is more difficult, especially with the modern media and its often sensational depiction of world events. Whereas a roman soldier served his general and did what was ordered, now a soldier can return home to find his peers seeing him as a war criminal for doing his duty. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I don't pretend to be an authority on teasing out the historicity of the Bible, which is why I relied on Fergus Millar's treatment of the text. Although I'm not a Christian and haven't a religious bone in my body, I don't think that ancient history is best served by ignoring unreliable sources. If that's how we practiced ancient history, we'd have to drop Livy, Suetonius, and all the rest. Yep, understand the point, but the problem I have with the bible is that it isn't a history book at all. Its a story. Based on real events certainly, but then so are many novels, romances, and hollywood epics. Its rather like basing your knowledge of Spartacus on Kirk Douglas.

Its difficult to say who was the worst because Rome endured for some time and enemies came and went in many cases. The gauls were undoubtedly people to be reckoned with around 390BC (they invaded Rome) yet Caesar with one legion and a few mediocre allies conquered them. The germans were fierce tribal warriors yet it was only the leadership of Arminius that got them such a victory over Rome. The Britons kept more than a fair share of roman legions busy keeping the peace in Britannia, yet even with Boudicca's lead a huge army of british tribesmen were crushed by outnumbered romans. Spartacus gave Rome brown trousers, but even with his able leadership he was unable to compete with roman reinforcements. Hannibal ran riot in Italy but without a secure supply line he too was unable to compete with roman reinforcements. Shapur led a powerful persian army and threw the romans out of Mesopotamia, yet the city state of Palmyra with fewer troops than Rome had available pushed him back more than once. Leadership is a vital consideration. A well led enemy is something more dreadful than a few badly behaved and chaotic barbarians. Circumstance too - are you able to marshal your resources to defeat an enemy, or must you allow him to cock a snook at you whilst you deal with another threat somewhere else? In order to answer that question, you have to decide on the basis of longevity of threat and behaviour of the enemy. Its mostly opnion I guess, but yes, I agree Rome was its own worst enemy. Carthage must be considered too, because they fought three wars to a bitter conclusion in a struggle for commercial and cultural dominance. The gauls had a moment of glory - they weren't as strong afterward. The germans too must be seen the same way. I wouldn't overlook the persians. They were probably even crueller than the roman empire to their own subjects.

Wayland is a saxon name. Also, one of the reasons for the saxon land grab (it wasn't a military invasion, I'll accept that) was that the coastal settlements in europe were being inundated by rising sea levels, a process not finished since the end of the ice ages.

Not to the extent that we see today. Certainly there were men who liked violence and those who found it instrinsically awful - or anywhere between, just as we see today. However, the human psyche responds better to situations where we fight en masse with an enemy in front of us. In modern warfare, the risk of death is different, and more present in the background. You might step on a mine. You might be in the area of an artillery strike. An aircraft can drop a laser guided bomb on you without warning. A sniper can take you down from over a mile away. A parked car might suddenly explode. A civilian gift of food might contain a nasty suprise. Your enemy is camouflaged, hidden, and waiting around every street corner. Combine that with the noise and damage that modern weapons cause, you have a combat enviroment far less 'enjoyable' and definitely more stressful. I think in some cases you may have seen men with too many memories of things, but then again, that was a violent time and death was commonplace. The romans watched men fight to the death for fun. They watched animals being slaughtered for the same entertainment. They also watched criminals subjected to horrific executions. Ok, that was happening to someone else, but then this sort of thing was accepted by the ancient world as an everyday event and it wasn't just the romans. Remember how horrified the romans were when they heard the tales of what happened to the men captured by the germans in the Varian Disaster?

Its just playing with a name, because there's no literary tradition that associates Arthur with bears. 'Straws' and 'clutching' come to mind.

As speculation it can give all sorts of answers. Personally, I don't think the roman empire stood any chance of surviving that length of time. What we find in human societies is that cultures 'grow old'. They lose the dynamism, become stagnant, overly ritualistic, and inward looking. Roime's success, aoart from their penchant for organisation, was their willingness to commit violence to succeed. Now, in a position of necessity or strength, this is desirable (sadly), but in times of peace a culture can easily go off the boil. Humans like a certain amount of stress and we respond to dangerous situations sometimes in a very positive way - nature has designed us like that - its a major part of our social animal psyche and one reason for our success as a species (Violence is another). Without these external needs to pull together and survive co-operatively, human societies drift into a selfish hedonistic patterns, which indeed is what happened in the roman empire. The culture loses its edge, its combativeness, and younger, more aggressive cultures realise that they can assert themselves over yours. Again, this is social animal behaviour translated into politics and war. The young lion senses the old pack leader is past it, and rather fancies having the harem for himself, thus the risk increasingly begins to look worth it. Sometimes the old lion is still a force to be reckoned with, but that young male will be back. Interesting point about the old star trek series. The romulans were intended to be a sort of romanesque offshoot of the vulcans although STNG rather diluted that idea in favour of the Cardassians. Also, there was an episode in ST that featured a modern roman empire that ruled an industrialised planet.

Right. In ancient times the stars were brighter. Seriously. Modern light and atmospheric pollution has reduced visibility. They were looking for significant stars, not countless specks invisible to the naked eye (and their eyesight was in all likeliehood better than ours). Watching the sun/moon/stars was important to these people. That was how they measured time. It was a seies of phenomenon that they could not explain by mundane means and therefore something special, especially since the seasons were in unison with these observed movements. Some henges did have wooden structures, as temples they had specific purposes. For instance, Stonehenge was a place of the dead, whereas Woodhange (not too far away) was a place of life. Religious rituals between these two sites must have been very important to the people who lived thereabuts. There has been some excavation outside the circle, and these are variously explained as offerings, although some look suspiciously like sacrifices. The fact that someone found buried with signs of violent death means very little, more depends on the circumstances of the find and what was buried with him. Thats basic archaeology. Also, if a defensive site, why on earth did they create it on low lying terrain, and not the ridge to east? Neolithic forts were almost invariably built on high ground specifically for defense. Unsophisticated the neoliths may have been , but they were no less intelligent than us and knew full well the advantages of a steep hill. If defensive, what purpose would a ring of standing stones serve? Pointless. Better to build a stout palisade which is precisely what we find at contemporary hillforts. There really isn't any reason to believe Stonehenge and Avebury were of any military value, apart from the status of occupying the site.

Are they related? The reason I ask is that Garum made it to India, where it got reinvented as Worcester Sauce by the british (and reimported!) Perhaps 'Garum' also spread eastward too?

Oh please. The Bible is propaganda. It whitewashes everything to portray the christians as the downtrodden Chosen. Whether John was any more accurate or not I can't say, but then I doubt you can. In any case, the early christians edited the content of the Bible so its not really a reliable source of history, regardless of christian sentiment.

Ah, slave.. Have this message sent to Palmyra. You know who must read it. Augustus is too keen to reward us. A few gauls? We outnumbered them nearly eight to one, what chance did they stand? Hardly deserving of a triumph. Perhaps Augustus means well, but I shall prepare for treachery nonetheless. As in business, in politics one must be ready... Go! And take the southern route, I don't want that message falling into the wrong hands...

Calm down Neph....

Ahem. now even I have to say this thesis isn't accurate. In my area are some ancient sites known to have been over-run by saxons. Wayland Smithy, a neothilic burial site, was regarded as a sacred site by the impressed saxon invaders marching down the Ridgeway, and the hill-fort at Barbury is so named because it was taken over by Bera, a saxon warlord. Further, just down the hill from that fort is a level plateau where a dark age battle took place between saxon invaders and romano-celtic defenders, who lost. The remains of this relatively minor set-to have been found. If you look at the map of wiltshire, there are plenty of saxon names given to sites, and we know the saxons were keen farmers as much as hated warriors. Well I would suggest Mr Pryor comes down to north wiltshire armed with an ordnance survey and read up on saxon place-names. He might see things differently.

To Augustus Caesar... The Legiones Augustus Magna remain ready to serve Rome and its Caesar. However, our victory was by overwhelming strength and therefore I have decided to decline your generous offer of a Triumph, and I shall not be upset if Macer chooses differently. The sheer gall of the man! After the expense I went to to raise those legions and now he wants me to give them up! Am I to help pay for celebratory games as well I wonder? Or is this a subtle hint to stand down?... Longinus? Augustus has called for him? Manlius, send for the tribunes. We must discuss what we should do... I fear the stakes are rising and we must be ready for treachery and subterfuge. Just in case you understand... Oh, and bring that Nephele into my tent. I want to persuade her who's side she's on...

Pliny the Younger tells us the romans weren't bothered by earth tremors - they occured often enough on a small scale to become an unwelcome but ordinary event. His recollections have been dismissed as nonsense pretty much up until the modern day, but he made a pretty good record of what happened. Its noticeable from the actions of his father that the effects of a volcanic eruption were simply not known, and therefore whilst there was some immediate hazard, the true scale of the peril wasn't understood. Pliny the Elder received an SOS from a woman named Rectina (she didn't survive), and although he sailed with a number of vessels to rescue her and those with her, he instead was forced to sail further south to Stabaiae where he stayed overnight in the villa of his friend, Pomponianus, where he was nearly trapped in his bedroom by the accumulation of volcanic refuse. Making his way to the beach that morning he overcome by the fumes. In a way he was lucky. Many victims were crushed as the roofs collapsed under the sheer weight of pumice, others were overwhelmed by pyroclastic flows. These violent clouds of hot ash and dust are not for the faint-hearted. The cloud will burn the skin, the lungs, which are also lacerated by tiny volcanic glass fragments, and the dust will form cement in the throat and suffocate the individual. Moving at up to two hundred miles an hour, the cloud can travel for some distance as the refugees at the boathouse in Stabaiae found to their cost as they waited for a boat to evacuate them.

So then, provincial law depends on who it concerns. If the judaeans take care of their own problem, then often a roman governor might not interfere - he wants an easy life and letting the locals carry on as much as possible isn't necessarily a bad thing since he's mostly there to keep the place peaceful and paying taxes. If the local problem impinges on roman interests then a stern hand is required. To what extent a roman governor might choose to intervene depends on his character as much as circumstance I would have said.

Provided the centurion has periodic contact with the individual, then no, it wouldn't take long to learn the names of eighty men. In peacetime this is easy. In war, when men are killed or invalided out frequently and replaced by new recruits or those transferred from other units (the romans did do that) then its difficult for a centurion to know everyones name. The centurion would indeed find it easier to learn someones name if he attracts attention to himself as Faustus suggested.

Gladiators fought barefoot for better grip on the sand, something confirmed by analysis of bones found at Ephesus known to be those of gladiators. Be careful, because most of those depictions have anklets, not footwear, which suggests to me that Britain wasn't the only area that anchored fighters in place, although this feature doesn't seem to be shown in such artwork of the imperial period (in Rome at least)

Much is said about elephants in warfare but these animals aren't really temperamentally suitable. They panic easily for one thing. I would guess the superiority of indian elephants was down to temperament (indian elephants are known to be more compliant) and possibly size (although modern african elephants are bigger, there was a smaller species in north africa now rendered extinct). A lot depends on circumstance and he tactics involved. Elephants are never a sure thing. I wasn't aware of these battles at thermopylae but not suprised. In a mountainous area a defile is bound to become a strategic path. The fact the romans won does suggest their superior team training was an advantage, but this was before the professional army, so in this case the romans were a levied army in exactly the same way as the spartans. What we don't know however is the relative quality of the persian arm,ies involved in these battles.

Interesting. The frieze depicts gladiators with very basic gear, not the highly stylised classes that we're accustomed to. As expected, I see men fighting in bare feet.. but do my eyes deceive me? Is picture no 4 showing footwear? Thats unusual, and possibly an error by the artist. On other images, I can see something around the ankles of these men suggesting a means of either keeping them captive or perhaps keeping in place, since we know from finds at amphitheaters that stone blocks with iron rings were used as anchors to keep gladiators in the center of the arena. The helmets used by these men seem to have a similar construction, but with a wider bowl, to legionary types, and the gladius is a military pattern. This means the up close and personal gladiator shortsword either isn't in general use at that time, or again the artist has erred. one man is obviously wearing greaves on his legs, and the shields depicted varies from image to image. Anything from a round greek style shield to a rectangular curved legionary scutum. One man is shown raising a finger in defeat (looking remarkably like an insult to our modern eyes!) whilst a trumpet player sounds the move and brings the mans despair to the attention of audience and referee. Marvellous stuff.

Definitely Clemens. The eyebrows are too close together...

I too live in a region affected by the ice ages. In fact, ten thousand years ago, there were ice cliffs towering over my home up to a mile high or more. Britain does have a complex geology. Chalk, clay, granite, basalt, sandstone, limestone etc. Where I live the victorians had to abandon a railway tunnel under the urbanised hill because of flooding and collapses as they encountered folds of different material. Now whether this affects burials I can't say, but then, burials aren't usually too deep.

yes, I understand the romans were big on spices (understandably), but did they bother where slaves were concerned? Household staff probably fed off kitchen scraps as much as regular meals so I guess they had an advantage. A slave who ran a food stall for a master had even more of an advantage. But the food doled out o slaves without these opportunities? Spices weren't always so cheap. Which begs another question. Was garum cheap to purchase. On the one hand it was very popular, on the other tons of the stuff crossed the mediterranean every day.

Well I had to didn't I? I saw barley on sale in Sainsbury's and with Jamie Oliver inspired enthusiasm, I attempted to recreate a gladiators meal. Probably didn't turn out quite like the real stuff, but I guess it wasn't too far removed from what these people ate. It was bland and almost tasteless. I remember a talking head on tv describing the meal as 'boring' - he was spot on - but it was filling and certainly not unpleasant. No, I haven't sprouted muscles overnight.... Has anyone else done things like this? I'm curious as to whether this sort of re-enactment goes on behind the scenes amongst us enthusiasts. There was a thread a little while ago where someone was doing a school project on this sort of thing.

Also remember the phalanx is a great archery target - a big square mass of men mostly unprotected (No, rephrase that, exposed). Spartans with sword and shield are more flexible and find it easier to avoid arrows.