caldrail

The late empire soldiers were once again forced to supply their own gear. Numbers of men under arms had occaisionally risen to huge numbers - the worst case being during Diocletians Tetrarchy when paranoia between the four leaders resulted in an arms race. That meant raditional means of supply no longer worked. Strictly speaking a Roman soldier had always been responsible for equipping himself - it was just that the Late Republic/Principate underwrote the costs and made the soldiers suffer stoppages in the pay to fund the equipment. Much of what the legion needed had been made by their own artisans in the major fort's workshops ort by local workers under contract when demand exceeded supply. Later, this system failed. Attempts were made to introduce a central supply system with larger scale 'factories' making stuff, but again, this did not work well. Bear in mind that the funding of military equipment was often made by the noble/politician put in charge if the local supply couldn't meet demand, but with money being far less available in the late empire (ironically the increase in coinage shows how little value late empire money had) that sort of sponsorship was less prevalent. Also the idea of booty from war used to fund military activity was less available too. Further, troops were often unpaid in later times thuis could not afford equipment anyway, so simply made do. basically then Vegetius is right. Many troops were badly under-equipped in the late empire. But before we settle on a financial answer - it also has to be said that Roman strategy and tactics were changing. The old form of heavy infantry dominance was no longer working effectively when battles were gnerally smaller, forces more mobile and less confrontational, and so the Romans had begun relying more on 'low level warfare' as Dr Goldsworthy puts it, such as ambushes and raids. The Romans were actually quite good at it, which was just as well, because the skills of fighting large set piece battles had largely been lost.

Basically because he wasn't seen as warped at the time, spomnsored civic improvement, and made sure he got the credit. basically it was politics, just like today.

I'm getting fed up of being labelled. Categorised. And mostly in some derogatory fashion. So I've decided to issue a public statement. Am I gay? No. Absolutely not. Never was, never will be. If two blokes want to go off together and do whatever two blokes do to each other, fine, get on with it - Just don't bother me with it. I know quite a few people will have heard otherwise and find that hard to believe - some will refuse to believe it because it makes them look like fools or bigots - but that's the way it is. All my sexual partners were female. I'm single due to circumstance, not preferences. Am I a Conshy? No. Absolutely not. Never was, never will be. For the uninitiated a 'Conshy' is slang for "Concientious Objector", or someone who refuses military service out of some moral, political, or religious objection. I would point out that I tried to join the RAF twice in my younger days. The first time I was turned away because "There are no vacancies". The second time I was told I couldn't hear properly. It is true that my rejection eventually came as a relief. My teenage urge to serve my country had wilted with experience of the Air Training Corps and an increasing desire to forge my own path rather than follw my fathers footsteps. As it happened, by my twenties I wanted to be a musician, a path I followed for many years. But despite these meanderings through life, I have had no issues with military service from any concientious grounds. Am I Trying To Live On Benefits? No. Absolutely not. Never was and never will be. Truth is, I've been told in a letter from more than a year ago that I'm no longer eligible. So I couldn't even if I wanted to. As it happens, I like my creature comforts and that requires I pay for them, thus I want a profitable living even if no-one particularly wants to provide me with one. A shame really, because I come well qualified, capable, reliable, adaptable, and put up with no end of personal discomfort to turn up on time every day I'm required to earn my keep. Finally.... There you go. My statement is complete. I'll swear to these facts in a court of law or on anything sacred because they're true. I know they are. No-one can take that away from me, however hard they try.

Late imperial activity in Germania was often quite scurrilous (the legions were as bad as German raiders) and bear in mind that at that time soldiering was not a profession partuilcularly liked, valued, or supported. Troops were often unpaid and had to make do with part time civilian jobs (hence the banditry). Political coherence was beginning to fragment and settlements were often making their own deals and contracts for security rather than depend on badly led, poorly paid, reluctant imperial legions. Worse, the German tribes were co-operating more now that Roman foreign policy of divide and rule was failing and just as aggressive as they had always been. Your possibilities are quite open. Troops pay chests, booty, tribal treasures. If your characters are taking something to Egypt however, it does make sense that the object originated from there - a useful plot device?

Caesar had an eye for the ladies but remember he was also a man of some status - not only from a good family, he reportedly claimed ancestory from the Gods, and having consorted with the Queen of Egypt (and the King of another state if rumours were true), clearly he was a man who liked to be seen with celebrities. Whether Caesar indulged in the Roman male habit of having sex with slaves (they were property - he had every right) isn't known. Whilst his dalliances are part of Roman legend he was also a very motivated and busy man. It certasinly isn't impossible that a woman could attract a Caesar (Sulla had been bewitched by a lady at the games) and the exploits of the later Caesars demonstrates that virile pursuits were a perk they tended to enjoy to the max. I would point out that Caesar was a very ambitious man, one who had political domination as his goal from the very start, and also a man who was not shy of ordering death and injury should it suit his puroposes. For instance, during the Gallic War he had Gaul prisoners released with their right hand chopped off - a clear startement and propaganda device - and had Cleopatra's younger sister Assinoe - who had tried to grab power and failed - publicly humiliated with a view to ritual killing later to please his important paramour. Caesar cancelled the execution when the crowd sympathised with the poor girl. So - how would a girl turn Caesars head? Firstly, she is going to have be somewhere where she will get noticed. Then she must find a means of getting noticed. If she's really serious about this, she may well want something else to tempt Caesar besides good looks and skimpy clothes. What can she offer politically? Militarily? Financially? In terms of social status? Ambitious girls are better at these sort of machinations than me but I think you get the picture.

Yes. The Crimea, or Taurica as it was known, was added to the province of Lower Moesia after Nero set a military expedition loose in that area, though his death brought the campaign to a halt.

The problem with the article is that it stresses the subject title, Roman Crimea. As Primus Pilus pointed out previously the area was never under secure occupation and represents a marginal frontier region. The article rather gives the impression of something more permanent (as articles often tend to favour pro-Roman arguments). I can't see anything actually wwrong with the information - just don't get carried away with assumptions.

For the average joe, I wouldn't imagine huge differences at all. The enviroment is squalid, cramped, expensive. In Rome, tenements house families packed into rooms. The lower floors are noisy and vulnerable to crime. The attic freezes you in winter and boils you in summer. There's no financial support for the poor either - none of modern social provisions, although they did have a corn dole if you had a permanent address. But then, the supply of cirn was variable according to circumstance. Augustus was obliged during one shortage to exile "useless mouths" from Rome. Claudius got pelted with stale crusts from an angry crowd. Water supply is an interesting issue. It seems local initiatives sometimes did supply cleaner water via aquaducts direct to homes in places like Herculaneum. In Rome, with much denser population and high rise apartments (the highest was nine floors - most averaged five to seven) the supply of water meant a walk to the local fountain and back again, upstairs, with a heavy load of water. I'm not hugely convinced the supply was entirely clean, certainly not by standards, but most likely better than typical towns that relied on wells or nearby rivers. Water from natural watercourses was used by human and animal alike for all sorts of things and if you were downstream of a settlement, the water was unlikely to be as healthy. With poor urban drainage and stagnant water malaria was rife in Rome as the imperial period progressed. In short, despite changes in culture and facilities, conditions between imperial Rome and Reformation London resulted in pretty much the same life expectantcy.The Tiber did not achieve the same terrible reputation as a sewer in the way that the Thames did but there must have been similarities.

I do think a lot of romanophiles get carried away with this concept of romanization. The Romans never, at any stage, romanized any society, or at less not overtly. They most certainly persuaded native leaders in new provinces to go latin so that they could be plugged straight into the Roman political system along with tribal loyalties, but the people themselves? As long as provincials paid taxes and behaved themselves, the Romans simply let them carry on with their lives. It is true that urbanisation was encouraged under the Augustan Franchise and that presented a familiar latin mode to cities around the empire, but only at the higher stages of development were Roman modes dominant. Many minor settlements were the same as provincial societies - hybrids, with a mix of latin and native influence. After all, the Romans said themselves that it was Gaul who had "most closely emulated them", which does imply not everyone was so keen to do away with traditional ways of life. For that matter, there is plenty of archeological evidence to show the persistence of native culture right through the imperial period and beyond. Of course the findings are no suprise. Although the Romans thought highly of cleaniness, clearly their cities were not particularly clean. They did, after all, stress the importance of the cloaca maxima, Rome's famous sewer tunnel. We are talking of a people who washed their clothes using human urine as a bleach, or even used the same urine to wash their teeth. We know that the insulae, or tenement blocks, were infested with vermin as much as much harassed tenants. And the waste from those buildings? More often then not, thrown out of a window into the street. Thing is though - I find it odd that the Romans complain more about the noise of urban life than they do about the smell/

Hadrian was hardly humble. He had one architect punished for criticising a building plan drawn up by Hadrian himself, who considered himself talented in that direction.One does not grab power in the manner Hadrian did if humility was a primary characteristic.

It has to be said (although I've never been there) that Pompeii and nearby Herculanuem are the most fantastic time capsules. That's what I love about Roman history. With such literary and archeological resources, one can almost get to know them. That's history, in my view, not dates and events, but the actions and reactions of the people who lived in former times.

Perhaps. Sometimes it brings huge problems. One Hungarian or Romanian (I don't remember which) found a silver hoard in a quarry where he worked. He's dead now, murdered, and the hoard is locked away in London with a serious international legal wrangle over who actually has the right either to own or sell it.

I didn't know there was any doubt that the Vikings reached that area. Russia is named after their presence in what is now Ukraine and Crimea. The Varangian Guard of the Byzantines was essentially recruited from scandanavians. Of course this find is evidence of their presence, which I believe is a better context.

I saw a report on BBC News recently about how the western nations are going to have to set aside their usual taste for meat dinners and instead gorge themselves on insect protein, because the insects are cheaper and require far less land to produce in quantity. The problem is that the worlds population is growing. And that is why eating insects instead of meat isn't a solution to the problem of starvation - it's merely feeding the problem. You see, the natural limit of human population has always been around two billion. Whether it was war, disease, diet, natural disaster, or whatever, our global population never really challenged this number even when civilisation was invented. Unfortunately we're now getting better at avoiding death, so now the populations of the world are getting bigger, especially in those regions who had previously seen childbirth as a lottery where having more kids was an investment in the future. The thing is, if struggling populations are fed and cared for, they breed. That's simply how humans behave, just like almost every other species of life on the planet. All we're doing with these humanitarian initiatives to rid the world of hunger is creating a bigger problem in the future, when the system really cannot meet demands. But there's another problem. As in nature, if an enviroment cannot support the species, they die off. It's horrible and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but aren't we going to have to face that unpalatable choice sooner or later? Can the West allow a few to starve to prevent far more from starvation when the bubble bursts? It isn't an easy choice, although many will prefer to follow thewir social instincts and try to assist. But then, aren't we guilty of ignoring the future threat because we see a different problem in our own time? Politicians like to say they're building futures for us. They aren't. Maybe loading the dice for another generation, or more likely, lubricating their own careers and prosperity. But of course when this bubble bursts we'll probably all be dead and gone. So why should we care? Quote of the Week The President of the USA has said that the recent UN Global Warming deal is the 'best way to save the planet'. No, it isn't, because the planet isn't in any danger whatsoever. What is threatened is a change to the enviroment we don't like, can't cope with, or spoils our safe little vision of daily routine. Human beings have been extremely lucky since the last glaciation - our global climate has been quite stable for 8000 years. But now it's all going horribly wrong. The reason isn't industry - nature can pollute the enviroment far worse than human efforts - but our growing population. There are too many of us now and that's what is driving the scale of damage our species is doing to its own interests, though I agree a great many other species aren't particularly wel suited to the world we're creating. So now we're doing a deal to control the worst of it. As if. Since when has humanity ever been compleltely succesful at controlling the world around them? Truth is, the climate is going change no matter what these politicians agree to. So deal with it.

I might need to buy some more blood pressure pills....

Any serious study of Roman medical practices soon uncovers how ignorant they were. Far from being sophisticated and advanced, mostly they hadn't the slightest idea what caused an ailment nor what cured it. Prayers were often part of a prescritpion for crying out loud. I do agree they had become quite adept at healing wounds, but bear in mind this body of expertise was in the hands of a greek minority, not generally practised, and for that matter medicine was not free. If you couldn't pay, well that's just tough. The same concept is often part of glowing appraisals of the Roman Legion. The idea that wounded men were quickly pulled back behind the line and treated for emergency wounds is nonsense. If you wanted the medics to treat you, you had to survive shock and blood loss on the field, not to mention being trampled or injured further by whatever was going on. When the battle was finished, and assuming the Romans had won, then you might be lucky enough to be transported back to camp and recive assistance. That the cavalryman mentioned above received a false foot is interesting but not really beyond anyones technology, since the 'foot' was merely a means to remain visually a whole human being as much as an aid to disability. Remember that the Romans had adopted an attitude toward physical perfection not disimilar to the Greeks. Antonia for instance could not bring herself to love her son, the future Caesar Claudius, because of his physical imperfections. She described him as a man that nature hadn't finished. In any case, this cavalryman was lucky enough to receive the false foot. I doubt many of his comrades were so well equipped after disability.

Not so, merely that the Middle Ages did not question the life of constantine any further than his christian connection. For them, as I said, the reason for greatness had always been his support for their faith. Eseubius however was alive in late Roman times and wrote a pro-christian eulogy of the man, so I guess we have to forgive the Middle Ages for their folly, but then they always did adjust history to suit their own perspective, thus for instance Jesus is pierced with a lance rather than the pilus a legionary would be equipped with, and to compound the error, the besieged crusaders in Antioch during the First Crusade are told where to find the 'Holy Lance', the location received in a vision by one of their host. Ahem. The truth is that the ancient sources vary in their description of Constantine - the Medieval commentators chose which text they thought applicable to their message. That said, the ancient sources paint, among the various attitudes, a picture of a man who was not just concerned with religion. The Panegyrics for instance praise his victory over maxentius. It isn't that Constantine was suddenly considered 'Great' in later periods, it's that his reputation and legend was quietly censored to suit the mood of the time.

Interesting. I don't remember this particular tale and it does have parallels with Nero's interminable performances on stage where members of the audience pretended to die or have babies as an excuse to leave. I know that the Romans used the seeds for cooking rather than the vegetable itself. Martial says it relaxes the bowels. There's a mention of lettuce when Pliny moans in a letter about one of his friends who didn't turn up for a party. Nope. Can't seem to find this anecdote. I'll keep an eye out unless someone else spots it first.

Who knows? The ROmans. That's why they caled him 'The Great'. Such titles are rare and do not generally apply to conquerors. Even trajan, an old fashioned conqueror if ever there was, a well popular Caesar with the invasion of Dacia and free public games to celebrate lasting four months to his credit, was never called 'The Great'. What appears to matter is the relationship with the populace and the improvements in safety and prosperity. Augustus for instance may have been 'The Revered', but that title was somewhat a matter of spin and his initiatives to improve the Roman world were rather less to do with helping the public lead better lives than impressing them with his benificence. In other words, it was civic bribery on a grand scale, and a policy that evebntualy got him into trouble when he sent the greedy Varus to collect taxes from occupied Germania (which wasn't even a province at that time). Now I can accept that the monument to Constantine has something of a media/propaganda purpose. nero did the same, building a huge icon to himself. The difference here of course is that Nero's statue did not survive his downfall, and even his palace grounds were redeveloped. Of course there is always going to be an element of eulogising the successful in later generations (so that in the case of Churchill I mentioned earlier, his success in WW2 is everything whereas his failures in WW1 and peace time politics are largely ignored). This is an avenuie of study in itself. For instance, to name an obvious example, we have a dark age hero, who despite enormous amounts of research and speculation - even from me - may not have been a single real person but a hero invented to suit the sensibilities of a rather changeable and dangerous era which has since been enlarged by the - wait for it - the mindset of the middle ages. It's almost the equivalent of a contemporary action movie star. Imagine people looking back in a thousand years and believing that Arnie was busting through the caves of Afghanistan with awesome hi-tech weaponry, impervious to harm, bits of of his robotic body showing through the ragged exterior of his form. It's the same concept. Nonethless, the connection with christianity was not as important to the average Roman as it may seem now. Constantine had won the civil wars and needed something to weld it all back together again. He couldn't do that alone - the empire was too big and fragmented. So he employed a religion that had the advantage of social order as part of its remit. Pagan worship was no good - that was too personal and individualistic. You have only to read the sermons of late empire bishops to understand what they were trying to achieve (beyond getting powerful and wealthy of course). That was exactly what Constantine supported them for. His own leanings were less contientious. He was, technically, a pagan until his baptism shortly before he died, and even that was a mater of spiritual gambling (hoping that a last minurte conversion would stand him in good stead, just in case christianity really was correct and that a man would pay for his sins, of which Constantine was only too aware of his own). To expand on what I said earlier, when it came to the middle ages, for whom christianity was a powerful reality in their own minds, to look back and ask what made Constantine 'Great' was obvious. He had patronised christianity,. Job done. And that has coloured opinions ever since. His other aspects were largely ignored because they were not deemed relevant to the desired aura. Does this begin to sound familiar?

Actually I disagree. Being on the winning side will make popular or unpopular as a leader according to circumstance, and a simple victory rarely accords anyone such status - witness Winston Churchill losing the first election after the allied WW2 victory. No-one called him "The Great" and still don't. During his lifetime he deeply distrusted after his adventures in WW1 and failures as a politician afterward. Constantines legacy wasn't entirely christian -I've made that mistake before and so will others again. Remember that Constantine did not convert the empiire. He simply patronised that religion and adopted it only on his deathbed, and for that matter, his reasons for patronage had almost nothing to do with belief or behaviour (he was a very militaristic man, he had his wife and son executed for... suspicion of naughty things). It was almost entirely a politic ruse to find something that would glue together his crumbling empire, suffering from the downturn of the time and a civil war. It is entirely plausiable he could have chosen a different religion for that purpose, especially since Christianity was hardly united and even under his aegis would never quite manage unification, and was a religion that was not well liked by a large proportion of his citizens. He might well have taken another course entirely. Of course the christian cults responded to the opportunity. Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that the "roads were filled with galloping bishops", who had their own fortunes to build rather than act as a moral arm of government as Constantine intended. Mutual interest than than some magical emergence as christianity prefers to see it. Howver, in the wake of Diocletians Tetrarchy, which itself was not a successful system due to paranoia of the four leaders that one of them was going to be conquered by the others sooner or later, that had seen men under arms inflate in numbers to extraordinary and hugely expensive levels, that the eventual breakdown of order and ensuing civil war needed a victor to bring peace and stability. Constantine did that. There were other christian Caesars - but none were given a statue as large as the ruined one now visible in Istanbul. To the Roman world he was indeed a political and military giant. It's only later, from the opinions of the pious middle ages, that we see his christian patronage as the major event of his life.

I have reviewed a book about him not so long ago which stresses his military career. Personally I've always considered Constantine something of a con artist (what politician isn't?) but it does seem his association with christianity rather obscures many of his other achievements. Despite my misgivings, a leader is not called ;'The Great' for nothing.

What a difference a letter makes. There I was, jobsearching in a mad desperate attempt to keep the authorities happy, when everything went horribly wrong. They have quotas for finding dole cheats and unfortunately my number came up, even though I was exceeding their demands by an order of magnitude. So innocent or not - I was declared guitly by any pretext and the money stopped. Luckily for me an employment agency eventually found me ongoing work - though I have to say, for two months it looked pretty bleak for me. The Job Center had sent me a letter telling me that from the 2nd of November 2014 they could not pay me. No reason given, just that. I'd already realised that the money wasn't going to continue but by then I was trying to find someone who would look kindly upon poor wee Caldrail and give him a job before he ended up destitute. Just today I received a letter from the Job Center, more than a year later, explaining that I may not have been properly informed about my rights concerning the job center sanction and offering me a chance to appeal. Are they kidding? A year afterward? I wasn't even sanctioned officially. The advisor never said the word. She just stopped my money after I'd followed her demands under duress and then had her boss send me the original letter saying no more cash from now on. That was, therefore, the second time she had kept my claim open while I was thrown off the dole for her own purposes. I knew she was dishonest - I'd already told her that to her face. Now I have the proof. These days the unemployed get a poor rap but not all of us were dole cheats trying to eke out an easy living on benefits. Some of us genuinely couldn't get employers to show any interest at all. I am thoroughly disgusted at the shamefaced exploitation of unemployed people that goes on. I'm well aware that many jobseekers are only making excuses or making token efforts, but at the same time, I was used and thrown down the toilet. I wonder if that advisor got promoted for her unceasing efforts to fight for truth, justice, and the government way? At any rate, truth and justice is something that is now officially ddenied a great many people. Unemployed? Sorry, but that's a label that will get you nowhere in Cameron's Britain.

No suprise whatsoever. Despite the increasing predominance of christianity in Roman society paganosm remained an alternative for those seeking something different. This is normal in any society - even in the strictly christian victorian world there were still pagan sects in the background, however serious or silly - and pagan worship on Britain is known to have continued into the eighth century ad (there is a list of penances written down for worship of craven idols and other minor practises), and the persistence of druidism, ostensibly destroyed by the Romans at the Battle of Mona in the first century, is hard to explain unless druids continued into the middle ages, even if increasingly isolated and irrelevant. As it happens, Rome was quite a hotbed of religious experiment, importing syrian and egyptian cults in particular, some of which were persistent.

But the Romans weren't taxed on earnings directly, so that equation is based on false assumption. Therefore the tax burden was weighted toward getting a percentage from those who gathered profit and status. Claiming there was an average tax obligation is just playing with numbers and different results could be easily demonstrated. Also, citizens abroad were subject to some degree of greed at times. For instance, Varus, who had been a governor of Syria before Augustus sent him to tax the barbarians in occupied Germania, had left the province very much the poorer. So although Augustus set tax quotas for provinces, the old idea of 'tax farming' was still in use under a different guise, in this case provincial governors using their status and influence to collect taxes to satisfy their own books whilst a set amount of money was sent to Rome. Obviously some governors would be honest and fair, but lets be straight about this - Rome was an exploitative society and that fondness for greed was never far from their hearts. Indeed, late empire sermons point at the failings of Roman society.

I wouldn't get carried away with tales of Roman efficiency. They were capable of great feats of organisation but their whole society revolved around the concept of exploitation, which included loopholes in regulations or even what they could get away with. Their system of law was almost a collection of temporary regulation anyway, as time after time this or that was outlawed only to be carried on as normal a while later when everyone had forgotten the law existed. Actually I was incorrect anyway - Augustus had made private tax farming a thing of the past, and instead instituted a more stable tax system, with taxes applied to sales and estates, and with fixed quotas on provinces. However, nowhere have I seen any demand for the citizenry of Rome to serve two days labour a year for Augustus. That's a very medieval concept, it doesn't sound Roman, and given the average preference for individual liberty, I find it hard to believe that the citizenry would tolerate that sort of social obligation easily. If I find evidence of this I'll happily eat my words - but right now, I wouldn't accept this point.