caldrail

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.

There were two kind of fighters who interacted with animals. Firstly, and higher status, was the venator, the animal hunter, who stalked and killed in the arena to celebrate religious rites and demonstrate power over nature. There were also Bestiarii, who not only had to fight animals as equals (thus the lower status), but were also employed to handle them as well. One man was said to have killed a bear by pushing his arm down its throat and suffocating it. Needless to say, this sort of mano-a-mano combat with animals was risky and difficult. 'Doomed criminals' did not generally fight the animals - mostly they were tied to a post and the animal allowed to do whatever. There is one account of a man being attacked by a bear in this fashion, tied to a post on wheels, who was described as no longer being shaped as a man after disfigurement by the bear. There was also an account of a lady of poor repute who was sealed up in a wooden cow, hauled into the arena for a rampant bull to have its way, much to the crowds amusement. Were animals badly treated? Well, yes and no. Firstly the animals were generally imported from distant areas and very expoensive to get hold of. Specialists gathered animals for the arena inlcuding soldiers (there was a legion in Germany that boasted of its bear hunters). The actual death toll of animals en route isn't known but bear in mind that animals were subject to stress and confinement, and there was one case where Augustus was going to show crocodiles to the public but they died before the event. Around Rome there was at least one 'zoo' for holding animals before events. I don't know if the public could wander around - I suspect they could - but provincial towns seem to lack those kind of facilities, and given the distances, provincials would have had much less animals on view than Capua or Rome. The other side to the argument is that the games editor expected animals to perform. Even dangerous carnivores were often frightened witless by the experience of being put into the arena and there's one account of lions retreating back to the gates in fear, whereupon the outraged and embarrased editor had the trainer executed. Some beasts were tasked to perform circus tricks (an elephant was made to walk a tightrope though I don't know if that was a success), others were rated as character fighters in their own right, but most were pretty well doomed. There has been speculation of what happened to the carcasses. current opinion favours meat handouts to the poor though what happened to the bones as you point out remains an interesting anomaly - there were however some large charnel pits around Rome, so some definitely ended up buried. The number of animals slaughtered could be extreme - Trajan was said to have had 11,000 beasts killed during 120 days of games to celebrate the campaign against Dacia (and almost as many men died in fighting too, a handy way of dealing with prisoners of war).

It probably isn't. I certainly haven't heard of this before and it doesn't sound right to me. There were however 'tax farmers' who bidded for the right to collect tax in a set area, who effectively lent money to the Roman state and got their money back (and with some profit I imagine) via tax collection.

Roman towns were more often than not based on native settlements in provincial areas, simply because that was already an established civic centre and thus government was easier. In some cases the town was thorughly redeveloped into the typical planned layout we expect, but in other caes, such as the failed romano-british town Venta Icenum, a mix of Roman and native archeitecture went hand in hand. Such settlemnts are known to have exosted in the occupied areas north of the Rhine prior to the Roman withdrawal after the VArian Disaster in ad9. Having said that, I cannot think of any purely germanic settlement that had developed to any appreciable size, nor was germanic culture condicuve to such civic development before Roman influence inspired them. The German tribes were not very united or conformal in that period - their culture being one of individual voice and pride - and it's hard to see how the Germans were going to expand beyond villages without some form of overall government and infrastructure to encourage larger urban development, especially in a region that Tactius had described as "Fearful forest and stinking swamp".

Is that picture deliberately reversed? If not, and that is actually how it looks, then it serves an additional function of leaving an imprint on wax. The eagle was a standard form of symbol after the Marian Reforms in the Late Republic and as far as I can see, this does not actually represent a particular legion, rather it seems to be a symbol of imperial authority. Who used this is anyone's guess other than they had some authority. Whether it's genuine I cannot answer. As it happens, it does look rather well defined and in good condition for the period in question. I wouldn't part money for this unless you get expert appraisals and good provenance.

Christianity was never united, but there were strong tendencies. Since Theodosius had ruled against Arianisnm and that it had once again become a heresy, it's influence in high places - whatever the beliefs of the individual - was reduced severely if not eliminated. After all, one needed only to point at someones heresy to blacken their name, a common practice in Roman times generally where public image was everything. Nonetheless, it's as well to notice that after Odoacer pushed poor Romulus into retirement at the tender age of 15 and had himself crowned king of Rome, the germanic elite were generally more arian than not. However, subsesequent history does rather show a very strong domination by early catholicism. irish christianity, with it's hard edged austerity, was pushed well back on its heels as the Roman church assumed something of the empires inheritance right under the noses of their social betters.

It's not a question of appearances - he is denigrating Arianism, which had been declared a heresy since the Council of Nicaea (apart from a short period during which the Gothic Revolt took place, in the reign of Valens, known to have been an Arian. Theodosius effectively ended any arian sympathy among the upper classes of Roman society although their churches endured for a lot longer, leaving the Roman world with two seperate religious hierarchies. Please note examples such as the Church of St Agatha of Rome, originally an arian temple and associated with the Goths. The Germanic leaders in the post Roman world were arian whilst their subjects more or less nicene. Such religious competition was not unusual in that era - witness the tussle between Nicene Christianity and Mithraism, both of whom claimed the other was copying them. it is noticeable that the death of Valens, taken by loyal men to refuge in a house and then burned alive surrounded by Goths unaware of his presence, is not unique to any single account and indeed, as far as I can see, is a byword for divine retribution for his arian folly. And in any case, Valens was not responsible for spreading Arianism to the Germans even though he encouraged it - one of his predecessors, Constantius II, was also Arian and had actively sought conversion of the Germanic peoples to his religion, largely successfully. The evangelist Arian, Ulfila, often quoted as the major missionary in the conversion of Goths to Arianism, is a tale supported both by Nicene and Arian literature of the early medieval period, the only difference being that the Catholics claimed was was not an Arian until later in life. I see no real evidence to support your assertion of mistaken religious creed.

Valens army was not destroyed. True, it suffered an enormous casualty rate during the afternoon of prolongued fighting and the subsequent escape in darkness (some caused by fighting each other in confusion) amounting to an estimated two thirds of their number. It is of course questionable how united Valens force was to begin with. Their leadership was squabbling over policy and status, and clearly the shambolic arrival of Roman troops at the battlefield left something to be desired, never mind that the battle itself started as a kneejerk reaction and not by order of Valens, who was busy organising swaps of hostages and negotiations to bring the rebel Goths into line without bloodshed, though it also has to be admitted Valens was being a bit haughty and at one stage refused to speak to the Gothic representatives because they weren't noble enough. It may have been that he wanted to speak to Fritigern personally, who he already knew. The defeat at Adrianople was due, basically, to Roman ineptitude and a gothic tactic of playing for time to ensure their cavalry had returned from a foraging expedition, which was why Roman spies thought the Goths had far less numbers (they weren't all at the camp at the time). The weather was well hot, the Romans had marched for eight miles at midday to get there, and the Goths had added to their discomfort by starting fires where smoke would drift into them. As for Arianism, it's well known that the Goths had adopted Arianism and would remain arians afterward, supporting a rival church. Valens was arian and insisted that the Goths remained so as part of the conditions of their settlement in Thrace. The Goths had converted to arian christianity for some time before the events leading to Adrianople. And since at that time the Emperor Valens, who was infected with the Arian perfidy, had closed all the churches of our party, he sent as preachers to them those who favored his sect. They came and straightway filled a rude and ignorant people with the poison of their heresy. Thus the Emperor Valens made the Visigoths Arians rather than Christians Res gaetica (Jordanes)

The Goths had converted to Arianism previously as part of the peace deal offered by valens in the war that had already taken place. Assimilation? There was never any attempt to assimilate the Goths, even those officially allowed to cross the Danube (a second group of the same order of size saw what was going on and decided to cross the river too, without permission, thus in all fairness, despite the Roman governors attitude toward those requesting assistance they were in fact faced with a far larger refugee crisis than Valens had authorised). What those two villains did was create a situation where the refugees were forced into slavery and so the problem went away with everyone else making a tidy profit out of it. Had the attitude of the Roman province been more benign, these Goths were allowed to settle. That did not require they became somehow 'Roman', only that they obeyed Roman law as well as their own and paid taxes. The only stipulation had already been met - that they converted to Arianism. However, what is clear that Fritigerns people, amnd quite possibly those of his rivals in Roman territory, had every intention of settling peacefully. It must have have been abubndantly clear to them having lost a war already that the Romans would not tolerate bolshiness or rebellion - but that was the path they were eventually forced down. And far from not assimilating, it ought to be remembered that Gotjhic culture was for a while quite fashionable in the Roman world - Gratian had been criticised for wearing a gothic cloak as a fashion statement. The Huns were of course the danger of the time, aggressors whose lightning fast raids were terrifying to those who thought they would be next. Sebastianus' predecessor in command, Trajanus, had already built a wall across the border somewhere to fend off their potential raiding. It was the both the pressure from the Huns, and the internal competition within the Gothic tribes, that had forced them to consider appealing to Valens for help. As for the Sassanids, they would continue to question the arid no-mans land between them and Roman territory. Neither would fully defeat the other. Two different cultures that basically did not get along too well.

People drifted toward the empiure, aggressively, speculatively, or desperately, because of the perception that the empire was wealthy, which is more or less the same as today, albeit that aggression cannot compete with Europes military strength aside from terrorism. The classic example in antiquity was the arrival of the Goths. Fritigern, who had already made a peace treaty with Valens, asked the Roman emperor for permission to cross the Danube and settle in Roman territory. Valens allowed this, but the governors of Thrace, where the refugees were crossing the river, were not best pleased at having to support a migrant ppulation. So Lupicinius and Maximus encouraged the most shameful exploitation of the Goths. When the barbarians who had been conducted across the river were in great distress from want of provisions, those detested generals conceived the idea of a most disgraceful traffic: and having collected hounds from all quarters with the most insatiable rapacity, they exchanged them for an equal number of slaves, among whom were several sons of men of noble birth. Ammianus Marcellinus Soon famine and want came upon them, as often happens to a people not yet well settled in a country. Their princes and the leaders who ruled them in place of kings, that is Fritigern, Alatheus and Safrac, began to lament the plight of their army and begged Lupicinus and Maximus, the Roman commanders, to open a market. But to what will not the "cursed lust for gold" compel men to assent? The generals, swayed by avarice, sold them at a high price not only the flesh of sheep and oxen, but even the carcasses of dogs and unclean animals, so that a slave would be bartered for a loaf of bread or ten pounds of meat. When their goods and chattels failed, the greedy trader demanded their sons in return for the necessities of life. And the parents consented even to this, in order to provide for the safety of their children, arguing that it was better to lose liberty than life; and indeed it is better that one be sold, if he will be mercifully fed, than that he should be kept free only to die. Jordanes Not content with this activity, the two Roman governors perceived there might be trouble ahead and so hatched a plot... Now it came to pass in that troubIous time that Lupicinus, the Roman general, invited Fritigern, a chieftain of the Goths, to a feast and, as the event revealed, devised a plot against him. But Fritigern, thinking no evil, came to the feast with a few followers. While he was dining in the praetorium he heard the dying cries of his ill-fated men, for, by order of the general, the soldiers were slaying his companions who were shut up in another part of the house. The loud cries of the dying fell upon ears already suspicious, and Fritigern at once perceived the treacherous trick. He drew his sword and with great courage dashed quickly from the banqueting-hall, rescued his men from their threatening doom and incited them to slay the Romans. Thus these valiant men gained the chance they had longed for--to be free to die in battle rather than to perish of hunger--and immediately took arms to kill the generals Lupicinus and Maximus. Jordanes And so a refugee crisis became a full blown rebellion against Rome.

I don't think the Romans would have been puzzled at all. The Rioman Empire was never fully united since it depended on political loyalty in the provinces which was often lacking, and we see plenty of occaisions when provincial garrisons turned toward Rome to start a civil war or coup detat. The problem here is that most people see the empire as some sort of monolithic state that effectively assimilated provinces and made them in some way fully Roman. That was not the case. Provinces may have been technically loyal to Rome, adopted many latin features, and paid their taxes, but they were effectively self governing regions whose governor, sent by the Roman government, did not ordinarily interfere in (though several made good use of the posting to squeeze the province for cash). Provinces were hybrid societies, so for instance we do not see British Romans, but Romano-Britons. The latin culture lived alongside its native neighbours throughout the occupation. Migrant populations were nothing unusual in ancient times either. That was why the Romans built walls in various places around the empire, to obstruct the passage of horsemen and extract tolls from entrants.

That some men avoided recruitment is not unusual - that happens in every society, and although the Romans were often militaristic and belligerent, the prosperity and easy lives offered by military success meant that many no longer had the immediate need to sign their lives for twenty five years (and in imperial times, it wasn't unusual to serve longer).. What is noticeable is that risk had little to do with it. When a Roman male of free birth got into financial trouble, he was more likely to cut a deal with a lanista and spend a few dangerous years in the arena than spend quarter of a century, or roughly two thirds of his expected adult life, as a lowly soldier who might never see combat and would ordinarily receive regular pay and benefits. The possibility of getting rich quick was seen as far beter than long term investment. That is probably very romanesque in general. That said, it wasn't just financial. We tend to forget these men had families and occupations to take care of, which in many cases must have seemed more important to them than service for a cause the individual probably had no interest in. Therefore when the gentleman punished by Augustus cut off his sons thumbs so he could not wield a sword, he was trying to ensure his estate would pass on and be taken care of. Incidentially Augustus also asked Tiberius at one point to look into how many men were hiding in rural slave barracks to avoid service. Clearly this was a known problem and fairly widespread enough to reach the top level of government.

Vandalism of cultural heritage is nothing new. The library of Alexandria for instance, and I understand another important library got burned at one point. Or the looters at large in the world today. On one recent television documentary, researchers followed satellite data to an almost unknown border fortification/wall in North Africa. The whole site was pockmarked by speculative digs, including some by JCB machinery.

What strikes me about this sort of thing is how much regional variation in gladiatorial combat there was. The 'official' standards may have been set in Rome or Capua, but archeology in places like Ephesus has shown how classes and matches varied. I understand that in Britain there was a variation for a while where defeated fighters were beheaded. Haven't seen that sort of thing elsewhere, and the archaeologists concerned linked it to possible slaves brought in from the Balkans, which means the behaviour isn't foisted upon fighters but was allowed as part of their ethnic heritage. It's suprising how much of this sort of cosmopolitan accretion occurred - which as I've often argued - means that 'Romanisation' was not as all encompassing as usually assumed.

The reality of archeological remains is that at some point they will vanish forever. Now I agree that deliberate vandalism is not acceptable, but that's the trouble with zealotry - it does not stop to consider alternative values and your reaction is in fact merely going to encourage them, because they act like bullies. Once they realise this vandalism hurts you, they do it all the more. But I agree they shouldn't do it and need to be stop. So if a bomb or two drops on them, I won't shed any tears for their ignorant creed.