caldrail

They want you to be offended along with everyone else. it's a gesture of rejection of western values and rather like a diluted version of Pol Pots attempt at creating a brave new world, is one of a series of actions aimed at wiping off the old world order and establioshing the dominance of this islamic creed. I do agree, the act was little short of criminal, but then ISIS isn't going to stop doing things like this. The thugs they use as leaders among them aren't interested in cultural values except their own, and will continue to employ force to swagger around feeling powerful. It's a very insidious creed as well. On one occaision last year one moslem youth harangued me in a supermarket carpark to the effect that he, Abdullah, will do this or that and rivers of blood etc etc. That was technically a punishable offence (Threatening behaviour at the very least) but usually this sort of polemic has no tabgible threat. The young man is merely sounding off to boost his ego and social status as young men do, the real risk being that he connects with those minorities who are more manipulative or equipped.

Interesting. My world history class back in the day started with events from 1850 in some detail, taught by an Oxford man who was quite a robust character. My teenage sensibilities couldn't handle it - my Ol level result was 'ungraded', but that was my fault. I like to think I've chosen a more interesting subject and made up for lost time since

There I was, sat at a computer in my local library happily webbing and internetting, when some bloke stolled past, leaned over, and whispered to me as he passed by. "Turn to christianity and all your problems will go away" He said. Well, problems are just part of life, which means his offer has an unintended fatal aspect. The thing is though, what he just offered can be considered at best unsavoury opportunism, or at worst, a form of blackmail. If he can stop my problems, then his morality in not stopping them until he benefits from it - and lets be straight about this - he intends to profit from me - is typical of the greedy Romanesque attitudes that christianity harbours to this day. I had actually decided not to post this issue on my blog after al - my temper having subsided - but since I've been threatened by some anonymous person to take back what I said or else, I've decided 'or else'. I'm not a servant. Not that long ago, a woman I used to know from my school days engaged me in conversation. Or more accurately, a sales pitch. She told me how one of her colleagues astounded doctors with a medical miracle as his ailing heart was mysteriously replaced by a healthy strong one following prayers when his mortal fate seemed imminent. I too could be part of her movement and enjoy the patronage of her favourite supreme being. To be honest, I suspect modern medicine and some obvious dishonesty by her colleagues has more to do with the man's recovery, if indeed he was ever ill. This is an issue that's been part of my life since I was a child. My mother made my conversion more important than any other aspect of my upbringing, and even to the end of her days, tried to get me to adopt her religion. Her methodology was to create situations so that I would learn about life and God. All she succeeded in was rendering me utterly baffled as to why things happened the way they did. And most importantly, she had made this very same offer. That I could be everything I wanted to be - if I signed up. She was however a somewhat misguided woman, however well intended, and don't they say that the Path to Hell is paved with god intentions? The structure of christian belief hides a form of virtual enslavement that I cannot agree to. I am, after all, somewhat Roman in my desire to preserve my free will and self determination despite the best efforts of those who want to pull my strings. Indeed, why would I turn to something I do not believe in? God will not rescue me from my problems because firstly I'm almost certainly too insignificant as an individual compared to the scale of the cosmos, and secondly because he doesn't exist. He's fiction. Invented by a society thousands of years ago to perform a social purpose that I refuse utterly to comply with. The truth is that divine intervention has a rather more mundane and mortal origin. Fate is the sum of all decisions and natural forxes. So my answer to you, Sir, whoever you were, is mind your own business. I'm not interested in your stupid cult, your false god, or your dishonest offer.

Well it seems my speculation is a bit off target. Just shows that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing I guess. Although the Senate is described by John Moorhouse in The Roman Empire Divided as meeting annually and electing Consuls even though Odoacer has declared himself King, retired the young Romulus Augustulus, and received assent from Zeno in the east. However, in The Later Roman Empire Averil Cameron tells us that the Senate lost its political purpose in the third century due to a lack of cohesion (That's my fav word of the month by the way ). Therefore it seems that we cannot ascribe continuity to the Senate for the period that you refer to, so if it didn't really matter who was Caesar in the hectic third century succession, then it was inaction, not action, that provides the continuity. In other words, policies made little difference because no-one was getting anything done.

I find this interesting, partly because I have family connections over there, but also the apparent divide in society. The AWI had a similar divide, with loyalists, rebels, and those not caring roughly accounting for a third each. Is this a reflection of human social dynamics as much as current politics? As I wrote not so long ago, our affection for empire is often expedient. If New Zealand now has the self-confidence to seek a virtual seperation from the colonial past, it would be difficult to stop, since the British are hardly likely to send in troops to restore a regime (and if our new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has his way, I doubt the Commonwealth would last much longer because it symbolises connections with an imperialist past, much against his sentiments, even though he represents a left wing order that has always sought expansion in world society). India has been going through the same changes. It actively rejects colonial associations yet somehow depends on them for social cohesion. Is New Zealand going the same road?

I have argued the case recently - none to successfully I must admit - that we tend to see 'emperors' in the wrong light. There was no such political office in Rome - it was matter of social status, support, and usually no small degree of machination. Whilst many see the empire as replacing the republic, the Romans do not appear to do so, even though the balance changed from Senate/Voting assemblies to something more like Senate/Military/Caesar & household. Right at the very end it was still SPQR, and the Senate outlived the rule of the Caesars by at least a hundred years or more. I truly believe that the Senate was still in business throughout, albeit with less interest as time goes by, which is why the empire becomes ungovernable by one man later on - the official government had basically taken more and more of a back seat whilst administration became bloated by sinecures and profit making opportunities. For instance, I've seen a version of Suetonius where Caligula is given full and absolute power by the Senate when he becomes the ruling Caesar. Okay... But then, why did he later ask permission of the Senate to hold games? Surely he wouldn't need to? As it happens, this event might be true but look at the context. Caligula, son of war hero Germanicus, is arriving at the SEnate house to be accepted as ruler and the public go wild. There's a huge crush to witness the event and the mob burst into the normally restricted senate house themselves, so I kind of begin to see the pronouncement as something of a publicity stunt rather than a legal transmission of authority. After all, since Caligula had tried to restore the rights of voting assemblies at the expense of the Senate to whom Tiberius had given those powers, why would Caligula do that if he were all-powerful himself? It just doesn't make sense unless the Senate has authority. So your premis, in this context, would make sense, because a civil serice - however inefficien and self-interested - is in operation whilst the Caesar is merely enjoying the status accorded to top dog of Rome. Sure, they could click their fingers and make things happen, but there is always a dangerous balance of power in Rome to which they often fall foul of.

Britain was on the Roman wish list for some time. Julius Caesar had made riads to sever support for the Gauls, and find the silver he had heard of. Augustus had plans to conquer britain but never got around to it. Caligula set up an operation only for his troops to waver on the beaches before embarkation. Claudius would eventually use the very same legions that Caligula had raised for the invasion.. The wars in Spain were quite protracted but there was a great deal of contact between Rome and spanish tribes besides the tips of swords. Logistically for instance the Romans had begun buying their supplies from the tribespeople. At the other end of the scale we events such as Galba's rather dishonest and cruel offer to the Lusitanii. I'm not sure the situation was identical to Britain because Spain would eventually become a somewhat more peaceful area than Britain, but then - in Britain Rome had troublesome neighbours and a rumbuctuous population, "rich in usurpers" as Gildas puts it, and Rome seemed to have taken a similar view of the territory that we see in colonial expanison in the American west.

all republics tend to be corrupted by power? That's a sweeping statement and one I don't agree with. I do concede there is a tendency in people to be corrupt when the opportunity exists but that's about ambitious individuals, not the system of government they work within. It is worth pointing out however that the republican Senate was not all powerful. In order to prevent another rebellion by the plebs it had been forced to introduce voting assemblies which ratified senatorial decisions. Only in the imperial period from Tiberius onward was the Senate able to make decrees.

Both. The Romans were ambivalent in ploitics as much as anything else. Cicero did mention that civic duty demanded more courage than military service thus ambitions were somewhat dangerous, and it is noticeable that the vast majority of senators sought safety in numbers besides their privileged place. Even during the imperial period the Senate continued to do business and more than once came within a hairs breath of resuming control of Rome, but of course, the easiest way to get rid of a powerful individual is replace him with another, especially once the legions had made their choice. The problem that the Senate encountered in the late Republic was that they were becoming used to the very same prosperity that conquest brought them. That's why many of them tacitly supported one powerful warlord or another, in that booty would eventually swell their own coffers, and also because it was easier to let prominent men take the blame when things went wrong.

Drumanagh you mean? Some historians believ it was a Roman fort. More likely it was either a trading post or a settlement of refugees from the empire. At any rate there is not enough evidence to assert the fort was entirely Roman.

I assume he was making that claim on the basis of intelligence available to him which we don't have, but then, any invasion of Ireland was no simple matter regardless of the numbers involved. Much would hinge on the usual Roman habit of playing one tribe off against another, seeking allies, and so forth. There's no mention of another Roman haboit of preparing for Imperial annexation by trading in luxuries to soften the irish population though I am assuming they already traded with the British provinces anyway. I also note that Agricola is saying these things to stir up support for such a venture, thus he probably is being optimnistic Some of those irish iron age forts were in difficult places to assault (yes, I do know about Masada) and the weather conditions in Ireland would have been difficult too. Could he really? I really wouldn't know. I'm not sure anyone else does either.

Sea trade wpuild have been a matter of commercial expediency. Because Carthage was a large city state with the largest local market, it follows it was a trade nexus with a lot of the traffic passing through. That would not stop Captains landing elsewhere to gain profit. Carthage did in fact control a number of significant ports around the mediterranean as well. This idea of control - I see this quite a lot in discussion of ancient empires and it seems to revolve a concept of monolithic state control which was never the case in ancient empires however centralised. It's amost as if human beings have this psychological need to se things in that way, but maybe that's an effect of modern culture with the benefits of contemporary media, communications, and political structures? I doubt the Carthagiian senate 'controlled' trade in the manner you infer. Trade was after all an entrepeneurial activity and one that brought them into conflict with the emerging Roman state rather than a state sponsored activity (the same applies to Rome incidentially, perhaps more pointedly given Rome's rapacious commercial mindset) What was happening was that individual merchants/captains were making profits and facilities were built by Carthage to allow trade to prosper and be taxed. As for thje siting of the military docks, I don't know thr rationale, but I suspect they built it after the main basin and thus it simply easier to put it there. Interesting point about obstructions and so forth, hadn't really thought about it, but I'm not aware that Carthage experienced any particular problem with that.

There is an element of doubt but there always would be when dealing with Roman emperors and their celebrity lifestyles. At least one senior archeologist now believes that judaean zealots were esentially committing terrorist outrages in Rome. I wondered about this for a long time but the evidence does point to a fire starting accidentially, dying out, then restarted to suit malignant purposes, mostly to do with land speculation and other dodgy deals, though clearly suspicion was levelled at Nero#s crowd of cronies and the observation that the Palatine was hit badly, the very same area of Rome in which political business was done behinbd closed doors - and out of Nero's sight.

Disagree all you want. The psychological conditioning is part of modern training and a known problem for veterans. that's not my invention - it's been written about, and for that matter, television documentaries aired with plenty more experience of this sort of thing than I, and further, some of that testimony was American. I'm sorry you don't feel happy about the way your society treated you after the battle was done, but you're hardly unique in that. The same situation is common to human behaviour. Civilians don't mind a victory parade and a quiet slap on the back, but asked to treat veterans as special from that point wears very thin with them after a while. It's always been like that.

On the contrary. It's the root cause. In order to make soldiers more efficient on the battlefield they are now dehumanised in a more subtle manner than simple bullying and shouting as was sufficient in prior ages. The problem is that modern western soldiers are not de-conditioned on release. As it happens earlier this year I was chatting to a younger veteran and mentioned this aspect. He agreed. He also pointed out that the instincts he had learned via training were in his words "difficult to turn off". You will find that historically veterans tended to get ignored when the war was done. Some Romans got quite up tight when arguments started. One story has a senator ripping open his toga when giving a speech to dramatically point at his war wounds, telling his audience that he had fought for Rome, since they obviously needed reminding that his war record made huim a valuable member of society.

Your assurances are outweighed by the available information. The inability of raw troops to exercise incisive shooting was a phenomenon noticed by combatants in World War Two, who relied on large numbers of low quality troops in many cases poorly trained. The British and Americans sought to counter this by teaching their soldiers to 'hate' the enemy, with no great result. Modern techniques for achieving the right mental condition to commit to battle evolved from the mid war onward and these days are so well well practised that many have expressed concerns about the inability of trained soldiers to adapt to civilian life.

Nero did not try to kill the christians off. A number were rounded up and set alight as punishment for their alleged involvement in the Great Fire. The story that he played the fiddle while Rome burned is also false. What is true that during his efforts to organise the rescue of Rome's population (he had rushed back from Antium), he asked to access a vantage point (The Tower of Maecanas) to see what was going on. Struck by the scene of devastation before him, he was moved to sing about the "Sack of Ilium". Suetonius reports that he donned stage costume to do that but somehow that doesn't ring true. I doubt Nero was much of musician but yes, the lyre was likely to be within his repertoire. Having gained some knowledge of music in addition to the rest of his early education, as soon as he became emperor he sent for Terpnus, the greatest master of the lyre in those days, and after listening to him sing after dinner for many successive days until late at night, he little by little began to practise himself..., ...So without delay he had his name added to the list of the lyre-players who entered the contest, and casting his own lot into the urn with the rest, he came forward in his turn, attended by the prefects of the Guard carrying his lyre, and followed by the tribunes of the soldiers and his intimate friends. Having taken his place and finished his preliminary speech, he announced through the ex-consul Cluvius Rufus that "he would sing Niobe"; and he kept at it until late in the afternoon, putting off the award of the prize for that event and postponing the rest of the contest to the next year, to have an excuse for singing oftener. But since even that seemed too long to wait, he did not cease to appear in public from time to time. He even thought of taking part in private performances among the professional actors, when one of the praetors offered him a million sesterces. He also put on the mask and sang tragedies representing gods and heroes and even heroines and goddesses, having the masks fashioned in the likeness of his own Life of Nero (Suetonius) The fire started by accident, not far from the Circus Maximus, and was driven by a warm wind along two streets that caused the initial conflagaration. This was reported to have been re-started and spread further by unknown agents, but since the fire then destroyed the homes of the wealthy on the Palatine, there is suspicion that Nero or his allies had deliberately fanned the flames to achieve the political end of weakening senatorial influence - since much of their business was interfering with Nero's rule and was conducted from their atriums. Sueonius accuses him of being fed up with narrow streets and so forth, and it is true that Nero wanted to reinvent the city as Neroplois, but his supposed city clearance and rebuilding was going to cost him dearly both in hard cash and the lives of important men he effectively stole it from.

I've searched but can't find any source on this. Apparently though Constantine banned sausages because of connections to pagan rites, or at least the informal information suggests. I will continue to look for something on this.

Not recently. Climate has been used as the villain in a number of dicumentaries, with some justification, but over-exaggerated in others, since the biggest problem with television history is the tendency to sensationalise. Watching Mike Loads fall over in Roman legionary kit in the face of a wind machine was amusing - and intended to be - but the Romans did mention this particular problem with regard to the event. A problem, or a cause of failure? It's easy to get carried away, especially since the production of such programmes often look for alternative explanations purely to arouse interest.

Gladiator. Note the style of sword, the stance, and the protection of the forward leg, the face guard on the helmet.

There's no set size. It's more of a progression. As the group gets larger, less individualism oprevails, because instinctively the group, formal or other casual, willingly falls in line with a charismatic dominant figure very easily. That's why large gigs work - the crowd tend to lose themselves in ther experience of it even though the intimacy of a smaller performance is lost. It depends on whether a leader with sufficient presence and leadership is present. If not, the group fragments, but then it might anyway. Read how Spartacus failed to keep his rabble together. After arguments with two other prominent rebels, Crixus and Oenamus, the three went their seperate ways (all got mauled decisively by Roman forces). No, of course not. All you have is a large crowd milling around. A community requires some structure and leadership, however it is formed. I don't really have any interest in this sort of psychobabble. If you want a feel for it, stop linking words together randonmly and look out the window at the world at play.

All we know of prehistoric Britons within certain time periods is that as part of their dealing with the deceased they deliberately defleshed the dead and interred their bones in barrows. No-one knows what became of the flesh they so stripped - was it spread out to allow nature to reclaim it? Was it buried or burned? Was it consumed either for practical reasons or in soe kind of recycling of the spirit? We just don't know.. Aztec sacrifice was something different. In that, the living heart was pulled from the victim as an offering to the Gods, sometimes specifically, and recent debate has focused upon the idea of a sort of end-timer cult in which the sacrifice was required to appease the Gods and stop them destroying the world. Ahem... Well I'm not concerned with polarity on this issue - whatever that's supposed to mean - but group behaviour in human beings is easy to understand if not always easy to predict. As groups become larger, so the individual becomes less self determinining, dependent more and more on the decisions of dominant members of the group. That's our social instinct and the reason why society functions at all. Most of simply obey because we don't dominate. Of course there are variable attitudes within society since like most things behavioural the 'bell-curve' of responses is always present. The majority more or less comply., the extreme minority might not, but then they tend to suffer for their variance as history and current affairs illustrates regularly.

Human beings have always had a strong tendency toward symbolism where death is concerned. Our memorials often proclaim something important about the deceased, be it restrained or very overt, sometimes by the family or perhaps the sentiment of a community. In more feral civilisations, these tendencies dwell more on an animist level, thus cannibals believe that in some way the consumption of an enemy confers a part of his courage or strength, or some similar property. This should not be confused with trophy taking, which is a more direct behaviour pattern, such as a woman in the middle ages who showed the head of her dead husband to her son so he would grow up to wreak revenge, and certainly the lad became a very cruel adult. Roman stroies oten show jubilant mobs parading around with body parts of a fallen leader - there's one instance of an arm where the tendons were pulled to make the hand 'grasp' as some comment on the deceased. Many of us would not ordinarily think about such practises, partially because we are part of a civilisation that eschews such behaviour, but it's never far away - witness the recent plot to dismember the singer Joss Stone, or the treatment of dead US servicemen in Somalia, for instance. Most of us have psychological brakes that stop us short of murders and atrocities, but at the same time, our mob behaviour can overule that very quickly. Thus an entire crowd of irish wellwishers turn on an army landrover that accidentially approached too closely and beat the hapless soldiers to death. Individually, few of those people would torture or murder howver they hated the victims - together, they feel safe, and when aroused, lose those inhibitions. But this is purely a mechanically social response. If we look at funeral practises of our distant briotish stone age ancestors, it seems peculiar to us. We see evidence of deliberate defleshing - suggesting cannibalism at first - but something that is designed to speed up mortal decay although we don't know what they did with the perishable leftovers. The bones however were interred without regard to individual unity. They could be mixed up completely, which to us is difficult to understand, so clearly the mindset, religious beliefs, and social structures of any society ccan impact of death rituals quite widely. When dealing with the Iron Age, we encounter a very brutal civilisation. Warfare iwas endemic, particularly in the earlier part, human sacrifice a required part of prophecy and appeasement, one that was so widespread that a religion almost existed to restrain and control it. Religion had gone from worship of ancestors or the connection between the land and sky, to a more physical desire to control destiny or seek justice for the disasters of fate. It was hugely cruel but on the other hand, the sifting out of people who just didn't fit in by these means, however unfair, meant that socieities were more homogenous. So it seems to me that the relationship between society and death is a variable one. Human beings are capable of some extreme acts, and we do seem secretly to enjoy hurting others if society says it's acceptable, but our judegment of these acts is usually based on the principles of the modern semi-christian west rather than those of the time and place.

The celtic practice of taking heads home as trophies is well known, and the subsequent treatment of them is the source of the 'grail' legends of King Arthur (the christian aspect was added in 1200).

The Navy remained Royal because it had been raised by the Crown, not Parliament. Some of these 'Princes OPwn' regiments are actually quite modern, formed as a resut of amalgamations, and entitled because a Prince of the Realm had been nominated as a commander-in-chief, or something similar. Don't wknow where Cornhole is. There is a Duke of Cornwall, our very own Prince of Wales. Beefeaters...