caldrail

Roman sexuality wasn't much different from today albeit sex was more readily available via slaves or cheap prostitutes. However, the idea that all Romans behaved like Nero's party guests is a bit off target - many Roman's were very moral, although wealth was always the problem. With prospertity comes free time and that encourages the looser side of human nature.

The idea that morale is the major factor is not unusual - I've always said myself that half of war is pschology - and many years ago I came across a wargamer whose rules were based entirely on morale both because it did away with bookeeping of casualities but also because it meant that players had to be more aware of circumstance to be successful. I tried it but somehow it just didn't work for me. However, morale is certainly a huge factor in warfare. With it, men will stand against impossible odds, even to their own sacrifice. Without it, an army collaspes. Ancient cavalry weren't weak, the horse gave them weight, height, and mobility. Infantry needed to act coherently - a weak defence would be ripped open by cavalry and this was why infantry were so keen to fend off horsemen, resulting in cavalry tactics to threaten, harass, and outflank enemy infantry.. Once an infantry unit began to break, as might well occur under pressure from cavalry, the horsemen would likely wreak havoc and anyone getting away from them could call themselves very lucky. But then you don't have a japanese mindset. For them, it was a matter of honour and logical exchange. Firstly samurai tradition (or rather, the 1930's reinvention of it) says that a warrior should consider himself already dead and not to be frightened by the possibility; secondly, that dying in combat gave a death a purpose; thirdly, that a suicide attack upon a capital ship was the exchange of one man to sink an entire ship crewed by a thousand, which to the Japanese was clearly an advantageous loss; fourthly, in choosing to die in battle rather than rip his propellors off, he honours his family and ancestors with his conduct. Oh good grief. No, it was a simple matter of dextirty and practicialty. Most people were (and still are) right handed and taught to fight so. Thus they logically met the shield of the enemy on that side who understandably was trying to protect himself as much as kill his opponent. Note that Roman gladiators were invaribaly expected to fight right handed. Those that fought left handed (such as Commodus) were considered unusual.

Unfortuinately statistics regarding climate change on the short scle are difficult to trust because those using them often have an agenda and get very choosy over which figures to use. Rapid warming isn't unusual - it happened at the end of the last glacial period and was way more dramatic than anything we're experiencing now. In any case, the correlation betwen industrial activity and CO2 levels is debatable - there is no direct link because the carbon cycle is not immediate, and in any case, we ought to be adding cosmological CO2 to the equation since we often come into the firing line of gas stripped from Venus by the Solar Wind. If anything, I might believe that deforestation has more to do with it than industry - and that's worrying, since in the story of Easter Island we have a model of a closed system that consumed it's resources and suffered the penalty for overpopulation. Earth as a whole is heading that way for no other reason than we're too succesful as a species. So in other words, we're reaching toward a curve in the "Rabbit & Foxes" diagram.

To add to the explanations given above, I understand that for historical purposes the 'Present' is defined as 1950, because nuclear tests and explosions after this date have rendered carbon dating useless afterward.

Bah! Humbug! it's that time of year when supermarkets try to get us to buy more stuff by playing Christmas Hits Of The Last Fifty Years over the tannoy. I asked a member of staff if the sound could be turned down - she walked away! I'm sorry, do you like Christmas? My Struggle With Earthy Girls Can't be bothered with all this Christmas rubbish. A young lady once told me that Christmas and New Year were the time of year when people are most likely to end it all. I didn't go out with her. But then, trying to go out with a woman is one of those things that very few of us are any good at but try anway out of some primeval urge to spawn more hapless generations that can't get off with a woman either. Here's a funny thing. People often sneer at sports car drivers and their apparent need to flaunt it because they've got it - I should know, I heard all the same comments back when I indulged in the cheaper end of the fast car market. Yet I found that women were attracted by the sight of my bright blue curvaceous and low slung speed machine. Not because of any extension of my physique (that's an unfortunate part of the male psyche), but because it suggested I was wealthy and successful (that's the unfortunate side of the female psyche - as much as hormones, pesonality, and physical attractiveness can spark our emotions, women do instinctively prefer a caveman to fill her larder, spawn her young, protect her from harm, and emable her deep rooted instinct to spend, spend, spend. Face it girls, you know I'm right) But flying aeroplanes? The kiss of death where girlfriends are concerned. Unless she happens to be one of the minority that actually like flying, most girls regard being in an aeroplane as a means either to be thrilled by adventure or to arrive somewhere interesting. Sitting in a grotty old Cessna for an hour, squeezed into a narrow cabin with a guy she hardly knows, subjected to the loud monotonous rasp and roar of a small aero-engine, feeling uninvolved in the entire process of getting from one place to another by air - she is quickly bored and can't escape. So unless you have access to a business jet and the money to reach a warm Mediterranean coast, the experience of flying won't make her think you're good in bed. Also, she will quickly realise that going out with you means she'll be sharing her bed with aviation magazines. What a great day to be flying. Isn't this fun? "Umm, Caldrail, we need to talk" Yes you're right. Hang on a moment Babe... "Eastwich, this is Romeo Juliet, overhead , routing south of London for Little Wimpton, over.... "Caldrail, I've been doing some thinking" Yeah? "I don't think you and I are going anywhere." No no, really, it looks slow because we're so high. Look, we're doing 90 knots. That's over a hundred miles an hour. "So is anything going to happen?" Nah, you're okay, flying is the safest form of travel..... What? Drunkard Of The Week It was all quiet in the early hours last night Drunkards don't like quietness, it disturbs them, and normally at some point there's a singing contest, football chants, threats of physical violence, appeals to lost girlfriends, or sometimes incoherent yelling. However, this time we got a treat. A drunk singing that old English favourite... I'm forever blowing bubbles Pretty bubbles in the air They fly so high Nearly reach the sky .... At which point he either fell over, bumped into a lampost, got squished by a passing car, found a friendly policeman, or considering how much alcohol was in him, did something extremely dangerous like try to light a cigarette. The residents sighed, pulled their blankets and duvets over themselves, and went back to sleep.

Wheat. The Romans needed it to make bread, their staple diet, and later would rely on Egyptian imports to supply the eternal city (that's why Augustus kept it as a personal preserve). Hopwever we know that supplies were sometimes prone to the vagaries of agriculture, and note that at one point shortages forced Augustus to send away 'useless mouths' to maintain enough food supplies for everyone else. As it happens. Nero was very fond of sumptuous dinners, delighting his guests with all manner of unexpected treats.

All you're doing is describing a modern military unit that you're familiar with. That's not history, and until you've derived something from historical or crchaeological sources in context, it does not describe functions of an army that lived in a different culture two thousand years ago. Looking for similarities teaches us nothing. It's the differences that matter.

1 - If one book is based upon the other, then you're still speculating about why. So no, I don't agree. And I;m not convinced the books are closely related as you insist. There's bound to be some similaruty given the nature of historical events and those who witnessed them. A future historian might draw similar conclusions from comparing current newspaper stories - there's no significance other than the story they relate. 2 - If the gospel writers are recording oral information derived from eye witnesses, then yes, they will agree. That's not conspiracy or invention, it's simply recording what people said. 3 - We're not accusuing you of fabrication - Please don't tempt us - We're pointing out repeatedly that you haven't done anything more than compare texts from a limited sample. If you watch the evening news, you'll likely see politicians being given a hard time for doing the same thing. That has failed to convince anyone. If you believe the Flavians 'invented' christianity, which has little if any support here, then you need to find proof that supports your conclusion other than another comparison of texts. The simple fact is you're going to struggle to find any, but I think you already know that, which is why you ignore the obvious and attempt to limit your sampling - which any statistician will tell you leads to inaccuracy.

My religious beliefs have nothing to do with this, nor should yours, given that this is a history forum and not a site for religiois conformance. Gilius has derived a concept from comparing texts which is tenuous and dependent on limited scope, not to mention modern translation and historical censorship. There really isn't any convincing reason to believe his conspiracy theory because it has limited credibility, no historical context, nor does it make sense. If the Flavians invented christiabnity, why? Why didn't they promote it as Constantine did? Why isn't there flavian era christian temples in the Roman world? Why aren't pagans moaning about the change of religious policies? Why isn't there any strife in Roman streets as there was in the late empire? Why isn't there any flavian era grafitti or inscriptions that illustrate the new policy? There just isn't any realistic motivation for believing that the Flavians invented christianity.

Of course there's climate change - it happens al the time - the Earth is a dynamic enviroment ifluenced by all sorts of things. To imagine we're the sole cause of it is actually illustrating how self important mankind can be. The problem is we're now more concious of these changes, because there are more of us to affect with more devices to record the changes. If you look back at older newspapers, say the between the wars, there are any number of reports of floods in America for instance, with great loss of life. Terrible weather is not unique to the modern day - it's just that unless we experience it, we tend not to consider it. The debate here is to what extent humanity is responsible for the changes. I cannot agree it's solely our own work, but with such things as deforestation, there has to be some suspicion that we're changing the balance out of our favour. That won't destroy the world, just lots of lives eventually. After all, experts reckon that all signs of civilisation will be eroded away by nature in two hundred years should mankind cease to be. What's that on a geological scale? Blink and you'll miss it.

Statistics won't prove it either. How many times does this need to be emphasised? Gilius needs an independent source of evidence before his comparison will be taken seriously.

The far bigger problem is that we're living on a world that's changing around us and we don't like it. To say that global warming is merely a phenomenon that kicked in a century ago is blindingly short sighted. Whilst we aren't helping the situation, the link between industrialisation and warming isn't quite as convenient as its pundits like to have us believe. There are some serious discrepancies in pollution and temperatures that conventional warming wisdom doesn't want to answer. The Earth is quite capable of polluting itself far worse than we can - it's done so a few times in the past - but here the problem is that I'm looking at a longer timescale rather than restricting myself to mankinds industrial rise as a cause to blame. I will concede that our own pollution is an issue - that can't be denied - but the major effect or urban society is to create hotspots, not hot planets. I will also concedce that our gross numbers are not helping either, but then, as I said frequently before, that is ultimately self limiting. The bigger the population, the harder it is to find food, amd eventually excess numbers starve until the situation rights itself. We're not exempt from those rules however much science bends them, and that cattastrophe is waiting in the wings. In any case, I don't know what you're worried about The world has been a lot warmer than today more than once. During another interglacial period we had aftrican animals wandering the savannah of the Thames Valley. Within a few thousand years, the arctic mob moved in. In fifty or sixty thousand years the Earth will be poisitioned so that it's orbit and wobble coincide to produce the next glacial period. Britain will quite possibly be bulldozed flat by glaciers once again. Closer to home, let's not forget the Medieval Warm Period. Were we responsible for that? Nope. But we did enjoy its benefits. In any case it doesn't matter. We can't stop climate change. So we either adapt or suffer. That's how the Earth has always worked.

Fabrication using similar texts. As I've already stated, christians predate the Flavian period. We know this because of the work of christian preachers, because Nero burned a few of them out of spite (and to use as a scapegoat), and because archaeology supports early christianity. The Flavians didn't do anything to promte it. As I stated before, why would they? It makes no historical sense to invent a religion at odds with the native pagan beliefs of the Roman world. Considering how stubbornly traditional Romans were, your conceopt, however illustrated, is not proven. Comparison of two texts is not proof. You need corroboration from elsewhere. As I stated before, limiting your sources is not going to help your case. It invites suspicion and leaves out potentially adverse evidence deliberately. Sorry - the "Von Daniken" approach doesn't work with me.

A lot of hot air has been said about global warming. The world is not a static enviroment. Our global climate changes all the time according to sun activity, orbit, planetary wobble, or the plethora of earthly influences especially those of a cataclysmic nature, or simply small variances from time to time. Unfortunately our human time frame is quite short - we only live three score years and ten ob average and our experience is limited to what we perceive either personally or via the media - thus we have a somewhat myopic view of our enviroment. Back in the Jurassic Age, without any hint of industry or other human poisoning, there was ten times as much carbon dioxide in the Earths atmosphere. It was also one of the most extraordinarily rich and impressive eco-systems we've ever had, much more stable than our modern times - we are after al still coming out of the last Ice Age and it is going to get warmer because of that alone, regardless of anything our politicians impose upon us to save the planet. In fact, the planet isn't doomed in any way whatsoever (at least in our frame of reference at least, though the sun will almost certainly destroy Earth in a few billion years due to natural changes) - it's just that humanity has been extraordinarily lucky in having a relatively stable and benign climate to flourish in, and that we're facing change we're not ready for. Hey, that's the name of the game and always has been. Creatures that can't roll with the punches end up in natural history museums. Our success as a species has led to civilisation and complex infrastructure. That's fine when everything carries on happily, but change in the climate renders our complicated networks vulnerable. It is frighteneing - those who have personal experience of extreme weather will no doubt agree that nature isn't so easily conquered as the Romans believed - but the trick is not to sit on the beach demanding the waves turn back, but to find ways of surviving the changes. Aftaer all, historical and paleontological records do imply that warm climates aren't such a bad thing. However, this "end-timer" stuff? There seems to be a little dark spot in our psyche that can get morose and prefers to believe that the "End is nigh" and all you sinners had better repent or else. In modern times this sort of cycle has been apparent since the Great Disappointment of 1844 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment There's nothing new of course. Such prophecies as the Age of Aquarius, the Great Tribulation, the arrival of our alien overlords, or the Final Battle, are part and parcel of religious beliefs dating back a long time. Linked not by some inherent truth (how can you discern the future beyond immediate probability?), but by a need to fit ourselves into some kind of manifest destiny, to conform to a social construct, and to manipulate others. Welcome to the Church of Global Warming everyone. Please be seated. Now hear ye sinners, your confortable lives will soon be at an end! Of course if you pay a few quid on your way out I'll have a word with the Almighty and reserve you a place in Paradise.

That argument could be applied to all sorts of things to no good purpose. "Intelligent Design" for instance, supposedly the proof of God's existence by virtue of our self professed perfection or adaptability, which in the real world ignores the incredible array of blind alleys that evolution has created over the eons - but then, evolution doesn't need God, does it? Arguably, mankind is a blind alley too rather than divine creation or ultimate progression. We agfter all the last of our species still surviving and as we grow more specialised, our success becomes more temporary. And so on. One of humanity's least well documented abilities is to recognise patterns. It's how we can learn to read or spot animal tracks, or for that matter, tell Fred from Freda. Unfortunately it can also be used to construct fallacies. Von Daniken did that back in the seventies, spotting 'parallels' in texts and mating them to monuments and relics in a half baked idea that we're the result of an alien breeding pattern. His evidence however only sounds plausible because opf the narrative style he uses. Typical of such authors, they infer a mystery and supply " answers" that no-one else has spotted since time immemorial. You can list as many parallels as you like. Until you have some sort of corrobatorive evidence of your assertions beyond a comparison of ancient texts (one of which is unfortunately a revised version of a revised version of a translated version of a censored version of a collection of works by different people - which in itself blows your quaint theory out of the water).

Part of the process of buying land in Britain is to pay for a legal search for such things (I'm not sure if it's mandatory, but you're risking a nasty suprise if you don't). The recent "right to roam" legislation does not interfere with this process. Concerning America, we probably get a skewed opinion here in Britain. Almost inevitably when this sort of thing eriupts in a 'fly on the wall' series, there's dramatic music, wobbly cameras, and a loud argument with lots of pushing and a clear victim (never any firearms of course. What's all this nonsense about Americans using weapons? )

A speculative point, unless you can name the source, thus not evidence. You're assuming a common purpose linking varying avenues of literary pursuit. Pure conspiracy theory based on common themes from a particular historical period. I could, on that basis, claim that there's a global conspiracy to rule Syria. Not necessarily, rather that they reflect common perceptions at one period in history.

There's plenty of areas built on former mines, and occaisionally sinkholes break through. Sometimes that occurs because of the mining, or because of natural subterranean erosion, such as happened in the north of England when a locomotive was swallowed up by a sudden hole (it's still down there, though no-one is sure how deep). However, most of these problems occur with earlier mines from the industrial revolution rather than the later and larger collieries, which tended to be opened further from habitation. There are area's in my home town that are built on former quarries, used between Roman and Victorian ages. Land is very expensive in crowded England and there's all sorts of laws attached to owning it, such as responsibility for maintaining public rights of way, however archaic, and to pay tax above a certain sized holding. There's a new shopping mall being built around the corner from where I live, and the developers, an experienced construction/architect company, could not find out who owned the unpaved alleyway running along the north side of the site. Ownership got misfiled and forgotten a long time ago, even though it's a public right of way.

The trouble with the Roman Empire (as Time Team's Helen Geake stressed), is that people casually spot the familiarities of their civilisation with our own and like to draw on these paralels, even to the point of assuming a commanlity between us. What that ignores in the vast differences we have - the strange rituals, the complex politics, the tolerance of violence, class distinctions, slavery, the cut-throat economics, the vivacious nature of urban life and it's hidden dangers of poor health, broken dreams, and dark alleyways with open sewers, the chauvanism and arrogance of the Romans, even the mysteries of an unknown world beyond the frontier. In many ways the Roman world has more in common with third world nations than the modern west. I would have to stress myself that our current military format descends from the use of gunpowder, something the Romans had no inkling of. Whilst I agree that the Romans were an organised people, their organisation only resembles ours in passing and merely because that human psychology hasn't changed much in two millenia, thus by experience they found certain ways of doing things worked better - we've made the same progress by a different path since warfare adapted to firearms, bringing armies out of the middle ages. Note however that the modern world organises it's armies in a much more formal pyramidical manner - we've gone further than the Romans did in organisation, because we have to. They had a more fuedal and primal view of things.

Many many years ago in that Jurassic era I call my childhood, I sometimes made a journey across the countryside to Lydiard Park. Back then West Swindon didn't exist. Just abandoned railway yards, farmland, and overgrown flak emplacements from WW2. I always remember passing through a village on the way where beside the road was a brake of trees that never seemed to grow any leaves, just existing as towering stalks of dark grey, always surrounded by flocks of crows that made the most unholy noise. Of course now the village is absorbed into West Swindon and the unholy noise is made by late night drunkards. The crows have gone. Maybe that's because they had more sense than to stay. After all, crows and ravens are very clever birds. I've seen a video clip of a crow using its puzzle solving abilities. Within seconds it retrieved a little metal basket full of food from an upright plastic cylinder by using a small metal rod with a hook at one end. I have to say, it was a very impressive display of animal intelligence. A few weeks ago I was taking a shortcut through my local park. Normally it's quiet, a useful quality for a remembrance garden, but on this occaision four crows were having a bit of a tiff. They flapped their wings ceaselessly, hopped from branch to branch in some avian parody of martial arts fighters, going at each other hammer and tongs. I can't remember what I said. Something like "Oh shut up" as I remember, and whaddya know? The crows stopped making noises, stopped moving, and the garden returned to its normal peaceful condition. Thank you. So there you have it. Crows and ravens are not only quite intelligent, but very polite too. Don't know where they learned that from. It clearly wasn't the average Swindon youth. Sermon Of The Week I lost my temper. I really did. There I was, minding my own business as I strode homeward, when I encountered those pesky christian preachers. As they often do, one bellowed praise of Jesus and excerpts from his best seller whilst his mate handed out little cards with his phone number on them. Out of the corner of my eye I couldn't help spotting his approach (the card distributor, not Jesus), grinning like a cheshire cat and determined to intercept me. That was when I lost my temper. "How many times do you have to be told NO!" I barked at him. Poor bloke. He backed off ever so quickly. He wasn't in much danger of course - a policeman was but yards away chatting to a member of the public and must of heard me explode. Funnily enough the preacher stopped shouting too.

Unfortunately we don't how the Romans spoke latin on the street - all we've got is the inherited 'Queens English' version from the christian church. Whilst latin is to a newbie a horrible complex language, so is English, so my japanese work colleagues inform me. If you're born to it latin would be a lot easier. As it happens, I hardly know any Latin at all. Praise the Lord for Google Translate.

I do remember being on exercise with a bunch of others. We were jogging through woodland to reach a better position when the guy in front of me vanished. Completely. Somewhat stunned, I called out to him, and I heard a woeful groan from a hidden hollow right before me, which the foliage had covered over. Couldn't help laughing though

Rank is a serious issue where I'm coming from. I get very fed up with people trying to describe the legion in modern terms - there's a lot of difference in the way things were organised and putting toga's on the modern world is not history. No, not a squad - because they were never organised as such. The phrase meant "close friends" and that was a very literal term, as most Roman labels were. As for inherent rank, here we have a problem. There is no record of a rank system for legionaries - none at all - and only Vegetius mentions "men rising through the ranks" which is itself odd, because why would everyone get promoted? What it appears to me is that ordinbary soldiers got status by virtue of service, and were rotated among the centuries with each annual increase, or something similar. Other titles such as Chosen Man, Standard Bearer, Musician, were jobs within the legion that had status - funerary inscriptions record that men served temporarily in these posts in no particular order. Men sometimes found roles within the legion according to their talent and trade - there's one tomb inscription of a man who was employed by the legion as a mule driver besides being a soldier. This is typical of a legionary - there's more accent on time served, role, and trade, and very little hint of actual rank. I do think it's wrong to see the legion as a dry pyramidical military unit in the modern sense - it was more like a military community, a sort of military villa run by an assigned noble with soldiers indtead of slaves, something that would have been very intuitive in Roman culture. Given that each legion was a fundamentally seperate entity, not linked by senior administration (or at least until the late empire anway, but by then they were becoming more medieval in style), we can hardly claim that it was all the same as today. The arrangements for travel varied. If wagons and animals were present, and time permitted, they were used. If they needed to get somewhere quickly, other decisions were made. Men marched without helmets worn on route marches, and there's one mention of weapons being carried in a convenient cart. We know from Plutarch that it was common practice for camp followers to maintain the troops with such activities as preparing food. In fact, Josephus, in his account of the Jewish War, describes a marching legion without animals, and civilian merchants supplied the soldiers at the siege of Masada. No modern labels - you understand? - We're dealing with the Roman Legions, not the US Marines.

What? As an excuse to throw them to the lions? As it happens the Flavian Amphitheatre has statues of classical significance, not christian, and was used to perform pagan rites - ie, the munera, (funeral games). Thankfully we therefore cannot include the Flavian Amphitheatre as evidence of Flavian Christianity.

Stand your ground Maladict. Don't let the barbarians conquer Rome!