Gaius Paulinus Maximus

The grain supply from Egypt was extremely important, if that had stopped coming then Rome would have been in serious trouble. There's nothing worse than hungry citizens!

Yes i know it's a tricky one with the birthplaces, I'd be very grateful with what ever you can come up with, thanks.

Im not sure about it. First thing is that they didnt portrayed Caesar in the way he could have win sympathy of viewer's. Second thing is that they invented story about incest between Ocatvius and Octavia not to mention the murder. He is not presented as the good boy but appears to be a little monster. I think they are going to show proscriptions and Octavians role in proscripting people. Except for Pullo and Vorenus there is hard to find the people one may like. Cicero is weak, Anthony is wild, Cato was stupid what was already stressed by Cicero. From the historical characters only Brutus looks like a good man. I sort of agree, in series 1 Octavius comes across as a spoilt, sniveling little s*** with a vindictive and evil streak, i don't think it showed him in a very good light although it did show him to be intelligent and politically wise above his years, so maybe it's just paving the way for when he grows from a boy to a man in series 2. BTW i thought Anthony's character was great!

Does anybody know of a list charting the birth places of all the Emperors? I've often wondered which country or region produced the most Emperors and why.

It's been quite a while since I've been to the wall at segedunum so my memory of it is a bit hazy, but from what I remember it did seem to be mostly flat, but to be fair I wasn't really taking much notice of the lay of the land. You've probably already seen this website but if not then it might be of some use to you. http://www.roman-britain.org/places/segedunum.htm I know it's quite a trek from where you live but probably the best way to put your mind at ease would be to visit it yourself and make up your own mind about the contours of the site, it also makes a great day out. Good luck with the project NN, can't wait to see it.

Oh Gee! Would you believe it ? Sometimes, I'm confused. Black Adder Basil Capt. Black Adder Count de Piedmonte d' Alief Cecil Don Tomasso Earl of Brookfordshiresexingham (forgot if it is Basil or Cecil, etc.) Gaius Ahhhh but the difference is that they are all of your own doing where as I'm just an innocent blogger trying to make my way in the blogging world? BTW what the hell is a Turkish thingymejigwhateveryousaid?????

That looks like just the ticket! Cheers DC

Great description of battle Caldrail, I felt like I was almost in there with them, I was getting tired myself, just reading it Again i totally agree with what you are saying, but the question still remains 'which do you think would have been responsible for the most casualties, The pilum or the gladius?' You've given an excellent argument for the effectiveness of the pilum and i totally agree with you but you haven't actually committed yourself to an answer.

An excellent piece of work PP :smartass: . I knew very little about Pertinax before reading your article but now you've made me curious.....

Does anybody know of any books written on the art of seige warfare? It's something thats always interested me, a book describing the construction and use of seige warfare with plenty of illustrations and diagrams so you can actually see what they looked like and how they worked instead of trying to form a mental picture and it just not seeming right.

Number 6.... Are you speaking from experience??

Thats fine, you can have Orgasma I had my eye on Prolifica Fornicata anyway! Now thats a strange one, firman is part of my e-mail address and for some bizarre reason whenever I edit a reply in the blogs section it says 'edited by firman' but on the forum it says ' edited by GPM' I'm at my wits end, I'm not sleeping, I've lost my appetite i just don't know what to do next, one minute i'm GPM the next I'm firman!!!!!!!!!!!

I would say so, after the the pilum has been released, a percentage of the pilum would probably be lodged in the enemies shield or had missed all together, then it's straight down to the nitty gritty, close quarter combat which would last for much longer than the flight of thousands of pilum's and probably have a bigger kill ratio. Again beware, because its popularly assumed that a soldier can swing a sword at his enemies for hours on end tirelessly - a result of too many hollywood films there I think! Soldiers, even the fit ones, are going to get tired suprisingly quickly once you go hammer and tongs at each other with swords. The main fight would be pushing, shoving, and an occaisional stab when your opponent leaves a gap. Remember this isn't the arena - you haven't got freedom of movement and your unit is pushing behind you. Of course this is going to cause casualties. As for the pilum, I get the impression that the roman soldiers expected to knock down a proportion of the enemy at a distance. Realistically some opponents must have been injured or killed by them. I totally agree, I'm not saying that the pilum wasn't a good weapon, quite the opposite, it would have been extremely effective. The sight of thousand upon thousand of pilum's reigning down on you with nowhere to hide must of scared the hell out of the enemy, but even after this first onslaught and all the pilum had been spent and a proportion of the enemy had been put out of action then the rest would still keep coming and would eventually meet their end at the point of the gladius. I was just echoing what Votandi said earlier that in my opnion the gladius would have been responsible for more casualties than the pilum.

The trailers I've seen are quite intriguing. I don't mind the "fantasy" feel of it at all and am quite looking forward to it as an action piece with some historical flavor. I saw the trailer for the first time at the cinema this week end, and it looked pretty impressive, especially on the big screen. It's like a usual historical movie but with a dark and sinister look to it. One thing stood out though......since when did the Persians use armor plated Rhinoceros's in battle???

Caracalla, who seems to have trusted no-one but his troops, increased legionary pay to 675 denarii. I assume that Caesar raised the men's pay in order to keep them loyal ( he threw money around anyway) But remember that the Later Roman Empire was rife with inflation. their denarii had progressively less and less silver in them. Caracalla might have simply been picking up the slack. Does anyone know the value of denarii from Caracallas' time to compare that of Caesar's? When first introduced the denarii weighed approx. 4.5 grams and was nearly pure silver, this remained fairly stable throughout the republic. During the Julio-Claudian reign it dropped slightly to 4 gram and then under Nero it dropped again to 3.8 grams of silver. The Denarii continued to decline in value until Caracalla introduce the double denarii which was also known as the 'antoninianus'. Although nominally valued at two denarii, the antoninianus never contained more than 1.6 times the amount of silver of the denarius. During second half of the third century the silver content of the antonianus fell to only 2%, losing almost an appearance of being silver. EDIT.... Think me and PP have been reading from the same song sheet

Now that old Unscrupulato's out of the picture I think the time's right for me to make a move on his daughters and sisters......... they sound like my kind of gals!

Really it should have been ' a little bit of everything' because I do love every aspect of ancient Rome, but the thing that grabs the majorioty of my attention is the Legions, countless wars, famous Generals etc, I never get bored of reading about the up's and down's of the Roman army, it's fascinating stuff!

Ha ha nice find DC, "There apears to be a large orange hedge heading towards us" "Thats not an hedge consul, that's the Scots!" I'm sure will be delighted with it!

It's a tough one between Roman law and architecture and engineering but it's going to have to be................. architecture and engineering! You just have to take a look at some of the structures still standing today, pretty amazing, concrete for a start totally revolutionized the whole art of building and construction, then you've got the aqueducts, the expertise needed not just in building them but actually making them work as well is outstanding. The people of today owe a hell of a lot to the architects and engineers of ancient Rome.

I would say so, after the the pilum has been released, a percentage of the pilum would probably be lodged in the enemies shield or had missed all together, then it's straight down to the nitty gritty, close quarter combat which would last for much longer than the flight of thousands of pilum's and probably have a bigger kill ratio.

Gaius Marius is credited with a design change about 100 BC. He found that the iron shank was not bending very often, so that the enemy were able to throw the pila back at the Romans. So he had one of the two iron rivets that held the parts together replaced with a wooden peg which would break or shear off on impact, causing the head to flop and making it unusable. After the battle it was a simple matter to replace those pegs. One problem is that on many of the surviving pilum heads from this general era, the edges of the tang are bent to form flanges which essentially wrap around the wooden junction block. So they aren't going to flop if one rivet is missing! But of course few of these can be dated with certainty, and there do seem to be pilum heads with simple flat tangs which would function as the story says. By the end of the Republic, however, it looks like the difference between heavy and light pila has gone away. The tanged variety is slimming down, and the points are generally a narrow pyramidal form, very rarely barbed any more. Some have three rivets rather than two, and most have an iron ferrule or collet at the top of the joint, so Marius' wooden peg system was apparently no longer in use. But we do find that the iron shank will bend on impact, keeping the enemy from chucking them back. Most illustrations of Imperial legionaries show only one pilum, but a few show two, both tanged and apparently identical. It would appear that two pila were still carried, but that there was no longer a "heavy" and a "light". Check out this site, it's got picture's and diagrams of the different pilum's and it even gives you the correct way a pilum should be made. Take a look at the whole site, it's got everything a legionary needs to know about clothing, armour and weapons. http://www.larp.com/legioxx/pilum.html

o.k. maybe a slight oversight on MPC's behalf, no need for the all out attack at the start of your post. MPC only suggests the period 78-49BC because of the full list of magistrates for the period available. If you would like to expand the period under consideration to over 400yrs well be our guest.....and good luck! From what I've read and what I know I'd say that MPC does have a good understanding of how the political system of the Republic worked as I'm sure do you, I just think that you need to tone down the confrontational and agressive nature to your posts,because this is a fascinating topic and it would be a shame if it just turned into a slagging match.

A high first (I also added information of the ins and outs of the Roman political system and client kingdoms before coming to a conclusion; however, this is not in the above post). Congratulations :smartass:

Nice work WW. How did you fair on the grades front?