Gladius Hispaniensis

And while we're on this topic, I wonder what everyone has to say about the hypothesis that was put out a few years ago about the insanity and erratic behaviour of many Roman politicians (esp.emperors) being caused by lead poisoning because of the profusion of lead piping in Roman civic life? P.S This is no joke. Someone really did put forward that theory

Caldrail, according to Josephus German auxiliaries did serve in the Holy Land in the 1st Century C.E

My mistake. I ought to read a little more about the Eastern Church

Actually the accounts of Vlad's death are not consistent. I was just going by the more popular version - "There are several variants of Vlad III the Impaler's death. Some sources say he was killed in battle against the Ottoman near Bucharest in December of 1476. Others say he was assassinated by disloyal Wallachian boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field or during a hunt. Other accounts have Vlad falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguards (the troops loaned by Prince Stephen remained with Vlad after Stephen B

Having been educated in Catholic schools most of my life, I think it would be a mistake to assume that Catholics worships saints as deities. They certainly ask for their intercession but I don't remember that they actually pray directly to them the way they pray to Jesus and Mary. The veneration of Mary as a divine mother definitely indicates influences from the Isis cult though. Even the terminology is the same - Stella Maris, Queen of Heaven, Mother of god, etc. This is something that has no parallel in the Orthodox Church or even the earlier Gnostic beliefs of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Yes. Ottoman rule in the Balkans was certainly brutal and autocratic. The Turks were often capable of fiendish cruelty. But I think it would be a mistake to single them out for that. I don't think Europeans had a better track record for humanity and clemency and their treatment of minorities has been no better. Just look at Vlad the Impaler and his colourful career. His defeat and death at the hands of the Turks is still celebrated to this day by his own countrymen. That should tell you something. The unbelievably cruel suppression of the Cathar heresy in France is another example. And as for the Auto da Fe and it's treatment of Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other "heretics", let's not even get into that

The basic tax levied on non-Muslim subjects consisted of two parts, the jizya or poll-tax, and kharaj or land-tax. The 5% must have been in addition to that.

I believe the majority were either forced to convert or pay very heavy taxes or lest be killed depending on the mood of the Arabs. However, large pockets of Christians sucessfully resisted Muslim advance, e.g. Maronite Christians, Coptic Christians, Syrian Catholic church, Cappadocian Christians...etc[Note the names are kinda modern] I'm not sure what you mean by that. Pockets of Christians successfully resisted conversion to Islam, which is not the same thing as "resisting the Muslim advance". AFAIK these above mentioned groups did retain their religion and culture in a largely Islamic environment, but they had to cede political power to the Muslims nevertheless. Regarding the "very heavy taxes"- do you have a ball park figure of how much they were taxed? As Ursus pointed out, it was far less than what the Byzantines were taxing them already.

Ave The "Enclyclopaedia of Military History" by Col. Trevor Dupuy states that the Byzantines suffered approximately 200,000 fatal casualties in the war with Persia. I don't remember what source he quotes but I have read his other books and he is usually pretty reliable as a historian. If that figure is true, then it certainly explains the attenuated state of Byzantium in it's war with the Arabs. I have no idea about Persian casualties though. Apart from what Decimus Caesar mentioned above, one cannot forget the role played by the physical toughness of the Arab warriors, born and bred in a desert environment. It's important to remember that wars are ultimately won and lost by people and their good and bad qualities.

I agree. The Etruscans even lent their name to Toscana, or Tuscany, which is a Northern state, and I don't remember reading that their political influence reached as far south as the Napoli area. But trade influences are more than likely, as Decimus pointed out

Well thanks for that info GPM and PNS. I remember from my History classes that Medieval Europeans used salt as a means for preserving meat in an age with no refrigeration. I imagine that must have been an important function of salt with Roman soldiers as well among others

Ave While we're on the subject of Legionary wages, I was just wondering if the Latin word salarium from which "salary" is derived indicates that Roman soldiers pay included a rationing of salt since the word also means salt? Probably sounds crazy but I thought I'd hazard the question at the risk of sounding foolish

Ave Caesar doubled the pay of his legionaries so they received 225 silver denarii a year, that is 9 gold aurei. This rate was maintained until late 1st century CE. It was issued in three installments, known as stipendia, of 75 denarii or 3 gold aurei, probably on the 1 January, 1 May, and 1 September. At the end of the 1st century, Domitian increased the pay to 300 denarii or 12 aurei. Septimius Severus raised this to 450 denarii. Caracalla increased this by 50 percent Apparently cavalrymen were payed more than infantry All the above info from Goldsworthy

The mystery just snowballs!No mystery there. The existence of Nazareth during Jesus's time has been doubted for a long time. As you mentioned earlier no contemporary documents list it. It is unlikely to have existed before the 3rd C.E. Jesus of Nazareth is considered by many to mean a mistranslation of Yeshu ha- Notzrim, or Jesus the Nazorite, presumably the same Nazorite sect that Samson was supposed to be a member of

Beware - the bendy pilum works because of gravity, not impact. If the point bends on impact then the weapon is functionally useless since the point will not pierce but simply deflect It would be interesting to know if anyone collected such statistics at that time but I seriously doubt they did. History in those days was considered a measure of a writer's eloquence and diction rather than his accuracy or attention to detail. One thing I do know is that the wounds inflicted by the gladius hispaniensis were quite horrendous. Many hardened veterans were said to have thrown up when they saw the bodies of those slain by the gladius

Good point. And both scenarios are highly improbable. The idea that a known Jew-hater like Pilate could be forced to do anything by Jews of all people, especially a judicial execution at a predawn hour when the whole world is sleeping, is just patently ridiculous. On top of that we're supposed to believe that important men in Judea, on the eve of the most important festival in Judaism, had nothing better to do with their time than twiddle their thumbs in expectation of trying and executing Jesus. I've often wondered - what was the frigging hurry? Why could it not have been done after the Passover when things generally quietened down in Jerusalem? The Passover season was a tinderbox waiting to explode. Every year at that time the Romans used to double the size of their garrison in the Antonia fortress in anticipation of trouble. The whole scenario is absurd. That on top of a dozen other absurdities and one is reminded of Josef Goebbels dictum that the bigger the lie the more ready people are to believe it

Kosmo, that army invaded in two waves. The first one, led by Tariq bin Ziyad, did largely consist of Berbers. The second one, led by Musa bin Nusayr, was largely Arab. Do you have any evidence for stating that the Berbers in that expedition were mostly Christian? That really is new to me. IIRC they were Berber converts to Islam. Not disputing you claim, btw, just asking for some evidence.

Another interesting thing about the pilum. Apparently the heads of the pila in early Republican times were rather different from the later ones. They were not pyramidal ones that we are so familiar with, but tended to be bigger and of a slightly different shape, with long tapering sides. I don't know if all early pila heads were of this shape or only some, but apparently they became standardized in late Republican and Imperial times to the pyramidal shapes that we know so well. I though it rather odd that the Romans would actually prefer the later type because it seems the earlier types could do much more damage

I think someone forgot to mention that Arius had his nose punched in the Council of Nicea by St. Nicholas - yes, I mean Santa Claus. Nice gentlemanly "council" that one With goings on like that, and of course Charlemagne's famed crusade against the Goths, no wonder Arianism did not survive

According to Adrian Goldsworthy's "Complete Roman Army" the pilum could theoretically be thrown a distance of 100ft (30m) with an effective range of half that much. This has been determined from tests done from modern reconstructed pila

Ave Theodora I read your above comments with interest. A few points I would like to make: 1.Jesus healing on the Sabbath is not contrary to Judaic law as is commonly assumed. Remember there were two schools of thought in Rabbinical Judaism, the one founded by Hillel, considered rather liberal, and a more conservative one founded by Shammai. The Pharisees that questioned Jesus about healing on the Sabbath were not accusing him of being a sinner, they were just asking him to defend the particular school of thought that he was following (in this situation he seems to have been following Hillel, who allowed healing on the Sabbath) 2. Abraham was certainly considered righteous before the Mosaic Law, but there is nothing odd about that. The Mosaic Law applied to people that lived during or after the time of Moses himself. Since Abraham lived long before that, him being considered righteous would not be unusual among Jews of Jesus's time. On the other hand someone violating Mosaic Law during and after Moses's era, e.g. the Jews during Paul's time ,would certainly be considered sinful 3. Whether Jesus was God or not is a theological issue that Christians are going to resolve among themselves. As a student of History I can only observe that it is highly unllikely that Jesus would have made such a claim and therefore it is a later Pauline accretion. 4. As for the Logos debate, it would be wise to keep the following in mind: The opening words of St. John's gospel are what people use to equate Jesus with God. If we go back to the original Greek, we get a different idea. When it says "the word was with God", God is translated as tontheos, meaning god-like or godly. When it says "the word was God", God is translated as hotheos, which means God or Deity. So what is being implied is actually something different. It is saying that God is God and Jesus is a god-like or godly person. Another thing to bear in mind is that these are not the words of Jesus, but of the evangelist (whoever that may have been) Regards, Gladius

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but the language that the Jews in the movie seem to be speaking sounds like Hebrew. If it is then that certainly is anachronistic. To the best of my knowledge Hebrew was only used as a sacred and ritual language at that time and the language of the masses tended to be Aramaic. Of course Gibson cannot be blamed for this. He would be hard put to find a number of actors that could converse in Aramaic!

Ave Ursus I shall comply An interesting thought - We already mentioned that Cyrus was called the Messiah in the OT just as Jesus was to a later generation. Obviously the two have very little in common except for one very interesting thing - Cyrus actually was seen as a liberator that freed the Children of Israel from a foreign yoke, and in that respect he fully deserved the title as he actually did free the Israelites from Babylonian bondage. In other words he was seen as the person chosen by God, or the Ha Mashiach in Hebrew, to perform this function. I believe this is fully the expectation that Jesus's people had regarding him - a person divinely ordained to free his people from the Roman yoke. In a Judaic context that would make perfect sense. That Jesus did not succeed in his mission is through no fault of his own. The later concept of the Saviour dying to wash away the sins of the world is a later accretion from pagan mystery religions

We know that Jesus was a great person because of the devotion showed by his following and from the fact that he was willing to lay down his life for a cause. Just because some parts of the NT are plausible, it does not logically follow that the rest of is automatically plausible too. What school of logic is that? The Josh McDowell School of Logic for Bible Thumpers? Many parts of many other ancient manuscripts are shown to be partly plausible and partly implausible And I know that Christianity is not Judaism. You're not telling me anything new. That is my point. Jesus was a devout follower of Judaism. His modern day worshippers are followers of the pagan aberration known as Christianity

Caldrail I think you and I are actually in agreement with what people regarded as "son of God" in those days. It was used in a more generic sense, but that is not how Pauline Christianity sees it. The Catechism says very clearly, "begotten, not made". That is hardly a Judaic concept you have to agree. The late Reverend Billy Graham illustrated this more vividly in front of a crowd in South Africa by waving a finger in the air and saying "The Holy Spirit Impregnated Mary". This is more akin to pagan legends like Zeus impregnating Olympias in the form of a snake to give birth to Alexander and other such myths prevalent in that area at that time. If by Messiah we mean son of God in a figurative sense then that is within the framework of Judaism but that is certainly not how Pauline Christianity sees it. Jesus, by the way, was no Tom, Dick and Harry. He was a very learned sage, and a very remarkable character, and a great human being. That is something people that followed him did recognize and that is why they followed him. But that does not imply they thought of him as a Deity nor does it imply that he and his followers intended to start a new religion