Primus Pilus

While intentions are always difficult to discern... its quite clear that there was a Roman naval base at Gesoriacum (near modern Boulogne, France). The Classic Britannica served as military ferry for passage between Britannia and Gaul but obviously patrolled the waters of the Mare Britannicum (Channel) and the coastal waters of Britain, Gaul and Germania. It had been there (at Portus Itius) since the conquests of Caesar and remained so for centuries. Obviously there was some need for the presence of a fleet beyond just ferrying troops back and forth.

I can't. I'm afraid my brain just doesn't function that way. I would suggest maybe it was some sort of Freudian infatuation with his mother, but how would that explain Antinous Sorry, I'll excuse myself from this thread before I send it in an off topic spiral.

Unless the designer is all of the above, such as Hadrian designing the Pantheon, then there are few in history who have been able to build with unopposed creativity. Even the great Apollodorus of Damascus (Trajan's famed engineer who designed such monuments as the Danubian bridge into Dacia, Trajan's Column and Forum, etc.) was banished and possibly executed for his slander of Hadrian's designs and skill.

I thought it was 5? I think it was a 6 hour series and the first one was 2 hours. Maybe it was a 5 hours thing with 4 episodes... either way... I'd like to forget

The comment was slight, and hence I gave him only a very slight reprimand. The disagreement between he and Ursus aside, I suppose he felt that his personal agenda did not fit the discussion of this forum and decided to take it elsewhere, which of course is everyone's perogative. Phil25 has by no means been banned and is free to come back. He will find however, much as other members sometimes have, that there is usually a swift and angry backlash here when people try to paint the past with a modern politically correct brush. Everyone just has to temper things a bit with reason and courtesy and we can sing 'Kum Ba Yah' in a great circle of love. (well ok, thats a bit much)

Ok the bit is getting old, but I'm in a mood so here goes... Most ancient battles report staggering numbers of losses on one side with far fewer for the victors. Was this because the ancients reported the size of the army that lost 'as killed' rather than simply as having run away? Is it ridiculous speculation on their part? Is it embellishment? Is it truth? For the most part we can't know any of it for sure even though there certainly must be some truth within all the reports. I've always had a gut feeling that the ancients reported losses based on the destruction of the army, and not necessarily men killed on the battlefield. For instance, if an army of 50,000 was beaten and it fled, dispersing into the countryside, this may have been reported as 50,000 men killed. Perhaps only a fraction of these were actually killed, but once the rout was on, many armies did not reassemble, so for all practical purposes the 50,000 man army was destroyed. But of course, I have no way to prove this theory and it is pure conjecture. But since we're obviously heading back to this Roman physical superiority thing again, how do you explain the Germanic victories prior to Marius? Was it simply sheer numbers? Was it bad Roman leadership? Why could the Romans defeat them at Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae but not at Noreia and Arausio? The number disparity was certainly there in all 4 examples, why does the supposed Roman superiority only come into play when they win and there must be some other excuse when they lost? Maybe it truly was the genius of Marius (as well as Sulla at Vercellae), including tactics, training and discipline, (along with the cavalry ambush Marius set at Aquae Sextiae) and not physical superiority that is really whats important. Hannibal was outnumbered at Cannae but he still won. Was it because Celts, Celtiberians, Numidians and Carthaginians were physically superior to Romans or was it because Hannibal was a genius? Surely the physical superiority of Romans would win out over the poor generalship of Paullus and Varro? For a guy who wants to hype Roman superiority over other cultures, I don't think that you realize by downplaying the excellence of Roman legions and their training, discipline and resiliency etc., you are actually discrediting one of the reasons that Rome was indeed great enough to conquer Europe (except Germania of course) and the Mediterranean. Are you truly trying to suggest that all armies were relatively equal in skill and only the physical superiority of Romans made the difference?

(Note that all figures are questionable) And you left out previous Roman losses at Noriea under Carbo (numbers unknown) around 113 or 112 BC Marcus Junius Silanus lost perhaps as many as 30,000 men in Narbonensis at about 109 BC Longinus at Tolosa or Burdigala in 107 BC lost his army and his life (again numbers are unknown) but a reported 4,000 survivors managed to return. To top them all, before Marius finally crushed the Cimbri at Aquae Sextiae, at Aurasio in 105 BC the Romans lost perhaps some 80,000 men. While the numbers seem ridiculous (losing a couple hundred thousand men in a few short years), there is no argument about the outcome of the battles. These previous losses added to the glory of Marius' eventual victory, and hence his being named as the 'third founder of Rome'.

Well Sulla was 60. It's not old by today's standards but he wasn't really 'young' either. As for Sulla's vilification though, he was certainly guilty of some atrocities against Roman citizens and political rivals, but he was embroiled in a violent political struggle that involved the same tactics from his opponents (notably Marius and especially Cinna). While it is far more in depth than this simple paragraph, Sulla was both a shaper of events that led to the fall of the Republic, but he was also a product of a very turbulent political time. Though it was a time of great fear for the opposition and reversal of fortune for some plebiean agendas, Sulla's quick rise and brief 'reign' provided some seriously lacking stability. I have Keveaney's book on my desk and will hopefully get to it soon. Sulla is a too oft ignored character.

We originally had the crazy idea to make a separate website for the 'Byzantine/Romanion' Empires but I doubt I will ever get that far. If someone wants to make a list continuing the line after the fall of the west... feel free

Again, that was a page that I literally threw together as a placeholder for further glory later. Like many projects... its simply something I have not been able to return to yet. Cato, I would love to see some pieces on your namesake a well as men like Cicero. I barely gave them the attention they deserve because my focus was hardly biographical. Clodius, same thing with you regarding your namesake. I've touched on these famous names of course, but I hardly give them the sort of attention they could get. If you guys fancy yourself writers these types of things would be wonderful additions. {EDIT} but keep in mind everyone... Please do not feel any pressure to do anything. If you prefer to just hang out here on the forum and discuss Roman history, so be it, that's why we created it in the first place. We simply wanted a place to discuss the Roman world. Nobody has any obligation outside of following the rules of this forum. If you aren't writing something for the joy of it, or for the satisfaction of helping to introduce people to Roman history, than don't feel as if you need to do something because the guy next to you is. This site was started for those 2 very reasons. I still love researching and writing even if I don't have the time I wish I could dedicate to it, and nobody should feel pressured into helping. There are no time limits and I don't think it will ever be truly 'finished' anyway. But thanks everyone for the enthusiasm of course!!!!

It actually says its reprinted by permission. The author just has it listed on that forum (provided in the wiki link) and on his own site, but it is the same guy... Sander Van Dorst. I still am not a great admirer of wikipedia, but it looks like they covered their bases on this one.

Ack! But I thought that Cassius Dio places a Jewish revolt in Cyrene during Trajen? Acts of the Apostles I thought then said another happened during Hadrian and that's the one that involved Cyrus? Of course I defer to your judgement P-P because as we move father into AD I walk on shakier ground... EDIT (After P-P's Edit...) I see, my memory was cutting out a portion of Dio... Quite frankly, that era was nearly a persistent state of revolt from Alexandria to Cyrene to Cyprus to Jerusalem. Sorry about the after the fact add-on. It was actually a separate post, but sometimes when you make one post right after a previous one... it will combine both together as if it was all done at the same time.

Thanks Clodius, yes we always welcome additions. The main 'history' site, which begins with the Kings of Rome and is currently through Hadrian, is being written in order with the intention of being a single continuing story. (and I really need to rewrite the early parts, this thing has grown far beyond my original intentions). That doesn't mean someone couldn't submit an article about Constantine, it just wouldn't be linked into that part of the 'story', but would still be readily available on the site. There are some sections that I compiled as fairly generic overviews but still provide decent information... the provinces for instance... and others that go into far more detail, 'The Punic Wars' section for example. My coverage on some topics is cursory and really just a placeholder. As an example of this, the 'Roman medicine' section is laughable in its overall content to anyone who is educated in the field, but can serve as a quick introduction to a complete laymen. What I am saying is... feel free to submit your own articles even if the subject exists. I take no offense to being corrected or challenged, and welcome any addition that improves the quality of the information provided.

The revolt on Cyprus did occur during Trajan's reign. You may be thinking of the Simon ben Kosiba Jewish revolts which occured under Hadrian. I will admit that the 240,000 number is not an easily identifiable figure and the ancient sources on Trajan are practically non existent. Just for the record, my source was not 19th century but rather Cassius Dio book 68

Absolutely, this was determined in the Servian constitution. Even in early America, the people who could vote were "The People" at the fundamental level... But hence the US electorate college designed to protect the 'masses' from their own stupidity.

The same thing came to my mind as well. Without even touching on the politics of who's right and who's wrong, who deserves this or that... we know damn well that this isn't good for peaceful co-existence of Israeli and Palestinian states, as well as people. I don't suppose that there's really been any good reasons to believe that several thousand years of intermittent warfare/fighting will come to an end any time soon anyway. Despite moments of relative calm and people on both sides who are certainly tired of the never ending battle and are trying to do the 'right things', peace just never seems to be enough of a collective goal.

I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away! Dear lord I love Monty Python

Oh, lets just go to the stoning... no-one is to stone anyone , until I blow this whistle! Well he did say Jehovah. The stone haggler The stoning [EDIT] Oh wow, never mind those links... what a find for the archaeology forum... the entire script of the Life of Brian! And... The Holy Grail I feel like I just discovered the Rosetta Stone. hahahah

On the 26th (overnight in the Americas and morning to afternoon in Europe) many of you may have noticed that UNRV was down for somewhere in the area of about 8 hours. It seems that our host decided that our domain had expired, even though we paid it through automatic renewal, and had received an email receipt confirming that the charge had gone through. To make a long story short, it apparantly took several hours for the tech people and the billing people to put thier heads together and correct the error. Sorry to everyone for any inconvenience. Additionally, there have been several shorter periods of down time over the past few weeks/months that we think is directly attributable to performance issues. Our forum upgrade some time back, including the gallery feature, has been cutting into our bandwidth and server storage limits which certainly isn't helping. (And this may be the source of some complaints we've received regarding some forum quirks). Repeated attempts to discuss upgrading our hosting package (higher power server, larger storage and bandwidth, etc.) have been frustrating, since nobody can seem to tell us what we need to know about the moving process, management options, etc. At any rate, we are looking into alternatives and hope to have something resolved soon. Our ultimate goal is a dedicated server with managed hosting so if anyone has had experiences in this department (regarding various hosting companies), we'd appreciate your input. Thanks for your patience!

Absolutely the alliance against Ptolemaic Egypt played a part in influencing Rome. One of the factors in the negotiations for peace prior to the Syrian war was that Antiochus was required to return conquests of Egyptian territory to the Ptolemies. While this arrangment was never quite settled (and the invasions of Antiochus against Greek cities rendered negotiation pointless), it shows that the Romans were very much embroiled in all the international politics of the Alexandrian successor kingdoms.

Yes excellent perspectives and quite well taken (clarity and such).

No of course not--that would be absurd. I'm not arguing that Caesar was Forest Gump (although that's a funny idea!), but only that his political strategy wasn't perfect--by relying on violent, cynical, popular agitators, Caesar was bound to find his henchman putting him in a difficult spot (hence my mentioning the Bona Dea business). This isn't really a major point, by the way--as Caesar had his Clodius, Pompey had his Milo, and Cato had his Bibulus. Politics makes embarrassing bedfellows. LOL, ok, was just making sure we had some posturing for effect going on in there

The man ran circles around his political opponents even if he did have a few bumps along the road. Did that event finish him? Hardly. Politics isn't about standing and fighting... its about knowing when to stand and fight and when to give ground. One doesn't have to always win to be a master, one has to know how to play the game. Hispania was a pretty smart move in retrospect. Didn't Caesar's campaign for Pontifex Maximus put him so far in debt (from bribing people to vote him the priesthood!) that Crassus had to bail him out? Caesar only got out of his debt to Crassus (830 talents, or about 1/8 of Crassus' wealth) by pillaging the wealthy villages of Hispania Ulterior. Caesar was facing ridiculous debt problems before he even campaigned for Pontifex Maximus. He increased that debt for sure, but his victory enabled new opportunities. Caesar took advantage of the opportunities that existed at the time (Hispania among them, a stroke of genius, really) and manipulated them for his benefit. Securing debt relief from Crassus is just another example of his mastery of the situation. Or are you suggesting that Caesar bumbled and stumbled his way to becoming one of the most recognized names in human history, and that he really lacked any political ability whatsoever? I mean c'mon Cato, I don't care if anyone likes the man and his methods and motivations can certainly be questioned but to deny his accomplishments seems very petty to me.

I absolutely love Bill Thayer's Lacus Curtius site and find it invaluable. His presentation of some of the ancients is far more user friendly than some others (though I do hope he does some more translations.. especially Tacitus) Greek and Latin translations And William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities is just great to have around. Thank You Bill Thayer!

Empire on ABC Most of us seem to have liked it at first (myself included) but that quickly turned into loathing with subsequent episodes