Primus Pilus

Yes, indeed Pontifex Maximus List But back to subject...

And much like Alexander, it probably would've collapsed after his death. Fortunately for Rome, they still had another 50 years of positive imperial rule ahead of them after Trajan died.

This seems to only be available to admins, though our board settings say it should be available to all 'members'. Can any other members confirm if upload attachments is working for them please?

Rhetoric, oration, military 'arts'

The references I've seen have indicated a drawing of lots, though I wouldn't be surprised if officers may not have bothered with such a formality. In practice I'm sure there may have been some displays of favoritism. As there aren't a great deal of records dealing with the subject, its alot of conjecture, but the numbers make me wonder. I would suspect that the division of men would've been based on the pre-existing contubernium. In theory, this was a unit of 10 men, but in practice was made up of 8 men. Rather than dividing into new groups of '10' wouldn't it make more sense for each contubernium to draw lots. If that were the case, decimation actually would've meant the death of 1 out of every 8 men. Of course, this totally assumes full compliment of men which was rarely the case, especially if the army had done something to deserve decimation. I suppose there wouldn't be any choice but to 'count' using another method.

Welcome to UNRV and thanks for participating Germanicus. In the future though, we'd prefer thoughts so closely related and without replies in between, be posted all together in a single post. No worries though, thanks!

Every 10th man, hence 'Deci' mation. They were indeed beaten to death by their fellow soldiers, in which the entire century/cohort/legion would've taken part depending on the circumstances. A brutal form of discipline but probably much more effective than later methods of execution for desertion. In this way at least all the 'guilty' had a grim part to play. Fortunately it was used very seldom, and is only really mentioned a few times in the ancient sources. The Crassus incident clearly stands as the most well known.

Suetonius is certainly the most entertaining. I've never valued him as the most reliable (mainly because of his use of gossip and rumor), but all of the ancients certainly have their flaws. Of course there is truth in every ancient source. One just has to try to get through the propoganda of that period. My personal favorites are (though I personally value all the sources, these are just my favorites): Dio Cassius. Seems to comprise similar 'facts' to most other sources and yet does so without quite as much bias. (IMO anyway) Livy. Regardless what anyone might think of his style or his propoganda, without Livy, we know virtually nothing of the early Republic. Tacitus. Terribly biased, but invaluable nonetheless. Without Tacitus, we know even less than the minimal amount we know as it is regarding ancient Germanics. Caesar. Of course, he is probably the most biased, but what a brilliant and detailed account of some of the most violent and world shaking events in world history. Suetonius. As already suggested, you can't beat him for reading ancient history and feeling entertained at the same time. Most overlooked or underated: Appian of Alexandria. (His material on the civil wars of the late Republic is invaluable.) Honorable mention: Polybius for his treatment of the Punic Wars.

True enough. Generally though, the 'evidence' Vegetius gives relates to later imperial practices. I'm not personally aware of any such evidence for legionary marks prior to his writings. It would certainly stand to reason that such marks would be different in the two periods (Republican and Imperial), but perhaps they weren't specific to any slogan at all. Couldn't the mark just be a simple + or a / or a ]? Perhaps it might be a legionary mark, like II if one was recruited into Legio II Augusta, or some combination of symbols for that particular unit.

1) Be courteous 2) Debate is encouraged. Argument and flaming is not. Support your own opinions. Do not attack the opinions of others without making your own case clear. We also generally do not encourage single line posts without some 'meat' within the posts. (This is topic dependent of course and generally relates to historical discussions.) For example rather than say just 'Caesar was the greatest general', post 'Caesar was the greatest because he conquered a unified Gaul, crossed the Rhine, invaded Britain, defeated an equally great Roman army, brought Egypt completely under Roman dominance' etc, etc. 2a) Do not require proof of established consensus history. Obviously there are many items open to debate, but if you bring an unestablished opinion here, you must attempt to prove it before making an unsupported statement and requiring others to prove you wrong. (This goes along with general debate courtesy) 3) Try to keep subject matter in the appropriate forum. Keeping the forum tidy encourages people who are interested in particular subjects to post in those categories, or to ignore threads they aren't interested in. 4) Be language sensitive. We have posters from all over the world, many of whom don't use English as their primary language. Let's encourage proper English, but also give people the benefit of the doubt if some posts seem a bit difficult to understand. However, excessive internet lingo, various forms of 'leet' speak and general grammar/spelling laziness are highly discouraged and can be deleted/ridiculed without notification. 5) Be tolerant. The Romans viewed many people of all walks of life to be of lesser cultural standing, but rarely cared about ethnicity or skin color. Even religions of all types (with the notable exceptions of Christianity, depending on the era, and Judaism depending on Imperial regime) were widely accepted. However, don't be politcally correct just for the sake of it. Sometimes we must be a little more clear in order to illustrate a point. If something is offensive we will deal with it appropriately, but we don't want to censor any more than necessary for the health of the forum. 6) There are also teachers, students and people of all walks of life who read this forum countless times from various search engine results. Let's keep the 'colorful language' to a minimum and present ourselves with intelligent, open and inviting conversation. We at UNRV, of course, can arbitrarily decide to ban or suspend a poster, delete or edit threads or posts, at any given time. We hope thats a very minimal occurence. Welcome and Enjoy.

I'm not the technical guy to set that up, but I dont see any reason why we can't.

Photos are great, just make sure we give credit where its due, if they aren't personal photos.

Oh feel free to retort, but I only wanted to point out that Belog's post is perfectly viable in my opinion. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess.

NP... What I should've said was, we should agree to disagree. Either way, now I'm done, and I leave this thread to others.

Spartacus, le'ts not jump to quickly here. It's a question I can't answer because I've never studied language to any great detail, but there may be some willing to take it on. Besides, the initial question is valid....

Nice flame bait. I am replying because I am forced to. Debate is encouraged as that is the idea of this forum. Those sort of comments are not. That's all.

I am partial to the Republican period as a whole, especially the time of the Punic Wars and subsequent eastern expansion. Though that expansion eventually led to the collapse of the Republican system, at this point Senatorial government was still viable.

Tell me how I have shot myself in the foot. The goal of the those who commit ethnic cleansing is the elimination of those they think are inferior. Caesar may have saw them as inferior, but that was not the motivation for war. As I've said countless times. Caesar's goal was never the elimination of the Celtic people, nor did he conquer them out of any sort of hatred. In fact many Celts were Caesars allies and remained so after the final surrender of Gallic resistence. By definition, their conquest was not ethnic cleansing. Caesar's goal was the increase of his own glory, dignity, wealth and politcal power. He didn't care who he conquered, as long as there was someone to conquer. Once the war had ended, the Celtic people became important and contributing members of Roman society in western Europe. I will no longer reply to this thread, as it is obviously becoming pointless.

Ethnic cleansing is the deliberate elimination of an ethnic group of people. The Romans never did that. Period. You can twist history to fit the modern interpretation and/or your own moral codes, but its quite simply wrong. Caesar may have razed some towns and villages and even killed people by the millions. However, he did not wipe out the Celtic people, nor did he ever intend to. He killed until they were subdued, and thats all. In the modern world, ethnic cleansing is not about subjugation, it is about the elimination of an ethnicity. Even if the victimized group 'surrenders' to their oppressor, the cleansing would continue because the goal is not supreme authority. The goal is the death of a lesser race.

Mostly from Suetonius actually. Regardless, I loved I, Claudius. The sequel dropped off a little, but still an excellent novel. Hmm, I think its about time to re-read those.

No, I'd go to see the gladiator games.

Yeah, hell I'd go.

You are also misinterpretating what Caesar did vs. what more modern nations have done. Caesar exterminated Gallic Celts for resisting Roman rule. Those Celts who accepted Roman rule lived freely and were granted great favor. That is not ethnic cleansing. It is annhilation on a massive scale, but not ethnic cleansing.

Hmm, I do attend the modern equivelants... ie American Football here, Soccer for Europeans, and every other sport on the fringe and in between.

There have been estimates that Caesar enslaved as many as 1 million Gauls and exterminated an equal number. Caesar himself made outrageous claims as to the number of slaves brought back.