Primus Pilus

In my expert analysis of the photograph in question, it is clearly the ghost of christians who were burnt at the stake by Nero as scapegoats for burning the city.

Just a simple tunic would be authentic, but I suppose it would depend on what the goal was. For something like this, I'd assume anything that resembled a gladiator would be more popular.

I'm afraid that most reputable scholars admit that the foundations of Rome are mythical at best. A revelation of new data would be a huge archaeological news. Who are these scholars and what is this scientific criteria?

I have just recently started reading "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War" by Nathaniel Philbrick and wanted to share what a fascinating account of early American colonization/Indian relations that it is. Not only is it appropriate for this time of year (as we close in on the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States), but this is the sort of history that is often glossed over or delegated to the third/fourth/fifth etc. tiers of important subject matters. Frankly, I am only a few chapters in, but I don't feel at all inappropriate in suggesting that this is a must read for anyone interested in the early colonial period of North America. Generally I find myself focusing on the Revolutionary period through the Civil War when reading on American history (when I occasionally take a break from Rome of course) but I am thrilled to have drifted back into this earlier period. From what I have read so far this is not a "European colonists were evil while Native Americans were victims" revisionism, nor is it the opposite account of European supremacy and Native American savagery. It is simply a balanced and honest portrayal of history direct from the sources... good, bad and indifferent. I may be jumping the gun by posting this so early into my own reading experience, but I can't wait to get home and continue reading. Mayflower: Amazon reviews and such

We also know of Baeterrae from Massilia in Narbonensis (part of Gaul for such practical purposes as was suggested in the show). Pliny says this in HR 14.8"

Perhaps true for those versed in the details of the Julio-Claudians, but still a nice collection of trivia. Thanks Augusta!

Yes, his first goal was to successfully claim the inheritance, but I meant to suggest that it was ambition (in addition to his legal right) that drove him to do this even in spite of the objections of his family. Certainly I don't mean to imply that it was ambition alone, but only that I believe this to be the single most influential motivating factor.

Familial honor combined with vengeance could serve in a romantic approach, but good old fashioned Roman ambition was presented with an amazing opportunity IMO.

I downloaded and installed Firefox 2.0 yesterday without even knowing all of the included features. Today, while typing posts in the forum, I have noticed an occasional misspelled/typed word underlined in red. Trying to figure out why our forum suddenly has this feature, I realized my naivety. Lo and behold, it was the Firefox browser that includes a spell checker and not the forum software. Mind you, I have no clue if the other non IE browsers include this feature, but spelling snobs the world over should be delighted. (I am pretty sure that even the new IE 7.0 doesn't include this feature). Mozilla/Firefox

I split off the graffiti posts... that's exactly the sort of discussion that warrants its own thread in this forum

Welcome to the new subforum of our Colosseum category for discussion of entertainment based on the Roman world. Feel free to start topics regarding and/or discuss episodes, characters, the script, the plot, actors, sets, costumes or whatever you can think of regarding the Rome television series.

Pardon the pun when talking of crucifixion... but an old thread gets resurrected. We seem to be largely focused on Roman brutality here, but for a Roman, might not the greatest punishment simply have been to be stripped of citizenship and exile?

I'm in agreement with Pertinax here. It was no secret that many of the American "Founding Fathers" held great admiration for Republican Rome. Adopting pieces of Roman culture as symbols of the early American Republic is based more upon logical association than a veiled transferance of Mithraism. Perhaps we are misunderstanding the original premise so feel free to correct our presumptions.

Would you recommend them, Julius? Bearing in mind, of course, that I am a terrible 'nit-picker'. I have often picked one up in a bookshop and flicked through, but the writing did not engage me. However, I would be prepared to persevere with this for a well-told story. I do keep thinking about it, but have not yet taken the plunge. Do you like a completely artificial story (though well written and action packed) about a person, time period and series of events that have a great many historical sources to refute everything in the story? If you don't mind an escape from the known history, it is an engaging tale. However if you prefer your fiction to be based on a bit of accuracy, you won't like this at all.

That's a pretty defeatest attitude about it all. I don't understand why some folks in general have this morbid fear of taxation. It seems irrational to me, because for every economic level, a raise of something like 0.25% of income would not be noticed, and yet it would lead to a great amount of money which could be well applied. I don't fear taxes, I despise them and how they are spent, while understanding a minimal necessity of the evil. And to me, raising taxes is defeatist, not opposing them. "There are no guarantees but death and taxes"... this is optimism? EDIT: PS, my bad here guys, I don't want this to too far off on the taxation tangent... please do address the article... which actually doesn't mention a thing about income taxes anyway.

But higher income taxes resolves all this? Do we assume that another political agenda would somehow spend it the "right way"? I really don't think this is political at all. We can raise all the taxes we want, and there are numerous factors at work, but we aren't going to see a return of US manufacturing until the labor cost playing field is level.

Of course the working middle class is a globalization loser (and coming from a manufacturing reliant state, the effects on our economy and labor force are easy to see) but what does it have to do with the comment regarding tax cuts for the rich when in reality there was an across the board tax cuts for everyone who pays taxes? The association is not relevant. We are losing industrial jobs because it is cheaper to make products in foreign factories. Individual income taxes (no matter who pays them and how much) have nothing to do with globalization. Regardless of the percentages of which group saves or pays how much, my personal tax cut was significant despite being quite decidedly middle class. Are you suggesting that if we raised everyone's taxes some how manufacturing would miraculously return as a viable option for the US worker? Is there some correlation between manufacturing and raising the highest percentage bracket of US income taxes from 36% to a higher figure that I am missing. Does eliminating taxes for everyone in the lower brackets create some sort of incentive to build factories? I suppose the middle and lower classes would have an extra couple thousand dollars to blow on crap made in southeast Asian sweat shops, but it's not going to help anyone find an industrial job. EDIT: Woops, forget to mention that the article is quite well written and my response is more to give FC a hard time than to refute anything in the article itself.

You've summed it up fairly well. There were cases of non land owning citizenry (and slaves and freedmen as well) serving in the legions prior to the reforms of Marius (ie 2nd Punic War). Many lower class citizens still had occupations to return to after their service as the mass influx of slaves from Greece, Africa and the Balkans had only just begun. Additionally Colonia and the retirement of veterans on provincial soil was not a new concept in the post Marian army, but the scale grew with each successive generation as Roman borders expanded farther and farther beyond Italy. You also touched upon an interesting factor regarding the burden on the Roman state that still contributed heavily to the recruitment, outfitting and continuing supply of the imperator general armies. There is often a misconception that the men were entirely dependent upon their generals, when for the most part, a great deal was financed by the treasury. It seems that oft-times, even the legions themselves were not quite aware of this. Don't misunderstand though, the treasury and many individual aristocrats could and often did benefit heavily from the conquests of the army.

While those frilly wine looking bottles are impressive, I must point out for the record that the most beautiful bottle of beer in the world is a full one. Anyway, please ask your aunt who the US importer is (if there is one).

Its the chase of the speculation or the analyst hype that is the bigger problem as the markets have opened up to so many investors with 401(k)'s, small day trading accounts, etc. If one continues to look for companies that disregard the stock price chase (without alienating investors completely of course) and worry more about their corporate philosophy rather than the pitfalls of analyst expectations, the market can be quite sound (though still a risk). The strategy won't make the 'quick buck' but it will see fairly steady growth over the long haul. The market is both as stable and volatile as its ever been, in my opinion. There is nothing new about hype, corporate greed or scandal. Regardless, I stopped both online and short term trading when I lost my ass in the tech crash a few years back.

I'm afraid I'm also unaware of any distinct English language prosopographies. Other than the works by Michael Grant, I'm not even aware of any collective bios of the two 'dynasties'.

Curry seems to have an agenda well beyond the origins of the salute. There may or not be links between the original American "Pledge of Allegiance" and the Nazi salute, but he acts as if the US salute was the first time humanity ever performed such a straight armed salute. The US stopped the practice during WWII because of the similarities, but Curry seems to believe that the existence of the US Pledge is an indication of a guised continuation of national socialism. Some of his research seems quite sound and provocatively interesting, but the conclusions are so tainted by his agenda that they border on the bizarre.

Despite the fact that we rarely have any serious problems with our community, we have decided to add another Legatus to our staff of moderators. Due to long serving dedication to the forum, sound contributions to the site as a whole and a consistent diplomatic presence, we have decided to promote the much deserving Pantagathus. Thank you for your support of UNRV. ----- While I'm at it... this also serves as good opportunity to welcome back Germanicus to the forum after a considerable hiatus from internet access. Welcome back Germanicus... glad to have you back. ----- Just as a note on our moderators... while each has been given a sort discretionary imperium, they should be considered more as guides in our discussions of ancient history rather than as forum police. However, its always a wise practice to have several trusted eyes to help keep the group humming along for those occasional disturbances.

Caesar took some diplomatic/political hostages, but not mass quantities of slave laborers. With the various disasters that disrupted his fleet, he probably wouldn't have had room for them even if he had captured them.

Actually provided you make regular payments and maintain long term credit accounts, it doesn't matter if you ring up huge amounts of debt. You can easily establish 700+ credit scores while still being a financial menace to yourself. The bulk of bad credit occurs when people stop paying their debts. As such using credit scores is hardly a good indication of the potential employee anyway (and I agree it is a stupid idea).