Number Six

I cannot provide you with a bibliography for such a wide topic. Anyway, why are you dismissing Cicero so promptly? He's perhaps the most important intermediary between Greek philosophy and the political thought that led to the Principate. And indeed there is copious bibliography on Cicero's political thought. But not only on him

I can't help you with Xenarchus, but there is copious production on Octavian's political philosophy background: it's basicly covered by the studies on the age between the Scipios and Octavian himself, mostly being concerned with middle Stoa, Polybius and Cicero's political thought.

I don't think I ever heard of it, but I'm not surprised either. There were trades between Egypt and India already under the Ptolemies, via Red Sea: those trades became meaningful under the Roman Empire and there is even a literary text from the 1st century that describes the routes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea. I'm not surprised that they explored the inland of routes which were sizable enough to burden the Roman finances. I don't think there is much more to know on the episode you reported, except putting it into the context which is given by the fact that ancient Romans were active out of the Mediterrean Sea more than we tend to believe.

Learning Latin is a slow process, don't expect great results within one year. If I think of my progress after the first year of High School, hell, not much to be excited about. And you wanna be self-taught, even worse. Furthermore, you're never ever gonna learn proper Latin unless you use it, use it and use it again on a regular basis. On topic, I may have goals for 2014, but I haven't set them yet. Still completing 2013 ones

I don't agree. Divine filiations are a wide theme in the Hellenistic ecumene. I don't see why should we reduce it to a relation between Jesus and Titus, while there's an obvious relation between Jesus, Titus, and much more. But I don't assume you're aware of this, since you think one can come up with an understanding of Christianity after reading just a few texts contemporary to the Gospels.

There is such a thing as labour history. There is also a discipline called industrial relations, which is a shared field between history, sociology, law and economy. Theoretically there are many figures who'd be interested on your material, granted that it is a meaningful one.

Anyway, I am still waiting for the Antonine Constitution rap that was advertised in the title.

English pronunciation is quite difficult for many non native speakers. On the other hand, I never thought of Latin as a difficult language to pronunce. Relativity.

Of course you can. I'm just saying your statement isn't helping to think of it crirically either. If you wanna critically challenge that statement, you should try to answer the questions that I suggested: What were the rights, what the obligations of Roman citizens at that point? What the rights and obligations of non Roman citizens? How did their life change? Personally I am not scholarly interested on the Antonine Constitution and I cannot help you much. But a simple search on JSTOR gives me numerous entries, although many of them are in German.

You can't just say 'it must have meant something and who ever said otherwise must be a moron'. What were the rights, what the obligations of Roman citizens at that point? What the rights and obligations of non Roman citizens? How did their life change? There is plenty of historians who analysed the issue. Anyway, some historians argued that the Antonine Constitution didn't give citinzenship just to every free man of the Empire.

archive.org has some good stuff from early 20th century. But how is Kindle with PDF files? I mean, I tried to read some PDF on my Kobo Aura and I decided I'll just read PDF from my computer.

He did not get raped as far as we know, but he was allegedly homosexual. Catulus sometimes mocks his homosexual behaviour, but the source of the rape idea is more likely to be the anecdota about Caesar's alleged relation with the king of Bithynia in Suet. Jul. 49: 'queen of Bithynia' was he named.

Depends on what period are we talking about. The third century was still a learned era. Just think of personalities like Origen. A contemporary of Origen was Modestinus, the last of the great jurists of the late Roman Empire: when Gregorius flourished, before the end of the third century, law studies still meant something. On the other hand, if we consider the two following centuries, which is when legal knowledge went largely lost before the brief Iustinianian revival, we find that bishops were appointed for all kind of offices in the public administration, and held functions that dealt with trials: for example, according with CTh 16, 11, 1 (399 CE) trials de religione would have bishops as prosecutors.

Rome had different kinds of priests. The pontifices were actually lawyers: they were experts of ius sacrum, which was a part of ius publicum (and originally, like before the Twelve Tables, they were experts of law altogether, since the whole of the law was not a secular matter). The ius sacrum continued to exist for long as a part of the ius publicum: still Constantine would found Constantinople by following the rites of consecratio which were regulated by the ius publicum / sacrum. But I would doubt that ius sacrum, at that point, was still prerogative of priests, for the simple reason that law was heavily secularized already since a while, so you would not need specialized priests for whatever rites still held in public law. Of course you'd still need priests to perform them (Constantine himself was pontifex maximus like any emperor up to Gratian), but that's nothing like the late republican age. On the other hand, I am not aware that the priests of the state cult needed any extensive legal training, and I don't see why they would. All in all, bishops inherited some of their functions from pagan priests, but I think that their education comes from another element of their role in the Christian empire. Like some scholars pointed out (I'm thinking particularly of Peter Brown), bishops replaced the (secular) urban elites in the management of local administration. Law must have been an appealing career for that kind of social class, whether they became bishops or not.

The kind of philosophers that usually are (or should be) ignored by historians are the philosophers who write historical or semi-historical works. Obviously I don't mean that philosophers are or should be ignored on other matters, for example on method. I mean, one thing is basing one's historical work on Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge, which any historian may indeed benefit from, another thing is basing one's historical work on Foucault's History of Insanity which, while having some good ideas, is sloppy and inaccurate on the level of scientific historiography. The result of historians going too much after historical ideas of philosophers is apparent in the bullshit produced by hegelian historians up to few decades ago. That's why I say that the historical ideas of any given philosopher may not be necessarily of concern for historians and history.

I never read anything by him, but usually philosophers are mediocre historians (including Foucault). And they aren't often considered (explicitly) by historians. It comes from Plato's Timaeus. I'm not sure what are you meaning. Christology originated from issues which were proper to Greek philosophy, that's known. But what do you mean when you say that the trinity crises was because of Aristotle's teachings? I mean, given that you put Aristotle as the crises, what is the starting point of the trinity matter?

You're treating global warming as a belief. In fact, it may be so for the most of the population, for that's how knwoledge ever works: we do grant our belief to people who are competent about information we cannot verify by ourselves, and forming one's knowledge is mostly about trusting someone's else competency. But also yours is a belief. The point isn't whether global warming may be a belief or not, the point is whether it's only a belief or it isn't. In fact it's not only a belief. There are countless scientific studies on it, and your personal experience with climate doesn't prove them wrong. I may bring up my own experiences, which differ from yours, but not yours nor mine are a good fundation for questioning global warming. As a side note, although I'm aware that there are climate change denialists, the most debated issue isn't whether global warming is happening or not, but whether it's caused by mankind or not; and its extent.

You phalanx gotta have very bad AI. Also I wonder whether one could make 30 foot poles with materials then available, but I am no expert.

Well, Romans may have been under the political influence of Etruscans. Their meeting with the Greeks of Italy probably was less favourable. Anyway I guess that the influece of the latters on the Romans may have been downrated. Also, the Etruscans themselves were influenced by the Greeks, so one may suppose one route of influence or the other.

So basicly the Jews took something from anybody they came in touch with. Oh, God, I didn't know. Basicly the same as anybody else usually did. The Romans themselves took from Etruscans, from Magna Graecia (long before the 'Hellenization' of their culture would begin) and from the other Italic peoples. Hell, if we consider the influences of Etruscans over the early Rome (an influence that some scholars tend to exaggerate; but, although I do not agree with exaggerations, the influence is far from minimal), Roman-Greek bilingualism wasn't any original... not because of the Jews, but because of the Romans themselves. In the end it's down to one simple thing: do we recognize any originality to what the Romans did with Greece? I have no doubt that what Jews did with other cultures they came in contact with (or were usually dominated by) is just as meaningful and original. Not necessarily the same thing.

Well, you mentioned Jews. It is indeed an interesting clue, but what Jews are we talking about? Not that you cared as much as to specify it, for the sake of the historical facts you boast about. So, let's see, what Jews? The Alexandrian Jews created a hybrid Judeo-Hellenistic culture, Philo being their most notorious champion, but is it in any way similar to what Romans did with Greek? Hell, no. Jews speaking Greek in Greek Alexandria is not the same field, not the same championship and not even the same sport, like someone said. Jews in Judea following Alexander's conquests? Great, that's another good clue, but what did they really do with Greek? How did it affect their culture? Would you tell us? War, you finally said it, indeed. It doesn't appear to me that Greek was used on the same extents as it was in the Roman Empire: the Jewish culture was little affected, other than for originating sub-cultures such as gnosis. Do we wanna talk of post-70 CE Jews? That's interesting too, Christianity was a big phenomenon which originated from Judea and was permeated by Greek thought, but 70 CE is quite after Rome and we may also question the extent of Jewish contributions once Christianity took off. The influence of Persian, Babylonian etc. empires over the Jewish civilization is significant and it is probably a better example, but I keep missing the point of the comparison, as Jews were basically under the rule of those people. So, well, first of all, you don't make a good service to the historical facts by making a list of ancient nations, without either argumenting why it's actually relevant. Secondly, you can probably name each and every one of them, for anywhere there have been forms of bilingualism, contacts, influences, etc. So, in the end, you're probably missing the point I was trying to make: it's not about some random peeps speaking another as random language. Maybe the impact of the Greek culture over Rome is not entirely clear: I didn't mention bilingualism because Romans were smart or because it's fun to speak a second language. Simply, Rome (which is: its upper classes) went through the last centuries before Christ and came out with a completely different figure; the 1st century CE Rome had changed a whole lot from what it was in the 4th century BC. Rome took a foreign, more advanced culture, the Greek culture, and provided itself with the means to establish a political dominion and a cultural reference over the mediterrean ecumene: the absorbtion was so deep that you can't always distinguish what's Roman and what's Hellenistic: historians do sometime talk of the Roman Empire as of a Roman-Hellenistic Empire. All of this went by the knowledge of the language. There is no equal: Romans were first at doing exactly this (and not some other random form of cultural exchange or subjugation). And hey, I just gave the clue to the OP. If he wants to use it, he can get documented and/or ask for clarifications, but I didn't intend to write a paper for him. More so because, in the end, we may have different opinions.

You keep suggesting examples that belong to the wrong time, place or dimension. I am not gonna challenge them anymore. If you want, argument them. I'm not gonna make an argument on each and every moment of Jews history just to prove a point. I don't think we understood each other anyway. Since you already said that you accept the Roman supremacy of scale in bilingualism, I'm not even sure what are we talking about anymore.

Well, the argument doesn't apply at least to the 'Hellenic Jews': Jews living in a Greek city and learning Greek is quite different from Romans living in Rome and learning Greek. As far as Hellenistic Jews, Samaritans and what not are concerned, I should therefore ask you what did they do with their bilingualism, how did it affect their culture, so we can apprecciate if it's anything comparable with my example. Philo (Alexandrian) doesn't count. Joseph probably does, although it's not a matter of single personalities, as it's not for Rome. But I may also ask: what Jews are we talking about? The Jews before or the Jews after 70 CE? In the end, we can spend the next few days with you listing all of the ancient nations and with me saying why they're different (or asking you why are they similar), or you may try to understand the point I was trying to make, which is not even a strict point, and it's difficult to contest if you don't either argument the supposed similarities of your examples. Like you said, this kind of talk is not scientific, but it's not universally invalid either. In fact I wonder if you're bitter because I didn't recognize the greatness of cynism, which you appear to study, or because you don't like the unscientific approach of the OP, which I didn't challenge but supported instead.

Hellenic or Hellenistic Jews?

Bilingualism is a practice, before than being an idea: any country that happened to be in a certain socio-historical condition practiced it in some way. But exactly because it's a practice, not an idea, I don't think it makes sense to speak of supposed 'originators' who did something - in fact - different. It's not just about size. The point is: in the light of the OP's approach, the example that we can get from Roman bilingualism is an example that, as far as I can see, we cannot get from any other ancient civilization. We talk about universal citizenship? In that case we should rather look at the ones Romans took it from. We talk of bilingualism? What happened in Rome has no equals.