Maty

That might make for an interesting thread - how, why and how often did Roman legionaries mutiny?

How much food an individual legionary carried depended on where he was campaigning and what conditions he faced. (For example in some areas the amount of food would be limited because of the amount of water that a legionary needed to carry too. ) On other occasions the commander might help the men by parking his legionary camp right in the middle of an enemy cornfield. Excavations of field camps indicate that legionaries scavenged anything edible from the surrounding area (e.g. well-gnawed vole bones), and in an emergency Caesar's legionaries once experimented with making bread from grass. Legionaries apparently also carried a type of hard tack biscuit which could keep them going for a while if necessary, and every legion had a squad of expert hunters charged with bringing in extra grub. Overall, there are relatively few accounts of troops in the field suffering from hunger. This is mainly because the legions had good supply trains (attacking supply trains was a constant endeavor of enemy commanders who could not fight the legions directly) and because the army was very good at living off the land.

which completely failed ...

There's not enough fragments to make even a synopsis possible. I think about 30 sentences survive from the entire work, and most of them are from book I which seems to have been somewhat independent of the rest and dealt with the Roman foundation legend. Your best source for this is Frier's 'Libri annales pontificum maximorum: the origins of the annalistic tradition'. If your library does not have it, you can either fork out about a hundred dollars to get it from Amazon, or do a search for it online - I had a quick look and the relevant chapter 'Fabii Pictores' seems to be in Google books. However, you might need the real thing to find the appendix which lists the works wherein all the fragments are found. (As a comment on a later posting - it is an interesting question as to which historians today are important because the monks -for whatever reason- preserved them, and which historians the monks preserved because they were important. Those monks were pretty arbitrary. For example we have the Hellenica of Xenophon, but would probably prefer the Oxyrynchus historian who covered the same period. We only know this historian existed because some scraps of papyrus were found with bits of his work on it. We don't even know his name, but the scraps give us hints of some of the huge body of works from antiquity we have lost - Pictor's included.)

Europeans can have other than the black hair and brown eyes which are the norm for other races. Hmmm...

Not sure if the idea of a 'distance too far to go on foot' actually occurred to the Romans. We know legions cheerfully marched from one end of Asia Minor to the other, and there's no reason why anyone else could not. There was a good road system (at one time the famous silk road ran through Anatolia), so if you went from say, Ephesus to Pergamon through Pontus you could then cut south through ex-Commagene and be on the road to Tarsus via the Cilician Gates. Not many people other than the military used horses - mules were a better bet. If you could not afford a mule the question is why you would want to walk all that distance. Families tended to stay put, and poor people did not have far-flung business connections. If you had to travel but could not afford to, your best bet would be to hook up with (for example) a merchant carrying provisions overland, and look for a job on his staff. This would also help with the bandit issue.

Another issue is that 'Roman' is too broad a term. Are we talking imperial messengers? A businessman? A family? An entire legion? Each of these used different means of travel, and that's before we assess the degree of urgency involved. Then there's the time of year, which is important if you have roads or passes blocked by snow. However, if you are looking for a very rough guide, I know of a modern couple who did a pilgrimage on foot from Canterbury to Rome, and it took them just under three months. However, in the right conditions and with relays of good horses I'd estimate that you could do it in under three weeks if you don't mind being a stretcher case by the time you got there. (Ship to Massilia, then by road via Lugdunum and Durocortorum to the Channel ports.)

Somewhere in the Life of Vespasian there's an interesting comment. Someone came up with an innovative device which would make building the Flavian amphitheater easier. Vespasian rewarded the man, but declined to use his invention, saying it take the bread from the mouths of his workmen.

I think the argument is in reality really reversed--as those above have stated--Octavian's friendship made Agrippa. Not doubt Augustus benefited from his loyalty and competence. In most of Agrippa's successes it's probable his legions contained a large number of veterans--or those led by veterans--who had served under Julius Caesar; being his 'son' was cachet Agrippa didn't have. As mentioned above, Agrippa was at one time Augustus' designated successor, which suggests that 'blue blood' may have been less of an issue (at least once things had settled down a bit). But also, there seems to be little that Agrippa wanted that he didn't already have as second-in-command. And let's not forget that he knew his descendants would be top dogs in Rome. (Though as they included Caligula and Nero this was perhaps not a good idea.)

Hi Relpel I had a similar issue recently, though I just wanted to describe the equipment. The people you need to talk to are the re-enactment community. Do a Google search for 'Roman army reenactors' and talk to the group nearest you. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the assistance I received.

The first point you may want to look at is what constitutes 'corruption'. Nepotism, bribery and back-scratching do not corrupt a system if they ARE the system. So as a jumping-off point, I'd suggest trying to imagine how an administration might work in the absence of bureaucracy, which is actually quite a modern concept. Good luck with the paper.

http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/en...1738535795.html Looks like heavy rains are doing in Nero's last memorial ...

The way I understood a wall such as Hadrian's deters raiders has nothing to do with preventing them from getting in. Any reasonably fit bunch of light infantry will not find a wall a serious obstacle. The interesting bit happens once they are over the wall. Imagine a couple of thousand Caledonians swarm over the wall. This does not pass without comment, and the Romans start assembling their reaction force. Now the point of crossing the wall is loot. So after they have raped the cattle and rustled the women our raiders have waggon-loads of corn etc, sheep and sundry livestock that they want to take home after a memorable trip south. Except now there is this stonking great wall in the way, and a large force of very annoyed Romans closing in fast. Assuming the Romans on the wall can defend the gates, even for a limited time, the only way to get safely back home is to hop back over the wall with little more than you took in with you in the first place. Especially as you didn't bring any cavalry (that wall again) and the Romans are bringing theirs.

Erm, the Macedonian phalanx was. it pinned the enemy infantry while the cavalry worked round the sides. That was the general theory anyway. But returning to the Greek version, note that an Olympic event - the hundred yards - had to be completed while wearing full armour. And we know of at least one hoplite charge at a full sprint, which is the one that took the Athenians under the Persian volley at Marathon. And I'm speculating here, but I'd imagine a wedge of hoplites running into a battle line might disrupt it somewhat. My two bits. I'll now await correction from people who actually know what they are talking about ...

Good stuff. Am currently doing an online class on ancient Greece. Am very happy to point my students at other people's material. (Why re-invent the wheel?) A splendid find!

I'm interested in the 'Imp' on the side of the coin. This suggests that Brutus had been hailed as 'Imperator' or 'conquering general'. Is there any other record of this having happened?

Congrats on an interesting and challenging quiz. Not sure about the famous vanishing ninth in Scotland though, as I thought the latest opinion was that they vanished later, in Germany or Judea. Also (and this is perhaps somewhat nitpicking) the Pompeian legions from Spain were disbanded and reformed a couple of times before they became permanent establishments, and in this they were more like the original legions of the Republic which only lasted for a campaign. However, I'm sure that others who specialize in this field will be able to add more informed comment. I got the one about Diocletiana wrong (drat!) so will retaliate with a legion trivia question of my own. Which legion was originally raised by a non-Roman king?

I know a website that has post on caligula, take a look at it I'd certainly like to see more discussion of Caligula's empire. There's so much focus on Caligula's personal life that no-one seems to have noticed that the rest of the Roman empire actually got on rather well in the background. His biographers bang on about how his extravagance ruined the imperial finances but even a greatly extravagant emperor costs less than a small war, especially as Caligula's 'projects' spent the money within the empire and actually added to the money supply as a sort of stimulus package. As far as I have been able to tell, unless you had the misfortune to be in close proximity to Caligula, things were not bad at all. Despite the stuff about wishing the people had just one neck for him to cut, it seems the common people of Rome genuinely missed him when he was gone.

Just tantalizing fragments so far, it seems. I'm trying to understand the mind of the person who snipped the original manuscript apart to make book-bindings. The horror, the horror of it ...!

There's also mention of a broad-brimmed hat type worn by both Sulla, especially at the siege of Athens, as it seems the lad did not tan well. Suetonius also tells us that Augustus used to wear a broad-brimmed item when outdoors. If these aristos wore them you can bet there were many imitators. I like the idea because its so different from how we imagine Romans to look.

I agree with Cato that most Roman aristocrats were not soldiers 'from a very early age', simply because soldiering was meant to be combined with a political career - the Republic had few 'career soldiers' amongst its leaders. We do get some exceptions though, usually in exceptional times - I'd say that Scipio Africanus was one, since he started soldiering at age 17, had seen three major battles before he was 20 and held his first major command at age 25. Then there was Claudius Marcellus raised, we are told, to be a soldier so much to the detriment of his other education he was rumoured to be functionally illiterate. Pompey started young (as his Dad's ADC and was also commanding armies soon after he started shaving). But even Marcellus managed to squeeze in some minmal time in politics. A final exception was Augustus' grandson, who was nominally in charge of a campaign in the east and was killed by an enemy javelin. As to the military positions, the first formal office was usually military tribune, though some young men went with senior generals as 'companions' in order to get acquainted with details of warfare even before then. So by the time a Roman in the late Republic became a senator at age 30 he could well have a decade of military experience. Gaius Gracchus explicitly says he had even more. Caesar ... hmmm I think his first military experience was at a siege of Miletos when he was quite young, then he took over the defence of Asia against Mithridates while in his 20s (simply because he was around, and no-one else was doing it). His first formal military command was in Spain where he earned a triumph, so he did not arrive in Gaul as a total novice. As far as I know the only source we have for the overwhelming odds he repeatedly overcame in Gaul is, errr Caesar.

This is one for the linguistic archaeologists I'd say ... there's various ideas how Jupiter got his name, with the common idea being that the '-piter' bit is an old Latin variant of 'pater'. From there we can either go to the Indo-European Djus-pater (father god), or to 'Zeus pater' father Zeus. There another idea I'd be inclined towards, because it it explains the double 'p'; which is that Jupiter was originally 'Father Jove', which give us a vocative of 'Iovi piter' and from there the extra 'vi' sound was subsumed to a 'p'. But frankly, I'm stretching. Does anyone know if dear old Sextus Festus has anything to say on this? Thanks for reminding me of Silo, Nephele - I knew the name seemed Marsian to me, but I didn't make the connection, though it was evidently in the back of my mind. Re the changing spelling of the gentilictium, I agree that this could be caused by different spelling as branches of the family became separate clans, but it could also be a matter of personal preference, as young Clodius demonstrated.

Poppaedius, also rendered as Poppeaus is best known through the Sabinus family, especially Poppea Sabina, the unfortunate wife of Nero. Is the name originally Marsian? With the Philippus clan - there's notably the husband of Atia, and his (presumed) ancestor who commanded Roman forces in Macedon in 169 BC (though presumably this name is a derivative of the Greek Philhippos, which brings us back to horses). Another name worth throwing into the mix is Iuppiter. Only one known bearer of the name, but quite a significant one.

Check to make sure that you sign up to the right course. A classics degree may be different from a degree in classical history. Classics students looking at the Late Republic spend more of their time looking at how Cicero put his speeches together and his use of the past participle. Classical history students focus on why Cicero was making those speeches in the first place. In other words, though there's a large overlap, Classics is mainly about language, and classical history is mainly about events. The next thing that any university will ask (as well as about your funding!) is what previous experience you have had in the subject. And though these days it is certainly not essential, you won't do yourself any harm in learning some basic Latin asap.

I think Sulla was either lucky or skillful in his choice of battlegrounds here (with Sulla it's sometimes hard to tell luck and skill apart). As you say the Pontic phalanx did its job, but the flexibility of the still legions did them in. As Caldrail says, the psychological aspect is vastly important. Experienced legionaries know that cavalry won't charge home if they stand firm - but it's hard to convince your bowels of that. As for cavalry getting round your flanks - this is always a risk, and not just for phalangites (cf Cannae) but the phalanx is uniquely vulnerable. And Hellenistic armies never got the idea of using shovels in the field the way the legionaries did to make earthworks that limited cavalry's ability to maneuver.