Maty

This is from a milestone from Vindolanda. The MPXX is no problem as this is the milestone bit. But the line above has me stumped. It's either ACORIS, which is a city in Egypt, and some way from northern Britain and not very relevant, or A 1000 RIS (because a c|[backward c] was the old Roman for M as in a thousand) Either way I can't make much sense of it, and thought I'd throw the issue those here for their thoughts.

I'd put their habit of crucifying dogs once a year up there in terms of gratuitous cruelty - maybe not cruelty to humans, but revolting nevertheless.

This could be a legacy of the Lombard invasion, or even the time when Gauls occupied Cisalpine Gaul. I have observed this in Northern and central Italy but not the south. As you say, the present blonds in North Italy might be of Lombard descent. But then the darker complexions of the south - especially Sicily - might traced to later Arab invaders. They were there for 200 years, I believe. Anyway, why don't we ask the Romans? Google 'roman frescos' and study those from classical Italy. Assuming that the painters used standard Roman types as their models, we find plenty of swarthy Italian types, but also plenty of pale complexions, lots of mousy brown hair, and the occasional blond. Not much different from what one might find on an English street.

'Along this train of thought, I find it borderline offensive at how the Romans have been so thoroughly Anglicized. In so many artistic representations, they look, sound, and act like your stereotypical modern northern European. Now, this isn't entirely inaccurate, as some Romans in Gaul, Britain, and northern Spain probably did look more like northern European and less Mediterranean. But for most of Rome's history, both before and after the empire, they probably looked and sounded more or less like a modern-day Italian, Spaniard, Portuguese, or Frenchman does. ' Ummm, yes. As long as we accept that many northern Italians and Frenchmen are blue-eyed natural blondes. There were a number of Romans called Rufus, and this comes from red-headed 'Anglic types'. And Sulla was not just non-swarthy, he used to go horribly blotchy in the sun. Apparently he looked very Germanic. The Romans used to joke about people who tried to change their hair colour to artificial blonde, but there were undoubtedly many natural blonds about - Pompey being one. As to how they sounded, that's anyone's guess. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the sound of 'original' Latin from the scansion of contemporary poetry (one effort famously deciding that Cicero should be pronounced 'kicke-roo') but no-one really knows.

A great post, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. But there's one sentence I'd quibble with, and that's the one above. As I recall Spartacus did compete with Roman soldiery in a fair fight - and beat them at least twice, and one lot of soldiery were a veteran legion from Gaul. (I'm counting the other time when he was caught between two Roman armies, and beat them one after the other as a single occasion.) With inaccuracies in the movie, I seem to recall Crassus doing his decimating by pushing people off a bridge, which is innovative, but not what a dyed-in-the-wool conservative like Crassus would have done.

I just fired up a DVD with Miami U professor Steven Tuck claiming Romans initially DISDAINED Greek culture (maybe because they disdained the Etruscans?). Then he says they gradually learned to like Greek art and architecture, especially after 212bc sack of Siracuse, and emulated it as soon as they had a need for big formal temples, villas, and such. It's possible to overstate the 'disdain' thing. For example in the misty days when Roman legend and facts are hard to tell apart, tradition has the Romans seeking guidance from Delphi in Greece, and the twelve tables which were the foundation of Roman law were established after the Romans heard of a similar enterprise in Athens and sent a delegation to take notes. Which you don't do from people you disdain. Aqueducts and sewers as well as much of their architecture the early Romans lifted directly from the Etruscans, and things like ship-building they took from the Greeks. The point is that while one nation or another might claim to have 'invented' a particular idea, they didn't hold a patent, and these things became part of a common Mediterranean culture. I submit that temple design was one of those things. Certainly after a hard look at Syracuse, the Romans felt that they needed to up their game in terms of culture. But the clue here is in the 'big formal temples' not in 'radically redesigned temples'. That said, there is a theory that the temple/shrine of Heracles in the forum boarium represents an older form of temple design, but the even older temple of Jupiter O.M. on the Capitoline seems to have been from the start a 'Greek' design.

I'll have a crack at the Greek part of the question. And I'd say that there were no changes when Romans encountered Greek influences, because the Greek influences were there from the beginning. When Rome was founded Greek influence was strong in the area as a result of close ties between the Etruscans and the Greeks. The legend that the Etruscan kings of Rome were originally of Corinthian stock is a reflection of this. Since the Romans deferred to the Etruscans in many matters of religion, and the few architectural remains we have show that the Etruscans used roughly the same temple design as the Greeks, it is probable that the first temples built in Rome already followed the 'Greek model'. Certainly our sources never mention any changes to the adoption of the standard design of altar/proscenium/cella, with a column/architrave construction. In fact an argument has been made, controversially, that the 'Tuscan' style of architecture precedes the Ionic and Doric, which would stand this part of the question on its head.

Take care with the audio portion. I have discovered the hard way that (for example) Germans, Italians and English write the same Latin, but the pronunciation is vastly different. And no-one really knows how the Romans did it. Good luck with the learning. It helps a lot if you understand the rules of grammar in any language, but especially your own. And with Latin, as with any foreign language, it helps if you spend a lot of time in that country, so spend time hanging out with Caesar and Suetonius and reading academic stuff on a topic you enjoy that is mainly English but which also has a number of words and quotes in Latin.

Heheh, I feel a little goofy admitting this, but my motto translation request was for a vampire clan in an online role-playing game. So, I guess the "Infernum" is best suited to the purpose. *sheepish grin* Ah, in that case my translation would be 'Non soli senecti longi in dentibus sunt.'

It can't be irrespective of your gender, because Roman names were gender-specific. So a male might be Perforatus est, but his female equivalent would be Perforata est.

Thanks, that looks pretty good to me! Anyone else able to confirm or add to Neoflash's translation? Oke - we don't need Tartarus, because Latin is used extensively by the Catholic church, who have several words for Hell itself. Also, we probably don't need to repeat the verb, so I'd try venimus atque infernum nobiscum. Disclaimer - my Latin tutor once threatened to shoot me for wanton abuse of the ablative, so take my suggestion cum grano salis.

There was a similar work of pornography disguised as history dealing with Caius Caligula a few years back. I would recall the name if I hadn't made such an effort to forget it. On the bright side, Mr Cawthorne is continuing a long tradition of spinning stories of imperial depravity which goes back to before Suetonius. From what I have gathered by looking at some reviews, he has basically taken a historical event - e.g. the capture of Valerian by Shapur - and allowed his imagination to slobber over it. It's only a matter of time before I see him quoted in student essays, and have a chance to offload my 'Did you check the original sources?' speech. Come to that, perhaps I should mail the speech to Mr Cawthorne.

And since Mr Thayler is too modest to mention it, the LaciusCurtius website which is one of the first places I send my students, and where I always go when starting to research a new topic, or simply for a rummage around on a quiet afternoon. My deepest thanks, Sir!

"IMHO, by now a more interesting question would be why the Macedonians were still able to win some significant battles over the Roman legions, notoriously when Perseus routed Crassus at Callicinus." I'll have a stab at answering this one. Though we should first note that this was not a legion v phalanx battle. It wasn't completely a rout either, but I'll come to that. Basically Perseus had his army all drawn up near Tempe in Thessaly waiting for the Romans to come to him. Crassus had a hellish time getting his troops through the mountains and took so long arriving that Perseus came looking for him.(Perseus spent a lot of this war wondering where the Romans were and what they were doing. Military intelligence was not his strong suit.) He caught up with Crassus at Callicinus, a few miles from Larissa. Because of the broken ground around the Roman camp, neither side deployed its heavy infantry, with both phalanx and legions kept in reserve. The battle was mainly light-to-medium foot and cavalry - about 12,000 per side. So rather than Roman v Macedonian this battle was Thracian and Gallic irregulars v Peltasts, and Macedonian v Greek and Roman cavalry. The Greeks were unenthusiastic allies in the first place, and a direct charge by the Macedonian companion cavalry did not make them feel any better about being there. After losing about 2000 men the Greeks legged it for camp, and their retreat was covered by Thessalian cavalry which held formation. The next day Crassus pulled his army to more secure quarters over the river Peneaus. That was Callicinus. I'd say a better example might be the crushing of a legion under Iuventius Thalna by Andriscus in 149. It was definitely a legion in action here, and it was virtually wiped out. Regrettably, the Romans are generally a bit vague about battles in which they got thumped (apart from claiming their allies let them down), and the sources for this period are poor anyway (e.g. no Livy, Polybius in fragments). If anyone does have excellent sources for this battle please don't tell me. I've just done 80,000 words on the Macedonian wars and it's too late to change anything.

I've always felt kinda sorry for the Gorgons. They started as beautiful women, and then get turned to hideous creatures because Medusa has sex with Poseidon in Athena's temple. (Like she had any choice - Poseidon even raped his own sister Demeter once.) So once given their makeovers by Athena, the Gorgons take themselves so far from humanity that Perseus has to give three handicapped old ladies the third degree just to find them. So they are hardly a public menace. In fact Medusa did most of her petrifying after she was murdered and Perseus started waving her head at people he didn't like. Anyway, once Medusa got capped, this left two sisters. They were immortal (Medusa wasn't), so either Buffy the Gorgon slayer finds a way around that, and we have one episode (and the pilot of course) or we have many episodes involving Buffy the wannabe Gorgon Slayer. On the other hand, we could unleash Buffy on a nasty beastie called the Strix which rips up babies to get the mother's milk with an extra order of baby blood - problem is that Buffy the Strix slayer hardly rolls off the tongue. Of course, 'bending' a bit of mythology solves all these problems anyway - Bring on Buffy the Pedant slayer!

Thanks for this link - it looks like a great journal. I've printed out the first .pdf in glorious technicolour, so it looks as if this might be an issue with your printer. Can you print other items off the net without them greying out? Also have you tried downloading the .pdf and printing that? Since we might be getting somewhat technical here, you might consider sending me further details by message, I'll be happy to help you with sorting it out as thanks for providing some reading material whilst I'm listening to england getting thrashed at cricket. I printed at work and they only have a black laser printer. If I down load pdf? can change the colour of the fonts? Oke- the problem is that this journal uses an attractive lilac colour for a lot of its fonts. A laser loaded with just black toner will convert this to greyscale, and this gets you the faint grey you are seeing. You need a colour inkjet to print this properly. You can change the colour of the fonts in the pdf, but this requires technical skill and something like photoshop, or a pdf editor. You'd do better investing in a $40 printer. If you want to do it the hard way, download the .pdf, select the text and copy it into your word processor. Then change the font to black and print it. However, you will lose a lot of the formatting and other features that make this an attractive journal. I've downloaded the latest .pdf and read through it during a rather boring repeat of CSI on the TV. Seriously, consider that inkjet.

Thanks for this link - it looks like a great journal. I've printed out the first .pdf in glorious technicolour, so it looks as if this might be an issue with your printer. Can you print other items off the net without them greying out? Also have you tried downloading the .pdf and printing that? Since we might be getting somewhat technical here, you might consider sending me further details by message, I'll be happy to help you with sorting it out as thanks for providing some reading material whilst I'm listening to england getting thrashed at cricket.

Actually he's got a point - there is not a lot known about Spartacus. The Romans did not talk about him much for the same reason a street gangster does not tell about the time he got whupped by some geek girl from the right side of the tracks. Some of the best detail we get is incidental stuff while (for example) Plutarch is telling the life of Crassus. That said, I can see at least three things wrong with the top picture shown in the article, and anyone who describes '300' as 'a liberating experience' is definitely someone to fear. But, if it gets people into ancient history there's always forums like this to put them right - but first they have to have their imaginations fired up, and if this, or even (gulp) 300 does the trick then I'm all for it. (I also get the feeling that the Romans would have loved 'Xenia warrior princess' if someone had presented it to them in pantomime form, especially with real blood and extra nudity. )

Just as an extra note - this Ajax was the fellow who raped Cassandra at the fall of Troy. C. was clinging to the altar of Athena for sanctuary and Ajax dragged her off. The other Greeks wanted to execute him - for impiety, not rape - but he saved himself by clinging to the fallen statue of Athena which had fallen over whilst he was dragging Cassandra off it. As a result the gods were less than pleased with him - hence the incident on his journey home.

Seems to me there's a danger of tangling two different threads. Does monotheism make people more ethical? and Is monotheism more ethical? And whose ethics are we talking about anyway? To call one religion more ethical than another is like comparing their height or yellowness. The comparison does not make sense unless you compare a religion against a set of ethical standards derived from outside that religion, and therefore from outside the culture which produced it. To misquote Kipling 'What may be fair in Berkley Square is taboo in Timbuctoo'- ethics are a moving target. Anthropologists reckon the Greeks had a 'shame culture' - where the main issue lay in your faults being publicly exposed, whereas today we have a 'guilt' culture based on the perception we have 'sinned'. This is entirely aside from whether the respective religions are monotheistic or polytheistic, yet lead to very different ethical standards. There's nothing to stop a polytheistic religion from having a hell and enforcing ethical behaviour that way - its just that classical religion did not. (Perhaps due - as Nephele mentions - to an inability to find an arch-fiend capable of producing the right flavour of fizzy drink?)

Okay - not Amazons. (Although they are sometimes depicted in a Scythiany way), and it looks as though the leftmost figure is carrying a Scythian bow case. How about Adrastus then? There's a very similar theme - dude on departing on chariot accompanied by Scythian bowman - identified as him on p.200 of Gods and Heroes in late archaic Greek art by Karl Schefold, Luca Giuliani, Alan Griffiths. The pic is also a hydria this time by Psiax (Wurtzburg 319). Apparently Adrastus departing from Argos was a known motif, and he went on to become king of the Scythians. This would make him the rider of the white horse in the main picture, which is the stallion Arion, given to him by Heracles. If the bottom pic had shown lions fighting boars, I would have regarded the identification as definitive.

S/he does indeed - though it's six pixels in size, so hard to tell. We need a bigger pic - and preferably another one that shows the other side of the vase, which may be where the main event is taking place.

I'm not a professional on this topic so can rush in where angels fear to tread. My own suggestion is that if we are looking for a mythological theme, we could look at the Trojan wars - as suggested by the chariot. This would make our horsemen horsewomen - Amazons to be precise, with Penthesilia riding the white horse. You can see a Scythian bow case on one of the rider's backs and the Amazons were famous as both archers and horsewomen. The two lions below would be those of Cybele, worshipped by the Amazons. Another alternative is that this is another Amazon - Areto and her companions Iphito, Pantaristo etc, off to avenge the murder of Hippolyte. Or perhaps this particular painter fancied a break from mythological themes, and painted a bunch of Scythian horsemen. We may never know.

Nice spotting; this baby is the piece 1979.614 from the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, an Antimenes' Hydria of 46 cm. height with the following official description: "Main scene on body: Four barbarian horsemen ride to the right on three black horses and one white. The horsemen wear pointed caps, long sleeves, and patterned trousers and are probably Scythians. Below main panel: frieze of animals below, with central group of two lions attacking an animal. Scene on shoulder: departure scene with warrior mounting chariot while five other figures look on".

This may be relevant - its from Livy 24.15 and involves Gracchus' slave soldiers fighting Hannibal. They have been offered a bounty for every enemy head they produce. (I've not had time to check the Latin to see if the 'right hand' is accurately translated.) 'Nothing hampered the Romans more than this setting a price upon the heads of their foes, the price of liberty, for no sooner had any one made a furious attack upon an enemy and killed him than he lost time in cutting off his head-a difficult matter in the tumult and turmoil of the battle-and then, as their right hands were occupied in holding the heads, all the best soldiers were no longer able to fight, and the battle was left to the slow and the timid. The military tribunes reported to their general that not a man of the enemy was being wounded as he stood, whilst those who had fallen were being butchered and the soldiers were carrying human heads in their right hands instead of swords.'