Maty

It's technically possible. Caesar would have needed to be a highly precocious teenager (aged 13-15), but then, he was indeed precocious. I wouldn't put too much on Plutarch's statement that Brutus jnr looked like Lucius' statue, as a) We don't know when the statue was made and it might have been modelled on a later Iunius Brutus, and b.) we don't know where Brutus' family came from. We know Lucius Brutus executed his own sons for treason and died in battle almost immediately afterward, so unless there was subsequent unrecorded male issue from a quickie before the campaign, the line is not direct. This is suggested also in that Lucius was a patrician, but the later Bruti were plebeian, I believe.

So that's what the Romans did for us. The question is would anyone else have done it if the Romans were not around? Let's take a look at some of the points mentioned here. Sewers and Aqueducts. The Etruscans taught the Romans how to make sewers (and roads). There were aqueducts in other parts of the world as well as Rome - e.g. fifth century Athens - (anyway aqueducts never caught on in Britain for some reason). Town planning with a grid system - Hippodamus - was Greek and did it for the Piraeas in Athens and Alexandria in Egypt. Oratory - before Cicero there was Demosthenes, and before Demosthenes there was Pirekles. Currency and alphabet - Phoenicia, and laws, Hammaburai. Language - our language system is basically Germanic, though we use some Latin vocabulary (which we got mostly from the French after 1066). However, English uses auxilaries and basic verb forms with word order for meaning, whereas Latin uses a rigid inflexion system. So, assuming the Brits were not stupid (and Stonehenge predates the pyramids, so they knew a bit) they would have picked up most of what the Romans had anyway. And bear in mind that archeology suggests that the Romans did not so much 'give' these things to the Brits, as bring them for themselves whilst occupying the island. Most Brits seem to have spoken their own language and lived in wattle huts as ever. Particularly Roman innovations seem to have been gladiatorial shows, and fast-drying cement. (And according to another post I will have to look at ball bearings!) Basically there was an entire Mediterranean civilization which helped to make the western world. We get a lot of our culture from Greeks, Egyptians, Semitic peoples and the Assyrians and Bablyonians. Until they had conquered and absorbed these cultures into their own, the Romans did not contribute much apart from sudden death, which is why the above civilizations considered the Romans as barbarians until about 250 BC.

Hah. I was blathering on about cleopatras so much I forgot that I originally intended to answer the previous question. Octavian was a distant relative of Julius Caesar, but owed his entire position to being adopted by him in Caesar's will. As Mark Antony told him 'You, boy, owe everything to a name'. Therefore Octavian could not help but be made uneasy by the existence of a true son of Caesar, even one born out of wedlock. If papers could be 'found' showing that Caesar had recognized the child as his, Octavian's position would be severely compromised. Remember, Caesarion combined not only the line of the ancient Julii but also that of the Ptolomies, making his a line of great significance in the east of the empire. Antony's children were a different matter. Remember Antony also had a child (Antonia) by Octavian's own sister, so indiscriminate murder of Antony's offspring was out of the question, even if Romans of this period went in for such stuff (such barbarity was still half a century away). Antony himself was thoroughly discredited and his offspring no threat to Augustus, and were in fact useful, both as signs of how merciful he was, and as a way of binding the offspring of various client kings to the Roman house through later marriages (because of the Ptolomaic connection rather than the Antonine.) (As a matter of interest, because of Antonia, both Gaius Caligula and Nero were as closely related to Mark Antony as they were to Augustus.)

Cleopatra was a fairly common name of Hellenistic royalty. We find it not just in the Ptolomaic dynasty but also among the Seleucids. For another example, the wife of Tigranes the Great of Armenia was another Cleopatra. Apollodorus mentions two mythological Cleopatras, and the name was certainly common in Macedonia before it came to Egypt. Though there were seven Egyptian Cleopatras there is no suggestion that this was any more a title than that of the eight royal English Henrys. It is more that royal families tend to be very conservative in their choice of names, and chose ones which have positive connotations from previous generations. The analogy with Caesar in Rome does not really work, as Caesar was a family cognomen, and the Caesars of the first century used the name in the pretense that they were in some way the heirs of Julius. (As in fact the first five emperors were, by adoption).

My own research on this produced a mortality curve that looked like a stuka pulling out of a dive-bombing run. Basically, infant mortality was substantial. Thereafter if disease or war/childbirth was going to get you, this would happen before you were 40, and if you made it to 40 you were practically unkillable. (As far as can be discerned, the mortality rate among over 40's in the first century AD was more or less equivalent to 20th century Europe, since a lot of weeding out happened beforehand). I was at a seminar where this topic came up in front of a *very* well qualified audience, and after a long discussion they concluded that a woman needed to have seven children for the replacement rate to remain stable. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi had 13 children of whom three survived. As a very rough rule of thumb, you can assume two out of five will die in their first year, one in the next four, another before age twenty. Hopkins 'death and renewal' has a lot of material here, and see his "On the Probable Age Structure of the Roman Population" in Population Studies 1966. Also if you look at Richard Saller's work you will find more to go on (he also reviewed Scheidel in Population Studies 1999, according to my notes). also someone called Durand did a study on mortality in the American Journal of Sociology 1959-60, though his work was based on tombstones, and many neonatals were buried casually without them. You'll also find useful material in "Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman Social History" by Keith R. Bradley

heh! Maybe we should start another thread 'Is a nice Roman a contradiction in terms?' If we do start looking for nice Romans, my vote goes to Rutilius Rufus.

I'm with Sonic on this one. Whilst Adrian Goldsworthy has some very definite views on Caesar (with which, as a member of the 'can we assassinate him again, please?' squad, I don't fully agree), he did try very hard to present his book on Caesar as a non-judgmental piece which allowed the reader to make up his own mind. However, I've also had a look at his next book, 'The Fall of the West', which should kick up enough of a storm to please you, Cato! In this he takes a line that goes more than somewhat contrary to the currently fashionable academic theory, and seems set to cause a few hissy fits. He's also, I believe, due to be appearing on TV introducing episodes of a particular programme, but this may not be confirmed as yet.

If substituting a military dictatorship for a malfunctioning democracy instead of trying to reform the democracy makes for a great man, then Caesar qualifies. Do any other 'great men' of the 20th century come to mind? Caesar was a great general, but his Gallic campaign was conducted for Julius Caesar's political benefit, not Rome's military or economic needs. And that's not a good reason for the deaths (conservatively speaking) of half a million people. Caesar was a charming individual who would probably go out of his way to be pleasant even if he had nothing to gain from it. If he did have something to gain, he'd cheerfully see you dead or ruined in an instant - especially if you were not Roman. Caesar was not a good politician - good politicians don't get assassinated by the senate, or forced to declare military coups against their own country. And if there is any evidence of a political programme other than the promotion and glorification of Julius Caesar, I must have missed it. I'm with Suetonius on this one. Caesar deserved to die. However, my anti-Caesarian views are also well known. You could try Goldsworthy's Caesar, Portrait of a Colossus, where he gives a very balanced view despite my attempts to persuade him otherwise. My choice for greatest - not nicest - Roman would be Augustus. He made the nearly impossible job of being emperor look easy, genuinely reformed much of the system (tax collection and military service, for example) and gave forty years of peace to a traumatized and collapsing empire. And many people have heard of August (formerly Sextilis) which is named after him.

I don't know about 'free to travel'. As far as I know there were customs due on anyone bringing things into the empire, so certainly there were border checks, and probably further tolls to be paid at provincial boundaries. Even Roman subjects needed permission to travel to other provinces, or at least they did in some cases. In the rule of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius your Parthian merchant would also have been considered an enemy civilian and found his goods subject to arbitrary confiscation, even if he was let into the empire at all. Roman citizens did not need special identification because people did not move around very much. So if you were Paul of Tarsus and claimed to be a Roman citizen, anyone in doubt would enquire from Tarsus whether this was in fact the case. Because it was a. relatively easy to check and b. very dangerous if you were caught lying, on the whole, you only said civus Romanus sum if you really were. If you wanted to make a point about being Roman you could wear a toga. Only Romans could do that, and even they didn't, much.

Indeed - and you might have to pick a version of Ancient Greek. I struggled for a year with Thucydides and then discovered that most of the texts I needed were in demotic Greek anyway. As someone who still teaches ancient history (albeit over the internet) I've found one of the best ways to encourage discussion is to put people into the situations faced by ancient protagonists and ask what they would do. e.g. 'Where did Pompey go wrong? Come up with a strategy that would have beaten Caesar in Greece' works better than 'Discuss the Pharsalus campaign'. A colleague reports a discussion becoming well over-heated on the topic 'Were the Gracchi social reformers or socialists?' But going back to languages, apart from the advantages of being able to read Mommsen and Herder (for example) in the original, someone who studied with me at university now has a well-paid job in the EU, not because of the topic of his thesis, but on the strength of the languages he acquired in order to be able to write it.

That was Casilinum wasn't it? River Volturnus rather than Lake Trasimeme, and against Fabius rather than Flaminius. Trasimene was also a dirty trick though, featuring guerillas, (and horses and spearmen) in the mist. I've always liked the opposite trick, of appearing to stay by tying corpses to sticks to look like sentries and having a few volunteers to keep campfires burning for the entire departed army. (I think both Spartacus and Sulla pulled this one, and were imitated by the writer of Beau Geste, who had evidently read his classics.)

The one about the sacred chickens would be C. Claudius Pulcher at Drepana in 249. It's in Livy, but I don't have the reference on hand. Just as a matter of interest, his fellow consul was Pullus (chicken). Pullus managed to lose the other half of the fleet at Cape Pachynus.

The nasty thing about Roman humour is that a lot of it has such a straight delivery that later generations are left scratching their heads and asking 'was that meant to be a joke?' In this category is Plutarch commenting that the (immensely fat) Vitellus was 'descended from a river nymph' and Cato the elder saying that a healthy lad should be bathed daily in the urine of a man who ate nothing but cabbage. An example of dry Roman humour I've always liked is the senator who was owed a favour which he expected to have repaid with political support. When the favour was due to be delivered, the man who owed it tried to hide in the back of the crowd. In due course a slave came over to this man with a note from the senator. It said 'You owe me for not noticing you.' A more slapstick moment I'd love to have seen was when Cato challenged Caesar about a note he had received while in the senate. Alleging this was a treasonous message from conspirators against Rome, he ordered the note read aloud. It turned out to be from Cato's half-sister Servilia wanting to meet Caesar for some clandestine sex later.

I want a rematch! Preferably with the quizmaster leading the other side. He wants to sail an army around Greece! (Does he know how many Roman soldiers have been delivered to Davy Jones by people who thought transport by sea was a good idea? Germanicus in the Rhineland campaign for example). And if I am going to engage someone in northern Greece, why can't I march there? I've still got the choice of going in through Illyricum or Macedonia. Also, if there is a Visigothic army that I, a Roman, am close enough to engage, I'm probably not going to be able to outrun them to the nearest city even if I have a cavalry unit. And ... and ... More seriously, for a realistic quiz, you need lots more info. Like if you are going to storm a city, what missile troops to you have to clear the ramparts? If you are going by sea, what time of the year is it? etc. I did like the answers that said something along the lines of 'you made the right decision, but you are toast anyway'.

And of course, for a collection of dirty tricks and manouvers that would get you thrown out of your local wargames club, you could try the Strategems of Frontinius, which have the advantage of being written by a contemporary Roman general. For a good look at Roman armies from those who actually saw them from the pointy end, you should look at Polybius and Josephus. These were both serving soldiers who had more than a passing interest in how the Roman army worked, and a lot of later books are based on their reporting.

Just a couple of scraps to throw into the pot. Martial (not exactly a pleb I know...) has an epigram in which he protests about being shoved aside from a fountain by a German, and complains that this is a Roman font, not the trough for a 'defeated race. On the other hand, there seems to be considerable evidence that the Italian underclass sided enthusiastically with Spartacus in 70 BC, to the extent that his army was a mixture of slaves - often Germanic - and poorer Italians. Toward the end Spartacus' army got so large he was turning away recruits.

How are we defining 'inferior'? Militarily? Culturally? In the later empire, there is some evidence that the upper classes rather admired some aspects of Germanic culture - as indicated by the adoption of Germanic cloaks by military leaders. However, the lower classes were at least ambivalent. When Stilicho (half-German) was killed on the emperor Honarius' orders, this was the signal for an Italy-wide pogrom of Germanic peoples and their families. It did not help that Germanic foederati expected to be paid with a healthy chunk of the land they were defending, and Rome's leaders were often too desperate to care who got dispossessed in the process.

Martial definitely feels more is more so to speak - and as he refers to some character boasting of his oversized organ, such sentiment was perhaps not uncommon. I've not read of this in connection with Mark Antony though, and Cicero, who never spares a scatological reference to the man if he gets a chance, would certainly have said something even if along the lines of 'it's bigger than his brain' Re Patronius 'Habebat enim inguinum pondus tam grande ut ipsum hominem lacinam fascini crederes.' Petronius Sat.92.9 'The guy was so well hung that you'd think the man was an attachment of his prick'. However, in Greek art, perfect shape and proportion is everything, and only the very ugly or barbaric depicted as having a huge 'Mark Antonys'

If anyone fancies a look at the source material, there's a pretty useful text here http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/jordgeti.html JORDANES THE ORIGIN AND DEEDS OF THE GOTHS translated by Charles C. Mierow I've not checked it against my library copy, but the text seems to be as I remember it.

I'm assuming that your lass is upper class? As far as we know (from tombstone evidence) some working class girls often married later. You might like to look at the poems of Sulpicia for some insight into the mentality of a Roman teenage girl in love, and if you are in the early imperial period, a mention of the delights of Baiae might not go amiss. Roman girls could sometimes be educated enough to terrify their male compartiots (Martila has a typically crude poem on the topic, and Juvenal unloads a rant on over-educated ladies too) so study is always an option. Also, a good filiafamilias would have helped mother with household administration if upper class, or even piled into the family business if lower.

I've not heard of a toga being used as bedding anywhere in the sources, and would love to know if there is such a reference. However, there is no reason why a toga should not make a very good - if slightly odd-shaped - blanket. It is large, made of soft wool, and has no buttons, buckles or joins that would prevent it being spread smoothly over a bed. In fact as a toga was once almost everyday wear - it might even have been the norm in some parts of early Etruria - there is no reason at all why a poor man might not have his toga double up as a bedspread. It would be interesting to think that those modern students who drape themselves in bedsheets for 'toga parties' actually had the right idea all along!

Another option worth researching is for your young man to do a bout or two in the arena. I haven't checked this recently, but emperors were quite keen to prevent the upper classes debasing themselves in this way. It may be that having gone in with the intention of fighting anonymously (lots of gladiator helmets gave this option) your hero gets rumbled and an officer career is closed to him thereafter. Perhaps some of the others who know this area better than I could shoot a few holes in the idea, but otherwise it might have plot possibilities.

A rare book, but well worth finding, is Furneaux's The Roman Siege of Jerusalem which discusses not only the siege but also much of the campaign leading up to it, including Beth-huron. He uses sources from the Mishnash, but his major source is Josephus, who had the experience of seeing a Roman siege army, both from the pointy end (at Jotapa) and from the Roman side (at Jerusalem). His description of what it was like to be on the walls facing Roman artillery suggests that it was a very unpleasant and scary experience. Does anyone know where this picture comes from? Am currently looking for pics of Late Republican legionaries to reproduce in a book on Mithridates of Pontus

On which topic, I seem to remember a helmet of a warrior from a tomb painting in the Greek city of Paestum (in Campania) which had a definitely tusky look. Or bull's horns perhaps? What I find interesting about the Roman foundation myth is that despite a lot of hard work by the hyper-critical school, no-one has been able to actually prove it definitely wrong in any important particular. If anything, what evidence is uncovered all points in the direction of the legend being essentially correct. However, short of a dateable artifact marked 'Romulus wuz here' I'm not sure if the foundation myth debate will ever be really settled. While it's interesting that there is indeed a cave where the legend says there should be, this doesn't mean it's THE cave.

At Charonea, (Sulla vs Mithridates, round 1) the Pontic scythe chariots charged the Roman lines, which opened up to let them through. The chariots were then polished off by javelineers posted at the rear for just this purpose. This certainly suggests that there was a lot of space and flexibility in a Roman line, though my own belief is that the Roman ability to form a very tight front line in melee meant that even when outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1 in overall strength they still managed local superiority at the pointy bit. Incidentally, I once had a go at using a 'proper' Roman sword. These things are startlingly heavy. I was quite fit at the time, but would hardly have been able to lift it after about ten minutes of hard use. I guess with trained muscles you might stretch this considerably, but my own guess is that a 20-30min melee would lead to total exhaustion for all concerned.