ASCLEPIADES

Salve, Amici Saint Christopher Cynocephalus

Salve, C Here comes Ctesias of Cnidus, Indica, cp. XXXVII: "On these mountains there live men with the head of a dog, whose clothing is the skin of wild beasts. They speak no language, but bark like dogs, and in this manner make themselves understood by each other. Their teeth are larger than those of dogs, their nails like those of these animals, but longer and rounder. They inhabit the mountains as far as the river Indus. Their complexion is swarthy. They are extremely just, like the rest of the Indians with whom they associate. They understand the Indian language but are unable to converse, only barking or making signs with their hands and fingers by way of reply, like the deaf and dumb. They are called by the Indians Calystrii, in Greek Cynocephali ["dog-heads"]. They live on raw meat. They number about 120,000." J. Lendering hypothesizes Cynoscephalae might be a translation of the Indian svap

Heia, MPC! Good point: Fortuna Primagenia (Praeneste)

Gratulatur reduces, DF!

Wiser words have been hardly ever said. Both T. Livius and Lord Wellesley would agree for sure. Anyhow, If we all agree (I think so) that: I don't think there's any significant disagreement on this one: As MPC rightly notes: And it's consistent with Titus Livius too (Ab Urbe Condita, Liber XXII, cp. XLVII): ...est peditum pugna, primo et uiribus et animis par dum constabant ordines Gallis Hispanisque; tandem Romani, diu ac saepe conisi, aequa fronte acieque densa impulere hostium cuneum nimis tenuem eoque parum ualidum, a cetera prominentem acie. Impulsis deinde ac trepide referentibus pedem institere ac tenore uno per praeceps pauore fugientium agmen in mediam primum aciem inlati, postremo nullo resistente ad subsidia Afrorum peruenerunt, ... ...the infantry became engaged, and as long as the Gauls and Spaniards kept their ranks unbroken, both sides were equally matched in strength and courage. At length after long and repeated efforts the Romans closed up their ranks, echeloned their front, and by the sheer weight of their deep column bore down the division of the enemy which was stationed in front of Hannibal's line, and was too thin and weak to resist the pressure. Without a moment's pause they followed up their broken and hastily retreating foe till they took to headlong flight. Cutting their way through the mass of fugitives, who offered no resistance, they penetrated as far as the Africans ... Then, if ...you should probably check out their primary sources.

Salve, P. Gratiam habeo for such a cleaver quote; in a letter to John Croker, August 8, 1815 (from H.T. Sibome's The Waterloo Letters ): "The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance. ... Just to show you how little reliance can be placed even on what are supposed the best accounts of a battle, I mention that there are some circumstances mentioned in General--'s account which did not occur as he relates them. It is impossible to say when each important occurrence took place, or in what order."

Sorry to read that, Lady A. No easy answer for youth street violence anytime anywhere. Education as a whole might have a place for its control, but a limited one I fear.

Ipsae summae rerum, MPC

What the hell is that??? If that's a Roman then I'm Julius Caesar!!! It looks more like a fireman. WE WANT ROMAN LEGO!!!! WE WANT ROMAN LEGO!!!! WE WANT ROMAN LEGO!!!! Salve, GPM We agree.

Salve, C Lucius Anneus Florus didn't agree; here comes Epitomae, Liber II, cp. XXX: Sed difficilius est provincias optinere quam facere; viribus parantur, iure retinerentur. Igitur breve id gaudium. Quippe Germani victi magis quam domini erant, moresque nostros magis quam arma sub imperatore Druso suspiciebant; postquam ille defunctus est, Vari Quintili libidinem ac superbiam haud secus quam saevitiam odisse coeperunt. Ausus ille agere conventum, et incautus edixerat, quasi violentiam barbarum lictoris virgis et praeconis voce posset inhibere. But it is more difficult to retain provinces than to acquire them. They are obtained by force, but secured by justice. Our exultation was accordingly but short. The Germans had been defeated rather than subdued. Under the rule of Drusus they respected our manners rather than our arms. But when Drusus was dead, they began to detest the licentiousness and pride, no less than the cruelty, of Quintilius Varus. He ventured to call an assembly, and administered justice in his camp, as if he could restrain the violence of barbarians by the rods of a lictor and voice of a crier.

I want a Roman Lego series!! I DEMAND a Roman Lego series! Heck, Playmobile has gotten with the program -- it's about time Lego shaped up! -- Nephele Salve, Amici LEGO: Roman Empire

Salve, V Quote: "But Prof. Richard Holdaway, a lead researcher on the earlier human contact theory published in Nature, on Tuesday stood by his 1996 study that found evidence of rats and humans in New Zealand more than 2,000 years ago." HERE goes to a related publication by prof. Holdaway

Salve, Amici et Gratiam habeo for the Link, Faustus "You answered 52 out of 60 correctly

Salve, MPC As I see it, pre-Marian status was not really "civilian control" but a citizen Army, without a clear-cut distinction between military and civilian citizens.

Salve, Taelactin. Besides the epigraphical evidence (mostly funerary inscriptions) previously noted that locates those four legions at Britannia circa the Plautius invasion and their dissapearance from their previous bases on Germania and Pannonia, Publius Cornelius Tacitus informed all of them were combating against Boudicca's revolt 18 years later (Annales, Liber XIV, cp. XXXII, XXXIV et XXXVII): [XXXII] et victor Britannus, Petil[l]o Ceriali, legato legionis nonae, in subsidium adventanti obvius, fudit legionem, et quod peditum interfecit. The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his troops, and destroyed all his infantry. [XXXIV] Iam Suetonio quarta decima legio cum vexillariis vicesimanis et [e] proximis auxiliares, decem ferme milia armatorum, erant, cum omittere cunctationem et congredi acie parat. Suetonius had the fourteenth legion with the veterans of the twentieth, and auxiliaries from the neighbourhood, to the number of about ten thousand armed men, when he prepared to break off delay and fight a battle. [XXXVII] et Poenius Postumus, praefectus castrorum secundae legionis, cognitis quartadecimanorum vicesimanorumque prosperis rebus, quia pari gloria legionem suam fraudaverat abnueratque contra ritum militiae iussa ducis, se ipse gladio transegit. Postumus too, camp-prefect of the second legion, when he knew of the success of the men of the fourteenth and twentieth, feeling that he had cheated his legion out of like glory, and had contrary to all military usage disregarded the general's orders, threw himself on his sword.

Salve, C Any primary source on that? Talking about an almost contemporary and contiguous conquest by Octavius, here comes the Roman History by Lucius Claudius Cassius Dio, Liber XLIX, cp. XXXVI-XXXVII: "...Caesar (Octavius) made a campaign against the Pannonians. He had no complaint to bring against them, not having been wronged by them in any way, but he wanted both to give his soldiers practice and to support them at the expense of an alien people, for he regarded every demonstration against a weaker party as just, when it pleased the man who was their superior in arms... At first he did not devastate or plunder at all, although they abandoned their villages in the plain; for he hoped to make them his subjects of their own free will. But when they harassed him as he advanced to Siscia, he became angry, burned their country, and took all the booty he could."

Salve et gratiam habeo, Ingsoc. Quite interesting indeed. I noted you were looking for information about Agrippa'a funeral inscription. I hope you found it.

Salve, K As far as I can tell, virtually no. Archeological evidence of Roman influence among non-conquered neighbours (.e, Hibernia, Jutland, Sarmatia) seems to be limited to some coins at best.

Salve, MPC Epistolarium moralium ad Lucilium Liber XII, Epistola LXXXVI, cp. XI-XII. Lucius Annaeus Seneca Minor wrote this letter when he was resting at a t the resting at the country-house which once belonged to Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior (In ipsa Scipionis Africani villa iacens haec tibi scribo).

That didn't interest the average invading barbarian at all. What they wanted was roman wealth and luxury. From a barbarian-on-loot point of view, yes, it's irelevant. For a killed-roman it's not interesting if the big guy with an axe have ever heard of Arsitotle. Please remember barbarus just meant "foreigner". Romans conquered and annihilated civilised and uncivilised barbarians alike (just remember Carthage and Corinth). Persian civilisation was actually older than Roman. If Germanic barbarians fought against Rome, it wasn't for the lack of civilisation or Corpus Aristotelicum, but because they were being attacked.

Salve, Amici Here comes Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Liber I cp. XXVI: Omnium provinciarum populi Romani quibus finitimae fuerunt gentes quae non parerent imperio nostro fines auxi. " I extended the boundaries of ALL the provinces which were bordered by races not yet subject to our empire." Augustus didn't even try to justify such aggressions for posterity; it was unnecessary. Rome was never interested in neighbours, only in conquests. Rome did its best to conquer all, and if Rome stopped, it was mainly for logistic reasons.

http://www.unrv.com/book-review/background...hristianity.php Salve et Gratiam habeo, Ursus. This is another one of those great reviews that you have made so customary for us. I totally agree Christianism is one of the main products of Greco-Roman civilization, without ethical qualifiers (which depend mostly on our personal religious conceptions). For a long time by now, Papacy and other Patriarchies have been the last functioning Roman imperial institutions, and it seems it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. The term "paganism" has always troubled me, as it is a Christian term (and perspective) for quite heterogeneous non-Christian-non-Jewish religions. It would be as if Jewish theologians tried to analyze the "gentilism" as one isolated category. Try any matched pair of them; let's say Mithraism versus Isis cult. They were probably as alien to each other as any of them was to Christianism. I'm not so sure that 7% Jewish Diaspora figure was always helpful for Christian dispersion. In fact, you can easily find evidence for the opposite view among both Christian and Jewish scholars. When the empire administration harassed one of them, Christians and Jews were on opposite sides most often than not. I don't think paganism collapse was always

Salve Let's not forget there was an Atticus Herodes too.

The most interesting coincidence to me was that the author states that Jesus as well as Caesar hung on a cross. He provides a reconstruction of the crucifixion of Caesar. He credits Suetonius and Appianus for this image. Salve, Amici Judging from the extract of this book linked by LJV, it's extremely hard to see where the "overwhelming amount of similarities" might be. Even if a bit incomplete, Suetonius and Appian quotations are accurate, so you can verify they don't mention any cross at all. The image is clearly not based in what both passages describe and I can't understand how can anyone credit either Suetonius or Appian for it. If this is indeed the most interesting "coincidence" he was able to find, then this book can hardly support the conclusion that "the story of Jesus is based on the narrative of the life of Julius Caesar". BTW, Divus Julius' cult didn't dissolve "as Christianity surfaced". It was displaced by Augustus cult, then this one by Tiberius' and so on. Imperial cult was on the imcumbent Emperor-god and the cult of his antecessors was on a secondary place at best, as long as a procedure of damnatio memoria didn't take place. This kind of cult went on long after Jesus' crucifixion, at least until Constantine's reign. Of course, there is abundant evidence of sincretism operative among most of the major mistery cults that were thriving during the principate period, and our Ursus has worked a lot on it (I suppose they were "filling" each other as required). I don't think Garotta have shown us any convincing evidence of that being the case for Divus Julius' cult. I think that, as long as he really wants to, Garotta can find similarities almost everywhere.

Gratiam habeo for that link, Lady N. Note the additional bibliography. "For other names see Herodian, {peri mon. l} (on monosyllables), 12. 7; "Corp. Inscr." iv. p. 184, n. 8319; Arrian, v. 6, xix.; Colum. vii. 12, 13. According to Pollux, v. 47, Xenophon had a dog named {ippokentauros} (cf. "Cyrop." IV. iii. 17). Good advice even for present times. Even so, I guess Columella and later writers were mostly retyping Xenophon and other earlier writers. Consequently, we should expect lots of Greek names among Roman and even medieval canines. I wonder if even Xenophon himself was original.