Antiochus III

For an AP class, I was able to choose a Roman essay topic, and the prompt basically goes as follows: explain Roman sports/entertainment from the republic and empire and tell whether or not they reflect the society, politics, and state of the republic/ empire. I am confident I will be able to put together a good essay (3.5-5 pages), but I will need to cite MANY sources and I hope you guys know of some sources that would be good to use. I watched a documentary on gladiatorial combat that one of you linked to, and I was wondering if there was a way to cite that. I need at least 2 book sources, and I found out that my mom returned many of the books I had regarding ancient Rome, and now I only have Rubicon by holland and a goldsworthy book. any suggestions of what sources to use for this essay/ any advice you might have would be GREATLY appreciated as this class is difficult and thee essays are being graded extremely harshly to prepare us for the AP test. Thank you all so much for your knowledge and I hope you will reply soon because my essay is due next week. Antiochus III

Can anyone tell me how they made vinegar/got it thousands of years ago? If anyone happens to know the history of vinegar and would like to share, I'd love to hear about it. ALSO: some sources say that oats were thought to be weeds until 4000 years ago. Anyone have knowlege regarding this? And finally, is alfalfa native to the Americas? Thanks for knowing about such interesting topics. Antiochus III

How about how the Pyramids were built and how the 200 ton stones around the sphinx enclosure were moved? And what about the cultural similarities between the Americas and Egypt? What about how the U.S. won the Vietnam War. . . oh wait it lost horribly. Seriously, moving that many 200 ton blocks today is impossible, how would they have done it before? What about how the lost Tribe of Guinea? These mysteries all seem more interesting to me than the ones viggen put forward. Antiochus III

This makes me wonder: why the hell does this site have John McCain ads? Come on, another white emperor, one who will just continue the legacy of a few rich snobs who only care about their own wealth, and the wealth of the people that bribe them? Can't we learn from the Romans, that having a bunch of rich people ruling an empire can only make the rich richer and the poor poorer? And what of freedom? Yes, we Americans are the free-est in the world to pay taxes and watch our freedoms meet their demise. Antiochus III

I read Tom Holland's book, Persian Fire, and in it it explains how certain groups (like the Persians) manage to conquer things quickly, and then expansion suddenly comes to a screeching halt, with some rulers still attempting conquest, but ultimately failing. Cyrus the Great conquered nearly all of the Persian empire, and then his son Cambyses led his own successful expedition to Egypt, only to find soon after that other provinces were in revolt, and then Bardiya (his bro) was looking to unseat Cambyses as king. Since Cambyses needed to leave Egypt so soon to try and consolidate his own power, his further expansion in the region was cut off. Antiochus III

Clearly, history repeats itself. Some ancient wars (or just single battles) played out in a very similar fashion to modern ones, one excellent exampe being the First and Second Punic wars, and the First and Second World wars. There must be many wars that have ancient counterparts, or vice versa, and I want to start the discussion of how certain things are similar, how things have changed, and what might happen in the future if we do not remember the past. Mainly though, if you know of any wars or battles that have certain things in common with ancient ones, please let us hear about them. Antiochus III

Also, information sources provide may be consistent with archaeological finds. For example, much about the specifics of the battle of the Teutoberg forest in A.D. 9 is unknown. Using what the sources say and comparing it to what is found at dig sites and what is written on graves, historians can accurately put together a book explaining what they think happened. Antiochus III

Just so you know, the gallipoli campaign was a miserable failure, and sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people to "create a national identity" in my opinion is just making yourself look like an idiot. Military accomplishments are often overshadowed by the fact that the use of force is moving humanity as a whole backwards, and no doubt eventually will cause our end. Antiochus III

That book that was linked to had a chart that showed what appeared to be the number of men eligible for military service, even though they make it seem like the number of troops already levied. I made some calculations, and according to that chart, in 225, the Romans could raise 799,100 men from Italy and Sicily. Are there any sources that have info regarding this? Antiochus III

I think looking from a modern stand point we could see whether or not it is possible to use electric fish as defibrillators. Just because some source says it happened doesn't really mean much. Maybe they tried it a couple of times and it didn't work, but they recorded it anyway. The point is, you can ask an expert if it's possible to do something like that. My dad is relatively in tune with the aquatic world, and has done extensive SCUBA diving, has taught classes about it, and has considerable knowledge regarding such fish because he has swam with them. I'll ask him about this. Antiochus III Edit: also note the "may have used." whoever made that clearly doesn't have a complete grasp on the subject.

What sort of information do we have on what the Roman army did when it was cold, like in Britannia and Germania? I was just thinking that it would not be fun to walk around in the snow with only sandals on. Is it possible that the metal nails on the bottom of a legionary's sandals served as anchors for fabric or leather that would be stretched over the sandals for better protection? Did legionaries stuff their sandals for insulation? What about their other gear-was it the same as a legionary's would be in Syria? Antiochus III

I saw that post about Greek vs. Roman methods of water transportation, and I would like to know more of the specifics of how the Romans utilized pressure and lead pipes to move water. Does this mean that at some parts of an aqueduct water was actually going uphill? I thought one needed to use pumps or something to incease water pressure. I would be happy if whoever posted that could reply in more detail. Thanks. Antiochus III

People constantly rave about the intellectual prowess and democratic institutions of the Athenians (and people usualy mention how "peaceful" they were), but was that really the case? There were some scholars of Athenian heritage, and I suppose that their city was as intelligent overall as the next one, but the only citizens in their democracy were adult males, and many women and others had less freedom than the "oppressive" Spartans, whose system of government arguably was better. And peaceful? The Athenians fought their share of wars, made conquests (or attempted to but their military incompetence led to their defeat in the case of Syracuse), and when the war with Sparta was in full swing, they overthrew their precious democracy for an oligarchy. Antiochus III

Yeah. Nice vocab word to know, even though I already use it. Antiochus III

Pompey's campaign against the pirates was a war on terror. Regardless of Holland's political views, he's made an apt analogy. terrorism- noun: the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear WordNet

The topic starter mentioned how future civilizations benefited from Roman farming techniques. I'm not quite refuting this argument, but i recently attended a lecture by an expert in the fall of Rome and its harshness on the environment. He mentioned that Roman farming techniques were responsible for the destruction of croplands and defertilization of the soil, as well as many other problems. (Did you know that entire Roman ports washed away because of deforestation, etc.??!). I just thought that mention of this might start up a good discussion. Were any of you guys at the lecture, by chance? Antiochus III

Oh. Thanks. Antiochus III (The GREAT!)

I was reading about the north African provinces and the products that they exported. I saw that "corn" was a major product there. I am pretty sure that the crop formally known as Zea mays was cultivated in Mesoamerica and wasn't discovered by Europeans until well after the fall of Rome. I must be missing something basic here, so I would appreciate it if someone could explain this to me. Antiochus III

I think that there should be no need for imperialistic thought or empires to exist. Those two things only exist because of human overpopulation. Antiochus III ps. I know some of you will have a lot to say against this argument...

umm.. the sailing ship made the Spanish empire mush more possible than the america empire. the americans didn't even wield their naval power--instead of fighting and defeating the barbary pirates, the US decided to just pay them tribute. Antiochus III

That is so crazy, I was just reading about that in the book called Persian Fire by Tom Holland. That brings about a question: just how big of an empire did the lydians have? since lydia is in the western part of asia minor, they would have had to have a pretty large empire. I'm looking for some type of map i guess, preferably for the time period circa 550 bc when cyrus was rising in power.

One of the only "true unconcacted tribes lives on an island near india. the ones in brazil are mostly contacted because they have seen loggers. the one on that island has never truly been contacted. They shoot arrows at passing aircraft and marine vehicles. Antiochus III

Thank you for the info. From what I gather, no one really knows exactly when the phalanx system ceased to be used entirely, when the manipular legion started to be standard, and exactly how it evolved to become what it was during the war with Epirus and the punic wars. I was afraid that would be the case. Still, however, thank you all very much for the info you did provide. Antiochus III

That claw seems rather pointless to me. it has to be operated from the shore, which makes it only useful to prevent an enemy landing, and the enemy could easily land somewhere else, and then assualt the thing on foot. seriously, this thing is ridiculous. Antiochus III

When did Rome start using a non-phalanx formation? what were her earliest legions like? what was the command structure? I'm sort of looking for an in depth description of roman warfare from 500- 250 bc. i know thats a lot, but if you could chip in just a little that would be great. I;m sure caldrail will have a ton to say. Antiochus III