sylla

I remember that there used to be several good pages on a University site covering the excavations at Kalkriese a few years back, which showed the line of the fortified wall as well as the distribution of finds unfortunately I discovered a year or two ago that it had been taken down. However, the following link to Ancient Warfare Magazine has some background on the battle as well as a map of the distibution of finds which you may find interesting. http://www.livius.org/te-tg/teutoburg/teut...-kalkriese.html NB If I am not mistaken if you click on the 'satellite photo' (actually an aerial photograph) of the site the wavy path running horizontally across the site is actually the line of the wall [edit - which was discovered through excavation]. Actually, that "satellite photo" is a ... satellite map (not exactly what we usually understand as a "photo"); you can get an even better definition at Google Earth. We are in no shortage on maps and material from the Kalkriese site; the special issue on "Arminius' Masterstroke" is available online at a good price, with a really nice map opening the article by Adrian Murdoch; on an open access basis, is still think Jona Lendering's page (already linked by Melvadius) is by far the best. Here is an interesting Discussion that included Prof. Lendering; the following quotation, based in his book "De randen van de aarde" is pure gold: Q: "... I wonder if anyone can give me an idea of the size of the forest itself?" A: "There was no forest. "Saltus" has always been mistranslated. It means "passage" (between the hills and the bog). This is confirmed by pollen analysis". It's a good example on how can archaeology give us a new light on our textual sources; in Lendering's own words "... if we ignore his geographical bias, Dio is a reliable author". That's indeed a great "if". Personally, I agree that Arminius was a nice strategist, but mostly for his post-Teutoburg campaigns; the disaster of the Kalkriese "forest" was mostly explained by the naivety of Varus and the carelessness of his legionaries; there's a priori no reason why Viriathus or Vercingetoryx wouldn't have been able to do the same, given of course the case that Galba or Caesar (and their respective legions) had been as gullible as Varus and the XVII, XVIII & XIX Legiones.

As far as I know, Greek precedence was never challanged by Latin east to the Ionian Sea in Classical times.

Congratulations, Neph!

Thanks, JG. An excellent article indeed. Distorting History for chauvinistic purposes has always been a bad idea, but repressing it is probably no better. After all, Congolese people can hardly blame Ambiorix for the Belgian African conquest... The Hermann story is not totalitarian by itself; as stated by this article, Von Kleist actually used it against the Napoleonic oppression of Germany.

As usual, we almost entirely agree, (I mean, if all that implied that Rome "expanded" over Britannia but not Caledonia) . An almost certainly unverifiable assertion; in any case, leaving aside Strabo and Pliny is already not "100%". However, I guess the same can be said from the military personnel serving nowadays in Greenland .

Indeed (or at least most of it). For some years after Cannae, the Romans presumably fought in Italy far more against other Italians than the properly Punic army or even the Gauls; Punic War II became then to a large extent an internal civil conflict for the Roman side. The defectors (mere individuals or entire cities) were for most purposes Roman secpnd-class citizens (socii). These men bore Latin Nomen and Praenomen, and had fought side-by-side with the the properly Roman Legions for decades or centuries, using their same weapons, manipular organization and tactics; for example, the famous L. Bantius of Nola "had been discovered lying half-dead on a heap of bodies on the field of Cannae". Some of them were even relatives of the Roman most noble families; for example, the Capuan senator Pacuvius Calavius, the leader of the party that brought that city under Punic rule, "had children by the daughter of Appius Claudius [then the praetor in Sicily, Consul 212] and had given his own daughter in marriage to M. Livius [Consul 219 & 207]". Even more, the choice of the Punic versus the Roman side frequently resulted in local civil conflicts from the populace against the aristocracy, even if affinities varied; ie, in Capua and even Nola, the common people supported the Carthaginians, while in Locri the opposite was true. The Italian defectors usually fought in their own independent units, and they frequently took their own initiative, sometimes even aside from the Punic command; for example, when the Locrians attacked Rhegium. Most of the defectors were Campanians, Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians and some Apulians; as far as we know, all of the Latin cities remained loyal to Rome, but the same cannot be said about the western Greeks; their largest poleis, Tarentum and even Syracuse (after the death of Hyero) came both to the Punic side. Virtually no city supported Hannibal north to the Garigliano river (more or less like the German line Gustav in 1943-1944), so further Gaulish help was hardly expected. The Spanish Saguntum had required eight months of a costly siege for being taken, and even after Thrasymene, the Punic army was utterly unable to capture the mere Latin colony of Spoletum in Umbria; the siege of fortified cities was no easy task for the Punic army, which main weapon was its speed and mobility. Therefore, Hannibal had little choice after Cannae but going south, where in addition to the Campanian resources, he could also take some strong bases and some excellent allied Legions from the Romans for his own army; ie. defeating Rome with its own weapons. Unsurprisngly, the chief activities of the Punic army for the late 216 and 215 BC were the attack to the major Campanian ports (Neapolis and Cumae) and pushing northwards (ie, the way to Rome) via Nola. In addition to the persistent loyalty of most of the Roman allies, Hannibal was eventually unable to accomplish such goals mostly due to the prudent use of the Fabian Strategy, and the outmost exponent of the latter was the usually impetuous Marcellus, who with presumably the equivalent of two legions or less was able to definitively stop at Nola the advance of the same army that had so utterly crushed the eight legions plus auxiliaries of Varro & Paullus just some months before. Naturally, the loyalty of the Italian cities to Rome need not to be explained just by pure unconditional love; the fear from both the alien multinational Punic army and the expected Roman retribution, economic factors, internal rivalities and of course the Roman hostage system must all have played a role. After all, Capua had to ignore the fate of their own 300 selected cavalrymen who were serving in Sicily by the time of their defection. As far as I know, Capua and Hannibal never defected each other; for five full years, Capua was the Jewel of the Crown for Hannibal; his preferred camp was at Tifata, overlooking Capua; the Punic commander prevented more than once the Roman capture of this city; and when such capture finally happened, the Capuans fiercely fought up to the end, in spite of the systematic accusations from our sources of "luxury and extravagance". The support of the Carthaginian suffetes and senate to Hannibal is hard to evaluate in the absence of Punic sources, because the Roman and Romanophile authors systematically tried to praise this commander (the personal opponent of the heroic Scipio) at the expense of his vilified nation; it seems Carthage gave or at least tried to give far more help than our sources pretend us to believe. In any case, we know that Bomilcar was indeed able in 215 BC to arrive "at Locri with reinforcements of men and elephants and also with supplies". That's the reason why Hannibal, essentially deprived from elephants for Thrasymene and Cannae, was still able to use them against Marcellus. Whatever you may understand as "popular choice", it was indeed relegated after Cannae; in fact, the fourth consulate of Fabius Cunctator (with Marcellus for 214 BC) was literally a coup d'

Most of it indeed is (like half of Bavaria is an exception); Gallia Belgica was entirely north of that river, not to mention Britannia and obviously the Roman occupied Caledonia; the northernmost confirmed Roman construction is Stracathro (56

Circa 60 AD (early Nero's reign) chattel slavery was still fundamentally fueled by frontier wars; the major contributors must have been then the Parthian wars, Britannia (it's the year of Boudicca's defeat) and the high Danubian border. Greece was then by large a net consumer of slaves; if most (at least 2/3) of the Roman slaves had Greek names, that was just for fashion and not for their ethnicity (in fact, only 2-3% bore Semitic names). However, Greece was always the preferred source for expensive specialized professional slaves (eg, physicians). Like for any other commodity, the maritime transport of slaves was faster, cheaper and far more efficient than by land; Brundisium and Ostia were the main ports of entry from Greece. 60 AD is also when the imprisoned Paul of Tarsus would have come to Rome and within the accepted range of dating for the Epistle to Philemon; may you be thinking about Onesimus or any other Christian-related story for your novel?

Most of it indeed is (like half of Bavaria is an exception); Gallia Belgica was entirely north of that river, not to mention Britannia and obviously the Roman occupied Caledonia; the northernmost confirmed Roman construction is Stracathro (56

Apparently the battle lasted for three full days, so it would still have been ongoing exactly 2000 years ago. First; I don't think a masacre in Northern Germania had anything to do with the Danube frontier; in fact, the effect of Arminius' victory over the Rhin frontier itself was probably only secondary. The main reason for stopping all Roman exapnsion was presumably simply physical; the human and material resources of the empire were just no enough to get them any farther (ie, the second stage of Luttwak's scheme for the Imperial military evolution). Then, for a century and a half, the full three Dacian provinces, presumably with around one million people and an extension of more than 200,000 km2 (more or less like contemporary Italy) were kept under the Empire's boundaries, sometimes as far as the Dniester; not to mention Chersonesus Taurica (modern Crimea). That's pretty much north (and east) to the Danube.

We are sharing our references here; bare assertions are just not enough. Can you quote your sources? Offending post deleted

Offending post deleted

Not if I get there first .

Congratulations, MPC. That's a wonderful contribution. May I ask you which is your source and how were "familial relations" defined by the author(s)? (ie, which family-members and which rungs of the US cursus honorum were included for elaborating this graph)

Nice spotting; one can only hope that this finding might proved revealing indeed, because the Bar-Kochba rebellion was a critical and particularly dark period of Classical history, possibly including and even explaining the definitive Christianity's schism from Judaism.

Just ask a surgeon (any surgeon); the Fat Armor Theory is simply nonsense; not to talk again about agility and fitness, obvious requirements for gladiatorial combats.

Usus autem sum, ne in aliquo fallam carissimam mihi familiaritatem tuam, praecipue libris ex bibliotheca Ulpia, aetate mea thermis Diocletianis, et item ex domo Tiberiana, usus etiam [ex] regestis scribarum porticus porphyreticae, actis etiam senatus ac populi. 2 et quoniam me ad colligenda talis viri gesta ephemeris Turduli Gallicani plurimum invit, viri honestissimi ac sincerissimi, beneficium amici senis tacere non debui. 3 Cn. Pompeium, tribus fulgentem triumphis belli piratici, belli Sertoriani, belli Mithridatici multarumque rerum gestarum maiestate sublimem, quis tandem nosset, nisi eum Marcus Tullius et Titus Livius in litteras rettulissent? 4 Publ<i>um Scipionem Afric<an>um, immo Scipiones omnes, seu Lucios seu Nasicas, nonne tenebrae possiderent ac tegerent, nisi commendatores eorum historici nobiles atque ignobiles extitissent? 5 longum est omnia persequi, quae ad exemplum huiusce modi etiam nobis tacentibus usurpanda sunt. 6 illud tantum contestatum volo me et rem scripsisse, quam, si quis voluerit, honestius eloquio celsiore demonstret, et mihi quidem id animi fuit, 6 <ut> non Sallustios, Livios, Tacito<s>, Trogos atque omnes disertissimos imitarer viros in vita principum et temporibus disserendis, sed Marium Maximum, Suetonium Tranquillum, Fabium Marcellinum, Gargilium Martialem, Iulium Capitolinum, Aelium Lampridium ceterosque, qui haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere memoriae tradiderunt. 8 sum enim unus ex curiosis, quod infi[ni]t<i>as ire non possum, ince<n>dentibus vobis, qui, cum multa sciatis, scire multo plura cupitis. 9 et ne diutius ea, quae ad meum consilium pertinent, loquar, magnum et praeclarum principem et qualem historia nostra non novit, arripiam.

Of the multiple caveats already noted for that thesis, probably the most obvious is that the East didn't fall; in fact, as you said above, the Goths were settled in the Balkans, ie, the Eastern Empire.

Fat is no armor in any way; it bleeds and it hurts. You can test it yourself.Four extra inches of adipose tissue would hardly give any significant protection for your internal organs against blades; in fact, they would make you far more vulnerable, for the obvious and unavoidable loss of agility and fitness. Obesity is actually a huge disadvantage for fencing and any other modern equivalent to gladiatorial games. And of course, if obesity was the desired standard for the circus' fans, why are virtually all surviving pictorial representations athletic or at least lean? (Including those from Curry's own article)

Before talking about "Roman" or "barbarian" "blood" (or any modern genertic equivalent) and maybe even diving into racism, we should remember that both "Roman" (Late Empire) and "Barbarian" were political, not ethnic terms. As Polybius pointed out and even their persistent enemy Philip V of Macedon admitted, if the ancient Romans ever had a characteristic trait from their very beginning in comparison with any other contemporary civilization, it was precisely the assimilation of the alien, from enslavement to military recruitment. Even in our oldest reports, alien units were already among the Roman soldiers; regarding specifically the Germans, they were recruited as auxiliaries at least since the time of Caesar; their reasons were presumably the same than at the IV century AD; "barbarians" were already militarily trained (usually since childhood) even if ill-disciplined, they were regularly cheaper than the Roman recruits, they had been loyal for years (even decades), and last but not least, they were entirely expendable. The system had worked for centuries and there was no reason why it shouldn't have continued working, as in fact it happened in the East to their very last moment; just remember the Varengian guard. Besides, the estimations for most migrant Germanic tribes of the IV & V centuries are in the order of the tens of thousands at best for the whole populations (children and women included), while the Imperial army described by the Notitia Dignitatum probably had more than 400,000 effectives.

Maybe we should try to better define "Barbarization"; if it just means "large scale replacements of indigenous units with barbarian (alien) units", it was arguably ongoing since the very beginning of the Roman expansion (the Latin socii).

Usus autem sum, ne in aliquo fallam carissimam mihi familiaritatem tuam, praecipue libris ex bibliotheca Ulpia, aetate mea thermis Diocletianis, et item ex domo Tiberiana, usus etiam [ex] regestis scribarum porticus porphyreticae, actis etiam senatus ac populi. 2 et quoniam me ad colligenda talis viri gesta ephemeris Turduli Gallicani plurimum invit, viri honestissimi ac sincerissimi, beneficium amici senis tacere non debui. 3 Cn. Pompeium, tribus fulgentem triumphis belli piratici, belli Sertoriani, belli Mithridatici multarumque rerum gestarum maiestate sublimem, quis tandem nosset, nisi eum Marcus Tullius et Titus Livius in litteras rettulissent? 4 Publ<i>um Scipionem Afric<an>um, immo Scipiones omnes, seu Lucios seu Nasicas, nonne tenebrae possiderent ac tegerent, nisi commendatores eorum historici nobiles atque ignobiles extitissent? 5 longum est omnia persequi, quae ad exemplum huiusce modi etiam nobis tacentibus usurpanda sunt. 6 illud tantum contestatum volo me et rem scripsisse, quam, si quis voluerit, honestius eloquio celsiore demonstret, et mihi quidem id animi fuit, 6 <ut> non Sallustios, Livios, Tacito<s>, Trogos atque omnes disertissimos imitarer viros in vita principum et temporibus disserendis, sed Marium Maximum, Suetonium Tranquillum, Fabium Marcellinum, Gargilium Martialem, Iulium Capitolinum, Aelium Lampridium ceterosque, qui haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere memoriae tradiderunt. 8 sum enim unus ex curiosis, quod infi[ni]t<i>as ire non possum, ince<n>dentibus vobis, qui, cum multa sciatis, scire multo plura cupitis. 9 et ne diutius ea, quae ad meum consilium pertinent, loquar, magnum et praeclarum principem et qualem historia nostra non novit, arripiam.