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First, Have you checked this out? Then, there is some terrific material on this issue from some UNRV members, especially Nephele; try the search function in the Forum section.

But for those of us who are neither True Believers nor Militant Skeptics, Sanders' study of historicity is both interesting and relevant. Yes, but in general terms the historicity of Jesus is both interesting and relevant for passive agnostics just in an indirect way; ie, just because there are millions of True Believers and Militant Skeptics who care about such issue all around the World. Just check it out; if we ignore the religious consequences of the life and death of Jesus across History, there would be essentially no evidence of his existence. A strictly non-religious search would not detect him at all. Please don't get me wrong; I'm actually a big fan of the work of the Jesus Seminar, and not primarily for religious reasons; we can learn a lot from them on textual criticism.

Briefly, a couple of issues: - An easy sport analogy (believe me, it applies): The soccer team of Italy is currently considered the best (ie, the World Champion) after the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Now, here comes their secret: they didn't lose any single match. Their trainer was obviously important and even sheer luck may have had a role; but we can safely assume that the main reason for that outcome is that they have some of the best players of the world, by any measure. (Naturally, we can quote millions of these examples, but a pearl should be enough). - The Roman Republic was in permanent war for all their known History (even at the only year that the Janus temple closed!), often of rather high intensity; the draft was frequently carried to the extreme, sometimes to its very biological limits, even before Cannae; for all that time "Roman citizen" and "legionary" were absolute synonyms. Now, please, can anyone wonder where did the "standardized training" come from? - The original question of this thread ("How were the Romans able to win after Cannae?") should probably be rephrased: "Why did it take so long for the Romans to defeat Carthage in Punic War II?". By sheer numbers and resources, the expected outcome from 218 BC should have been a relatively quick Roman victory.

Please excuse my impertinence, M. Which would be your choice? (ie, the " Top Five (or X) Most Overrated Tourist Attractions")... especially regarding Classical Antiquity.

OK, let

A common overstatement about the battle of Teutoburg (certainly not present in this article) is its numerical impact on the Empire. Three legions lost (plus cavalry and auxiliaries) implied some 20,000 casualties at most. After this battle, the Empire had only 25 legions. But four decades before, immediately after Actium, Octavius inherited no less than 60 legions (excluding auxiliaries), in spite of the immense human losses all along the Civil Wars. At Carrhae alone, seven legions were lost. Then, if Augustus didn

This report is relevant because until quite recently the prevalent opinion (shared by many people still today) was that the good savages lived in perfect harmony with nature; as their chat section shows, there is still some disagreement about the contribution of early humans to the extinction of the Megafauna. I entirely agree with Kosmo; the fact that Africa was the only place where the Pleistocene Megafauna survived is best explained by the long time that those animals had to adapt themselves to the humans. I agree with NN description on BBC 4; I would think that "early" simply means previous than "late". The Dodo quote was just a metaphore on the dissapearance of the Good Green Savage theory.

This Coin shows Aurelian with Hercules, one of his favorite Gods. Among other deities that also appeared in coins with Aurelian or the empress Severina were Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Apollo, Aesculapius, Minerva, Juno, Venus, Victory, Aeternitas and of course Sol, a not so well defined solar divinity (different from Apollo).

Thanks for that; glad to change the subject. Nope.I'm not sure exactly who are you thinking about, but Africanus Major was as aristocrat as it can get, from the most successful noble family of the most successful Patrician Gens. The consuls and commanders after Cannae and even after Zama were from the same traditional noble families. Among the consuls for the first 30 years after Cannae, only two new men are attested, Laelius (Scipio's client) and Cato Censorius. In fact, the two new men from the beginnings of the Hannibalic War, Flamininius and Varro, faced the full responsibility for Trasimene and Cannae, respectively. The Sword of Rome was a Claudius (Marcellus), the Shield was a Fabius (Maximus) and both were veterans from long before Hannibal; the heroes of Metaurus were another Claudius (Nero) and a Livius (Salinator). Even Atilius Regulus (from the group defeated at Cannae) eventually became a Censor in 214 BC. The Roman soldiers were defeated at Trebbia, Trasimene and Cannae because they faced one of the best Generals and Armies in History, not for being rookies or amateurs by any measure. They were expert legionaries that had repeatedly proved themselves against fierce Gauls, Ligurians, Illyrians, Sardinians and other peoples. Just remember the great battles of Telamon and Clastidium. The complex and decisive battle of Telamon, greater than anything else until Cannae and fought just seven years before the Hannibalic War, should be especially interesting for all those skeptic on the tactic capabilities of the "amateur" middle Republican legions. From Polybius in his second book: "The infantry were now close upon each other, and the spectacle was a strange and marvellous one, not only to those actually present at the battle, but to all who could afterwards picture it to themselves from the reports. For in the first place, as the battle was between three armies, it is evident that the appearance and the movements of the forces marshalled against each other must have been in the highest degree strange and unusual".

At the risk of overstating the obvious, Jesus has had an immense impact in History... as a religious figure, ie. as the inspiration of a colossal religious movement with literally hudreds of branches. As a religious figure, Jesus is (in present) in the same category as Buddha, Apollo, Pythagoras or Ahura-Mazda. All religions are based on faith, by definition a belief not resting on material evidence; strictly speaking, what is relevant to any religion is the idea behind the faith, not the material individual behind the idea. Jesus is no exception; in fact, if we try to analyze him as a non-religious historical figure, we are left with essentially... nothing. Sanders' book is hardly original; a "historical Jesus" (ie, a verifiable biography of Jesus of Nazareth based on historical non-religious methods) has been searched at least since the XVIII century. Sanders clearly owes a lot to the famous Jesus Seminar. Even if the methodology used by this kind of research may not be religious per se, its motivation most clearly is, because any branch of Christianity believes that "their Jesus" is the historical one (ergo, that the other versions are unhistorical). Naturally, a "historical Jesus" may also be useful for any deist, as evidence against the historicity of the religious figure. The Gospels ("good news") as biographies of Jesus, the same as any other text on him, canonical or apocryphal, are relevant just because they are informing the world about the coming of God. For that reason, all testimonies on Jesus (even Josephus) eventually get to the supernatural miracle part. This part is of course unacceptable by any Historical methodology; however, this same part is indispensable for any of such narratives; ie. without it, they would have no sense. Plainly, if Jesus was not God (or at least a prophet for the Muslims), who would care about his story? It's a fact that cannot be ignored. Therefore, strictly speaking, the "historicity" of Jesus is essentially irrelevant; true believers will always consider him God, for skeptics evidence will never be enough.

And Q. Naevius Sutorius Macro by John Rhys-Davies.

With all due respect, I'm not a big fan here of timesonline top whatever lists; I would be far more interested in the personal opinion of other UNRV members regarding this issue.

See? Your previous post was not only a bad joke.It's indeed already evident that snapping my fingers will not make you read the evidence before commenting it. Would it be too arrogant to assume that one day we may be lucky enough for you to share your hidden evidence with us? Your little irrelevant exposition is a rather tortuous way to admit that even you can't deny the "unprofessional" (sorry: "amateur") Republican Romans were the best soldiers of their time; you're already making some progress. BTW: romantic again? Oh yes, I forgot; it's Caldrail dialect, not English. We can't take it literally. PS: Admins, even if I am as eager as the next guy for sharing testosterone displays, this may be a good time to close this thread, or at least send it to the Arena.

Any information is as good as its original source. There's nothing embarassing in using Wikipedia and allied sources; after all, the material of some UNRV staff members is already there, sometimes even edited by themselves. It's the uncritical use of any sources what we should try to avoid; as far as I'm able to remember, a lot of the "Caesar/Jesus" material would have qualified. An excellent point. There was (and still is) a gradual continuity between poly- and monotheism; arguably, a monotheist God or Goddess is just a polytheist deity with an attitude. This trend might have come from far earlier; from the official Roman standpoint, the Road to Monotheism probably was essentially the natural extension of the Imperial Cult. Roman rulers were regularly worshipped in the provinces (either Hellenic and non-Hellenic) while still alive at least since Flaminius in the II century BC; the peregrini subjects frequently displaced such ruler cult to overlap long-standing regular divinities, including solar Olympic deities. After the strong Roman popular rejection of the divine pretensions of the Dictator Caesar, that practice became the regular official policy; for example, Apollo was the favorite model and companion for the Augustan cult. In spite of the purported quasi-monotheistic personal pretensions of Caius Minor (aka Caligula) and the reported introduction of alien cults by some Caesars (usually reported as evidence of impiety, most notoriously Elegabalus), it seems that the Emperor in turn and his dynasty were still seen as just some additional deities among many more until the Crisis of the Third Millennium. The social and political instability would have then favored a more intimate identification of the progressively more divine rulers with their own patron deities. The impact of the emergence of the intensely Zoroastrian Sassanid Empire probably also had a major role in the Roman Road to Monotheism. In fact, some sources suggested that some earlier rulers may have turned their attention to Christianity itself, eg. Alexander Severus and Philip the Arab. After the impact of the Reforms by Aurelian, the Tetrachy took this issue quite seriously and all their members seem to have been identified with some prominent traditional divinities, especially Jupiter and Hercules; the latter was the original patron of Constantine. In his search of power, he reportedly recurred to multiple deities, and Jesus seems to have been initially just one among many, actually selected in accordance with Licinius against Maxentius

That's a good point and I agree it was indeed a major contributor, but hardly enough by itself, because as with any other theory, we ought to explain why the East didn't fell, as their army was similar or even a bit bigger than the western one. I think that as a whole, Ward-Perkins

Some evidence would be nice - you haven't provided any. But don't bother. I doubt many of us are interested in a debate over the meanings of the English language. The issue of how you see professional and amateur status isn't supposed to be rigidly defined - it's a loose description based on context and I'm sure if you ask most people understand perfectly well what was meant. Regarding the English language, I must agree; some people just don't care. Regarding evidence, if this is not a bad joke, you really need to read the last posts again, this time carefully. Briefly and slowly, the main evidence for the Roman Republic military expertise was that they won absolutely all their wars across several centuries and conquered their known World. Please explain us how was all that possible by any big coincidence.

I'm also a great fan of Luttwak's thesis. The military reforms from the Tetrachy perod were presumably too extensive for being attributted to just a couple of rulers; they were essentially the Darwinian adaptation of the Late Empire as a whole to its new conditions. These reforms were indeed quite successful in the Eastern side. If the Western Emoire eventually fell, it was in spite of those reforms, not because of them.

I can't think in any single reason to doubt he was anything else than a pure Macedonian.

Can you mention which sources are "some" and which others "some"? As far as I know, our main sources (Eusebius, Lactantius, Anonimus Valesianus) counted Constatine's Dies Imperii from his fater's death in July 25, 306 AD.

By the time of the late Empire, the whites and reds had disappeared, leaving only the blues and greens. The two factions became political as well as sporting. Can anyone tell me what happened to the whites and reds? By the end of the VI century at most, the Reds (Rousioi) have merged with the Greens (Prasinoi) and the Whites (Leukoi) with the Blues (Venetoi). Physically, there were only eight places, for two chariors per team.

You know, the ghost of poor old Polybius must be revolting wherever he is. This fallacy is called a false dilemma for a reason: the "amateur"/"professional" dichotomy just didn't apply; period. This was war, not Rugby. If for the sake of the argument we imagine that the Pre-Marian legionaries were farming their land and fighting the war in alternate dates, the soldiers of most city-states (eg, Themistocles or Miltiades) must then be considered "amateurs" too; not to mention Genghis Khan troops or the Sioux of Sitting Bull... even if of course, not a single one of such soldiers was fighting "as a pastime"; they were there not just for "love", but for duty. And if we still had any doubt about it, Polybius made this point painfully clear (6, 36-37). Amazing as it may sound (and the same as in V century BC Athens, for example) the Roman citizen soldiers were payed for their service, even when stationed at home; just check once again on good old Polybius (6, 39, 12-14): "As pay the foot-soldier receives two obols a day, a centurion twice as much, and a cavalry-soldier a drachma. The allowance of corn to a foot-soldier is about two-thirds of an Attic medimnus a month, a cavalry-soldier receives seven medimni of barley and two of wheat. Of the allies the infantry receive the same, the cavalry one and one-third medimnus of wheat and five of barley, these rations being a free gift to the allies"... ...obviously with or without booty (but of course, Roman soldiers were always expecting booty; we have plenty of evidence about that). Even without such evidence, the most elementary common sense tell us that the Roman, Greek, Mongol and Sioux soldiers had to be cared for by their respective states whenever they were in campaign; no regular soldier can be expected to fight on a half-time basis. Naturally, that was because war has never ever been a hobby or free-time activity anywhere; and even if the Romans had oddly thought otherwise, it would have been physically impossible for their soldiers to farm their own lands whenever they were just some miles from home, even within Italy itself; ie. in Lucania, the Po valley or even Umbria (not to mention serving in the cavalry or the navy). Enough on why "amateur" is an absurd term for the legionaries; regarding "professional", if you use it as "expert", the Roman soldiers and officials were the paramount military experts of their era, looong before the Marian Reforms; I sincerily hope we need no more evidence on this issue. It is just in its elitist acceptation where this term didn't apply; previous to the Marian reforms, essentially all Roman citizens were expert warriors (and expert farmers too, BTW). In modern terms, it would be as if all the citizens of a country would have studied (and excelled in) the same profession (eg, as a country with 100% of expert lawyers... and the best expert lawyers ever, we may add). Relative to their predecessors, the Marian Mules and later legionaries were considered

That our Romanophile sources were utterly trying to belittle a significant victory of Perseus is clear from the hard evidence of the huge military and political consequences of Callicinus: - the immediate retreat of Crassus' two "super" legions (6000 effectives each one of them) and multiple allies, from an enemy force of roughly the same size; - the loss of the whole Thessaly for several months; - the enthusiastic reaction of the Greek sympathizers of Perseus; - the sending of the Aetolians to Rome to answer for the defeat; - and of course the delay of the definitive invasion of Macedon for another 3 years. Livy himself acknowledged an atypically unfavorable casualty figure for the Romans from this battle. Interestingly, JM Kistler pointed out the presumably significant absence of the Numidian Elephant squad on the Roman side in Callicinus, a unit that was active across virtually all major Roman victories from both the II and III Macedonian Wars, obviously including Phalanna and Pydna. The Roman Elephant factor might have actually played a more relevant role than usually acknowledged. Regarding the IV Macedonian War, the use of Phalanges is far from certain, because this war was in all likelihood a popular rebellion and Andriscus the Pseudo-Philip has only

Actually, almost all we know about the Huns was relative to and narrated by the Romans across their relatively short existence as a political/ethnic entity (late IV to middle V centuries AD). Our sources consistently depicted them as an evil menace, but their relationship with both Roman Empires and the Germanic nations were frequently quite complex.

Arguably, most films (and show-business in general) tend to be rather inaccurate far more often than not, presumably from their own entertaining nature; the real life of many historical figures was frequently so boring... All that said, from what I have been able to see posted here in UNRV, timesonline has never been especially fortunate for the selection of their "10 most" lists, and this one seems to be no exception. I'm sure many UNRV members would have done a far better job. Some films, like 10,000 BC and Apocalypto, are not even history, and the latter is criticized not for its accuracy but for hurting some misguided indigenist sensibilities, as if any human group anywhere has ever been incapable of cruel actions. Other films, like Pearl Harbor, are in fact quite accurate, so they are criticized for the literary depiction of their characters! Gladiator has been extensively discussed here and in other threads (and many other websites, of course); a great spectacle with bad history. In fact, the actual gladiator should have been Commodus, not Maximus. This emperor was a fascinating figure that surely deserves a better script.