sylla

Some figures are administratively determined; eg, the size of a Legion. Non- determined figures are essentially either guesses (eg, the casualties reports from most battles) or measurements (eg, censuses); guesses are far more common in our Classical sources. Typically (although not necessarily), guesses tend to be rounded numbers. Even if he was not especially meaningful for the Roman History, the saga of Spartacus was narrated by several Roman historians, beginning from his very own generation and often depicting him as a virtuous adversary among the vilest villains (long before any Marxist influence), quite analogous to the case of Hannibal. Some of the original details (eg, the names

Even if this issue is indeed broad and relatively complex, after Pompeius' succinct introduction we can return to the original questions:

By May 1945 the Truman administration (the same as FDR up to his last day) still considered that massive Russian help would have been required for the definitive defeat of Japan; the A-bomb was still a project. The first nuclear blast (Alamogordo) didn't happen until July 16.

While waiting for the expertise of Docoflove: Quote (SIC): " J was originally used as a swash character to end some Roman numerals in place of i. There was an emerging distinctive use in Middle High German. Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550) was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as representing separate sounds, in his Ɛpistola del Trissino de le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana ("Trissino's epistle about the letters recently added in the Italian language") of 1524."

Yup; only thing was lacking was herr Hitler in the White House.

BTW, cheers and happy birthday to UNRV membr Medusa!

It seems that you require more gladiatura and less warming.

Infamous in what way? You might remember that he organize gangs that fought in the street and terrorize political enemies and that after his death his supporters burn down the Senate house! In short, in the late Republic, the age anarchy and demagogues, Clodius is the worst example of them both. Or maybe the best example. Despite the...burst of life...he inserted into politics during the Late Republic, much of what he did, played to the common person's pleasure of immediate gratification and belief that there was someone in the senate who made their life more interesting and granted them a place to use their collective influence. The commoner was an untapped source of power and that is what made him both infamous, to some, and a hero, or at least a tool to be tamed- if that were ever possible, for others. I think we tend to remember Clodius as infamous thanks to Cicero's opinion of the man. As the happenings of the 60-40's B.C. are exciting for me too, I'm really sorry for having diverted your analysis by my careless use of the word "infamous"; believe me, I never pretended to add any value judgment for or against Clodius, Cicero or anyone else. Please change that word for an ethically neuter "famous" in my previous statement and let the life go on.

Fine with me, NN. A personal apology to UNRV as a whole; I have tried my best to limit my remarks to the academic debate and I have never pretended to imply personal connotations.

"Fantasy" is one of those words that have been so constantly and carelessly used by you here, without the support of any regular English dictionary, like "romanticism" or "guerrilla"; Please try your own search at Merriam-Webster Have you even tried to estimate the figures for those "little" ("not great") battles so absurdly dismissed by you? Plainly, you have been systematically ignoring even the most elementary maths. Old habits die hard; any search of evidence is a good improvement, but that is only half of the job; now you have to analyze it. Please re-check your own quotations and try to use your own evidence. The relevant facts are clear and easy to read in Eutropius and Frontinus, the only relevant sources that you chose for your previous post; then, you simply ignored or denied them, just by your own bare assertion, without any additional evidence! The Marxist and Anti-Marxist references were irrelevant red herrings, because nobody here presented Spartacus as a pre-communist hero (No, the Kubrick film was analyzed in another thread; if that film left such a permanent impression in you, maybe you should try that Thread again). As it has been repeatedly stated, all our sources state the same basic facts, either Plutarch, Appian, Orosius or anyone else. Please check on previous posts; so far, you have been answering questions that nobody asked. You have so far given no hint of having understood the delicate balance of social factors involved in the appearance, development, consolidation and aftermath of the Third Servile War to any significant extent; there's no way then that we can expect you to explain them to us. (If you simply have no idea what I am talking about, just check out carefully my preliminary observations in the post #14 from this same thread) We simply can't have enough time to review the mechanism of all the countless fallacies that you intentionally or carelessly committed; a pearl should be enough: - Frontinus didn't explicitly name Spartacus as a general in any single phrase, because he had previously done it in the introduction of his Book I ("in order to complete the task I have begun, to summarize in convenient sketches the adroit operations of generals, which the Greeks embrace under the one name strategemata"); otherwise, we would have to admit that Frontinus denied the title of "general" to such notorious "bandits" (yes, that dictionary again!) like Caesar, Laelius, Ventidius or Themistocles. If you have any question on my previous statements or their sources, just ask it. If you want to correct any of my statements, just give us your sources so we would be able to analyze them together. As you have probably already note, unsourced statements are frequently hard (or even impossible) to answer. Thanks in advance.

Well, my personal impression is that Plutarch, Appian, Orosius, Frontinus, Sallust, Eutropius, Florus, Velleius, Cicero, Augustine, Pliny and Livy (among others) reported a a pretty lot of incidental stuff for the producers to stick to. BTW, check out the trailer; there is indeed extra nudity and blood.

The voting subject really interests the heck out of a lot of people around here. Being new, there's a lot of stuff that you should study all along UNRV; you may begin - here as an introduction to the Roman voting system itself, and - here for the actual meaning of the patrician: plebeian dichotomy.

Are you aware of any people actually injured while performing this kind of reenactments?

The album was on private somehow...it is now public. Enjoy! And enjoy we shall; nice pics, thanks for sharing. Glad to know you had a good time. Arguably, Augustus was hardly as handsome as his graphic propaganda depicted him.

Lying in state != burial. There's the source of the confusion. The shrine of Julius I guess would have been the one in the Forum (hence the second oration from the rostra), not Caesar's tomb which iirc was on the Campus Martius. Burial in the forum would be highly unlikely in any case. I dinstictly remember seeing an epitaph bearing Octavia's name in the Mausoleum of Augustus. It was a fake, though, and I'm not aware of an extant original. Congratulations, Mal; that was a most cleaver analysis. As far as I can tell, Seneca's ad Polybius didn't add anything relevant on this issue. Have you found any textual or epigraphical confimation for the actual burial of Octavia in the Augustan Mausoleum?

BTW, all that Primus Pilus said applied to the plebeian nobiles too. MT Varro was a good example; Livy and others pretended to further embarrass the disgraced surviving consul after Cannae by quoting his (presumably apocryphal) antecedent of having worked as a butcher (in the literal, not the military sense).

Please remember that in an extremely distorted way, the Roman Republic has already been depicted in Mr Tapert's XENA with a "Caesar", a "Crassus", a "Pompey, a "Brutus" and even a "Boadicea". Believe me, "accuracy" can't get any worse. Despite the undisputed popularity of the series and the expected appearance of scantily clad women, I don't think that even the most naive Xena fans took that for history, in the same way that Star Trek has never been used as a textbook of physics.

Then, all the relevant facts are still the same, as told by any available source: the army of Spartacus utterly and systematically defeated all the legions that they faced for more than two years, including multiple major battles against many praetors, legates, two consuls and one proconsul, conquering in the process vast territories and many cities, sometimes quite close to Rome itself (while the powerful professional armies of Mithridates and his allies were being routed at the same time by the same legionaries in Asia). And of course, for crushing Spartacus and his men, ML Crassus required almost the same number of legions used by Caesar some years later to conquer Gaul. Therefore, our conclusion cannot change; the question is not so much the indisputable qualities of Spartacus as commander and tactician, but the nature of the underlying conditions for his army; how was the rebel army able to achieve such impressive deeds with just untrained slaves and without logistic support?

Good point; HBO Rome was not particularly accurate regarding these characters.

And this is probably the best one describing his men.

I think the first one would be the best to describe Spartacus.

Any information anywhere is as good as its sources.

Just on an entirely personal title, some preliminary observations: - This rebellion was not limited to slaves; it was probably the closer we may get to a peasant revolt across the late Republican years. The participation of

In addition to the previous prudent advices, you may want to try to become a virtual collector first; ie, just images, explanations and allied virtual stuff. That is quite friendly to wallet and marriage, even if addictive. In that way, some insights into numismatics can be acquired (even without infringing copyright rules) before even trying the real coinware.