sylla

Please do! It will be greatly appreciated. well - The Hellenistic world and the coming of Rome by Erich S. Gruen‏, chapters 15 to 17 The Hellenistic world from Alexander to the the Roman conquest by M. M. Austin‏, chapter 5 The Cambridge history of Judaism by William David, chapter 8 "Antiochus IV" Also there is - Edwin Robert Bevan, The House of Seleucus, 2 vol. (1902; reprinted 1966), considered as the primary source in English O. Morkolm, Antiochus IV of Syria (1966) - Seems to be a full biography And Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish Struggle Against the Seleucids‏ by Bezalel Bar-Kochva‏ My two cents: Good news is that, as this Antiochus Epiphanes (beware; his father was homonymous) was both a relevant classical and biblical character, he is depicted in multiple reviews. Bad news is that he is a Biblical character, so the depictions are theologically biased more often than not. Specific biographies seem to be uncommon; however, any decent Classical or religious (both Jewish and Christian) encyclopedia have extensive material on this guy and his time. Some examples: BK Waltke, "Antiochus IV Epiphanes"; in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia; I Gafni, "Antiochus" and LH Feldman, "Hellenism", both in Encyclopedia Judaica . There are many excellent reviews about the Jews under the Hellenistic rule, but the standard reference text on Antiochus IV seems to still be Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, by Victor Tcherikover (1959); English translation by S. Appelbaum. Philadelphia:Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961. Additionally, Tcherikover authored or co-authored many books, chapters and articles on the same topic. A History of Israel from Alexander the Great to Bar Kockba by H Jagersma (1985).may be added to CC list above too. The most relevant primary source is Polybious, especially books XXVI, 10 and XXXI, 3-4;; other important Classical sources are Livy, book XLI, 19-20 and Diodorus. books XXIX, 32 and XXXI, 16, 1-2.. Antiochus is also mentioned by Appian, Josephus, Asconius, Cicero, Plutarch, Porphiry, Valerius Maximus, Justin, Zonaras and Malalas, among others. The main religious sources are the Book of Daniel, the four Macabees, Eusebius and many Christian Chronicons.

A good point, Formosus. Additionally, the Romans also gave their slaves names such as Avitus ("Grandfatherly") and Paternus ("Fatherly"), perhaps in a condescending manner much like the "Uncles" and "Mammies" of America's antebellum South. (And there I go, drawing a despised parallel between ancient Rome and latter-day America. Live with it, y'all. ) An exposed child rescued and brought up as a slave might be named (perhaps in an affectionate way) Inventus (meaning "discovered"). Pejorative cognomina were not found among freedmen as much as among their former masters. The noblest Roman was proud of his name indicating his lisp, or baldness, or bow-leggedness -- whether he actually bore those attributes or not. Slaves, on the other hand -- particularly decorative house slaves -- were more often given attractive names. -- Nephele We better hold our horses for a moment. It's an unsourced statement from a reenactment group. Does anyone know a primary source for this?

Can you give us any more information on monsieur Montepelant? Google search of this name matchs no documents. (I mean, if this is not a joke).

Yes, this is interesting, answers my questions. "The master could free his child, but he could not acknowledge or adopt it: law and society was adamant on this point." Slavery in the US and in much of the Western Hemisphere was founded on race. This is a major difference from the Roman institution. Thanks for your response to my questions! Veyne was misquoted out of context above: the actual phrase (pg. 52) is "Today's closest psychological analogy to ancient slavery is racism". Some lines below, Veyne adds "Their ethnic origin was of no significance". As a whole, this chapter is a nice introduction to our topic. At least for the first couple of centuries, Western Hemisphere's slaveowners had obvious physical traits that allowed an easy visual disticntion between slaves and non-slaves in their geographical context. The Romans and their neighbors never had such advantage; Verres could explain the crucifixion of some Roman citizens by pretending that he believed they were runaway slaves.

Please do. I never heard about this before. Please look here, Kosmo. The website in the link shows a plaster cast of a crucified figure with the names Orpheus and Bacchus clearly inscribed in greek. http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9856 and: http://www.vexen.co.uk/books/jesusmysteries.html Thank you! I agree there's plenty of evidence on potential multiple synchretism for the early Roman Empire, Christianity included. However, the same as Kosmo, this is news to me. I'm aware that Dionysius (or at least one of his avatars) was ripped in pieces by the Titans; never heard anything on crucifixion. Probably I missed something; but I suppose the plaster cast is not by itself considered an evidence, even with such clear Greek inscription with the name of two divinities (why are both there?) This image is already available in en.wikipedia as "Dionysus Crucifixion.gif" (why can't it be Orpheus?). Strangely, it is not linked to any text page. Where was the original piece found? How was it dated to the 2nd Century? Are there more of them? Any additional information? Plainly, how do we know it's not just a forgery? Thanks in advance for any reference and information,

Actually, at the beginning slavery was the moral option for the war captives; the alternative was anihilation. Even so, when you look closely, you can almost always find some kind of social awareness from the masters about the moral complexity of slavery; this was especially confusing for the Romans, given the relatively high expectation for the average slave of being freed some day. It was an eternal nightmare for the Roman legislators. Where you can find an universal agreement is in the moral condemnation of the own slavery; no population was ever proud of being slaves. Even if it usually had the upper hand, the Roman army was in no way invincible; unsurprisingly, Roman captives were regularly enslaved by their enemies if they didn't get a ransom first; as it may have been expected, the enslavement of Roman citizens was particularly prevalent across the first and second Punic Wars. We certainly live in an atypical era; slavery was still an almost universal option two centuries ago. The change was not physiological; our ancestors were not born to be slaves. The change was cultural, and it's easy to forget that it was not spontaneous or gratuitous; or that no social phenomenom has ever caused so much pain and suffering to so many of our ancestors. It

No offense taken. BTW, I'm not sure which one is implied to be in a worse position, the Old World slave or Uncle Tom, the slave in Rome or the Jew in Auschwitz. My own guess is that it was a quite personal issue that varied ad infinitum for any given individual. Slavery is human beings considered as property, a fascinating issue that modifies virtually any imaginable aspect of the affected societies; law, religion, economy, family, politics, culture, to name a few. Its diversity has been almost infinite; from the prisoners

Indeed. Slaves vs. free it's misleading. Slaves often are like freedman and often freedman are clients of their former owner, but in Rome everybody, not only freedman, had a patron. So, slave, freedman, client are different but related. Children and wifes are also a lot like slaves. And as FV mentioned most ottoman sultans were sons of slave mothers and those mothers called "valide sultan" played a huge role at the court. That would be like saying that being a Jew or a Gipsy in Auschwitz was no big deal, as you could always become the warden's lover. People, you must be joking; nuff' said.

Are you sure it that the child wouldn't be free if the mother was free at it's birth? Anyway I believe that we are putting too much weight on the word slave. I've always had the feeling that slaves should be considered more as another class in society, just as rich, poor and patricians. Live as a slave could differ just as much as life as a free man. Lex Aelia-Sentia, commented by Gaius (Institutiones, I, 84). The child from a slave father was servile, even if the mother was born free.

You're plainly reversing the logic; Philemon was first "found" (that's the antecedent) and then the identity of Caesar's enemies was discovered in any suitable way (that's the consequence).

Yeah. Didn't the Romans conquer the Hellenistic world? Why exactly is this such a pressing debate? I would say because the Romans were never able to conquer Persia and the other Asiatic countries as Alexander III did, and because of the clash of national prides; the Greeks never let the Roman forget it.

The child was a slave if any of his/her parents was a slave while the mother was pregnant. If both parents were slaves, the issue was the property of the mother's master. It was a regular method for perpetuating chattel slavery. In generaL terms, however, the Romans seem to have been less successful than other slave societies, especially the southern United States.

"The slave Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised Caesar's enemies that he would poison him," I rest my case. The witness can be killed, your honor. That doesn't state his reasons. It only records that he agreed to commit the crime. If the quoted sentence is true, the motives for poisoning Caesar were those from his unnamed enemies. Naturally, such enemies may have come to tell him about his traitorous slave. Or Philemon might have spontaneously confessed (if he didn't care any more for his life) without any additional stimulus (like torture). Even under such extremely unlikely scenarios, any Roman politician (or rational human, for that matter) would have proceeded to an exhaustive interrogation by any mean available. (Even if only to be sure that it was all the truth and nothing but the truth). In fact, this candid anecdote is atypical enough for Suetonius selecting it as an outstanding example of Caesar's wonderful (but irrational) clemency.

And this is the huge stumbling block, and the difference between us, Calders. No - they are not! Each individual is a product of his/her society, which society helps shape his/her ambitions and motives. Are you saying that a Roman woman's motives and ambitions are the same as an 18th century Swedish woman's, or a 21st century English woman's for that matter? Same for the men. Roman men were imbued with a sense of history, duty to the state and Rome's destiny. But was this ALL Romans? Or just those in government? Do we even have evidence to make an informed analysis of the urban poor and their motives/ambitions? Sweeping generalisations do not help us here. Well, there are some comments we can make, sweeping generalizations though they are, as cultural anthropologists have gone to some effort to identify what are called 'cultural universals'. That is, all human societies have certain features which they share - making jokes, liking music and dance, a tendency for males and females to form long-term unions, a desire for social status, and to raise children to whom we are genetically related. (And I'll add a tendency for teenage males to make idiots of themselves, as I've just come back from watching a bunch of mall-rats doing so.) Human nature is basically unchanged from the time we left the African savannahs - however, the manner in which it finds expression is indeed radically different from society to society, and history can also show some interesting social pathologies (I'll put Sparta in this group - possibly we should add the aristocracy of the Late Roman Republic as well.) So yup, I'd say our Roman woman, 21st century lass, western or otherwise, or your average (I stress average) female in any society wants a good marriage, to enjoy social status in her peer group, would prefer wealth to poverty, and would probably like to give that little cow down the road a good slap. And should it happen that the average woman does not want to raise a brood of bonny bouncing children, the human race is in trouble. Once we recognize these basic human traits, we can see how they find expression in different societies. So I'd say Caldrail's cause is not totally lost! Apples and oranges are being mixed here. The "cultural universals" of Maty are indeed anthropology, closer to biology. They essentially mean humans are humans after all. The same as we all have kidneys, lungs and heart, in general terms we all care about our families, need to live in society and learn to behave as the people we have around us. Such traits are fundamentally inherent to our human condition, even if their expression could be greatly affected by the environment. Augusta is talking about historic events and processes, the quintessential example of the Chaos theory; an extremely complex and dynamical system where the smallest variation of virtually any condition may produce large and unpredictable variations in the long term outcome. The typical Butterfly effect: one flap of its wings could change the course of weather forever; the endless "what-if" scenarios. Contrary to physical sciences, we can never control the conditions of our observations; there are no historic experiments.

Aurelian and the Third Century (Alaric Watson, 1999) has a couple of well written chapters on the Palmyrean Dynasty and Kingdom.

"The slave Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised Caesar's enemies that he would poison him," I rest my case. The witness can be killed, your honor.

That you can in some way find "humanitarian" my previous post amazes me. You don't have to acknowledge humanity to dogs or wolves for being aware that they may hurt you if unchecked; and you might be in big trouble if you underestimate their intelligence; there's nothing "modern" in that concept. Social status is entirely different from rationality; even deep social discrimination is perfectly compatible with the awareness of risk. Long before Eunus and Spartacus, the Romans were permanently paranoid regarding any chance for a slave rebellion (as any other slave society, BTW). Romans were well aware of the potential cognitive abilities of their slaves; after all, most of their couriers, their physicians and even their children's teachers were or had been slaves, as well as many of their philosophers and literates. In fact, we may find slaves exercising almost any activity. Recruiting slaves was the ultimate resource for the Roman state in extreme situations, as was the case after Cannae; no fact could be more eloquent. And last but not least, the were also aware that the slave of today may very well be the freedman of tomorrow. Caesar's psychology is an issue for another day; I will simply state by now that my impression of Caesar's intelligence is too high to admit he would not have extracted any relevant information from Philemon by any mean at his disposition. In fact, he did it; that's why Suetonius was able to explain us the slave's motives. We have only Suetonius' word against the chance that Caesar used torture to get such trivia.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

No way can I disagree with Augusta here. My two cents: I would prefer another approach, more in the Popper

Any debate based on pure subjective grounds ought to burn itself out sooner or later; we all knew that beforehand. It's only when we discuss over objective evidence when we have any hope of getting any useful conclusion. Paradoxically, nothing strengthens the faith in democracy so much as watching an antidemocratic argumentation done by the exercise of the democratic rights. Still, I'm glad that now I know a little more. Actually, our democratic glory is that nobody has to agree about anything; ; the exchange of knowledge and ideas is all we need and all we get.

We may have found something really interesting... or we may not. Sadly, I didn't explain myself right; what I was asking you for was sources, provisions and details from this ground-breaking Lex Julia de repetundis, as you described it. Most Roman laws were quite specific; the various (no less then six) Leges de repetundis or, in plain English, bribery laws (repetundis and related declination forms are Latin verbal nouns meaning the recovery of extorted money) were no exception and, by themselves, they were no mystery; as their name may suggest, they were advanced against the illegal money acquisition by Roman magistrates, especially but not exclusively in the provinces. The Lex Julia in particular benefited from at least a century of legal precedents, and most of its provisions were adopted from previous Leges; for example: - improperly retained money should return to the affected victims, - pecuniary penalties would be defined by litis aestimatio, - convicted magistrates would lose their rank, - and they would also be disqualified from being senators and many other charges. It was indeed a nice Republican law, proposed by the appropriate magistrate, analyzed and approved by the still fully operative Senate (as opposed to later Imperial decrees). Our main primary source is Cicero, as you can check on the internal link posted by Primus Pilus. BTW, when Cicero praised this law ("For by that most just and admirable law of Caesar free nations were really and truly free"; In Piso 37; 55 BC) he was trying to convict L. Calpurnius Piso (Caesar's father in law and one of his main supporters) for his shameless extortion of Macedonia; this stuff is regularly called irony, and it made Cicero famous and a nightmare for people like Catilina, Anthony and Caesar. Corrupted politicians had always posed as anti-corruption activists for obvious reasons; in fact, the last previous Lex de repetundis was decreed by Sulla. Later Imperial Roman jurists commented extensively in all relevant Republican laws, from the XII tables onward, notoriously as late as Theodosius II and Justinian. The Lex Julia de repetundis was indeed the last Roman bribery law, mainly because the Imperial system made such laws essentially obsolete; people like Augustus, Claudius, Domitian, Hadrian and Aurelian were not restricted by legal subtleties when they desired to punish their administrators, even for imaginary faults. Besides, the advancement of Roman laws drop drastically under the Empire, as the proposals could now came from only one source. All in all, as you can see, there's nothing here even remotely similar to a rule-your-own-province Manual for Roman dummies. Naturally, my first guess would be that either your sources are wrong or you have misunderstood them; however, you may perfectly have access to relevant sources unknown to me. If you would be kind enough to post any input on sources, provisions, implementation and any other legal details about this law as you originally described it here, that shall be highly appreciated.

We agree, and we shouldn't be afraid from keeping disagreeing. Taste is subjective. However, please note that what I compared was the misery of 44 BC versus other years of the Civil War, not with anything else. In other facts we essentially agree; for any reason you simply don't want to use the right English words. Definitions are objective and the dictionaries are there; that's not for grabs. For example: Corruption (Webster): "when applied to officers, trustees, etc., signifies the inducing a violation of duty by means of pecuniary considerations". On the other hand, evidence is objective and can be discussed; for example, the Lex Julia de Repetundis, a nice Republican law from a more than century-long tradition of leges de repetundis against extorsion; a good law indeed, but no where can I see anything that could be depicted as the law that (SIC)

Tacitus presented this maneuver as a wise strategy from Germanicus and his legate Tubero (ibid 20) for deliberately provoking the Cherusci. I would think the trophy mound as a whole (and not just the boards), including the spoils of their fallen comrades, was the intended raging sight for all the Germans (and not just for the clans inscribed in the boards). Even if some former auxiliaries and other Cheruscans were able to read Latin, I doubt many of them would have been close enough to read the inscriptions. In any case, the whole picture must have been rather eloquent for even the less literate men. The inscriptions were undoubtedly done for the Roman posterity; after the subsequent second victory, Germanicus "raised a pile of weapons, with a legend boasting that "the army of Tiberius Caesar, after subduing the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe, had consecrated that memorial to Mars, to Jupiter, and to Augustus"." (Ibid 22) From the very beginning, all victories of the Imperial Army were systematically considered as the acting Emperor's triumphs; occasionally, some other member of the Imperial dynasty (like Germanicus) may share some of the glory. As usual, Tacitus tries to abuse Tiberius via Germanicus; however, this was the standard practice, and the unilateral claim of a personal triumph from any commander would have carried the obvious risk of being considered a sign of rebellion.

Such couriers were called tabellarii, usually slaves or freedmen; if for any reason you were unable to use your own, you ought to pay the services of the tabellarii from the publicani, the private contractors that collected taxes and did other services for the government; Cicero recommended some of them to Atticus for answering his letters (Att 5.15.3). Sometimes the merchants were able to transport the mail too. Private men often have to share the cost of this service with their friends; essentially, you were on your own. With the advance of the Empire, the local administration of some prominent cities eventually hired their own municipal tabellarii.

From the Loeb translation (Bill Thayer's site) "It was a brilliant, and to us not a bloody, victory. The enemy were slaughtered from the fifth hour of daylight to nightfall, and for ten miles the ground was littered with corpses and weapons. Among the spoils were found the chains which, without a doubt of the result, they had brought in readiness for the Romans. After proclaiming Tiberius Imperator on the field of battle, the troops raised a mound, and decked it with arms in the fashion of a trophy, inscribing at the foot the names of the defeated clans. The sight affected the Germans with an anguish and a fury which wounds, distress, and ruin had been powerless to evoke. Men, who a moment ago had been preparing to leave their homesteads and migrate across the Elbe, were now eager for battle and flew to arms. Commons and nobles, youth and age, suddenly assailed the Roman line of march and threw it into disorder. " The Germans' frustration and rage after such a sight was understandable, but such rage certainly didn't imply that any German was actually able to read. What Tacitus undisputedly implied here is that at least some Roman soldiers were able to write.