Formosus Viriustus

I bet so too. This reminds me of the very funny scene from 'Spartacus' (can't find a clip I'm afraid, and yes, I know it is fiction) in which his 'master' tries to seduce his young slave (the young Tony Curtis ) with a very cryptic story about some people liking oysters and others liking snails and some liking both. 'It's all a question of taste and habit, really'. I would say that while sexual relations between masters and their slaves have probably always been very common, it was also more often than not the case that the slave was willing and not seldom more than willing. No doubt, having a sexual relation with their master was for slaves one of the best ways to improve their lot and in most cases that might well have been the sole or overwhelming motive. But I have no doubt either that in many cases very real affections were involved. Humans are humans. And as Henry Kissinger said 'Power is the ultimate afrodisiac'. And is anyone more powerful in the eyes of a slave than his or her owner ? Unless you are a bizarre freak, why would you like to brutalise unwilling victims all the time if there are plenty of willing partners to chose from ? Maybe someone who really likes you even, why not ? No doubt there are plenty of sources that will tell of brutal rape on a large scale, let's not kid ourselves. But there are also plenty of examples where slaves rose to the highest positions by engaging in a relation with their masters. The Ottoman Empire which, as far as I am concerned, had as legitimate a claim to being the rightfull succesor of the Roman Empire as the Byzantine had, was ruled for a few decades by the Sultana Roxelana, an ex-slave of foreign descent. Yes, she came to the harem as an 'unwilling' slave, but the love that developed between her and Suleiman is legendary. After his death she was one of the best rulers that Empire ever had and she is still very much revered today. Or closer to home, the Empress Theodora. Not exactly a slave, but as a prostitute her social status was not much higher than that. Formosus

Indeed, birds use something else to decorate the pavement. And nothing like playing in a rockband to attract the females of the species, h

Very interesting questions all, Ludovicus. The subject interests me very much. We had been discussing some of it in other threads these last few days. Hey, caldrail, is this one for us ? Formosus

Salve mi caldrail, Re : your post 9.30 AM today; my post 5.10 PM yesterday Yes, well, but the Pseudo-Xenophon explains in my view that the ancients also had a bit of sense. They needed those slaves. And it was the wise thing to do to treat them decently. Your view that there was almost always and everywhere an absolute distinction between the free and the unfree, is not very realistic in my view. Things were much more vague. How about the perioikoi and the helots who fought, and died willingly at Thermopylae ? Not Rome again you will argue. I am not arguing that at the time Rome and Italy were literally flooded with cheap slaves from the East, most of them would have faced a verry sorry lot. But if I am not mistaken, except maybe in those and comparable times, manumission was an almost universal practice. That means that the slave was a kind of bondsman or bondswoman : if he or she served his or her master well for a number of years, he got rewarded with his freedom and in many cases a handy starting capital as well. It's not like slaves didn't have the right to own money, and a generous master might have added quite a bit on top of those own savings for someone who had done his job well. How else could freedmen become some of the richest entrepreneurs within the shortest amount of time ? It may be a very akward comparrison, still. If today you are a junior executive in a big company, you are not your own boss. You have to obey the rules layed down by your superiors. But you make plenty of money and that gives you clouth. Now compare that with a self-employed Joe the Plumber. Yes, he is his own boss. He is a free man. But that's about all he can say. At the worst of times it might have gone pretty much as you describe it. Hence the slave revolts, which went on for almost a century and Spartacus' was only the climax of that. But afterwards things changed. I have little doubt that a more humane treatment of slaves was the deciding factor. I also think that by the time of the Principate the situation in Rome itself and other major urban centers was more comparable to the one described by Pseudo-Xenophon. I'm not disputing that the Roman world was extremely violent, that there was little regard for human life. And often very little sympathy with human suffering. But it's not completely absent either. There's plenty of instances too I think in the classics that show that. I said that there is little doubt that if you or I would be beamed back to there and then, we'd most probably see things that to us would be of an almost unimaginable horror, maybe within the time of a few hours even. But you'd get used to that. And I am not convinced that because such things would be almost omnipresent to see, almost everybody by necessity became an unfeeling brute himself. That sounds to me a bit like the argument that violent movies and computer games make young people more violent. (Please, let's not go into that one.) The anecdote about the collective execution of slaves you brought up is significant in the sense that it places things in a larger context : it does mention what the normal way of doing things was in such cases. And that normal way was that this law was not applied. I can't see how you can explain away the fact that free citizens rose in mass numbers because they thought that gratuitiously executing 100 or so slaves who were clearly completely innocent was a revolting thing to do. I think that is more indicative of how the common free people felt about their fellow humans even if those fellow humans were 'just' slaves. Your view seems to reflect to me more the attitude of a twisted minded mega multifundia owner who had more slaves than he needed or could feed. So killing of a few hundred just for the heck of it might have seemed a good idea to him on occasion. But I think such a man would seldom if ever be able to let down his guard. If slaves are constantly treated like that you can be sure that there will be plenty who will be willing to risk everything to get such a bastard. But I am quite prepared to agree to disagree on this one. I think we were talking about crucifixion. F rmosus

Thought I'd help you out with that name : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynoscephalae I think it was Alexander's plan to come West after he'd conquered the East. Formosus

From Pseudo-Xenophon : 10] Now among the slaves and metics2 at Athens there is the greatest uncontrolled wantonness; you can't hit them there, and a slave will not stand aside for you. I shall point out why this is their native practice: if it were customary for a slave (or metic or freedman) to be struck by one who is free, you would often hit an Athenian citizen by mistake on the assumption that he was a slave. For the people there are no better dressed than the slaves and metics, nor are they any more handsome. [11] If anyone is also startled by the fact that they let the slaves live luxuriously there and some of them sumptuously, it would be clear that even this they do for a reason. For where there is a naval power, it is necessary from financial considerations to be slaves to the slaves in order to take a portion of their earnings, and it is then necessary to let them go free.3 And where there are rich slaves, it is no longer profitable in such a place for my slave to fear you. In Sparta my slave would fear you; but if your slave fears me, there will be the chance that he will give over his money so as not to have to worry anymore. [12] For this reason we have set up equality between slaves and free men, and between metics and citizens. The city needs metics in view of the many different trades and the fleet. Accordingly, then, we have reasonably set up a similar equality also for the metics. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext...%3A1999.01.0158 Not irrelevant at all. We had the dead penalty in Belgium until the middle 1980s. In theory. I'd have to look it up but I think that apart from the WW II period and it's immediate aftermath, nobody was actually executed in the 20

Actually, I did both tests myself, of course. This one and the mythological one. I thought the mythological one was pretty lame, but this one is quite good fun. I had quite a few good laughs. But why should I bother to see the 'results' ? I know I am an oracle and as far as I'm concerned there is only one Lord of the Misfits, and that's me. (Although that is a bit of a contradiction, come to think of it.) But as far as you are concerned, I am fairly sure you are smarter than average. You are most probably the kind of person who does not takes personality tests too seriously. You are too clever for that. You in all likelyhood know that whatever you answer on the questions in such a test, you will get a result that consists mainly of vague but positive generalities, aimed to please the ego of the reader and with which hardly anybody could possibly disagree. This may be due to the fact that they usually prefer to state things conditionally. (You can't be too careful.) It's not unlikely that you are someone who likes to think for himself. Chances are you are a multi-talented individual with a generous character and a fascinating personality. Now if only those who know you, would recognise those facts, instead of treating you as a bore, best to be avoided. How unfair the world is ! If only they knew ... If only. Formosus

F rm s s

I can't agree with that analysis of Caesar at all. He was a politician with almost limitless ambitions, yes. And he was living in violent times when you had to be ruthless if necesarry to stand a chance at all. That is something entirely different in my view from a mobster who wants to get control of the liquor market with the only aim of making vast amounts of money in order to support a luxurious lifestyle. There's little to be found of that in Caesar, I think. That he didn't think it was worth it to question a slave who attempted to murder him seems reasonable. That man either acted from a motive of purely personal revenge or for money. It can't have needed an interrogation to determine which one it was. If it was the first one, why bother to find out more ? If it was the last one, Caesar would have known who was or might have been behind it. Finding out wasn't important. Well, I'm afraid that I find your view on slaves not much more realistic than the opposite one. They both have in common that they interprete the concept 'slave' in a very monodimensional way : the worst possible one. I have remarked on that earlier, that the conditions of the luckier slaves in any time that slavery was widespread, must have been better, sometimes infinitesimally so, than that of the worst of free men. There is plenty of evidence for that. The Empire it self was at times mostly run by slaves or freedmen who enjoyed a lifestyle beyond the imagination of the vast majority of the free citizens. I remember the anecdote you refer to, though I can't recall the author. I think your interpretation of it is not correct. If I am correct this incident was so noteworthy because it was one of the very few cases wherein there was even any suggestion that this law should actually be applied. There is a difference between laws and reality. Look around you. As to the distinction you make between fairness an humanitarianism, I fail to see it. Why even the suggestion that in this one case the law should be applied caused so much uproar, among the free citizens, mind you, was that it was considered as completely inhumane because there was no indication at all that the slave who had murdered his owner had not acted all by himself. That law was inspired by the idea that if a slave murdered his master with serious premeditation, there was no way his fellow slaves with whom he was living in very close proximity, could not have gotten wind of something, therefore they were guilty of not denouncing the culprit. As it happens, I think that if a slave murdered his master, and I am not sure how often such things occurred, he almost always acted in a rage or with very little or no premiditation or planning. So the complicity of others would seldom even have to be taken into consideration and if it had to be, it is likely that in that case efforts would be made to determine who exactly had been implicated. Consider it from a property point of view: does it make any sense to burn your own house down because the roof leaks ? I think that law was a purely theoretical statement implying that in such a case happening all the slaves of the murdered master had completely forfeited their right to live. That's not quite the same thing as being actually condemned to death and executed. Also the flexibility of the human mind, it's ability to think in a slightly schizofrenic way if you will, is underestimated here. You are not necessarily either a fellow human being or a soulless, willless piece of property. You can very well be both, at the same time or alternatingly. I see no problem with that at all. Depending on the circumstances, your own personality or qualities and my mood you can be either my second best friend or an inferior being who 'just has to do as you are being told'. Isn't that how we treat children ? I have come across plenty of indications, though not immediately from Roman times, that more humane slave owners often treated their slaves as much as children than as anything else. Children who were told to do what they were told to do, or else ... but this often as not for their own benefit. The slaves who were imported in vast quantities in the last centuries of the Republic and who ended up on the latifundia and in the stone quarries, must have had a very deplorable lot. But not all slaves where that unlucky. I often get the impression that the concept is very widespread that people who lived 2000 year ago must have had a completely different mind set, world view, psychology and emotions from us. I do not believe that at all. Humans are humans. Then as now. Of course, Romans must, by the omnipresence of it, have been pretty immune to sights that would rob us of our sleep for weeks. But I think that doesn't mean that an average Roman wouldn't to some extend be able to consider a fellow human being as such, even if that fellow human being was legally just a piece of cattle. Nor that people who enjoyed needlessly torturing fellow living creatures were overabundant at the time while they are very rare nowadays. Formosus

I knew it all along ! That the remarks of a VSP (Very Sensible Person) on the subject of personality tests, would only spark more of the same nonsense. You are all QCBN (Quirky & Contrary By Nature). Formosus

Salve sylla, Yes seems fair enough. I was probably reading (!) too much into that passage. It just drew my attention because we had been discussing the subject lately. Otherwise I would probably not even have noticed it. Taking that statement literally is a bit absurd. Boards or no boards, reasonably speaking that couldn't have made any difference to the Germans. But then that is what Tacitus says. That is always a danger, I think, reading most ancient historians. That Tacitus could give a good description of that battle seems reasonable to me. But he also describes to the minutest details several minor and insignificant incidents that happened at the time. My reaction then is : how can he possibly know that, given the distance in time and space ? That is were I think fiction and history intertwine. Thucydides is one of the few ancient writers who seldom if ever does that. Although he wrote about events that happened during his lifetime and in which he himself was involved, he seldom if ever goes into such detailed descriptions of rather minor incidents unless he himself had been present or if he had been able to verify them by means of several independent sources. The Tiberius thing : yes, I should have known that. But the way Tacitus uses names, especially Caesar, is very confusing : if the translators hadn't worked out for us whom he is exactly talking about when he uses that name and put it in brackets for us [me], it would be hard to make any sense at all of some passages. My reaction to reading Tiberius' name there was : did I miss something ? What is he doing here all of a sudden ? I thought he was in Rome. Forgetting that at the time you didn't necessarily have to be anywhere near the place to win a significant military victory. Vale, Formosus

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. Thanks for the text, sylla. I am reading it in a Dutch translation. That one slighty more stresses that the boards with the inscriptions caused the Germans more bitterness and rage than the loss of that many people. From Dutch to English I would translate it as : ' The sight thereof [the boards] filled the Germans with more bitterness and rage than the dead and wounded they had to mourn.' That is a strong statement I think if the boards were only ment for the Roman legionaries, which I also dare to doubt. Remember also that the Germans were led by Arminius - to all intents and purposes a Roman. In my opinion Germanicus had those boards put up with the intent that it would cause the effect that it seems to have had : away to further humiliate the beaten Germans. It wouldn't have been very effective if none of them could read. Formosus [Edit] I am also a bit confused by that mention of Tiberius all of a sudden. We are talking about Germanicus, I think ?

And where did you buy post stamps ? No, seriously, this is a question that intrigues me very much. I remember having heard about a letter that had been found near the Northern Walls - that must have been the Vindolanda tablets, I guess - from a grandmother back home who sent her grandson some warm underwear accompanied by a note with good advice and best wishes such as grandmothers are so fond of sending. That was one of the things that convinced me that literacy levels must have been pretty high : I can hardly imagine that you would go to a professional scribe for such trivia. At best ask that kid next door 'who can write a bit'. This also would mean that there must have been a rather large volume of private mail and something like a mail service. I have no idea however about how this might have worked. Only that it was probably just as adept at loosing packages as the modern mail services are. Formosus

Salvete Omnes, If it hasn't been mentioned yet earlier, could I draw attention to Tacitus, Annals II, 18, 2 and II, 19, 1 about the battle of Idistaviso during Germanicus' campaign in Germania. That seems to indicate to me that not only the legionaries could read, but the Germans as well. Why else would they consider boards put up after the battle with inscriptions to commemorate it so offensive ? You could argue that if only a few of them could read, they could tell the others. Still. Formosus

There's always Solitaire. Formosus

Googol, Googolplex, Zder. (Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe_Dollar

Hey ! Good to see you back, Aurelia. Thanks for your nice comment. All the best in the new job. Now, be honest, there's nothing more fun than being a civil servant, is there ? So, you're not too bad of. Formosus

Note how, despite the fact that they don't tell anything that would bring anybody to say : 'No, that's not me', they use the conditional all the time : just in case you are that one person that doesn't think (s)he is smarter than average. But be assured, there is only one thing that they are absolutely certain about, and that is that you are smarter than average. Well, of course, the fact that you did take this test, proves it, doesn't it ? *sigh* F rm sus

So am I. http://www.unrv.com/culture/surnames-of-the-valerii.php Congrats, Nephe ! Formosus

"Is this the best song ever ? I saw them just a few years later in, 1975. Yes I did. It was no doubt the best show I've ever seen. This clip is pretty much how I remember it. Most probably exactly the same line up. Except here you only get a feeble glimpse of how those girls could dance. And Tina danced those three Ikettes right off the stage. They had to call in the firebrigade to keep it from catching fire, as I remember it. Ike & Tina were a last minute replacement for Lou Reed who was the top of the bill at a rock festival at the time. Ike & Tina were not popular at all with the cool people in those days. They were considered pass

Formosus' Personality Test 1.Do you like doing personality tests ? 2.Do you think that women like doing personality tests better than men ? 3.How many personality tests do you do on average each week ? 4.Do you discuss the results of your personality tests with others who also did them ? 5.Are you in general pleased with what personality tests reveal about your personality ? 6.Would you have no idea who you really were, if not for personality tests ? Results : How many questions have you answered ? (What you have answered is completely irrelevant, we just want the number.) 1

Welcome to UNRV, shinichikudo ! Is he an idiot ? Is the pope catholic ? Who got you into this mess? The most bizarre thing is that the guys ( and gals) who got us into it are now being almost worshipped. For what ? For nothing really except for reassuring us that 'they' will get us out again. And when we come out of it again, which inevitably will happen sooner or later, those of them that are still around will take and get credit (no pun intended). The best joke is that these guys who always could predict 'the good times' years ahead now say : 'Well, nobody saw it coming.' Right. And nobody saw that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. For sound financial advice : Formosus

Of course they put that 'fualt' in there on purpose, so you suckers for this kind of 'personality tests' can feel very smug and 'analytical'. And then just a few lines further on they tell you that to you ... .... details and particulars are usually inconsequential and uninteresting .... It's not like they are not covering all bases. .... you probably think of yourself as being smarter than most other people .... Hmm, what are the chances of that ? .... That's because you are .... Of course you are, you are the smartest person in the world, and the most artistic, and the most atractive, remember ? .... This ability would make you unbeatable in debates if only you were a little less pensive about your own conclusions, and a little more outgoing .... Yes, if only .... *sigh* F rm sus

Suetonius was most probably not being ironic. Think about it. What would you choose ? But crucifixion no doubt also had a symbolic purpose : it was the most dishonourable kind of execution. Dishonourable to the victim himself but also to his relatives. The most honourable one being to be allowed to take your own life. I know the anecdote but didn't remember the throat cutting bit. It made me think : in the Middle Ages and later heretics and supposed witches were often condamned to be burned at the stake. But there were two kinds really : either you got strangled before the fire was lighted - the merciful kind - or you were really burned alive - the less merciful kind. Come to think of it, if you were a real baddy, they roasted you slowly over a coal fire. But the being burned after being strangled was a kind of condamnatio memoria I guess. On a few occasions heretics who had been dead for decades where unearthed in order to burn their remains. Could it be that in Roman times you also had two or more kinds of crucifixion ? The most merciful one where they killed you before they crucified you - the crucifixion itself then being symbolic - then maybe the Jesus Christ style, where they let you hang for a few hours and then finished you off and finally the most cruel one : where they just let you hang to die a slow and horrible death drawn out over three, four days maybe. Formosus