Virgil61

Thank you all! But really, I feel 26.

My Son and my war spoils go to an academy in Athens. My Other Chariot is a Toyota And of course:

James Inman Snaps at City Council Meeting - . ..."fan of John Tesh".

Hilarious.

From Augustus by Anthony Everitt, pg 104: Both sides hurled stone and lead slingshot at each other. About eighty of these lead balls have been discovered by archaeologists and many have brief, extremely rude messages scratched on them. Examples include "I seek Fulvia's c******s"; "I seek Octavian's a***"; "Octavian has a limp ****"; "Hi, Octavius, you suck ****"; "Loose Octavius, sit on this"; and, rather more feebly, "Lucius is bald."

Bill Walton - College and NBA player - BA History, UCLA Brian Dennehy - actor - BA History, Columbia Steve Carell - actor (40 Year Old Virgin, The Office US version) - BA History, Dennison U. Original post edited to show dismay in bold type concerning one entry.

Of course I'm sure you'll agree that it beganas an economic/political marker and, as family fortunes tend to change over time, became a hereditary marker for the more powerful segments of society. It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. The patricians go back to the founding of the city, when Rome was just a village of huts. Given iron age culture, differences in family wealth and status are caused by family size (hence the fertility gods). My guess is that the patricians were simply the first big families in Rome--fertile and large in number, therefore wealthy and high status (for a bunch of people living in huts, that is). Since Rome welcomed immigrants, it was natural that there would be an us/them distinction. Just look at small towns in Appalachia that are the same way, with large long-established (but never particularly wealthy) families taking ferocious pride in their "roots" and seeking to maintain political and religious influence in their communities. EDIT: A better analogy might be Americans who take such enormous pride in tracing their families back to the Mayflower. These American patricians didn't begin as richer than the later immigrants, they were just first and long-established. In fact, those Massachusetts puritans were originally so far from rich that they were stealing and begging food from the natives. I think there's a great deal of truth to all this. You can find it today in small towns in my home town--or anywhere else I imagine--where older families are more well known and respected. Take a look at p 162 on Forsythe for an interesting take on the issue (I've inserted the paragraph for those who don't have access): Since WWII, one important trend in the study of this problem has been to take seriously the possibility that the late annalistic tradition was wrong about a patrician monopoly of the consulship from its inception to 366 BC and to regard the non-patrician names in the consular list as both reliable and genuinely non-patrician. this hypothesis has often been combined with an idea proposed by the Italian scholar De Sanctis that, like so many other things, the patriciate was the product of historical evolution, and the group of families which composed it did not become a closed, exclusive body until some time during th early republic. E.J. Bickermann reinforced the plausibility of this idea by pointing out its similarity t much better documented cases of self-defined closed ruling oligarchies in the free communes of late medieval Italy...De Sanctis's concept of the closing of the patriciate has been widely accepted and has been applied by various scholars to the surviving data in attempting to determine exactly when the patriciate came into being. Indeed, an evolutionary approach to the question of the patriciate's origin receives support from both the ancient literary tradition and archaeology.

Not sure how long Youtube will let this stay up--it's in 7 parts--but it's worth a view. Just pathetic.

Of course I'm sure you'll agree that it beganas an economic/political marker and, as family fortunes tend to change over time, became a hereditary marker for the more powerful segments of society. Perhaps what, 5-10% or so of the population was patrician? While some perhaps 5-10% of the plebeian group gaining economic and political power over generations (as 'respected' families) replacing or matching that of patrician families who'd fallen from fortune. It's a guess of course, the percentages may be off but it's not far-fetched. And at least at the level of the political and economically powerful it would point towards their being a mixed bunch. Of course those who were unlucky enough to never have their family lines 'bubble up' remained plebes . Still the Romans weren't above using origins to denigrate others. I think it was Livy who was keen to point out that at Cannae, Varro was of plebeian background as if that were some part of the fault.

Add your own Sacha Baron Cohen - BA History, Cambridge Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - BA History, UCLA George W. Bush - !?!? - BA History, Yale Robert Gates - MA History, Indiana Franklin D. Roosevelt - BA History, Harvard Kurt L. Schmoke, Former Mayor of Baltimore - BA History Yale E. Annie Proulx, writer - BA History, Vermont Salman Rushdie, writer - MA History, Cambridge Jimmy Buffett, singer - BA History, Southern Mississippi U. Dick Jauron, head coach Buffalo Bills - BA History, Yale Jerry Brown, former governor of California - BA Classics, Berkeley E.M. Forster - BA Classics and History, Cambridge Stephen Chao, former head of Fox and USA networks - BA Classics, Harvard Lincoln Chaffe, former Senator from Rhode Island - BA Classics, Brown C.J. Cherryh, science fiction writer - MA Classics, Johns Hopkins Rita Mae Brown, feminist author - BA Classics, NYU Bill O'Reilly, Fox News guy - BA History, Marist Gray Davis, former California governor - BA History, Stanford Gene Scott, wacky televangelist - BA History, Chico State U. Orrin Hatch, Utah Senator - BA History, Brigham Young Ed Norton, actor - BA History Yale Tony Danza, actor - BA History Education, Dubuque Martha Stewart - BA History and Architectural History, Barnard Robert H. Bork, former judge - BA History, Carleton College

About the same as it is there, overcast and dreary. Par for the course, it is Seattle after all.

Extra-virgin?

Soon I predict that we'll log on to the board, find it's been taken over by Amazon or Walmart, and the admins will be somewhere in the Bahamas on a nice beach under an umbrella with a cold one.

It's a great question although I can't answer the stretching issue. From my own experiences in the Army ruck marching is extremely grueling, especially when you're training new soldiers up to a standard. We would use 60-70 lb packs and go from 6 to 12 miles at a forced pace on a weekly basis--very similar to the weight carried by the average Roman soldier. Out of 100 soldiers you'll have around five or so who aren't in any condition to perform; shins and foot problems are usually the cause with lower back problems and hangovers as well. There's really little medics can do--even today--about shins, feet, backs, etc except give out some ibuprofen and make you stay off the injured body part or at least not carry a pack on it until it heals. I was in airborne units for ten years, above average esprit compared to 'leg' units, and even then an injury is an injury. Sometimes you even have to pull soldiers off the line and make them stop in order to keep from injuring themselves further. This begs the question; Did legions have stragglers? There's only three courses available as far as I can tell; give the pack to another soldier or put it on a wagon and let the injured party walk without extra weight, put the soldier on a wagon if they are available or have them 'fall out' of the formation and catch up during the evening bivouac. Depending on the legion's wagon train and/or internal culture--like modern day units I'm sure that each legion had it's own (internal culture)--I suspect having a certain number of stragglers was common. Better units probably had a centurion or some junior NCO type go behind and organize these men in some semblance of marching order.

It seems we do tend to get 'the best' in terms of hard-working or being exceptionally gifted when it comes to immigrants.

Just a random thought, do you use a custom skin? No, and I've kept extensions to a minimum of two--Googlebar and Bugmenot. It seems like around 20% or so of user's have had some issues with this release (2.0). Like Pantagathus I'm thinking of using IE7, a great improvement over IE6.

My brother was engaged to a girl from Wales for a couple of years. He visited her family twice and was taken aback by just how cliquish it was in the small town they lived in. His first visit to a local pub resulted in the whole place turning and staring at him like in some movie. Once it was known he was a guest of the her family he was accepted and made a few visits there as the resident 'expert on America'. He was shocked at how anti-English they were.

Rune's Barf Bag Collection

It's a very broad generalization, but this is just how I feel based on my relationships with several foreigners, ranging from Bosnia to the Philippines. The one idea they all had in common was that we (mostly) take what we have for granted. Our country is the most capable of protecting its interests. I think this has a far greater role in these matters than is acknowledged. Yeah I know the type, I work with and am related to a few. They think all Americans should be as thankful as crack addicts who've just gotten a long needed fix. Well that's fine, the truth is while some individuals from Bosnia or the Philippines aren't complacent, when you go to their countries (I've been to Bosnia) everyone 'works' like they've taken a few valium and timeliness is a flexible commodity--and that's being very kind. I remember one project at a US Embassy building in Kiev, Ukraine that was finally finished when US contractors came in because the native workers lacked any sense of urgency about the project and it wallowed for weeks.

This might account for Caesar's inferiority in Gaul, but not the campaigns in Greece and Africa. In both those cases there was an enemy naval presence which Alexander's quartermasters didn't have to deal with. I recall him fretting over his ships being caught in Ruspina. Wasn't the consul who had crap poured over his head--begins with a B--giving his supply line fits in the Adriatic? And remember in Greece Pompeii had the advantage of inferior lines--support base and supply lines to his immediate rear. In the end I wouldn't say Caesar was better or even the equal of Alexander logistically, but that they were dealing with drastically different issues of enemy and terrain that makes comparisons not so clear cut. I'd add that with Alexander of course we're dealing with the gold standard of generalship in the ancient world. Freidrich? Oh, ok, not him.

I've never read it, but I know it's a seminal work in the field. I'll seek it out, theres' also The Logistics of the Roman Army at War which seems to have started as a PhD dissertation. There's no question that Alexander had a monumental task before him logistically. But, in commenting on this and MPC's post I'd put forth the following for discussion; Alexander's quartermasters task was made easier by the sea routes paralleling much of his expedition east and by those routes being uncontested, neither of which were replicated in Caesar's case. Even then his logistics weren't perfect, if I recall at least one poor quartermaster was put to death when supplies didn't arrive in time. Caesar and Alexander had drastically different terrain (and naval) factors which count in measuring their logistical differences.

Don't Americans work more hours and receive less vacations than almost all other industrial nations. One average I believe American workers work three hours more a week than other G8 nations, which in the aggregate of millions of workers adds up. But there's more to it than that. American workers still have the highest productivity rate of the major industrial powers, in other words in one hour of work they produce something like .3% more than other G8 workers which again adds up in the aggregate in a huge economy like the U.S.'s. The Chinese have a lot of issues ahead of them. The urban/rural divide is pretty vast if the literature is to be believed and there are major social and infrastructure problems that need to be focused on. They are also facing a demographic crunch in the next 20 years. Because of their 'one child' policy birth rates fell. Now that generation is heading towards retirement and there are fewer workers left to replace or support them. This has major economic and social consequences. I think it was Deutsche Bank that recently did a study high-lighting the fact that if they don't address this then China's long-term growth may slow. I'm not so sure we've become complacent. The US economy has outperformed the major EU powers and Japan on average in the last twenty years. GNP per capita and real wages have increased faster than theirs and a steady population growth--higher than other first world countries--guarantees a steady labor pool and consumer base. That doesn't mean there aren't problems to be addressed, but other countries would kill to trade their 'issues' for ours. I'm more concerned about the bottom 20% of the population. I'm not by nature anti-immigrant or anti-Mexican but the vast influx of illegal aliens is pushing wages at the lower end of the spectrum down artificially. Working people need to make a living wage and benefit from economic growth via those wages.

I take a contrarian position on this topic. I highly doubt that logistical problems were confined to Caesar's army. The reason we know so much about it is that he wrote of the issue. Even now if you looked at a typical US Army Brigade commander's day in Iraq a large portion of it is devoted to logistics of some kind. If we put forth that Caesar had some sort of atypical problem with logistics then how do we deal with the logistics of Hannibal's twenty year stay in Italy? He had no supply line available and lived on the fat of the land with or without the support of the locals. Do we use the same criticism of the barbarian armies of the 5th century that moved across the Western empire? We don't have Trajan's account of ops in Dacia, or that of hardly any other commander of Roman troops. Keep in mind that if you're moving through unfriendly territory with say 50,000 men do we really think that there were daily or weekly log trains of hundreds of wagons filled with 'corn' supplying these legions? Trajan's column is instructive. It portrays the legion's soldiers as building fortifications and conducting supply operations. It was chiseled by artists who must have been in the legions or, probably, had been advised as to what to depict. And it depicts not battles generally, but the movement of troops, building fortifications and supply issues; those things that take up a soldier's and commander's time. I think we're making the same mistake as the British archaeologist who's looked at Trajan's column and determined that the legion's had become nothing more than military engineers by his rule not understanding that actual fighting is a small token of an army's problems. We know of Caesar's problem because logistics is a commander's issue and, importantly, he was the only commander whose extended first-person account of long-term operations we have.

Was it Marius or Sulla who should be credited for the campaign against Jugurtha? Of course they were at each others throats for years over that question. Anyway, Marius was in North Africa for over two years while Caesar's presence was a matter of a few months. Different objectives of course and I'm not sure if they're comparable. At Ruspina Caesar's men (30 cohorts, mostly newly raised) were on a foraging expedition and the two rather small armies came upon each other. Caesar was almost without cavalry or archers vs. Labienus' Numidians. Interestingly Fuller and Goldsworthy have written in (I think) dramatically different tones about Ruspina. Fuller considers it a narrower escape than his jumping into the Great Harbour at Alexandria while Goldsworthy calls it a setback and can barely bring himself to call Ruspina a battle. (Fuller is at pg 270 in the Da Capo press printing and Goldsworthy at the top of pg 459.)