Northern Neil

The Osprey book 'Imperial Roman Legionary AD 161 - 284 shows legionaries wearing quilted 'gambesons' under their chainmail. In the days of my youth I was in an anglo - Norman re-enactment group called Regia Anglorum, and we found this arrangement very agreeable. The Gambeson itself was made from two layers of thick linen stuffed with rags or horsehair. On a test performed using a layer of mail, gambeson and a side of beef an arrow penetrated the mail, got caught up in the gambeson, but did not harm the beef underneath. Accounts from the crusades mention exactly this; the Saracen's arrows penetrated the armour but not the person inside it.

Good point - the 'fall' versus ' evolution' debate rumbles on through various parts of the forum. I go for the view that the Roman world carried on for about another two centuries after the fall, complete with 'proper' Romans. After about 650 I think it was evolving into something else - although the Byzantine Empire was definitely still the same state as that founded at the start of the Republic, and continued to be until 1453. If you go for the view that the senate and church merged to form the current Roman Catholic Church, then it continues to this day - not my view, but one worth looking at.

The English towns of Penistone and Scunthorpe have given delight to schoolchildren for many generations due to what the names become when certain letters are blocked out...

Absolutely. And even the few that were in Rome then would have been considered heretical or even Pagan by the time of Jovian and Theodosius.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/books/jesusmysteries.html Please click on the above link, everyone. I have a copy of this book; its scholarly credentials are good, and its references very comprehensive. Many of the stories related by Jesus, and ascribed to him in the Bible, appear in just about every other religion in the Eastern meditterranean from about 1000 BC up to (and after, in the case of Mithraism) the time of Jesus. In late antiquity, this was so obvious and widely known that the very dubious theory of 'Diabolical mimicry' was the only way of explaining these blinding similarities. I do not think that this in any way alters the basic message of Christianity or its validity as a religion, and I am puzzled as to why some people get so hot under the collar about it. It simply casts doubt on the authenticity of the Bible as an historical document. But then, it is quite clear from the apocryphal gospels, and parts of the canonical gospel of John, that Christianity was a mystery religion just like many others, before it was edited by Constantine, Eusebius and Athanasius. Prior to the third century or thereabouts, the stories in the Bible were not meant to be regarded as historical fact, except by new initiates and people only peripherally associated with the religion. They were allegories. But then, this book didn't really tell me anything I didn't already suspect from reading the Gnostic Gospels, the apocrypha, the Bible itself and other works on Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Graeco/Roman religion. It merely packages all the evidence in one volume and makes sense of it all. I have already posted this on another part of the forum; however, I think it is probably better at home here.

Peter Connolly's book 'The Roman Army' has some very good reconstructions of legionaries from the late republican period.

I would be interested in the nature of the Senate after the fall of the west - how long it continued, whether or not it eventually merged with the church, etc. I have read in John Llewellyn's book 'Rome in the Dark Ages' that the Senate effectively governed Odoacer's kingdom, thus giving it more power than it had enjoyed for generations.

... and in addition, they would not have worn black armour or purple cloaks to look mean to a film going audience! Sorry, I have no knowledge of the Persian Phalanx at Issus...

[quote name='M. Porcius Cato' Whether or not Persia realized its aim to reconquer Syria has no bearing on the strength of the Roman cavalry. Yes, Rome defeated many of her enemies. That's a given. But what is the evidence that the Roman cavalry deserves any credit for Roman military success? Again, I refer to Illyrian mounted infantry and their successes. Julian's successful campaign against the Allemanni and Franks relied largely on cavalry. Cavalry made up half the garrison of Hadrian's wall and other frontiers... and held them for nearly 300 years. Without scouting cavalry, Caesar, Germanicus, trajan and all the rest would have had no 'eyes' for their armies. So on the whole, I believe Roman Cavalry was quite successful.

I have come across this debate time and again throughout the years, and to me the idea that Romans were deficient in cavalry is a myth. Up to the third century, the Romans scouting cavalry was as good as anyone elses at the time. Again and again the 'superior' cavalry fielded by the Germans and Gauls did them no good whatsoever, therefore there was no need for Rome to field similar heavy cavalry. Perhaps the Romans would have fared better against Persia with more and better cavalry... but then, Persia never realised its aim to reconquer Syria, asia minor and parts of Greece. Their superior cavalry merely maintained the status quo in terms of territory. Later on, the argument is weaker still - Illyrian mounted infantry, and their ability to rapidly mass a force just where the enemy didn't want it, cleared the Balkans and lower Danube of undesireables and aided the revival of the late third century. Coming as they did from territory which had been Roman for centuries, I think we can regard those chaps as 'Roman' in every sense of the word. Later on still, Julian fielded cavalry which was every bit as 'State of the Art' as the Germans (though it is worth pointing out that they nearly came unstuck against unmounted Franks at Strasbourg).

A mid third century carving of a standard bearer from Hadrian's Wall shows that the Gladius was still in use at this time, although there is little evidence of it thereafter. It is depicted as being worn on his left side. The long sword (spatha) was used by the cavalry very early on, and in the infantry it appears to have replaced the Gladius by degrees from about 180 to 250.

A similar but far lesser known road exists in the Morecambe bay area. A road travels north from Kirkham towards the modern Town of Fleetwood, then just fizzles out - with no known Roman installation near the end (I think Pertinax makes reference tio this on another thread). One can only assume that its destination now lies under the sands of Morecambe bay or the Wyre estuary. But East Anglia in particular is known for shifting coastlines - I believe that further down the coast near Felixstowe ther used to be a fort of Saxon Shore type, but this went over the cliffs about 300 years ago.

And along with that, I wonder with some of the aforementioned if they have any grasp on the geography of the world of Jesus Christ or if words like Galatians or Ephesians are just words meaning people who got converted... ... or, indeed, whether or not Paul's letters to these people were supposed to apply to the rest of us, or whether he was speaking to those people only, making references to the particular cultures he was talking to.

The promontory fort in Drumanagh, Ireland, although stated as being of Roman appearance, does not appear so to me - there is no evidence as far as I can see of the standard street layout, or of regular, planned layout of ramparts and ditches. It appears to me to be a typical Iron Age fort. Once again, I refer to Google Earth with regard to this - see the image in my gallery and feel free to comment.

I have included a google - earth image of this site in my gallery!

I have come accross several websites claiming that North West Spain and bits of Northern Portugal (Galicia) have a celtic speaking population, or at least there are people there claiming celtic descent. Is this true?

...One could expand on this - Anti - Germanism vs Barbarisation, Decline of towns vs. excessive urbanisation. Some of these items cancel each other out!

I was under the impression that Italy was split between 5 different peoples as early as the 8th century BC- Greeks, Italics, Etruscans, Celto - Ligurians and Illyrians. Not much racial or linguistic uniformity here in the first place, I wouldn't have thought.

I have a constant niggle at the back of my mind concerning these forts. Where are the internal buildings, and what form did they take? (perhaps the term 'late period' forts should be used here - Cardiff had a saxon shore type fort, as did Lancaster and Caer Gybi) Reculver admittedly had a conventional praetorium - but then, it wasn't so much a late period fort, as one of the last early period ones - if you get my drift. Richborough and Lympne have a few very small internal buildings, but not much else. the other forts are just walls with nothing inside. Am I missing something here? Or maybe I am not up to date on recent research... anyway, if anyone can shed some light, I would be grateful, as I have an obsession about making reconstruction models of Roman buildings. But so far I have insufficient evidence to do a convincing model of one of these! By the way, the excellent 'Google Earth' site reveals an astonishing picture of the 4th century fort at Portchester!

Problem is, some areas have a lower resolution than others. The amphitheatre at Verona, for example, just shows up as a tantaliing eliptical blur!