pompeius magnus

I cant allow my name sake to take this kind of abuse. From my readings of Pompeius there are many questions that have been raised to his various techniques. The greatest of the questions on his techniques/ his supposed stealing would definently be the taking away of the command in the Mithradic War from Lucullus. This is a matter of point of view contrary as I have read that citizens of that time viewed it as a great injustice, and others as something that was not his fault. My view on this topic would be that in the world of Roman politics it was every man for himself, there were obviously alliances that were formed, such as Lucullus being a general who was in favor with Sulla, and Pompeius who had the backing of the people and much of the senate. I have recently come up with the notion that the main reason behind Lucullus losing his command was because of this favor of Sulla who had since died and many were still angry with his policies as dictator. Pompeius' main weakness was his drive to be liked by all, with this he fell into many problems and sided himself with the wrong people whom would eventually lead to his downfall at the battle of Pharlasus, or something like that. In another instance Pompey was sent to Spain and in a sense took the command away from the general over there in the war against Marius' cousin and a very talented general Serotorius. Pompey was defeated at first in this war but his great organizational skills and generalship helped the tide to be swung and Sertorius defeated. But in this instance there is no blaming Pompey for attempting to steal the command of Pius. With Lucullus, Pompeius was also in favor with Sulla in his younger years but at a much less extent and more of an aquintance. I await a reply.

Yes I have returned from an extended absense. Among the many reading I have done on Caesar, and also some of the other great men of the late republic, Plutarch does not directly mention anything of the affair, neither does a more modern text that goes into his youth. Assuming that it is true that Caesar was put in this position, it was more than likely to safe guard Marius' position as the Greatest Roman of all time, which he was told by his prophetess that Caesar would overcome his greatness. If Caesar was the Flamen Dialis then he could not be in a position to go into battle, as the FD could not see blood. The paramount reason that I think Sulla would have released Caesar from this restricting position was not because he recognized Caesars great abilities, which may have had something to do with it, but more likely to foil his bitterest enemies' plans and let Caesar become the man, the leader, the general, the god he was destined to be.

Solons laws were not directly involved there, as the formation of the Roman senate was in existence before the Solon Laws came into existence, but its expansion to include others was influenced by these, as well more heavily on the succession of the plebs. Also another important Greek law were those established by Cleisthes and his constitution.

Building off of what Primus wrote, the Senate was made up of the original families and through time it changed to encompass a larger range. The adoption of the Laws of Solon from Athens caused the Romans to be divided into tribes, which towards the middle and end of the republic is where you had some of the senators coming from and also is how the voting was split up.

My picture is of my favorite Roman: Pompeius magnus My signatures are from various sources: first quote was from Livy's War with Hannibal next one is the greek epitaph from the battle of Thermopolae- final one is a poem from my favorite poet Martial

Inside the walls of the roman camp

Favorite book: Historical: Beginnings of Rome by TJ Cornell and Gods and Warriors by some author I cant remember Non Historical: the Hobbit/ Catcher in the Rye/The Sound and the Fury Historical Fiction: First Man in Rome series Favorite Movie: Overall Movie: either Zoolander, Wedding Crashers, or Ghostbusters Historical: Hard to choose a good one, but i would have to cash in my vote for Band of Brothers

Yeah sorry, did post on the run so didnt take the time to look up correct spelling.

Hands down the best outside of Oxford is the University of Michigan, they have a phd program in Greek and Roman history which I will be trying to get into in a few years.

I would have to side with Favonius' translation semper in meo animo as semper is the best way to say forever, and animo is describing not the literal heart as in the thing that pumps blood, but more of the soul as animo can be translated in several ways, such as courage, character, minds, and so on.

Welcome to the board, most of those sketches you see on the history channel are sketches of sculpters from one period or another. to search for an online source just simply type in the name of the Roman or Greek you are looking for, put their latin name in to maybe decrease some junk sources such as: instead of Pompey type Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

This topic stems from an argument between Cato and I on Roman literature, so I decided to make a topic dedicated to peoples opinions of the best and worst Roman literature and why. Suppose I will start off: Best: Livy: I have always loved Livy and his insight into Roman history, altough biased it is well written and cleverly mixes mythology and actual fact. Martial: I love Martial and his cynic poetry, it matches my personality in many ways Least Favorite: Catullus- even though he is a very clever and intellegent man I just never got into his poetry based on its content and because he seems a little too obsessed with his woman.

NOt surprising of the puppy sarcrafice, to the Romans dogs were known as the lowest of the low, they were scavengers, dirty, and on more than one occassion interferred with the consular sacrafice of the bull right after the elections occured, just seeing a dog near the sacrifice was seen as extremely bad, and the sacrifice was often redone. And for Cato, where abouts in Chicago are you from, I myself am from Wheaton.

If you are interested in Reformation at all then you might want to visit the grave of John Knox the leader of the Scottish Reformation. I think its in Edinburg but I just have Scottish blood, and am not a native of Scotland.

Here you just proved my point, you say here that it wasnt as good as Lucretius, is there an official book on the point values each work got to rate them, if so please send it to me email me and I will send you an address kslice2k2@aol.com. This is my smartmouth way of saying that what you are claiming about Lucretius is your own opinion. We could argue all day long about what Roman work is the best, and get nowhere because we each have our own opinions. Personally I like Martial in terms of poetry and Livy in terms of all other literary work, so if I were to take a page from your book then Martial and Livy are the best, no to me I think they are the best, but to others it may be Horace, Sullust, Catullus, Virgil, or ever Lucretius. Furthermore, my example about Ovid's text was an example, books meanings are not always easily seen by just reading the words, you have to take a step back and examine the book as a whole. And if you want to tell the professor with a phd in Mythology and an expert at latin, then Ill give you his email address and you can tell him yourself. The example I gave was showing that Ovid had another underlying cause for writing this and not to just have his head up the backside of Augustus as you claim they all did. Your theory on the matter of these Golden Age writers is just proposterous in its own respect. And as far as your first comment on my literary talents, I have read many of these texts in both English and Latin and have my own biases about them, I personally dont like Catullus' work, but that does not mean I think he is a terrible poet, I just prefer the Cynisism of Martial because it fits my personality as a bit of a sarcastic person. That is is for now, I look forward to future talks. Good day.

Cato your badmouthing the greatest literary explosion in Roman history by saying that they were all brown-nosing money hungry men is just showing how you are basing your posts on mostly personal opinion. Virgil may have been a close friend of Augustus, but his work Aenid is one of the most spectacular works ever compiled, the Roman version of Homer, Ovid's work on Metamorphisis is a direct bashing on Augustus, this can be seen best by seeing how much of the book is dedicated to Religion and myth and how much is to politics, about 3 pages to politics.

I think all the walmarts of America are their own cities.

Ha, the Romans were feminists compared to the Greeks. One must only take a look at how their language is structured to see the introduction to this.

Cato im starting to notice a bit of a trend with your posts. You serve your namesake well. In my view the republic was not savageable. There are many underlining reasons behind this. First: its laws were not made flexible enough to change with time. As Im sure many of you know, the laws of the twelve tablets were borrowed from those of the Greeks, written by Greek poet Solon of Athens one of the twelve wisemen of Ancient Greece. These laws were great for the Romans when they had a small amount of territory, but not when they owned the Mediterannean, and the problem with this was that many senators were far too conservative, or stubborn in my view, to allow change to these laws. Because of this you had the various senatorial battles: the Gracchi reforms, Marius and his army reforms, Sulla and his demoting and limiting of the Plebians, Caesar and the Boni. These battles sent ripples throughout the republic and were all underlying causes to its fall. With these senetorial battles came lots of murders to prominant senators, each one a crack on the stone of the republic, the final one, Caesar, shattered the republic. Next, trends were set during the last 2 centuries of the republic that also had a huge impact in the demise of the republic. Apart from the various agrarian reforms that were so vigourously argued, and violently ended, there were many other reforms and trends that hurt the republic. The most notable and thus most important of these trends were those set by Marius and Sulla. The sacking of Rome and the seizure of power by these two men had terrible results as it set in motion the notion of an army being loyal to a general instead of the senate, this also can be seen in the horrible 3rd century with 30 different emperors, many former generals who were yearning for power and seized it. Finally, this is a theory of mine I have been working on. I believe that the attitudes and aggressiveness of the enemies of Rome in the early through the middle republic caused Rome to adopt a more aggressive stance towards their enemies and caused them to acquire more territory. here are a few examples of this: the Carthaginians: their paths with the Romans first crossed in Sicily, but the major aggression was shown from the Carthagianian general Hannibal who attacked Roman allies in Iberia and caused a huge war that lasted 17 years and ended with a severly limited Carthage and after their 3rd military encounter the city of Carthage was destroyed and salt sewed into the fields, a linking conflict to this was the Macedonian wars started by Philip's aggressions and siding with Rome. the end result of this was the Roman conquest of Greece and Macedon after the surrender of Persius, son of Phillip. Another example would be the agressive behavior of Antiochus and the end result, and end to his empire and further Roman holdings in the east. The Final enemy that chose to be aggressive towards Rome, and thus was conquered, was Mithradidate, spelling way off. Romans conquered him and his empire, thus creating a large amount of land that the Roman empire had to manage. Is it a meare conincidence that 50 years later the Prinicipate was founded under the leadership of Augustus, that is for you to decide. I welcome the rebuttles/disagreements with this post, especially this last one as it is an early theory I have and am still working towards expanding it and finding more evidence to back it up.

First off, I am not cherry picking data. the greatest info we have on the republic was from the last hundred years or so and I am comparing them from a more literary standpoint than from a militarily. And my last comment in my short post before bed is that if you want to compare numbers of emperors killed in one century, or for those 200 years of the principate, look at the number of senators killed during the last two centuries of the republic, you have the Gracchi brothers, all those senators executed by Marius, Clodius' murder, the murder of Pompey, Caesar, Cicero. The list is quite long, so dont give me any of the crap about how the principate was a worse form of government based on the number of emperor's killed, because the golden age of the empire was far better than any age of the republic, it was extremely stable and Roman culture exploded, seperating itself from the shadows of Greek culture.

Hell yeah Chicago, way to stay in shape.LOL

Once I again I have returned after a nice vacation in Flordia. I had to go with the Principate, as im sure many know comes from the Latin princeps which is translated in this instance as first citizen, it was established by Augustus who did not think of himself as an Emperor, but as the first citizen of Rome. What sets this form of Government apart from the Republic, established by a Brutus and ended by a Brutus, and the Dominate, established for the most part as a reaction to the tyrannic 3rd century, are not only military reasons. Yes it is true that during the republic the empire was for the most part set, with some changed in boundaries during the Principate and Dominate, but the most important thing that the Principate stood for was relative peace throughout the Roman Realm. Augustus was able to close the gate of Janus, which signified peace when closed, war when opened. The most important part of the Principate was the literary explosion. Yes you have Catallus in the Republic, but the literary achievements during Augustus' reign and after far overshadow the republican poets. You have the work of Livy, the writings of Ovid, and the brillance of Virgil and Horace. The one thing lost in the principate were the magnificant retorical works, those such as Cicero and others.

Im afraid victory for Spartacus would have been impossible. Even if he had managed to defeat Crassus and his legions, if Spartacus moved on Rome, Pompeius would have been called back from his campaigns in the east and would have crushed spartacus. The remanants of his army were terribly punished, they were all crusified along a major road leading from Campania into Rome, that would have been enough to keep me in line for ever.

Time for my thoughts on the matter now that I have some time to think indepth not including school work. The fall of the republic can not be placed squarelly on one persons shoulders, but many. You can put some on Caesar for marching on Rome, but he was not the first to do so, for this you need to go back to the times of Sulla and Marius. For Caesar it was not all because of his ego. Corruption was rife in the republic and it was rotting from within. The triumvirate, or for those not as well educated in Roman studies it was the union of the three big men Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, was a major faction that may have had an impact in seperating the senate. On the other side of the senate you had the good men, or Boni, who were plotting almost primarily against Caesar, so they had just as much, if not a bigger impact on the fall of the republic as they were constantly whispering in Pompey's ear and with the connection with Caesar through his daughter he was more easily swayed, and even was encouraged into when he should fight Caesar in Greece, leading to his decision on the battle of Pharsals, or something along those lines. Another possibilty and a theory I have been working on is how the challenges on Rome from their rivals, most importantly the Saminites and other Italian tribes, Carthage, Macedonia, and Antochius whom all caused Rome to go to war and thus were conquered and expanded Roman holdings and power which made it harder for a republic to operate such a large empire. So the main point of this is how the expanding power of Rome led to its downfall as a new form of government was needed. Ive said my part, look forward to rebuttles

No Mccullough says tenth, and it was the correct one I believe. The worst punnishment for me if I lived in Rome, would have been exile, forced to leave my beloved city, unless an exile was to Athens, or a nice beachy community, then I might not be so depressed.