Emperor Goblinus

Indeed, Ammianus refers to Legions comprised of Gauls and Pannonians, all of whom would have been considered citizens of Romania.Moreover, his description of their conduct in Julian's Persian campaign would seem to suggest that they were high -morale units. One Gaulish legion had to be ordered to the rear after they sustained a lot of casualties from constantly wanting to be in the thick of the fighting. They grudgingly complied. This account seems to run contrary to the view that late empire soldiers viewed military service as an onerous and undesireable task. Strasbourg was definitely a high point for the late legions, but since Julian's was defending central Gaul, the behavior of the Gallic legions may simply have been because they were defending their friends and family. A Pannonian or Spanish soldier might not have been so motivated.

All I will say is that one should not study Latin and a Romance language at the same time. You will be mixing things up all the time.

I'm glad that someone mentioned Basil's blinding of the Bulgars; considering the size of the Bulgarian army, to order each one of them to be personally blinded strikes me as particularly sadistic. Theodosius' massacre at Thessalonica was also pretty brutal and unjustified.

I remember reading somewhere that the pronounciation was closer to the Spanish accent than to the Italian one. These clips seem to back that up.

As Caesar said in the final battle of the siege. I was at a friend's house one time, and the Hannibal episode was on. Personally, I think shows like this are really cool. Literature and many shows about ancient warfare often treat the topic in an abstract way, and don't truly convey what it was like. We'll of course never truly know what it was like back then, but I think Battles BC does an excellent job of showing what wars were ultimately like at the time; massively muscular individuals killing each other in unspeakable ways and practically bathing in each others' blood. Historical accuracy is what's most important, but as long as that's maintained, I say bring on as much gore as possible. As for the long-haired Roman soldiers, I don't think that it would be too surprising them on campaigns that lasted months and years.

The battle was on eastern territory, but the Romans' loss made the Goths a permanent fixture in the empire, and we all know where they eventually ended up. I do think that had they been beaten, the West's fall would have been postponed.

Late Roman armies were considerably smaller than the ones in the Principate. A loss of that many men, plus the emperor and other ccommanders, would have been devastating. Theodosius had a hell of a time putting together an army to stop the Goths.

If I'm not mistaken, the term res publica was used as late as Valentinian I.

I had in mind the Late Republic/Early Empire era Latin. Yes, the language was in evolution, but until at least the ninth century, it was still recognizably Latin. Linguistic evolution is extremely slow; no one went to bed speaking Latin and wake up talking in Spanish, Italian or French.Just remember Polybius (II century BC): "The first treaty between Rome and Carthage dates from the consulship of Lucius Junius Brutus and Marcus Horatius, the first Consuls after the expulsion of the kings, and the founders of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. This is twenty-eight years before the crossing of Xerxes to Greece (circa 509 BC). I give below as accurate a rendering as I can of this treaty, but the ancient Roman language differs so much from the modern that it can only be partially made out, and that after much application, by the most intelligent men". I actually don't remember that quote; thanks for refreshing my memory. It's not too surprising that the language had changed significantly between the sixth century and Polybius' time. No, people didn't immediately shift to new language; there were a number of "transition" Romance language like the Gallo-Romance one found in the Oaths of Strasbourg. But I'm not sure if its fair to compare the Latin changes during the BC period to what happened after the fall of the western empire. Republican Rome never had any outside invaders push in on their culture and language the way that the Germanics, Arabs, and Slavs did to the late imperial provinces.

Between both extremes; "ancient Rome" would include people from at least 12 centuries; all languages were (and are) in constant evolution. Modern Romance languages are essentially locally evolved variants of Vulgar Latin; in general terms, the closer they get in time, the more understandable each one of them are expected to be. Cicero or Caesar would undoubtedly require translation among any modern Romance language speaking population. I had in mind the Late Republic/Early Empire era Latin. Yes, the language was in evolution, but until at least the ninth century, it was still recognizably Latin.

If a person from ancient Rome were exposed to any of the Romance languages, do you think that he might be able to understand some of them, or would they be totally incomprehensible?

Thanks.

I haven't seen any such misrepresentations thus far but I do know what you mean. Perhaps The History Channel will ask Don Cheadle to play Septimus Severus!!! As I am writing this, they are broadcasting "Battles BC" with a ludicrously miscast actor playing Hannibal, plainly of sub-Saharan African descent and I do know there is an image elsewhere on this forum but I couldn't remember in which part. Casting directors nowadays seem to think that if a certain character, such as Hannibal or Severus, is from Africa - per se - they must avoid offence by casting an actor of sub-Saharan ancestry. This, to my mind, is as offensive as Laurence Olivier 'blacking up' for his portrayal of Othello who, by the way, was a Moor and therefore of Arabic descent. Hannibal was of Phoenician lineage and would have been of Middle-Eastern appearance and Severus was of Italian, Libyan and Phoenician mixed heritage. It doesn't seem to be realised that Roman Africa was a province in the north of the continent, populated by a mixture of indiginous peoples mixed with other ethnic groups, non of whom match those misguided portrayals. There are so many lazy intellectual attempts in the media to portray historical characters in, what they see, as a sensitive and accurate fashion. In doing this they cause more offense to the reasonably knowledgeable than the most crass and chauvinistic representations of the past. This is a good point. The vast majority of Africans in the empire would not have been "black." Along this train of thought, I find it borderline offensive at how the Romans have been so thoroughly Anglicized. In so many artistic representations, they look, sound, and act like your stereotypical modern northern European. Now, this isn't entirely inaccurate, as some Romans in Gaul, Britain, and northern Spain probably did look more like northern European and less Mediterranean. But for most of Rome's history, both before and after the empire, they probably looked and sounded more or less like a modern-day Italian, Spaniard, Portuguese, or Frenchman does. I know that this is a very broad generalization, but I think that it's been drilled into the public conciousness that Romans looked sounded like Kirk Douglas Russell Crowe, when they really probably sounded more like Silvio Berlusconi. I think that it's a great disservice and insult to both Roman history and the Romance countries that the the quintessentially Mediterranean nature of the Roman people is often completely ignored in popular culture.

I'm doing an assignment where I have to use an interactive reference source to find an answer to a question of my choice. Because of this, I am wondering if anyone could fully answer my particular question. In a normal research assignment, I could easily research this question myself (I in fact partially know the answer to it), but this assignment calls for me to use this method. If anyone is curious, it is completely within the assignment's parameters to use an online forum like this to get the answer. The assignment is due Thursday, so I need a response by tonight or tomorrow. The question is: What were the circumstances surrounding the bestowal of a consulship upon King Clovis I by Emperor Anastasius, and is there any evidence that this new position caused Clovis to alter or add to his usual set of royal responsibilities?

I think that Arminius actually needs to be mentioned as well (Augustus gave him citizenship). Yes, he betrayed the empire and inflicted one of its worst defeats, but I think that this was good in the long term for Rome. Had Germania been conquered, Roman forces would have been spread more thinly than ever over a territory that was farther and farther from the Italian core. Because of this, Germany might have remained largely un-Romanized like Britain. No, the Romans wouldn't have had to deal with Germanic invasions, but they would have been exposed to other peoples such as Central Asian horsemen who were arguably far more dangerous than the Germanics. This could have overstretched the empire and may have caused it to collapse far earlier than it did. And this collapse may not have been the gradual and largely peaceful, non-disruptive crumbling of the fifth century, but a complete annihilation on the scale of what happened to Babylon. So, by kicking Rome out of Germany, Arminius forced it into a shape that was far more manageable and easier to defend.

Check out the video game Spartan: Total Warrior. In order to save Sparta from the Roman Empire under Tiberius, a nameless Spartan must wander around Turkey battling Beowulf and his Danes in order to retrieve the Spear of Achilles, and then save Athens from Sejanus' black magic and zombie armies.

While much of the shift from Vulgar Latin to other languages occurred largely in the absence of any serious "barbarianisms," this strikes me as something that might come from a Germanic source. Also, remember that there are other variations of this; in Spanish, the J in Julius is pronounced like an H in the form of Julio.

The ironic thing about Alaric was that he wasn't some barbarian warlord who crawled out of nowhere and sacked Rome, but the supreme commander of the western Roman forces. It just showed how weak the empire had become by then.

Had Massilia been conquered before the time of Ceasar?? I'm not so sure it had. It had remained an independent trading port since being founded by the Greeks in about 600 BC, It made alliances with the major powers in order to keep it's self safe, which it had remained so until the time of the civil wars when it unfortunately choose the wrong side and gave it's support to Pompey which resulted in Caesar besieging and eventually taking the city in 49 BC. Whoops, stupid of me. I know about it's ancient status and alliance to Rome during the Second Punic War, I was just very much under the impression that the Romans had a foothold in that region a decade or so before Caesar, due to Massilia asking for aid against the Ligures.

I've read a book about AD 69 which went into great detail about the Batavian revolt, and I do know about Julian's settlement of the Franks. I do also know about Julian's Frankish settlements. When I refer to "northern Gaul," I am referring to the areas near the Rhine (Belgium), Brittany, Normandy, the Ile-de-France, and basically all of the other regions to the east of Aquitaine and north of Limousin and Auvergne. This excludes the area around Marseilles which I know had been conquered before the time of Caesar and had been more linked to Mediterranean culture than to their Celtic and Germanic neighbors, as well as the areas immediately surrounding Provence. The question that I'm trying to get at is that, between the period of the Batavian revolt and the beginning of Frankish penetration into Gaul, was the upper tier of the province just as much culturally in tune with Roman civic and cultural life as were the southern Gallic regions, or were there still pronounced "barbarian" cultural aspects? I've read conflicting information on this issue.

I know that the Franks adopted Latin, but much of the political culture of northern Gaul moved away from the civil office-based, senatorial world of the Mediterranean to one that revolved around the Frankish monarchy. I was just wondering if there were not pronounced differences between the regions before the coming of the Franks.

I've wondered about this for some time. I've read in some places that northern Gaul was very romanized until the mid to late fifth century, when it's culture came to revolve around Frankish practices and the Merovingian court. In other places, I've read that they retained much of their Celtic culture into the sixth century (Gregory of Tours reported people who could speak Gallic), and that only the cities were very receptive to Roman culture. Could someone clear this up for me?

I think Aurelian needs mentioning. Conquering two schismatic empires is no mean feat. Had this not happened, the Middle Ages may have come two hundred years earlies. Also, the Aurelian Walls protected Rome for over a millenium and a half.

Livy tells a great detail about the Senate, although I can't say offhand if he gave the actual size of the Senate as the centuries progressed.

Yeah, the Oaths are pretty fascinating, a good look at proto-French and proto-German. One thing that's always bugged me about the early Middle Ages is the lack of large bodies of vernacular Romance texts. I think it would be fascinating to trace the development of any of the Romance languages through primary sources, but people were often just too concerned with writing things in Latin at the expense of the vernacular (with the exception of Alfred's England). Does anyone know which Gallo-Romance language the Oaths were in?