Pertinax

There were two couragous centurions ..Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus.They quarrelled continually about who came first in ran and every year fiercely contested the most important posts. When the fighting by the ramparts was intense Pullo said "why hesitate Vorenus? What chance of proving your bravery are you waiting for ? this day will decide our contest" So speaking he left the defence and charged where the Gauls were thickest. excerpt Caesar gallic War

Some years ago I read a book which was on the subject of important ancient battlefield innovations, (eg:assyrian jackboot for all season campaigning, Hyksos chariot for shock and mobility etc etc). I failed to note its title and also to take any decent notes . The one section which stood out was related to battlefield retrival of Legion casualties , the basis of the article was that the flexible spacing required for handling the pilum then acquiring "targets of opportunity" with the gladius within a "personal" space also allowed easier extraction of the injured by dedicated medics. The gist of the argument being that if (as we know) you retrieve fast and treat fast you can save lives, your opponents perishing from the efficiency of the "usual weapons" and lying injured with only camp followers or their own legs to save them. The point of this as a crucial innovation being that you dont waste trained ,experienced men you get them back into fighting condition and dont need to train more people up,secondly morale is bolsterd by knowing you are going to get pulled out by your shirt if you are hit.The point was made that Legionnary life expectancy was actually higher than civillian life expectancy even amongst front line combat troops.So the Legion was no bad option for men in a subsistence economy Can anyone point me to this source ? would anyone wish to comment on the notion of combat medics in relation to what is known of the attached Immunes in any camp? I think the book was of American origin, possibly from a Military college or training establishment .

does this mean spec-ops in Roman terms? SAS or SBS style? excuse my Brittannic terminology

I presume im covering very old ground if I recount the original teext about the two protaganists?

and I would like to be a Roman tourist in the Valley of the Kings and leave grafitti for my modern self to see! That was one of the most stunning things about visiting Egypt,seeing that nearly 2000 years before someone had done exactly the same tourist trip.The roman grafitti was even more "real " than the tombs themselves.

is the gallery link disabled to plebs?

may I also add that latterly Legions performed as a kind of strategic reserve from which vexilliations were sent as flexible combat units

Harking back to the pretty awful film "Caligula" the death by having your head scythed off whilst buried in sand didnt look too good-especially with those irritating kids throwing rose petals on you and giggling.

You are gracious Viggen ,I salute you! I am waiting for my copy of Rubicon to arrive and will set to work on it asap.

disgraced units could find their way back into favour sometimes-Legio III Augusta was "re-constituted" by Valerian in 253, it was formed around a forgotten and disgraced vexillation that had been on active service elsewhere when the Legion had beeen originally disgraced: the vexillation having been submerged within III Italica for perhaps 15 years. The original disgrace of III Augusta was for supporting Maximinus

Opinion was divided amongst cooks as to which type of womb was more succulent-barren or fertile.

Does the term "praeventore" or "supraventore" have relevance in this thread? And I apologise if the spelling is wrong.

Yes indeed my attraction to the life of the "parasite" was explicitly made on the grounds of luxury and wine in a warm climate.

Gemina was quite unusual in the sense that one half was taken from mounted troops.

My apologies I overlooked the review-ill post a short note and assume that most members are already familiar with the work.

Fratres! I intend that my next review will be of "Rubicon" by Tom Holland. I assume some members will have already read this book as it has been available for a while now(late June in the province of Brittania)? The Graves translation of the "Twelve Caesars" will be my next attempt at a comparison of translation style between different authors. I wil attempt a more in depth criticism than my brief notes on The Meditations , I fully accept that my criticism will be open to critique! I will also seek out more on works of etiquette so that Barbarians will be prepared when they visit the Hub of the Empire (note:pay no heed to the strange "Christian" sect as they consider a pig is a clean animal if it has lived as a vegeteaian for one year ,but ridiculously, if your cat or dog has climbed over the pig it is unclean! what next you may ask). Salvete!

I think the key here is as I hinted at earlier on, a "sparseness" of direct and truly meaningful words-I agree that some victorian translators were full of meaningless "antique" flourishes :fye..and forsooth..I jest to illustrate the point. We mentioned Rowan Atkinson elsewhere(!) if you watch him in the mock historical series Blackadder he illustrates this cod antiquity perfectly with a clever script-but then he is a highly educated man and knows and savours the use and ironic mis-use of words. Antiquity for its own sake-like the ham "Englishness" of old movies about Rome is as useless as the empty modernism cited above. There is a school of thought that modern architecture is drivel and pretentious drivel to boot: the argument being that if you do not know classical architecture you cannot possibly know how to build ie you have no alphabet so you cant spell ;the counter argument goes something like this-you can learn table manners but choose not to use them but this doesnt mean you dont know how to eat with a fork. The illogicalty in modern use is that many have only been shown how to eat with a spoon-I hold to the first part of the argument ,you must have some classical grounding-you dont have to like it ,you may well outgrow it but if you have it its in the bank and you have a fixed poinyt from which to navigate . Sorry if ive gone pedantic ! I enjoyed trying to unravel my own feelings on this topic. and im glad that people care about words so much!

excellent post Diegis-who was it who said if the Thracians had not been so fierce and keen to fight each other they would have defeated any nation? and there are some echoes in that post of the Albigensian Heresy- a child being unhappy to enter the world of the flesh because it is the work of the Devil and celebrations on Death as a passing away from a corrupt fleshly state to one of purity.The Cathars sometimes starved themselves to death its is said to achieve the bliss of death. I also understand that Thracian mercenaries were highly valued especially for tasks that their employers had no moral strength or stomach to undertake themselves? The sacrifice of the Young Warrior also echoes tellingly of Native S American warriror cults. Very interesting.

The loss of nuance, subtlety ,rythmn and simplicity I believe dates from the introduction of the"New English Bible" over the far superior St James version: or rather that is the signifying moment when "easy" language (ie: lazy) came to be seen as some sort of egalitarian doorway to hidden meaning and revelation. I think this is actually a total untruth and the opposite of what has occured ,the original texts (THe Vulgate for the Bible) are more obscured and made superficially facile. I have just ordered a number of texts and will give some pocket reviews of alternate translations. I would add that I am not a scholar of Christian works nor do I puport to be a commentator on religious matters. Pantagathus is to the point . English has I believe a 15,000 word vocabulary? (anyone- linguists confirm this?) what enormous subtlety! Why not use it.

Hannibal-Liam Neeson, look at his profile against the coins of that time versus his appearence in batman begins!

so he never listened to his mum then?

good grief! its Rowan Atkinson!

Look at the auxiliary horse archers of the Parthians (or indeed later Iranian nomads) and the resemblance in dress , stature and perhaps one might say demeanour of these men finds a strong echo in the more "westernised" celtic fringe of Brittania. Osprey series 175-Rome's Enemies (3) is food for thought .

A very brief note rather than a full blown review ,I have just re-read the Mark Forstater (2000) edition and the more venerable Staniforth edition in the Penguin Classics series(1964 but numerous re-prints). My observations are : the modernisation of the prose in Forstater has a very Americanised feeling to it, the forward and commentaries lean toward the "self-help" manual school of Dale Carnegie. The work is accessible but I personally find the modernity of presentation makes uncomfortable reading . Staniforth is and feels far more Anglo-saxon in tone and temper, though this does not imply that the text is eiher obscure or portentous. Staniforth seems to have a more measured tread in the prose and , I found, a less preachy tone in terms of sounding less like an improving lecture and more like a steady meditative reflection. I havent as yet got hold of Sir Derek Jacobi reading the Forstater text in audio book but I will seek it out and see if a great voice makes it more digestible. Romanists of the New World will probably be thinking along the lines of "America and Britain , two countries divided by a common language" when they read my note.

From my recent study of dining and drinking habits I think id like to be a "parasite"( not a term of insult please note) ie: a dinner guest who entertains the company with witty conversation in exchange for endless dinner invites to the houses of the rich and would be in-crowd..