M. Porcius Cato

The plebeians were reported to have effectively gone on strike. Apparently, massive civil disobedience can change the minds of even patricians--as Gandhi taught the British many years later.

The exclamation point is misplaced. In both cases, the gates were unlocked. In the latter case, the walls kept out the barbarians long enough that the Romans were starving.

And Tacitus was right.

This isn't a very Roman answer, but I'd bring back all the lost works of Aristotle I could--plus the Silphium plants (a great idea).

Not the biggest--nearly 40 legions faced off at Phillipi.

Haha. I wish you could bring it back--based on what Pliny, Juvenal, and Cicero said of the Anticatones, the two pamphlets were long-winded and vituperative. Just what I need to make my case that the dignity of Caesar was a sham.

Ipsi illi philosophi etiam illis libellis, quos de contemnenda gloria scribunt, nomen suum inscribunt.--On the very books in which philosophers tell us to despise fame, they inscribe their names.

And how exactly do you arrive at this number? And how is your method better than the actual PAY RECORDS that were available to ancient writers?

Cicero's letters are a fount of quotable squibs, one-liners, and pithy sayings. What are your favorites?

Not bleeding obvious to me. Why would Roman conquest have prevented the holocaust? Fascism, at least, cut across Roman and non-Roman territories (Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan).

Here's a nice list of the meaning of many cognomina. Cato, by the way, means "shrewd".

I thought the romans used terms like Gaulic and Germanic as general terms for a whole group of tribes. Isn't it possible that their siege engines and techniques varied from tribe to tribe, so some groups would be better then others. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but I'm still looking for some unambiguous evidence that ANY of the tribes had siege engines. So far, we still haven't found evidence that any Gallic tribe possessed siege engines, though Germanicus presented evidence that there were siege engines used when the Boii Gauls teamed up with Hamilcar .

Funny, i always thought it derived from the Latin termAVERE and Avere meant safe journey and turned into a salute later on. can you tell me the phoenician word it derives from? I wish I could, but the authors don't say.

As far as we can tell from this passage, the Gauls were unsuccessful in their siege, which I think suggests they did not possess siegeworks.

From the Charles-Picard book on child sacrifice: Another interesting fact from the same book: the Roman greeting Ave is of Phoenician origin.

Just to be clear: I wasn't seriously suggesting that Hamilcar didn't have siege works, just that the passage quoted leaves the possibility open. Obviously, the Carthaginians had siege works.

Mark Golden's "Children and childhood in classical Athens" is a really comprehensive treatment of the subject, but he doesn't say anything about twins. My bet is that twins would be viewed as something marvelous if for no other reason than that a mother managed to deliver them safely at all. Infant mortality back then was very, very high. It was so common that many Romans didn't even bury their infants.

Thanks Germanicus. That's useful information, though unfortunately not quite definitive: either Hamilcar supplied the siege works to the Gauls who had none, or Hamilcar had no siege works but the Gauls did, or they both had siege works.

Why is it so galling for you ? Not really galling for me. I meant that Keaveney was being quite charitable in his interpretation of Sulla's motives.

And what about Washington, Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt? Jackson and Roosevelt were terrible presidents. The first one acted unconstitionally by defying the Supreme Court order to leave the Cherokee alone; he also completely subverted Jeffersonsonian ideals with his hick populism. T. Roosevelt was a war-monger and had the economic acumen of a turnip. George Washington was almost a saint, so I'll say nothing against him except that his presidency was most remarkable for its precedents rather than for its policies.

VOS is one of her best. Did you catch AR's references to Rome in FNI?

Nice entry Moonlapse. I wonder whether it would be possible to create a network that somehow increases the costs of Chinese-style censorship. It would also be nice to know how to help Chinese dissidents circumvent Party control.

Well we must remember that the definition of fortified town varied over the centuries. The most obvious example is Rome itself been sacked in 390 BC (although this doesnt really count because the gates were apparantly unlocked) Hamilcars Gallic rebellion in 200BC did succeed in breeching and sacking Placentia prior to his defeat at Cremona. Was Placentia a walled city? If not, I'm still leaning pretty heavily toward the view that the Celts did not possess effective siege works. This turns out to be pretty important in evaluating how much of a threat they were by the second century. Right. And out of obligatory polemics, I have to add that even the oldest members of the senate stood boldly in their vestibules against these muddly, naked barbarians. Not that it did the old guys much good.

Judging by the anecdote above, the "example" only exposed Rome to more ridicule. By the way, there is another amusing anecdote re: Sulla's plundering of Greece. Broke, Sulla lit upon the idea of stealing from the shrines of Epidauros, Olympia, and Delphi. Sent to Delphi, a friend of Sulla's (Caphis the Phocian) was to make an inventory of the treasury there and oversee its plunder. Reluctant to do so, Caphis wrote to Sulla that he heard a lyre playing from within the shrine, and he didn't think it was such a great idea to mess around with the gods. Sulla replied that he should go right ahead with his handiwork because the lyre is an instrument of joy rather than anger and that Apollo himself must approve of the deed. (!) The rich part of this anecdote is that Keaveney, in his bio of Sulla, actually has the gall to argue that Sulla was sincerely pious in his advice to Caphis and that the anecdote shows how religious Sulla truly was. "Oh the horrors to which religion leads men!"

I can't. I'm afraid my brain just doesn't function that way. I would suggest maybe it was some sort of Freudian infatuation with his mother, but how would that explain Antinous... Exactly my point--even when an architect is an emperor, it's nearly impossible to discern any "ideology" from the building itself. Attempts to do so are like reading tea-leaves.