M. Porcius Cato

Among other things. Also, being lazy, forgiving the errors of their friends while sniping at the errors of others, being closed to outsiders, taking letters of reference from friends more seriously than objective test scores when evaluating students, and so on. All this is mostly a thing of the past (find the oldest and most pompous professor you can and ask him about the good old days sometime), but at bad universities it's still very much the norm. Either that, or if they really want to enshrine the quasi-socialist ideals they encourage in others, they can agree to live on a much lower standing of living (i.e., no unecessary comforts). Then tuition could be reduced and more students could afford university. And maybe I could get a refund on the money I already shelled in. Horrors! As a capitalist, I'd prefer we *double* tutition and soak the market for everything it's worth. You've got to admire that Ursus, right?

A 12-unit *anything* can be subdivided more easily than a 10-unit measure. "More easily" meaning, "by more divisors with none remaining". For example, 12 / 3 = 4, 10 / 3 = 3.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333, you get the point. The Imperial system is quite good at dealing with "middle-sized, middle-distanced objects" (e.g., in making a box), and so it shouldn't be surprising that so many different cultures alighted on 12-unit measures across so many domains. The problem is that 12-unit systems don't scale up (or down) very well: the number of yards in a mile (1760) doesn't make any sense at all. But when you think of it as a 1000-paces, you're suddenly at the cusp of the base-10 world of metric. Now that we have computers and calculators and the like, making these easily divisible without remainder is pretty trivial. The Imperial system was standardized, so I don't know what you're talking about with respect to standardization.

When exactly was this true? I know they have evidence of co-habitation from the finds at Hadrian's Wall, but this doesn't imply that families were travelling with centurions throughout Roman history.

To get back to the original question... Even if the length of service was 20 years, most Roman men didn't marry until they were fairly old anyway. So if someone entered the service at 18 and left at 38, he'd have plenty of time to marry and settle down. It's an extreme example, but (according to Plutarch) M Porcius Cato the Censor fathered M Porcius Cato Salonianus when he was about 80 years old (hence the weirdness in the Cato stemmata).

Not when someone is so deticated to an idea or theory that when evidence comes to light that completely negates thier work they deny it exisits or destroys it. A perfect example is the British Archeologist who discovered Minoain Linaer A and B... ... Though perhaps this is the 'Old Boy's Club' you speak of? Exactly--the problem in this case was not the competitiveness of the professor putting forward a lousy theory, but instead both his dishonesty and the old boys' club that turned a blind eye to that kind of behavior. What's nice about a ferociously competitive system is that it engenders the opposite of Gresham's Law. That is, good ideas drive bad ones out of circulation.

Before proceeding directly to PP's post (which I agree with entirely), I'd simply like to observe that this kind of thread is why I love UNRV! OK--enough kissing up to the moderators! Definitely. Certainly. Absolutely! This is exactly how people learn to read the newspapers under totalitarian regimes--dissident journalists write between the lines for those who understand how the system works, but by stiffly reciting the Party-line they retain plausible deniability should their opinions attract the attention of the authorities. Tacitus was a master of the samizdat arts. Look carefully at his advice to his fellow dissidents: "Let it be clear to those who insist on admiring disobedience that even under bad emperors men can be great, and that a decent respect for authority, if backed by industry and energy, can reach that peak of distinction which most men attain only by following a perilous course, winning fame, without benefiting their country, by an ostentatious self-martyrdom." Seems like straightforward advice that even a bad emperor would be unlikely to punish, no? But is it? What does Tacitus discuss in the very next section? The likelihood that the very exemplar of his advice--Agricola--was nevertheless poisoned! That is, the proceeding section completely undercuts the advice he's given, saying--in effect--"Even if you ARE a model citizen, under one of these bad emperors, you'll STILLl get nailed!" Of course, he then hedges like mad about whether Domitian really did have Agricola poisoned. He says it was a rumor and that he "would not venture to assert that there was any positive evidence" for it. But it doesn't take too much imagination to realize what he suspected, which is why this whole thread got started on the notion that Tacitus accused Domitian of poisoning Agricola, which was--of course--not what he said but only to be read between the lines.

Make the recipie and you will see... Not superfuous at all Fair enough!

But I don't see why a Roman couldn't convert $10 to 1000 pennies to do the calculation. As long as the monetary system is decimal, their counting board should work fine. Am I missing something?

So to keep it juicy--low heat, fatty meat, and the wet roll. Seems to me the wet roll is superfluous: what's it doing for this recipe?

I like the competition--keeps everyone sharp, learning, and is a helluva a lot better than the old Old Boys' Club that academia used to be. I hate that crap.

My sentiments exactly. Only I ALSO can't stand the non-academic world where professionals deride the intellectuals off of whose discoveries they're making a buck. In my opinon the world would be much a better place if the love of profit and the free market were to be united with the love of learning and intellectual freedom.

It's a trade-off. If you want easily subdivided measures of human-sized quantities, choose measures like feet, which can be easily divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. If you want measures that scale up and down by large factors, choose ones like meters, that go up and down by factors of ten. In the sciences, metric is indispensible. For building a box out of wood, the Roman system works better.

In the first place, this post concerns how to evaluate our sources, and I'll have nothing to say here on the topic of Scotland as an "unconquered frontier" so it might be a good idea to move it and the related posts (posts #10, #12, #13, and #14). The chief question is whether an author's agenda alone is justification for doubting the author's narrative. At one hypothetical extreme, one might choose to believe everything written by our source materials. This purely hypothetical position is clearly wrong-headed, as it places us in the position of believing even contradictory claims about historical events. At another hypothetical extreme, one might disregard everything written by a source who has some interest in his audience believing his account. This purely hypothetical position is also arguably wrong-headed, as it places us in the position of evaluating virtually all our sources as fabulists, and it thereby provides us with no way to provide a plausibe reconstruction of historical events. I don't think anyone is actually endorsing this position. For example, no one is arguing that Tacitus' love for his father-in-law casts everything Tacitus wrote about Agricola in doubt. The problem is how to adopt a healthy skepticism as opposed to pure crudulity or pure cynicism. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that there is a tendency on our parts to err on the side of cynicism, which I think has a number of costs that are just as great as the costs of erring on the side of credulity. As one example of this, I'd point to the habit of raising doubts about the veracity of an account based on an author's motives while ignoring (1) the author's audience, and (2) whether the author had freedom of speech. Obviously, an author's agenda can color his account. I'm not disputing this at all; it's a valid concern. But when the author's agenda is not shared by his audience and when the author hasn't full freedom of speech, I think these latter two facts should be considered as well. I think these latter two facts are especially important when evaluating the Imperial writers. First, consider the author's audience. It's almost certainly the case that Julius Caesar wished to cast his exploits in Gaul in a good light to increase his political support in Rome. But even I, as the forum's number-one "Caesar-basher", wouldn't claim that we should doubt all, most, or even that much of Caesar's account of what happened in Gaul. Why? Because I also know that Caesar travelled with thousands of other people, very many of whom could ultimately read Caesar's account for themselves. Because these participants in Caesar's actions could share their accounts with other writers, Caesar had to restrain himself from telling easily-detected lies. In contrast, when Livy was writing about the early republic, he could make up nearly any damned thing he wanted to when writing about the early history of Rome because no one in his audience could call him on it. So, I'd argue that when calling attention to an author's agenda (e.g., Tacitus' desire to praise his father-in-law), it's also important to point out that Agricola was a contemporary of many of those who could read Tacitus, and thus Tacitus' concern for his reputation would have acted as a check on his telling whoppers about Agricola. Needless to say, I don't mean that ancient authors are to be trusted entirely just because they had a fact-checking audience. The fact-checkers themselves hadn't enough information to check everything (e.g., private conversations, the exact number of enemies enslaved, etc). But, more importantly, the audience itself may be subject to the same constraint as the author himself, which brings me to my second major point. Second, consider the freedom of the author. Most of us take our freedom of speech for granted. However, for expressing views that were unpopular with those in power, there was a real threat of persecution facing some of our sources. The most dramatic example of an ancient facing persecution was Socrates, which is why historically-minded philosophers must continually remind us to read between the lines when approaching authors such as Plato or Aristotle (who at one time was brought up on charges of 'impiety' and had to flee town "lest Athens sin twice against philosophy"). Among ancient Roman writers who were persecuted, we can list: Cicero (who was killed for writing the Phillipics more than anything else) Ovid (who--for an unknown crime--was exiled by Augustus), Cremutius Cordus (who--for calling Cassius the 'last of the Romans'--was forced to starve himself to death and had his writings burned by order of Tiberius' Senate), Antistius (who was condemned but saved by Cato's panegyrist Thrasea Paetus, who was in turn executed by Nero's men), Helvidius Priscus (who--for having declared sympathy for Brutus and Cassius--was banished by Vespasian and later killed by him), Arulenus Rusticus (who--for eulogizing Thrasea Paetus--had his writings burned and was executed by Domitian), Herenius Senecio (who--for eulogizing Hevlidius Priscus--had his writings burned and was also executed by Domitian), and on and on. Quite obviously, you can't read many of these author's works--no Loeb editions for most of these heroes!--because they were MURDERED by tyrants and their works were BURNED by the tyrants' slaves and lackeys. Others, like Tacitus, managed to survive until a seemingly good emperor came along, but they too were writing under constraints--even the 'good emperor' Nerva (under whom Tacitus finally wrote his works) still had the power to crack down on anyone who opposed him, which may be why we read so little criticism of Nerva and so much pent-up rage against Nerva's predecessors. So, while I agree that we should have some skepticism about our sources, I think we should also consider how much is NOT being said that could be said. To me, Tacitus is a kind of ancient Solzhenitsyn or Anne Frank, and I honestly think it would be cynical to the point of immoral to doubt the veracity of their work because--surprise!--they didn't like being oppressed.

Brief reply for now is that I am very definitely NOT arguing for uncritical acceptance of source materials NOR am I arguing against a healthy skepticism about our sources. I was responding to the "consisent disappointment" that Germanicus mentioned more than to PP's entirely reasonable suggestion that we be aware that Agricola was the father of Tacitus.

Do you have any idea what the mortality rate of women was? So very many died in childbirth that I think it's a tad cold-hearted to suppose that the only motivation for using contraception was an attempt to avoid "maternal duty."

AncientLibrary.com is back on line.

Reminds me of a story I heard that men killed themselves lest they be forced to dredge the Cloaca Maxima.

Certainly, but it is a constant dissappointment to me that all we have to scrutinize it with is our own suspicion of Tacitus motives, which may or may not be correct......oh well, I guess that's the thing with the faded past. I agree with your disappointment but not your defeatism. Motives--by themselves--should NOT cast suspicion on every historical fact. The reasons for this are three. First, this line of reasoning leads us nowhere--it casts no new light; it casts only the shadow of doubt. Are we really bothering with all this history to end up saying nothing at all??? Second, it can lead us anywhere--once we dispense with all our historical sources as inveterate liars, we might as well place them on the same level as mythographers and fabulists. In which case, there is no reason to prefer one set of lies to another. Following this reasoning, we might as well set about reading the Nazi reconstructions of ancient history as those of Tacitus. Personally, I don't have any desire to read the Aryan love-stories, not because I'm not German, but because I think the ancient sources really were very often reliable--not perfect, but quite reliable under certain circumstances. The same is not true of the fabulists, who are unreliable under nearly all circumstances. Third, and most importantly, motives are not sufficient to distort historical records. Even the most biased ancient sources were writing for an audience that was probably even more skeptical than we are--each potential reader (or listener) of Tacitus was also motivated to believe that HIS ancestors were great and would be thus motivated to ridicule any whopper that Tacitus offered. Moreover, Tacitus' praise for Agricola not only had to overcome the envy of his audience, but more importantly, the envy of the emperor himself. When the republic was destroyed, historians simply did not have a free hand to write what pleased them. Many historians were EXECUTED for what they wrote. Personally, I think there is a true modern bias in what we believe from the ancients. Simply put, we are hostile and skeptical when it comes to eulogy, but we are credulous fools when it comes to invective. All I can guess is that people are unwilling to believe any heroism that they think they are themselves incapable of achieving: the conformist doubts independence; the lazy doubt productive achievement; the cheat doubts honesty; the irrationalist doubts reason. Consequently, much of the doubting that exists about ancient sources pretends objectivity but is in fact a MASK FOR MODERN MEDIOCRITY. That's my two cents on the matter. Perhaps a tad strongly stated, but approximately correct I think.

Or larks' tongues, wrens' livers, chaffinch brains, jaguars' earlobes. If you can get 'em while they're hot, they're lovely.

To play with really outlandish Roman numerals, visit Roman Numeral Conversion, where you will learn that 3,888,888 = mmmdccclxxxvMMMDCCCLXXXVIII.

This is an interesting story in that it reveals the inherent contradiction of attempting to argue for censorship. How can you argue for censoring something unless you know what it is that you are censoring; however, if one is to know what one wishes to censor, one can't have censorship in place.

Having already been through the "fall" versus "evolve" debate, I'm not going to rehearse the arguments again. But I would invite the advocates of the "evolve" side to contend with the evidence marshalled by Ward-Perkins.

Roman mathematics has always been puzzling: Why would they use such a weird, non-positional system when there was already a much better one (the Hindu-Arabic) in widespread use? Further, given that they didn't employ a positional notation system, how could they multiply? The rationale for their numeric system may have its origins in mercantile security. In the arabic system, a number like 1039 talents can be easily forged to read 9039 talents. Thus, by simply adding a little circle to the 1, it would be possible to defraud someone of 8000 talents. In contrast, to accomplish the same feat in Roman numerals, one would have to change MXXXIX to MxXXXIX, a change which could be more easily detected. Further, Romans didn't always use their numeric symbols to complete computations. More often, they used a Roman abacus, which did have a bi-quinary coded decimal system. What to do if you left your abacus with that little she-wolf whom you were visiting by the Temple of Venus? Well, there was a method, but it was complex.

Flavius: Why did you choose Pandora's Daughters as your only source material?

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