caldrail

I have seen a comparison with the Samurai longbow which comes out favourably for the Japanese overall. In fact, the Japanese bow has to be held off centre to prevent strain on the wrist and improve accuracy.

Oh wow. A few bad apples. Hardly enough to condemn is it? Anyway, I thought this thread was about Roman corruption?

I might suggest other reasons - A lack of initiative from the assigned army leader, or that the soldiers were in no mood to fight (that sort of thing happened in the late empire), or the lack of pay had caused men to wander off seeking civilian jobs, or that the Roman Empire had not actually realised how large the threat was, or that they expected a response from elsewhere for whatever reason.

But if anyone found out I was talking about it there might have to be retrial involving a new jury. I might be facing charges like Aiding and Abetting, Conspiracy, Perverting the Course of Justice, or Contempt of Court, especially since as a juror I had made an oath that I was a suitable person to sit in judgement of the accused. The British system is sometimes a little clunky, but it works, because professional honour polices it as much as the system itself. Don't judge Britain by the standards of countries you're familiar with. Does that sound a little grand? Well, the Romans thought much the same about their system of law for all its faults apparent to the modern age. Rome considered itself the centre of civilisation and it was law above all else that confirmed it in their minds, not the size of their empire or how tough their soldiers were. Their tolerance of dealing were substantially higher than today it must be said. But then there's an anecdote about a young man of good family. A prostitute preferred charges of Rape against him. Since she was a professional sex worker the Roman magistrate threw out the charge on principle - what did she expect? But, the young man in a drunken rage had broken down her front door to get to her and that was deemed unacceptable, so he was punished. Money made no difference in that case.

There are both legal and moral restrictions on discussing cases outside of court. As a juror, I was not allowed to discuss it either. Also, the issue of hiring more expensive legal representation is about market forces, not corruption. Romans didn't use our system..

You have a very biased vision of British culture. I've served on juries. There is no corruption. I was not approached or offered a bribe. We don't work like that - it's very illegal. In fact a barrister tried to tell me off in court once because he though I wasn't paying attention. But regarding Marc Antony - of course he didn't plunder Egypt, his girlfriend was still that countries queen.

Romans had less moral objections about using money to further their interests. It is interesting that Roman culture had the limitation on commercial dealing s for the wealthier end of society but they simply used associates with less social restriction to do that for them. Money was after all the traditional marker for the social status you could claim. It wasn't about bloodline as one fella on another site tried to convince me of. There was more social mobility than that. And then there's the anecdote of a patrician who gave sumptuous dinners to please and impress his peers, so much s that he bankrupted himself and committed suicide. There's abundant evidence of booty as a military goal, mentioned a lot and with matter-of-fact attitude, such things were just normal practice since soldiers expected to loot and pillage as a reward for risking their lives, and that never changed. An obvious case of bribery is when an important Roman stages games. A hugely expensive investment but a way of gaining public support for your next career move. It could go disastrously wrong though. Not just deciding the fate of a gladiator to avoid compensation payments against the wishes of a crowd, but as at Fedinae in 27, when some guy had a temporary amphitheatre set up (not an uncommon practice), made of wood, which collapsed killing 20,000 spectators and injuring more. That's one career that went the same way. Provincial jobs, especially senatorial governors like propraetors and proconsuls, were a lucrative source of income. They weren't there to rule as some assume, but to represent Rome, and as Romans they found ways of extracting wealth. Some were worse than others. Quintilius Publius Varus is especially mentioned for leaving Syria very much the poorer. But then Augustus taxed the Germans without official annexation or provincialisation. Having used the royal coffers of Egypt to pay his way, he was short of cash to fund his heavy expenditure on things like supporting the military, government, and civic beautification with his own funds. It's harder to focus on what we would call everyday corruption because it was usually too low scale to get mentioned by the Roman sources, too ordinary an everyday deal. But Tacitus does give away in connection of the Pannonian Mutiny that bribery of military centurions was so commonplace that lists of official bribe levels were issued in camp. Then we have tax farmers of the republican era who paid taxes for an area themselves then had the people compensate him for the deal, at a respectful markup of course. OR the recruiters of the late empire, bribed by settlements to go away, when they would hire cheaper foreigners instead and keep the change. Everybody was at it.

Keep it in context mate. All Roman elites were after money, that was how their society worked. And republican refers to res publica, "for the people". He had after all kept his promise to protect the Republic even after he had risen to sole prominence. Yes, the Empire had changed. So what? The Romans changed things whenever it suited them. Now back to Sonic. If you're looking for a meaty subject, a study of how Rome expanded its culture would be useful. There are lots of subtleties and aspects that the popular image doesn't recognise.

How about... the little known campaigns of Rome? Like the expeditions to Kush or what is now Yemen. There's some great stories to be told.

I used to get that sort of response on Historum. Won't work mate. If you want facts, here's one. You hardly gave any. Your answers devolved to opinion, and if you don't believe that, then re-read the thread.

Nope. Never said that. I said he was republican at heart. Res publica, not modern republican. I also said I didn't doubt his political ambition. But as for being a tyrannical type, no, he wasn't, though it somewhat ironic that a few voices accused him of being a Dictator when he was only using the privileges the Senate had given him. As I pointed out, there are other interpretations of Augustus that conform to the Roman sources, but these are not considered because people generally start with a preconception. Your viewpoint is not entirely unexpected - it's the bog standard view that many academics prefer, but I think it's fundamentally wrong. Authoritarian is not necessarily dictatorial - ask the personnel of any workplace. There are simply too many anomalies that show a different character and circumstance to that which people prefer. The standard view is too simplistic for a start. It relies on stereotypes from the previous century. The real issue here is that the Roman sources are being interpreted in a modern light. This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history people have looked at Roman history and interpreted it by the standards of their day. I'm not interested in that. I want contextual understanding and that means dumping convention.

It actually didn't matter whether powers were transferred from the Popular Assemblies, the Senate stopped providing them with issues to vote upon. That was political greed by the Senate though I do agree that Augustus clearly did nothing to obstruct that, but then again, that process of sidelining was not immediate - it would take decades and decades and some of Augustus' successors were just as guilty. But the matter of nominees. Augustus was in a position to manage the empire, but we know he did respect the rights of free will of those he did not select. Remember that during his reform of the Senate, Augustus nominated three hundred candidates, half the required number. Only half? Why not all? We can't escape the need for Augustus to hold a strong influence over government. That's not necessarily consolidation as you would see it, but just as much a manifestation of creating a workable relationship with Roman government, a recruitment process for an efficient government, or even self preservation, because Augustus knew full well how dangerous Roman politics could be. Remember what happened. Each of his nominees was given the right to select another candidate, anyone with suitable qualification, in order to bring the Senate to six hundred members, a size in accordance with tradition rather than the very inflated and chaotic previous host. But one man suggested someone Augustus had already exiled. So he asked "Really? That man? Isn't there someone else you could choose?". The Senator replied "I have the right to choose". So Augustus honoured his request and brought the new member back from exile. Think about that. Augustus made the rule perhaps, but he certainly observed them himself when it didn't suit him. Bribery? I've talked about civic bribery for a long time and Augustus was hardly the first to use that! the judgement and will of the Roman people in matters of the public interest can be indicated in three settings: at a public meeting, at a voting assembly, and in the audience assembled for shows or gladiatorial contests - Cicero. So what changed? The voting assemblies would give way to military power. The Senate helped create the very force that outweighed them.

Here's an interesting video looking into the effectiveness of archery at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. it's very illuminating. https://youtu.be/DBxdTkddHaE So. The conclusions are that chainmail isn't that protective against archery. A well designed metal plate armour can be very protective, but still transmits the shock of the impact. An external Jupon, or padded layer, will help mitigate the impact by a certain margin. And the heavy longbow pull does not allow the lightning quick fusilade of fantasy films. Food for thought.

The Comita Centuriate wasn't military, at least not directly. It was a voting assembly that was based on the old Servian classification of wealth for eligibility of citizens to serve in armies, not exclusively for soldiers. The internet is a little misleading on this. The 'centuries' of the assembly were not divided into exactly hundreds because wealth varied considerably among the public. Since Roman legions could not vote on issues in Rome (given they were garrisoned in provincial areas, one can understand the frustration they felt, but that long predated Augustus). The late Empire, or the Dominate, was fully autocratic. Voting assemblies had more or less gone, the Comitia Centuriate lasted the longest as more of a social forum than political. The Senate had been reduced to ritual status because legislation was by then a decree of the Roman leader. It was all still framed in republican terms and categories. The Senate did not control their armies.. They delegated that to selected men with the power of imperium, the right to command an army. To illustrate that, in the late republic perhaps a dozen men would have possessed that legal power. Augustus was awarded the unusual privilege of imperium maius, the highest military privilege, which established the precedent of the 'generalissimo's' of the imperial period.

You seem hung up on this idea of consolidation and redistribution. It does sound to me that you're trying to impose practises more akin to the last century than the ancient world. If Augustus was consolidating, why did he not claim ever more power and privilege? Why did he relinquish a high office? Why did he reform the Senate and encourage active debate and participation of its members? Why did he give Marcus Agrippa what appears to be equal power so he could manage the empire in the absence of Augustus, for a total of nine years? Why did he award the very same tribunician power to chosen colleagues more than once for a five year term each? These are not the actions of a tyrant. Caesar may have threatened, somewhat carelessly, to change the political map, but Augustus was given imperium at propraetor rank originally with the promise that he would preserve the Republic, which is fundamentally what he did. The Senate still ran the empire, Augustus only had precedence in the regions that had garrisons to command, and Egypt alone was his personal fief, newly annexed by Rome after the demise of the Ptolemaic dynasty so no redistribution there. His power to intervene were not absolute, it was limited to fields of responsibility like imperium always had been. And what's all this about soldiers giving up political rights? They had the same rights as citizens that existed in the Republic, they didn't give anything up. Far from it, they were soon to realise that they could impose decisions on the state without recourse to the various voting assemblies, who I might add, were eventually left without purpose by the Senate - not Augustus. They did not legislate. They were supposed to vote upon the issues the Senate asked of them.

Check this out. It popped up on my news feed... Archaeology breakthrough as stunning 1,700-year-old Roman gladiator arena found (msn.com)

No-one, not even me, is going to suggest that Augustus was sitting back and letting the world do it's thing, that's why he accepted a revived Princeps Senatus, he was operating as leader of the Senate. That doesn't mean he was clicking his fingers at it - the Senate was not going to like that. Many talk about the Senate being powerless at that point but it isn't true, the mechanism of republican government was still functioning under Augustus' guidance and would continue, albeit dwindling, until Diocletian tells the world that HE is in charge. But that said, there's very little point supporting and encouraging senatorial debate and resolution if you mean to control their decisions - someone is going to notice. it is true Augustus banned them making decisions for seven years toward the end of his tenure, but that wasn't Augustus the tyrant, that the Augustus fed up with murderous squabbles behind the scenes and trying to punish a Senate that wasn't behaving itself. He did after all restore their powers when he was satisfied they had learned their lesson. And importantly, please note that the Senate complained and heckled him. They didn't see him as a tyrant depriving them of power in favour of his own.

They didn't actually turn on Valens or the Empire as such, they were desperate and had not only been treated disgracefully as refugees, but Maximus and Lupercinus, who ran Thrace, had made a mass assassination attempt on Gothic leaders. They felt betrayed, never mind the Romans. Accordingly the only way to survive was to turn rogue against their hostile host. Valens was particularly upset. he had known Fritigern personally from a previous war between Rome and the Goths and it appeared to him that the Goths had reneged on both settlements. What follows is classic late Roman intrigue. Valens is less than impressed with Trajanus, his military chief, and sends for a new boy, Sebastianus, who is making a name for himself elsewhere. Sebastianus considers that sending the Roman legions as is will not suffice. Zosimus would later describe them as effeminate and cowardly. So he picks out the youngsters who are spoiling for a fight and creates a cadre of raiders to move ahead of the column (and don't forget, Valens had to make repeated pleas just to get his soldiers to march on the Goths at all). Valens is in the middle of a court argument. Do we rely on raiding to whittle down the Goth rebels? Or do we march on the Goths and crush them in bloody battle? Sebastianus is feeling insecure so he tries to lick Valens backside and overdoes it. Valens is on the point of telling him where to go. So Seb does something else - he reverses his argument, saying the time has come to break the Goths in one swift stroke (after all, the raiders are doing good work, heads are coming back to Constantinople on a daily basis), and therefore takes the wind out of his court rivals, including Trajanus, who wants his old job back. So the column marches to Adrianople, arriving in a disorganised manner. Valens does not attack, but begins negotiations. He wants to resolve this peacefully, man to man with the Gothic leaders. The Goths play for time - more on that later. But one Roman cavalry unit arrives so late that the Goths think the battle has started. So the situation rapidly escalates and the battle gets under way. Then the Goths spring their suprise. Returning foragers have arrived quietly and mount an ambush on the Roman line. The Roman army crumbles into a disordered mass. The fight goes on for the rest of the day, and only at nightfall are the Romans able to mount an escape which Valens, already wounded, does not survive. In the darkness the Goths apparently set fire to a barn they know Romans are hiding in - they didn't know Valens was in there. Thus the Goths were free to range across the region. They do not attack Constantinople. Besides being too powerful a city for them, the Gothic leader famously says "I do not wage war on walls".

On the face of it, Roman history seems, if you'll excuse the pun, cast in concrete. The Republic falls, Augustus claims the empire as ruler, and Imperial history begins. Is it really that obvious? I ask because I'm increasingly drawn to different conclusions that the somewhat flawed accepted story. Time then to outline where I am in this accentuated period in history. What was the Roman Republic? You only have to watch the successful film Gladiator to see how fixated with modern concepts we are. I refer to that hilarious scene where Derek Jacobi attempts to point out to Joachim Pheonix that the Senate was chosen from among the people to represent the people. Really? Someone thought 'republic' meant more or less the same thing as modern America. And no, it most certainly did not, the Senate was a group of senior politicians who had to be wealthy enough to qualify. Representation had very little to with it and historically there many Senators who had little intention of making decisions to benefit the common people. The word 'republic' to modern readers means a type of government. To the Romans, it did not. The word is derived from res publica, or 'for the people'. It was therefore the obligation of privilege to take of the common public, though in fairness many senators would pay lip service to that. The actual regime was neither here nor there, and given that Rome tinkered with its format in small or mighty steps over the course of their history whenever it suited them, then the fact their state remained SPQR .Senate and People of Rome' to the very end in the west rather points to a different interpretation of empire than ours. So what was this 'Fall of the Republic'? It wasn't a change in regime. All the apparatus of government survived the accession of Augustus. Indeed, he set about reforming the Senate, removing the riff-raff, encouraging participation, and making it difficult for Senators to hide in the crowd. Tiberius would later pass on powers from the Popular Assemblies to the Senate so they could govern in his absence. Hardly the powerless gang of elites many dismiss airily. No, it was the loss of of civic duty. Under the Principate, pandering to the public was less important compared to the immediate feel-good factor of panem et circuses 'Bread and Circuses'. The public would be bribed rather than appeased. I have to say, it sort of worked. Yes, you argue, but Augustus was made Emperor? No, he was not. There was no such title in Roman society and anyone attempting it was not going to last long. Monarchy was considered a tyranny by Roman elites in a society that favoured free will and self determination as the mark of civilisation. The public wanted a popular leader, like Julius Caesar, and demanded that the Senate make Augustus a Dictator. He always refused the title, even though the public rioted and threatened the lives of the Senate over it. He endured accusations of being a dictator already. He denied it. With good reason. The Senate had awarded him his far reaching powers and privileges and the title itself had been legally abolished by Marc Antony. Having won a civil war to keep the empire together and prevent a new powerful empire forged from Egypt and the Eastern Roman provinces, to have then sneakily claimed a kingly title would have breathtakingly hypocritical, never mind dangerous. Augustus instead becomes patron to his Roman client. Hardly radical, but it offered a convenient step to managing the empire rather than actually ruling it. This idea that Augustus planned a sinister and clever covert takeover doesn't work for me. Perfect and saintly he was not, but reading accounts of him I get the impression he preferred to do business up front and vehemently disliked subterfuge. Taxing the Germanic tribes occupied by Roman forces was hardly covert was it? Sure, it was greedy and opportunistic, but that was normal for Rome. In any case, Augustus needed effective government and boasts in his Res Gestae that he tried to create the best government possible. So the Republic in fact continues, but now, under single person leadership. The Senate still governs the bulk of the Empire, although Augustus now has the right to intervene if he thought it was necessary. He sends representatives to make sure he isn't needed, and unfortunately, in doing so created a mechanism for appropriating provincial oversight from the Senate, which develops over the next century mostly at the behest of those successors who saw themselves as more absolute than those who preferred to work with the Senate (and who generally did better). This would account for the naming convention and the reason why future leaders would always receive authorisation of their power from the Senate in republican style packages rather than autocratic rights, long after the Senate had dwindled to ritual significance. That brings us to the Dominate, following Diocletian's assertion of absolute power. At that point, senatorial government is effectively over. The Republic still continues, now ruled by men who liked to call themselves Imperator 'Victorious General'. Civic duty has gone. Hence Roman writers say the 'republic is dead'. But an imperial monarchy? I'm sorry, that stretches the point a lot. There are too many anomalies to simply rationalise as a convenient ruse to gaining power. Rome was more complex beast than that.

What historical Arthur? There were at least eight or nine of them and none were the mighty hero we love. As for being King of the Britons, that was the invention of Geoffery of Monmouth, whose rather imaginative Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) was well and truly trampled on by critics back in the twelfth century never mind me. At the time he was supposed to have lived, Britain was in the Sub-Roman period, local tribes picking up the pieces after they had booted out the unwanted Roman administration and seceded, Saxon raiders and immigrants queuing up to claim land. And just so you know, England and Scotland were not unted until the Act of Union in 1707. Gildas gives us a somewhat biased vision of Sub-Roman Britain, focusing on the warlords he thought of as barbaric and uncouth. No Arthur, though he hints of someone who had considerable status and reputation. And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? Never mentions him. As for Her Majesty, her lineage is described here... Ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II (geni.com)

Unfortunately the very serious flaw in senatorial politics was their adversarial debating, internal factions both large and small, and vested interests driving their motives. Having the power to make decisions in politics is fine except they represented an elite that did not like sharing power. Hence early on the people of Rome staged a walkout because the Senate would not give them a say, hence they were forced to set up the popular voting assemblies. The very same problem still existed in the late Republic, hence the Social War, caused by the Senate refusing or diluting the requests of the Italian Allies for a share in booty, rights, and decisions as equal members of Rome's informal federation. It was worse still by that time because the post of Princeps Senatus had fallen into disuse, so the Senate had no internal leadership. it resulted in constant bickering, feuding, and lack of resolution as various checks and balances simply cancelled out initiatives. Indeed, Julius Caesar allowed the Senate to increase to over a thousand members to make the situation as bad as possible. Yes, once as Dictator Perpetuo he was polite and respectful toward the Senate, but with so many riff-raff among them and many deliberately placed supporters, opposition to his rule was not going to worry him overly.

Not to us. The Welsh have been trying to present him as a national hero for a long time now, but claims by England and Scotland are not going to die away. After all, he was supposed to have been born at Tintagel, yes? That's Cornwall, southwest England (though admittedly under the native Britons at the supposed time so in a sense, Welsh). However, you can't pin the man down. As I said, he's an amalgam of heroic prototypes dating back to the Iron Age at least, so in an important sense more or less fictional.

About Roman spies? There's a lot of hype on the internet about this. They relied on informers, first and foremost. Deserters and local people were just as important in terms of information as anything more formal. The Frumentarii were not an intelligence class or agency, they were grain merchants whose wide ranging contacts put them in a unique position to pass on rumours and intelligence, and were co-opted as spies at one point though never formally so. They were eventually replaced in this role by the custom created Agentes In Rebus, a real bona fide intelligence service (as far as I know, the first ever) Peregrinii were not a formal spies either, because the word simply describes foreigners, though as an intelligence source may have been useful from time to time. Exploratores were legionaries used as scouts, though sometimes they did covert activity mostly of a military nature. They were not seperate units though formations of them sometimes persisted. Speculares were legionaries used as spies, deliberately, tasked with intelligence gathering as required.

Strictly speaking a Praefectus of the Cohortes Praetoriae did not have a role encompassing the Empire, he was commander of a bodyguard in Rome, though individuals were used as spies and a detachment of Praetorians would usually follow the Imperator when he journeyed - but then many of these leaders never left Rome anyway. The Praetorians are often blamed for unstable rule, not without good reason, but in most cases it wasn't the soldiers themselves, but rather the Prefect who had close contact with elite men in Rome who was instrumental in court intrigue. The face-off of Praetorians against the Senate that got Claudius in power, or the auction that did the same for Didius Julianus are obvious exceptions. Please note that the wiki article is incorrect. The Praetorians did not exist in the Late Republic, it was Augustus who formed them from all the bodyguard units left over from the civil wars, and the Urban cohorts were made from Praetorians with their own Prefect who doesn't figure in the historical record much, I can only think of the takeover immediately after the death of Caligula which the Praetorians overturned.

Things like that did happen. There's a picture of Marlene Dietrich arriving at a railway station in France before WW2 and she's in a trouser suit, looking very fashionable and daring with a crowd of hangers on (all male), but moments later she got arrested. I have seen photos of a female climbing club in La Belle Epoque, ascending a tough rock face in long dresses (I am told they sometimes climbed in knickers when blokes weren't around because the dress was heavy and cumbersome. So whether you got away with pushing the frontiers of public sensibility was always the same as now. Fame, wealth, confidence, support, opportunity. Same with ancient Rome. Women were expected to be demure and dutiful, but as Rome got wealthy on the back of conquest, so women started taking risks and pushing at social boundaries. One lady called Sempronia absolutely shocked polite society but a generation later in the Principate, her antics would only have raised an eyebrow. We have women like Julia, Augustus' daughter, who was so annoyed and frustrated at her father's moral crusade and stifling family atmosphere that she rebelled and became very wayward. Eventually her father found out about her hedonistic lifestyle and was so angry he had her exiled to a small island. The public heckled him in the street to bring her home. Or Agrippina the Younger? Never overt, but a woman who had gossip and controversy follow her like attendants. Did she sleep with her brother Caligula? Was she trying to get off with her son Nero at a social dinner? We don't know. Or on a different theme, Julia Ferox in Pompeii, who after the death of her husband hired out her home as a social club and apparently did roaring business. But - and I say this advisedly - it is interesting that clothes were labels as much as accoutrements to the Romans, and taking a privilege you weren't entitled to, or trying something new was worse than actual bad behaviour.