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caldrail

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Everything posted by caldrail

  1. Now this raises all sorts of ideas. Was the Neanderthal decline the result of disease? If so, was it the spread of Cro-Magnon that brought disease to the more static Neanderthal populations?
  2. caldrail

    Sulla

    Caesar didn't topple the republican edifice, he simply took control of it by emulating then exceeding Sulla's methods. The Imperial period was not a separate regime either, just good old SPQR but now with single person domination in diluted form (though it got a lot less conformal from Caligula onward). What Caesar did was treat the Senate with respect, at least outwardly, which is significant given how contentious he was earlier in his career. Of course, this behaviour was just realpolitik - we are talking about a character who along with Crassus plotted a mass slaughter of senators to grab power. However, Caesar did allow (or encourage) the Senate to swell to ovr a thousand members with enough dodgy characters to make senatorial debate even less decisive that it already was in the period of lapsed Princeps Senatus leadership. Proscriptions were not quite an obstacle. The Seconds Triumvirate were especially keen on them and Octavian, though initially reluctant, the most ruthless of all. Yet all that seems to have been set aside once Octavian decided to continue after Antony's death and became Princeps Senatus. After all, those that survived had less to worry about. As for Sulla's legal machinations, we are dealing with a period where politics was wavering ever more precariously between radical and traditional politics, so once Sulla was out of the way not really suprising that some laws were repealed or changed.
  3. caldrail

    Article: Roman medallions

    Good choice of Severus. An able politician besides being the leader of a successful military coup.
  4. caldrail

    Assessing Pompeii victims closer

    Guy - bear in mind that the eruption was not a sudden event. It took ten separate pyroclastic flows to get over the walls and into Pompeii. Those found in their houses were trying to shelter from the pumice rain, which doomed them because the weight of ash and debris built up on the roof and collapsed them.
  5. I knew it! There were interesting reports about the Amazon Basin going back a couple of decades or more. The foliage wasn't primary jungle so they knew there had been a human presence and some alignments in the terrain looked odd. Finally something more concrete.
  6. caldrail

    UK has six percent Viking blood

    Blonde hair and blue eyes are two mutations in human genetics dating to around thirty or forty thousand years ago. Just a guess, but I imagine Viking DNA is more prevalent in the northern half of Britain, where the Vikings had actually settled.
  7. caldrail

    What do we need Europe for?

    So they're human beings like the rest of us? (gasp) Shocking.
  8. I'm listening to a representative panel discussing ramifications of the Ukraine situation. One guy broodily looks at the audience and says that "war is not the normal condition of human beings". Excuse me? Has this guy ever read a history book? Does he not understand that warfare is merely the modern expression of tribal or group conflict common to mammalian social animals competing in the wild? I agree warfare is not desirable to most people, that it can be very destructive in the way we compete today, yet warfare or the threat of military action is an ongoing process. David Starkey has made clear that the reality of Human activity revolves around the ability to wield military force. This has always been true. Why the Iron Age ushered in a very violent world because of superior weaponry and reliance on resources to support such violence and the rise of the warrior society. Why the decline of Rome's ability to exercise military power was so influential in their demise. Why Stalin for instance once derided the Pope by asking how many divisions he commanded.
  9. caldrail

    On The Reality Of Human Behaviour

    What has happened is two fold. Firstly warfare, despite its complexity, detail, expertise, and destructive potential, is heavily controlled on a global scale. Most conflicts are against movements that aren't part of the ritual politics that restrains the global community. The situation in Ukraine has received so much counter-support simply because it flew in the face of the 'queensbury rules' we like to believe matter. Ritual combat? That's no different from nature. Animals learn to face off with the minimum of harm, so do we. Except occaisionally a leader comes along who discards such restrictions believing ruthless strength is superior. Secondly, the scale of potential destruction is now so bad via nuclear weaponry that usage is undesirable to both sides. As much as Putin is a wild card, even he doesn't follow the advice of his media pundits and prefers to threaten than actually press red buttons. At least so far anyway. The question is one of survival, much like the ritual aspect. If a leader believes he has an advantage, he might be tempted, first by taking an enormous risk, afterwards by increasing confidence that he will get away with it. But the ritual of nuclear confrontation does not yet have a scale of escalation that is meaningful in terms of what you can achieve without complete retaliation. For all their bluster, North Korea are no more likely to fire missiles than Putin's Russia. Because they don't yet know what they can get away with and the risks are so far to daunting. Mutually Assured Destruction. It worked since 1945, give or take some close calls.
  10. caldrail

    Ancient vegetarian diets reassessed

    Wait... Isn't this like claiming to be knowledgeable by repackaging what was already known? The benefits of a largely vegetarian diet are well known - just ask my doctor - but claiming Roman vegetarian diets were somehow superior and explains why they were capable of the supposed physical effort rather confirms how poor modern expectations and diet are instead.
  11. It's funny how military activity can turn these things up. You would think, probably quite rightly, that's it's nothing but destructive, but the major reason that Barbury Castle in Wiltshire still exists is because the US Army in WW2 wanted to site an anti-aircraft battery up there on the ridge and started bulldozing the area, right up until they started digging up skeletons which turned out to be from a Saxon graveyard.
  12. caldrail

    Human and Neanderthal interaction

    As I understand it, the problem Neanderthals had was down to their settlement patterns, reliant on localised forage and hunting whereas the Cro-Magnon were migratory and followed the food sources.
  13. caldrail

    What do we need Europe for?

    Monarchies? Most of those are countries run as republics whilst retaining a royal family. I hardly think that's an issue. As for being parasites, they're at least active as diplomats for the most part and corporate elites are sometimes more parasitical.
  14. caldrail

    What do we need Europe for?

    Seriously? Europe has five or six times the population of your homeland,.iI accounts for nearly a fifth of the world's GDP. It has its own space program, a major unification project, and most of its nation states belong to a dominant military alliance. One might more realistically argue why certain antipathic empires have any practical uses, especially given recent events.
  15. caldrail

    Bachelor tax

    It's an interesting facet of Roman politics that taxation came to serve policy as much as finance, especially given that greed was fundamental to Romans as much as status. Augustus was of course hardly a saint where money was concerned, but that was quite routine in elite circles so the Romans saw nothing unusual in it. When they do mention greed adversely, you have to wonder of the scale of it, with Varus reported as leaving Syria very much the poorer and then chosen by Augustus to oversee taxation of occupied Germania without official annexation.
  16. caldrail

    Mary Beard's Twelve Caesars

    It depends. 'Expert' academics are notoriously conservative, who often rely on conformity to underpin their public reputation. As I'm merely an enthusiast who earns a living outside of academia, I have little to lose when reconsidering Roman history though for most of it I happily agree with mainstream opinion. Mary Beard however isn't that far removed from the mainstream, it's just that she's more perceptive of clues from existing archeology. Her mission has more to do with revealing the human side of Roman history and in that she performs a very useful role.
  17. Similar idea to anti-personnel mines, without explosive devices.
  18. If that's the criteria, I humbly suggest Egypt or Assyria as arriving at the prize well before China did.
  19. caldrail

    Longinus, a Dacian archer.

    Roman roads were not a modern transportation system, they were there primarily for communication, with access to hostels for quick horse changes. Nothing to stop merchants using the road of course other than it might be faster for long distances to send the goods by water. since unless they were on official duty, the hostels did not serve their purposes. And of course, as this post makes obvious, strategic redeployment was simplified - but I say this advisedly, don't get too carried away with the concept. Remember that modern Russia relies on their internal railways in much the same way yet this does not make for guaranteed logistics.
  20. caldrail

    Ballista!

    In fact the Romans used a hand cranked version of a ballista able to repeatedly fire (though I imagine that device was on the smaller side) during the invasion of Britannia. It was discarded quite quickly because using five or six bolts on a target that was killed by the first seemed wasteful.
  21. caldrail

    Mary Beard's Twelve Caesars

    Mary Beard is a great communicator and anything she produces is worth checking out. Don't agree on absolutely everything she says but so many times she's reminded me that Romans were human. Different times, different standards, different ways. Yet at times we can't help recognising a little bit of our modern experience that we share with them. Mary is very good at describing that.
  22. Okay. I made a mistake. Postumus wasn't the legate of the II Augusta, he was the camp prefect (Top Centurion). Boudicca ended her days by poison; while Poenius Postumus, camp-prefect of the second legion, informed of the exploits of the men of the fourteenth and twentieth, and conscious that he had cheated his own corps of a share in the honours and had violated the rules of the service by ignoring the orders of his commander, ran his sword through his body. Annals (Tacitus) Nero sent reinforcements from Germania, which accounts for the mentions of Gemina. The whole army was now concentrated and kept under canvas, with a view to finishing what was left of the campaign. Its strength was increased by the Caesar, who sent over from Germany two thousand legionaries, eight cohorts of auxiliaries, and a thousand cavalry. Their advent allowed the gaps in the ninth legion to be filled with regular troops; the allied foot and horse were stationed in new winter quarters; and the tribes which had shown themselves dubious or disaffected were harried with fire and sword. Annals (Tacitus) The commentary from Bill Thayer is as follows: The probable course of events seems to have been roughly this:— Suetonius hurried ahead with his light troops, while the fourteenth legion and part of the twentieth followed by forced marches: the second had been summoned to join him, probably at Wroxeter (Viroconium), but its commander Poenius Postumus refused to leave his own front defenceless against the Silures of S. Wales. At London, the situation was found to be desperate, with the rebels in overwhelming force and the ninth legion virtually exterminated. Suetonius, therefore, fell back along the Watling Street until he met the legionaries, was forced to an engagement "somewhere in the Midlands," and only survived through being allowed to choose his own ground. (Bill Thayer) This implies the legate of the second legion was not present with his men. This is not explained.
  23. They had to in order to expunge shame, or possibly be decimated.
  24. The Legion II Augusta were in Britannia at the time. It's commander, Poenius Posthumus, refused orders to mobilise and committed suicide. Gemina was the name of two legions, XIII and XIV. The XIII was based in various places around Europe, the XIV took part in Boudicca's defeat at the Battle of Watling Street.
  25. I notice the graphics in the videos show wide roads being used in a modern fashion. No suprise to me, I've often had to argue that the Romans did not prioritise transport in the way we do, bur also the actual archeology usually shows narrower roads, only wide enough for vehicle traffic in one direction - the point is, Roman roads were not intended for vehicles but couriers on horseback and columns of men on the march. Sure, a wagon can use a road, but goods were as likely to travel by water, rivers and coasts, using local trackways to connect with local destinations.
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