caldrail

Yet the appearance of germans in Rome inspired a fashion for blonde wigs, suggesting that blonde hair is mostly an imperial import both real or imitation. Also women are known to have dyed their hair - there's a letter from one Roman husband giving his wife the benefit of his opinion after frequent re-colouring caused her to go bald.

It doesn't, and the pike wielding soldier would know that, although he wouldn't be immune to the normal sensations of standing there in front of a cavalry charge. A lot depends on what the horses sees. If it believes it can barge past a few individuals of lesser stature, sort like us really, then a trained horse can be urged to do so. If it perceives the infantry unit ahead as a big solid barrier - such as a compact mass of frightened guys behind a shield wall - the horse will in all probability refuse and deliver the hapless rider in front of the enemy unceremoniously if he's not quick witted or skilled enough. No sensible rider in the world is going to impale his mount on a stick in any case. Realise that a cavalry charge isn't about impact, it's about playing chicken. Who will give way first? Will the infantry soil their underwear and 'break', or will the rider wheel away at the last minute? In warfare cavalry does not impact upon formed infantry in defence if they have reasonable means to do so. It will however exploit a weaker formation and woe betide any infantryman who gives a cavalryman enough room to get into the formation, countered by the possibility that the infantry could unhorse the rider (in which case he generally doesn't live long, armour or not)

This is an intersting point. Once, many years ago, I was at a race meeting at Hexham and as the horses piled down the finishing straight, I leaned out to take a good look (safely, mind you). I was struck by the sensation of weight coming at me. The ground was vibrating, the hooves were pounding audibly, and the sense of unswervable purpose in the riders came across. had they been wielding weaponry, it would have been a very daunting experience.

That would depend on how much interaction with natives taking place. I don't know anything about the local population of natives there, but where there any in the area?

A breach in the wall or gate is a signficant moment in that it allows enemy troops into the fortification. That does not mean the defenders can't repel them, only that they are under pressure and their defenses are weaker for that breach from that point. The usual defensive tactic is to withdraw to inner defences which is often the case with fortifications. Many castles have an inner bailey which is an extra gate to be breached (the gates being usually the easiest point of forced entry). The defenders at Masada built crude inner defences, consisting of stone and timber layers, knowing full well the Roman legions would eventually breach the wall. However, since the defenders will eventually succumb to dehydration, disease, starvation, and poor morale, a well timed assault has every chance of success.

He doesn't hate religion, he just doesn't believe it has any intellectual value. I do note however that he seems to assume that religion is doomed for the very reason he refuses it, ignoring that for many religion is an important part of their lives and may indeed be a necessary part of the human psyche irrespective of which relgion you ascribe to.

Sorry, I wouldn't know where to find it. I only saw the program by chance.

Perhaps, but these things are relative given the different means of achieving the casualty rate. It takes a certain amount of time to approach, fight, and slay/overcome an opponent. Direct fire weapons are much faster in reaching their objective even with greater distances, and given the modern ability to compound the effect with mechanical repetition at a high rate, the conclusion is obvious. Therefore the result at Cannae has to be seen as the result of manual attrition as opposed to mechanical or automatic attrition.

Richard Dawkins is currently presenting a series on life after God. He uncovered interesting statistical research that shows moral behaviour compared between religious and non-religious people is hardly different, only the religious people feel shame about it. Strong religion does not like independent thought, because intellectualism questions standard teaching. We see the same tendencies in political regimes too. As I said, the strictness of religion goes hand in hand with the strictness of society.

The length of service was already defined. However we know that legions in Pannonia during the reign of Augustus had kept men on for thirty or forty years plus active reserve duty, thus requiring of those men a life long service, which was not standard policy and hadn't been since Marius brought standing armies in being. Tacitus further hints that such things weren't exceptional. The issue might have a number of causes relating to recruitment and training, which far from being 'the best ever' as is usually stated, were not at an all time peak in Illyria at least. The issue of taking out the commander is something we see where a soldier has the option to target him, so this has become particularly heightened in the firearm era, especially after aimed fire began to dominate group fire (which was not well aimed to begin with, and considering the musket was too inaccurate, often pointless). Note that ancient missile weapons, arrows, javelins, sling stones etc, all had the potential for aimed fire if the user was skilled, but that the use en masse tended to make aimed fire a secondary consideration. In other words, fighting hand to hand in a large formation makes it unlikely that the commander was at any more risk than anyone else despite obvious recognition. Since battlefield commanders only started to become anonymous in the reign of the rifle, we can see historical evidence for this. There is ione example of aimed fire at a commander that I can think of relating to the ancient world, though I cannot vouch for historical fidelity. In one battle, Julius Caesar ordered his men to advance upon the enemy Romans. They refused to budge, being somewhat exhausted and demoralised under campaign conditions. Caesar was furious. He demanded obedience. He threatened them with dire punishment if they didn't obey. He swore at them, describing them as poofs. No-one moved. Eventually Caesar grabbed a shield from the nearest legionary, drew his sword, and strode down the hill toward the enemy line, who clearly could not believe their luck. A volley of pila was aimed at him. Caesar stepped aside from some, took others on the shield (which I imagine he was unable to hold up further). In the silence that followed, Caesar beckoned his troops to follow him into battle - and they did.

There was no requirement for centurions to retire. There is one record of a serving centurion aged 80, but that must be something exceptional given the period, and although their experience was valued as leaders and trainers in the legions, most would at some point opt for a quieter old age. However I should point out that the casualty rate for centurions was higher than a typical legionary on average, mostly because they led from the front, but also in a minority of cases because they were obvious targets for retaliation in mutinies, but again, I stress this was a very rare event.

The question of whether religion is tolerant is not driven by the structures and teachings of the religion itself, but the nature of the society that interprets it. Intolerant societies have harsh religions. Tolerant societies are less fussy. To complicate matters of course there are often divisions in society where intolerant members want harsher religious belief. Also, the issue of what we consider as harsh is also relevant. Take druidic practises for instance. In theory, the druids were a class of overseers of religious rites - it was written that no sacrifices were allowed without a druid present - and thus presented a limiting factor on sacrificing human beings to assuage the gods or read the signs. They did however oversee such sacrifices and we know such sacrifices continued after the Romans arrived (Evidence for instance of human remains found in a vertical cave where they'd been dumped before death in the north of england, dated in the 1st century ad). During druidic times a typical sacrifice was to hit the victim over the head to stun him, strangle him (one set of remains show a violent application of a noose that actually broke his neck and killed him), then cut his throat. Everything was in threes - a significant number in druidic religion - and sacrifial rites followed this pattern. It has also been observed that one victim may have been prepared beforehand, possibly even voluntarily, although we cannot be sure. Of course the neo-pagans of the modern day who claim to follow druidic belief do not generally have any concept of the somewhat grim iron-age beliefs and wouldn't like it if they did, because they want something they consider more in tune with simple superstition that probably has more in common with neolithic/bronze age beliefs. So they see druidism in a positive light, ignoring the bloodletting. It comes down to a matter of mindset. The ancient iron age peoples believed their human sacrifices had a positive purpose whereas today it would be abhorrent for most people.

Granted, yet I notice the relatively rare mention of such things, and as far as I can gather, with the demise of Roman morality from late republic onward (mostly associated with the prosperous early principate but co-existent with christian standards in later times from the evidence of surviving sermons), there was even less desire to undertake the deed. You might think a less restrictive moral stand would mean an incresed prediliction to violentce, but the opposite is true. Harsh retribution is more indicative of harsher moral stance, consistent with what I read of the earlier republican periods.

Cheers chaps. I'm making a good recovery and hope to be coherent by the end of the week

The right of a father to kill household and family members is a very old tradition in Roman culture but not one often carried out in practice, mostly because the act, however legal, carries accusations of cruelty and barbaric behaviour in terms of public image. I would hazard a guess that most incidents came from the lower classes rather than patricians, who had more to lose from bad reputation and rumour than those classes of societies who were almost anonymous in the record as much as social standing.

I had a long chat with a re-enactor about armour a few years back. The weight is apparently well distributed once worn so not actually encumbering, and the worst feature he mentioned was heat, followed in second place by pinching (which depended on adjustments and how carefully the armour is worn). When I asked him whether he would have actually worn this stuff in combat he unhesitatingly replied "Yes".

I would have to say the casualties from arrows far exceed those from Roman short swords. Once you include firearms into the equation, the gladius vanishes off the graph, and explosive devices may well have killed more than that.

Mostly the punishment was divorce and public ignomy, though I accept legal punishments were in place. Wouldn't the punishment also depend on the degree of adultery? The status of the individuals, the extent of skulduggery, and what the adulterer stood to gain?

Like any piece of metal, it will eventually give away if you apply enough pressure and/or shock load, but I have to say the armour worn by a re-enactor was a formidable strip of metal nonetheless. The problem with the lorica segmentata, and very likely a major reason for the armours demise, was that it's complexity created difficulties. It required the assistance of another legionary to tie in place and had an unforuunate tendency, if badly worn, to pinch the wearer painfully. Banded armour also kept the wearer hot, uncomfortably so after strenuous activity or warm weather.

It's my understanding that the proportion of Italians recruited dropped to a minority of around 20% by mid-imperial times, although I don't remember where I read that so that's not a good reference. One of the reasons for that was the decreasing patriotic martial spirit in comfortable settled Italy whereas the surrounding tribal people were, perhaps not suprisingly, still up for a fight.

Polybius gives the game away. He underlines the hatred that existed for Carthage and anticipates their final destruction (he wrote ghis hisotries around 150BC, just before the final war). I think what we ought to bear in mind is that warfare in ancient times was far less concerned with protocol and ettiquette than later eras. It was often all or nothing. Rome smelled blood and wanted to be rid of their rival. Polybius refers to Carthage as a state in terminal decline politically and irredeemably decadent. Clearly there was a common sentiment in Rome that Carthage really ought to be pushed over the brink and gotten rid of once and for all.

The issue of colour was sometimes very significant to the Romans. Legionaries did not wear white, but rather natural undyed tunics that were a sort of off-white (although soldiers of senior positions undoubtedly used whiter tunics than the common legionary. Concerning red for centurions, that is the accepted norm, but it might be a distortion of the fact, since red was also used to simulate purple by over-dying the cloth, and purple was very sugnificant as a status marker.

Women's Rights are a modern issue. Whilst Roman women were given a definite place in society, it was possible for them to exceed those boundaries. One lady in Pompeii was known to have run a business after her husband died (although in fairness, she was due to be married in order to satisfy public expectation but then again I suspect she would have carried on running the biusiness regardless. Some of them, as we know, became influential in politics. Nowhere in the sources do I find a suggestion that women were unhappy with their lot in the way we find in recent times. Arguably the Romans found a balance that was acceptable, flexible even, to some degree, but one that allowed the woman a measure of respect if she conformed (an attitude that is pretty typical of the Romans in general, they were a somewhat conformist society). I'm also reminded of a possible fate attributed to Zenobia, the former rebellious queen of Palmyra. Having led her armies in the field (yes, she really did that, dressed in armour and everything). Some versions of the story have meeting a sticky end, but one suggests strongly that she was allowed to marry a senior Roman and live as his wife as long as she accepted her lot.

There was always a tendency in America to record events for posterity. Before photography, artists used to travel into the wilderness and left us some very evocative renditions of the native American and his day to business. As soon as cameras were available, even those clumsy glass plate jobs, people were taking pictures of everything and anything. It was, after all, proof of all those frontier tales if nothing else, and in terms of news a far better record than the laborious wood cut artwork they used in the victorian era, once they found a method of printing photographs mind you. In fact, the desire to photograph has never really left the American. take WW2. Germany made huge use of propaganda, Russia re-enacted evrything for the newsreels, Britain was full of cheeky chappies and giving the Jerry what for, but America? They filmed evrything. Absolutely everything, live action and usually in colour film. I've said this before but one of the most saddening pictures of the civil war was of a pile of discarded limbs piled against the brick wall of a hospital for disposal. Surreal and real at the same time.

This is probably isn't all that new, but I spotted the following report... http://uk.news.yahoo.com/jesus-had-wife-newly-discovered-gospel-suggests-202727064.html