Leguleius

Procopius's "Wars" = http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16764

Previously unknown secret passages and rooms were uncovered as recently as 2005 (http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/15934_Kremlin.html) so who can say? It's certainly a tantalising prospect!

This thread has brought out a distinction which the original question didn't specifically address: whether the Romans deserve credit for 'merely' transmitting others' ideas, or whether it necessary for them to have made an original contribution themselves in order to be historically significant. My own view is that what makes the Romans significant is precisely the fact that they did act as a conduit for the spread of common ideas over a huge new area. The fact that they borrowed most of them from their neighbours is neither here nor there IMO. A further distinction that can be made is to consider the extent to which ideas outlasted Roman rule, in contrast to those which were only transient. These are the influences which helped shape modern 'western' civilization. (E.g. hypercausts and gladiators died out, but classical concepts like the rule of law and personal freedom lived on). Finally, there is, I think, also 'the idea of Rome' itself which our civilization has been imbued with and which has inspired historical phenomena as diverse as the medieval papacy, the renaissance and the British Empire. Interesting stuff. I'll have a think about how Romanisation affected daily life in Britain and try and post some more shortly - since that was the original thrust of the question and is a subject I've been intrigued by for some time. Bed now. [Just got back from Glastonbury and sleep patterns still a bit skewed.]

Interesting article on Hadrianople here by Peter Heather: http://blog.oup.com/2007/07/rome/

About time too. They're just taking bread from the mouths of all those real Centurians... What? How is this hurting anyone?

I can assure you English archaeology is at the cutting edge (pun unintended but gleefully accepted). If spades were being used no doubt this was because top soil, or other recent material, was being removed. As we've got rather more of a past than you Yanks, we're actually quite good at excavating it.

Livy (XXXI.6) also mentions that the Ides of March was the day when consuls were historically sworn in, before that was moved to January. Another indication of the day actually being auspicious. Tom

Thanks for the link. Very interesting for this Isca Dumnoniorumite! Tom

The conclusion that Britain was less Romanised than other provinces seems pretty convincing. Not only did coinage disappear in the C.5th, but so did pottery - a rather more basic commodity. However, even in Frankia no coinage was minted until about 530. Before then Byzantine and Western Roman coins were possibly in circulation and there's a parallel for that in England: In 1997, a hoard of 22 gold solidi, 25 silver coins or fragments of silver coins, 2 heavy gold rings and 50 small pieces of silver bullion dating to AD 333- c.461-70 was found at Patching, near Worthing, Sussex. The coins included two imperial coins from Ravenna (reign of Valentinian III) dated c. AD440+ and Visigothic coins from the reigns of Majorian (c. 460-1) and Libius Severus (c. 461+). The hoard was buried, possibly in advance of Saxon incursions, around AD475. This is evidence to show that earlier views were not correct and that Roman coins were still reaching Britain well into the 5th century. (Also from www.postroman.info) So it is perhaps possible to overstate the 'differentness' of sub-Roman Britain. As for the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the east, these guys really were 'proper' barbarians, not like the Christianised, semi-Romanised Franks and Goths. They had had no direct contact with the Empire and so presumably had no conception of coinage. Therefore it's not surprising that they only start to produce coins from about 600, the date St Augustine arrived in Kent from Rome with the unenviable task of teaching the English how to behave like civilised chaps. Well that's my two sceata's worth, Tom

To be a scribe or bureaucrat with enough importance to be in the Imperial presence, but not enough ever to be noticed would be my ideal. Think of the conversations you would hear and the insight you would have into the workings of the state! Of course, I'd be making notes and writing my History (for posthumous publication) in the evenings... Where abouts in Isca are you, Aurelianus? Send me a PM.

Towards the end of the Western Empire slavery seems to have given way to a semi-feudal type of land service. From being the personal property of one man, rural slaves became tied to the land which was then apportioned by a great lord to his followers. Did the Christian Church have an official position on slavery which might have encouraged this shift? Was personal slavery seen as a 'pagan' institution? Or was feudalism more a concept imported by the Germanic newcomers? Thanks

"Having spared no pains in relating the course of events up to the beginning of the present epoch I had thought it best to steer clear of more familiar matters, partly to escape the dangers which often attend on truth, and partly to avoid carping criticism of any work by those who feel injured by the omission of insignificant detail, such things, for example, as the emperor's table-talk or the reason for the public punishment of soldiers. Such folk also complain if in a wide-ranging geographical description some small strongholds are not mentioned, or if one does not give the names of all who attended the inauguration of the urban prefect, or passes over a number of similar details which are beneath the dignity of history. The task of history is to deal with prominent events, not to deal with trivial minutiae, which it is as hopeless to investigate as to count the small indivisible bodies we Greeks call atoms which fly through empty space."! Ammianus Marcellinus - Res Gestae, Book 26, 1

OK - my review can be found here: Review of 'Julian: A Historical Novel'

I'm not sure whoever set the question was being very kind! Not only is 'greatness' a very open-ended concept, but, as you have identified, to do the question justice some sort of comparative approach is needed. Have you got a word limit?! My personal inclination would be to concentrate on the salient features of the Roman Empire and it's lasting significance and only refer in passing to other empires. That's assuming it's a Roman History course you're taking rather than an Ancient Civilisation course

Gildas was also of the 'they went earlier' persuasion: "13. At length also, new races of tyrants sprang up, in terrific numbers, and the island, still bearing its Roman name, but casting off her institutes and laws, sent forth among the Gauls that bitter scion of her own planting Maximus, with a great number of followers, and the ensigns of royalty, which he bore without decency and without lawful right, but in a tyrannical manner, and amid the disturbances of the seditious soldiery. ... "14. After this, Britain is left deprived of all her soldiery and armed bands, of her cruel governors, and of the flower of her youth, who went with Maximus, but never again returned; and utterly ignorant as she was of the art of war, groaned in amazement for many years under the cruelty of two foreign nations-the Scots from the north-west, and the Picts from the north." And with me too. But on the same basis, for Constantine III's rebellion to be successful, he must have had enough troops under his command in Britain in 407 to secure his position. Otherwise what could he offer Gaul? If he'd simply been in charge of the IX Mobile Bath Cohort, or similar, it would have been a hopeless springboard for a pretender. As for the survival of Roman life, the limited sources are, well, very limited. Archaeology tells us that coinage and mass-produced pottery ceased in the 430s and good old Gildas provides another book end in the 540s, when, he tells us: "26. ... And yet neither to this day are the cities of our country inhabited as before, but being forsaken and overthrown, still lie desolate; our foreign wars having ceased, but our civil troubles still remaining." But as for how long city life or a villa economy endured between these points, I must confess the more I read the less certain I get! And measuring intangible signs of 'Romaness' such as language, dress and thought seems almost completely impossible to me - it's like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture and with only 2 of the pieces! But I'm happy to be contradicted.

Indeed it does: What's the evidence for Honorius's message not being addressed to the Britons? I've heard that theory before but never seen the reasoning. I tend to feel 500-530 is rather late for the break down of Roman life. The archaeological evidence shows that coinage and decent pottery stopped being used c.430 and that many hill forts were re-occupied in the 5th century, but I'd be interested to hear another view if you'd care to flesh it out, Phil. Tom

No; more a case of one Roman taking the army with him, followed by the Romano-Britons renouncing allegiance to him and seeking to be taken back into the Imperial fold. Rather than throwing off the Roman yoke, the diocese of Britain was very eager to put it back on by all accounts!

Gibbon's Decline and Fall is probably the best piece of historical writing in the English language. The prose is marvelously elegant but readable: "Gordianus, their procunsul, and the object of their choice, refused, with unfeigned reluctance, the dangerous honour, and begged, with tears, that they would suffer him to terminate in peace a long and innocent life, without staining his feeble age with civil blood. Their menaces compelled him to accept the Imperial purple, his only refuge indeed against the jealous cruelty of Maximin; since, according to the reasoning of tyrants, those who have been esteemed worthy of the throne deserve death, and those who deliberate have already rebelled." - Chapter 7 The references to sexual goings-on are subtle (due to the age in which he wrote) but never unclear: "Faustina, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus [Aurelius], has been as much celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix that unbounded passion for variety which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind. The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina..." There follows an educational footnote, "The world has laughed at the credulity of Marcus; but Madam Dacier assures us (and we may credit a lady) that the husband will always be decieved, if the wife condescends to dissemble." - Chapter 4 And Gibbon has a wonderful line in humanist irony when discussing the early Church: "At such a period, when faith could boast so many victories over death, it seems difficult to account for the scepticism of those philosophers who still rejected and derided the doctrine of the resurrection. A noble Grecian had rested on this ground the whole controversy, and promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that, if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had actually been raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion. It is somewhat remarkable that the prelate of the first eastern church thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge." - Chapter 15 I believe I'm correct in saying that Gibbons narrative chronolgy is still considered accurate, although these days less emphasis is put on the decline and 'decadence' of the empire than on the actions of the barbarians in explaining why the empire fell. Scholarly and entertaining. Read it.

In 407 Constantine III was proclaimed Emperor by the British troops (the third in a quick succession of British usurpers) and crossed to Boulogne where he was able to secure the allegiance of the legions of Gaul, in place of Stilicho and Honorius. His forces fought several engagements with the vast hords of Vandals, Alans and Suevi who had just crossed the Rhine in 406/407 (and it's interesting to speculate whether his series of Roman counter-attacks from north-eastern Gaul may have been instrumental in deflecting the Goths southwards towards Spain...?). Constantine's forces were then defeated by legitimist forces led by Flavius Constantius, on behalf of Honorius, in a brief civil war in 410/411. We know from Zosimus (6.5.2) that the British threw off Constantine's rule and appealed to Honrius for help against the Picts, Scots and Saxons in 410 but were urged by the Emperor to, 'fend for themselves'. The result, according to Gildas, was that the British employed Saxon mercenaries to protect them. Perhaps this became widespread after the veteran genaration of old Roman soldiers passed away. Unfortunately, the Saxon mercenaries eventually turned on their employers after being refused an exorbitant pay rise and caused havoc: "All the major towns were laid low by the repeated battering of enemy rams; laid low, too, all the inhabitants - church leaders, priests and people alike, as the swords glinted all around and the flames crackled ... In the middle of the squares the foundation stones of high walls and towers that had been torn from their lofty base, holy altars, fragments of corpses covered with a purple crust of congealed blood looked as though they had been mixed up in some dreadful wine-press." - On the Ruin of Britain, 24.3 and 20.1 It seems likely that these catastrophic events coincided with the final British appeal to be given imperial protection, made to Aetius around 445. Given the large-scale campaigns being fought by Constantine in Gaul against the Gothic tribes and other Romans and the evidence of reliance on mercenaries by the British thereafter, we have to suspect that Constantine took the bulk of the British legions with him to Bolougne in 407 and that they never came back. The soldiers who should have been manning Hadrians Wall and the Saxon shore forts were just ground up in the fighting in Gaul. So not really a peaceful affair, Octavius

No doubt it was also a good way for the traders to feel more secure against the threat of robbers / royal extorsion. On an island you can see the bad boys coming...(!)

Sorry, no great thoughts. But I'm just reading Gore Vidal's 'Julian' now and would be very interested in any comments people may have.

"I happened to be in winter quarters at my beloved Lutetia -- for that is how the Celts call the capital of the Parisians. It is a small island lying in the river; a wall entirely surrounds it, and wooden bridges lead to it on both sides. ... As I was saying then, the winter was more severe than usual, and the river kept bringing down blocks like marble. You know, I suppose, the white stone that comes from Phrygia; the blocks of ice were very like it, of great size, and drifted down one after another; in fact it seemed likely that they would make an unbroken path and bridge the stream. The winter then was more inclement than usual..." From Misopogon by Julian the Apostate/Philosopher c.363 Clearly icebergs no longer float down the River Seine through Paris, even in 'inclement' winters, nowadays! What evidence is there for significant climate change in late antiquity and could this have had an effect on the internal and external troubles that the Empire faced in the 4th Century? Tom

I was going to start a thread questioning how the Romans could abhor human sacrifice for religious purposes, but be happy to watch a gladiator die in the cause of entertainment - but this discussion explains a lot! Less contradictory than I at first thought. If the arena saw relatively few fights to the death (and if many of those that ended in death were due to inadvertently mortal wounds, or were really 'executions') then the Roman attitude to human sacrifice by barbarians (e.g. the British on Anglesey) is more explicable: "The next step was to install a garrison among the conquered population and to demolish the groves consecrated to their savage cults: for they considered it a pious duty to slake the altars with captive blood and to consult their deities by means of human entrails." -- Tacitus (Annals XIV.xxix-xxx) Clearly this sort of thing was beyond the pail for Tacitus. Tom

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead" -- Romans, 1:20 (my emphasis) It seems to me Paul here is using the Platonic idea of a dualism between the intelligible and the perceptual worlds with which he would have been familiar as an educated Roman citizen of Asia Minor. I'm sure there are countless other examples of Hellenistic culture influencing Paul's version of Christianity. Interesting stuff. Tom

Scholarly opinion seems to agree that the Romans really did neglect accurate map making (for whatever reason). See for example: 'Space in the Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation' Had the Romans produced the maps we know thay had the technology to achieve, then medieval copies would presumably have looked far more like the magnificent 'Map of the Tracks of Yu' produced by Sung Dynasty China. Maybe written itineries were considered good enough?? Tom