Gaius Paulinus Maximus
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Posts posted by Gaius Paulinus Maximus
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A goth pict queen. Nice!
Isn't she the latest Bond girl?
I'm a big fan of Dominic West though, I think he's really good in "The Wire"
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Welcome to UNRV Medusa,
I'm sure you'll enjoy it around here. Good luck with Ludus Nemesis, it looks like good fun.
GPM
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Sounds a bit like the re-working of Eagle of the Ninth, wasn't that supposed to be made into a film a while back? I also heard that the director behind Dog Soldiers would have been the one behind the Eagle of the Ninth film. I suppose he might have scrapped that one film and done this instead?
It appears that there may be a seperate film being made that follows Rosemary Suttcliff's story a bit more closely than Centurion does.
http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?showto...amp;#entry93533
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It seems that some of the experts working on the map have come to the conclusion that rather than serving as an actual map of Rome it was actually just an elaborate decorative showpiece. They argue that in fact there was probably two Forma Urbis Romae, that the other one was an actual cadastral record of Rome which was written on papyrus and stored in the records house and was easily accessible and regularly updated and the one made of marble's sole purpose was to decorate the room that stored the cadastral records of the city.
Pretty amazing really, the lengths the Romans would go to just to decorate a wall.
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Until I'd looked through Klingan excellent pictures from Rome I was completely unaware of the existence of the Forma Urbis Romae otherwise known as the Severan marble plan of Rome. This fascinating piece of Roman history is a crucial resource for studying the ancient city of Rome. Enormous in size (18.10 x 13 meters ca. 60 x 43 feet) and astonishingly detailed, it contains irreplaceable information about the city in the early 3rd c. CE--its famous monuments and its lesser-known neighborhoods, its major streets and its back alleys, its commercial infrastructure and its religious life. The Plan also tells us about ancient Roman ideas of the city, ideologies of representation, and mapping and surveying. The more we know about the Marble Plan, the more we know about imperial Rome.
Unfortunately, only 10-15% of the Plan survives--and in 1,186 pieces. Starting in the 4th c. CE, this map suffered the same fate as many other public monuments in the city of Rome. Many of the slabs onto which it was carved were simply stripped from the wall of the Templum Pacis on which it was mounted and used in the construction of new buildings, or burnt in kilns to make lime. Even after the Plan's rediscovery in the 16th c. CE, pieces of it were used as construction material and lost.
Meanwhile, the surviving fragments are difficult to work with--many are large and very heavy; others are so small that their carved surfaces don't provide much identifiable information; finally, 1,186 is simply a very large number of pieces of marble to spread out and work with. All this means that the work of identifying and interpreting pieces of the Plan has been painstaking and slow, and has focused on the most identifiable public monuments rather than on the urban fabric as a whole. It also means that this immensely important monument is little known outside the community of specialists who work on Roman topography.
Take a LOOK at the best jigsaw I've ever seen.
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After a bit of thought and reading up, I'd have to plump for the Batavians for the simple reason that they fought successfully alongside the Romans for many years and even provided a contingent for the emperors Horse Guard. There has also been numerous alters and tombstones found along Hadrian's wall.
"They furnished nothing to the Empire but men and arms" Tacitus.
Tacitus described the Batavians as the bravest of the tribes of the area, hardened in the Germanic wars, with cohorts under their own commanders transferred to Britannia. They retained the honour of the ancient association with the Romans, not required to pay tribute or taxes and used by the Romans only for war. Well-regarded for their skills in horsemanship and swimming, for men and horses could cross the Rhine without losing formation, according to Tacitus. Dio Cassius describes this surprise tactic employed by Aulus Plautius against the "barbarians"-the British Celts- at the battle of the River Medway in 43AD
The barbarians thought that Romans would not be able to cross it without a bridge, and consequently bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank; but he sent across a detachment of Germanic tribesmen, who were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the most turbulent streams. [...] Thence the Britons retired to the river Thames at a point near where it empties into the ocean and at flood-tide forms a lake. This they easily crossed because they knew where the firm ground and the easy passages in this region were to be found; but the Romans in attempting to follow them were not so successful. However, the Germans swam across again and some others got over by a bridge a little way up-stream, after which they assailed the barbarians from several sides at once and cut down many of them. (Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 60:20)
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If the emperor Caius (aka Caligula) died in 41 and not in 84 AD, it was mostly due to suboptimal security; both his predecessors and most of his successors survived to countless conspiracies.
I think this just goes to show how much Gaius was truly hated at the end, that even his closest advisors and guard would play a helping hand in ending the young emperors life at 28 years of age.
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I'm Ok, no worries
The pictures from Etruria can only e found at the blog for the time being. I will try to upload them here tomorrow if I get the time, it's quite many.
The pictures just keep getting better Klingan, nice work mate
I especially like the picture of the Mithraeum, even in your picture it still has an air of mystery about it, but to have experienced it when it was still an underground temple would surely have been exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.
P.S. glad your still in one piece after this weeks terrible disaster.
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The Roman archaeological heritage of the south east comes under the spotlight in a talk in Chichester on Friday April 17 2009 at Westgate Leisure, Chichester.
John Smith, curator of Bignor Roman Villa, will highlight the similarities and differences between two of Britain's most well-known Roman Villas and one whose history has been lost in the mists of time.
Organised by Chichester District Museum, the talk will focus on Bignor, Rockbourne and the mysterious Minchington Villas, each of which has a fascinating if somewhat mysterious tale to tell.
http://www.culture24.org.uk/history/archae...eology/art67495
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If you have something to say about Sir Al, say it !
Would love to but it might get me kicked off the board for foul and abusive language!!!!!
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I can see both sides to the argument. The documentaries and 3D virtual tours we can get on TV and on the Internet these days are brilliant. You can see sites that you might never actually get the chance to visit as well as being educated on the history of it all in the comfort of your armchair with chips n dips and a beer by your side. But for me there's nothing better than seeing these sites with your own eyes, wandering around at your own leisure seeing everything first hand and thinking "maybe Julius Caesar or the emperor Hadrian stood in this exact spot???" OK you might not get the spectacular aerial shot (unless you hire an helicopter!! But I think this can be a bit pricey!) or the 3D image of what it looked like in it's full glory. But who care's? Your there, it's real, you can touch it!
This can not be beaten!
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Very nice article Aurelia.
Bravo!!!
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I've seen better!!
Where ?
Anywhere thats not at Old Trafford!!!
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I've seen better!!
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Belisarius: The Last Great General of the Roman Empire by Lord Mahon
I'm not sure why you included this: because it was the only one available in English?
It's very dated and merely retells the story as related by Procopius. There was no attempt at a detailed analysis and because of this Mahon simply repeated all of Procopius' mistakes, such as the conflation of two of Belisarius' early battles into one. Recommended for the traditional, starry-eyed view of Belisarius, not as an attempt to tell his story in full.
If only there was a more up to date book out there, telling the true story of Belisarius..............
Oh hold on a sec.......
Ahhh now I remember!!!Don't worry sonic I'm already on it!!
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Great find Neil,
I've been aware of this guy for a while, he's got a pretty good site showing off some of his other work.
It's called Ancientvine.Com
Also take a look at
guy's work, it's also very good. -
I know there's a few members on this site who are the proud owners (me included) of the excellent book on Hadrian's Wall by Breeze and Dobson which is now over 30yrs old. HERE'S an interview with one of the authors, David Breeze, who take a fresh look at the emperor
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As I have very few visitors in the album (and as it is very tiresome to upload the pics at two places) you'll find them at my blog today , http://ancientandold.blogspot.com/.
Klingan
The pictures so far have been fantastic, they look even better on your blog page, nice work
If you do find the time though, please do continue to post them in the UNRV gallery as well, your pics have been a great addition so far.
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Interesting link, thanks. But either something's escaped me or I'm just plain intellectually challenged. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. So does this answer my original question, did the Romans permit Judean farmers and Briton tribesmen to pay taxes in kind or were they forced to render coin? Mommsen mentions that payment in kind was made. I have found no other direct statement to this effect.
I'm not sure whether this was the case during the time of Vespasian but during the reign of Diocletian and his reforms it appears that since money had become almost worthless, the new system he had come up with was based on collecting taxes in the form of actual goods and services, but regularized into a budget so that the state knew exactly what it needed and taxpayers knew exactly how much they had to pay.
It was a very clever and a very fair way of collecting the taxes that empire needed but without impoverishing the less wealthy along the way. So in theory instead of saying we want 'X' amount from every landholder regardless of the size of the property, they took a massive census of every landowner and then worked out the size of the payment accordingly.
"Fields were measured out clod by clod, vines and trees were counted, every kind of animal was registered, and note taken of every member of the population." Lactantius.
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Actually I thought Simon Woods who played the older Octavius in series 2 was a much better than Pirkis. He was a lot more cold and calculating than the wet lettuce character played by Pirkis.
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Funnily enough I've just recently read "The Silver Branch" which was the follow up to the "Eagle of the Ninth".
I'd forgotten how good these books were. Hopefully the film will do the books justice.
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A big hello to tk421 and S.P.Q.R.
Don't worry if you think you may be out of your depth in some threads, you are not on your own that's for sure, I can certainly vouch for that! If you think you've something to add to the conversation whether you think it correct or not, just go ahead and post it, if it's not quite accurate then I'm sure somebody will very kindly correct you and point you in the right direction!
Welcome and enjoy!!
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I must have missed this review first time around.
I'm a big fan of Goldsworthy work and also a big fan of Maty's so to have the two combined in one review is a big plus for the book review section.
A great review, very well written as we would expect. I look forward to reading Goldsworthy's take on Rome's downfall.
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As a result of such abuses, tax farming was replaced by direct taxation early in the Empire. The provinces now paid a wealth tax of about 1 percent and a flat poll or head tax on each adult. This obviously required regular censuses in order to count the taxable population and assess taxable property. It also led to a major shift in the basis of taxation. Under the tax farmers, taxation was largely based on current income. Consequently, the yield varied according to economic and climactic conditions. Since tax farmers had only a limited time to collect the revenue to which they were entitled, they obviously had to concentrate on collecting such revenue where it was most easily available. Because assets such as land were difficult to convert into cash, this meant that income necessarily was the basic base of taxation. And since tax farmers were essentially bidding against a community's income potential, this meant that a large portion of any increase in income accrued to the tax farmers.
HERE'S an interesting article from the Cato Journal which covers among other things taxation.
Forma Urbis Romae
in Archaeological News: Rome
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I maybe wrong but I think it's located in Museum of Roman Civilization (Museo della Civilt Romana), located in the Roman suburb of EUR (Exposizione Universale di Roma). Which I believe is quite a long way from the city centre.