[Happy Battle of Milvian Bridge Anniversary Day!]

Ave

 

I read in another source that the vision he saw was of the Gallic Apollo near Autun. How much credence can be given to that over the Christian version?

[What's the last book you read?]

I am currently reading "A Hundred Decisive Battles" by Paul K Davis

[Is it possible the Arabs used Greek Fire?]

Ave

The Arab fleet that attacked Constantinople in 674 C.E may not have been that poorly armed after all. Here is a part of the poem written by Theodosius Grammaticus celebrating the Byzantine victory:

 

Where are the twin decked, fire throwing ships, and again, the single decked ships, also swift in the battle step?

 

That single line seems to indicate that the Arabs may have used a form of Greek Fire, which was, after all, invented by a refugee from Baalbek in Lebanon. Any thoughts?

If you already have the article of David Olster Theodosius Grammaticus and the Arab siege of 674-78 from Byzantinoslavica 56 (1), pg 23-28, 1995, you probably know more on this issue than most people here.

 

If that's not the case, that article is a must for you; a copy can be ordered from that link .

 

That sounds priceless. Thanks for that. I'll order a copy as soon as I have a fuller pocket!

[Is it possible the Arabs used Greek Fire?]

But if they used Greek fire at Sea, would not the sea catch fire? (I do not know anything about how Greek fire works so I am probably wrong here).

 

The Byzantines usually used siphons mounted on ships to throw the Greek Fire at their opponents.

[Is it possible the Arabs used Greek Fire?]

Ave

The Arab fleet that attacked Constantinople in 674 C.E may not have been that poorly armed after all. Here is a part of the poem written by Theodosius Grammaticus celebrating the Byzantine victory:

 

Where are the twin decked, fire throwing ships, and again, the single decked ships, also swift in the battle step?

 

That single line seems to indicate that the Arabs may have used a form of Greek Fire, which was, after all, invented by a refugee from Baalbek in Lebanon. Any thoughts?

[Unthinkable]

I could see pushing the Red Army out of Eastern Europe, but attacking and occupying the USSR to the Urals would have been lunatic for a war weary west.

Ursus does have a point. By 1945 the population of Western Europe were heartily sick of war and conflict. How Mr. Churchill would have sustained another long term war effort without popular support eludes me. Not to mention, of course, the support of the other western democracies.

Another factor to bear in mind was that the Red Army of 1945 had truly come of age. It was thoroughly battle hardened and had, through bitter experience, mastered the art of defensive warfare to a superlative degree and had the invaluable leadership of men like Zhukov, Koniev, and Rokossovsky. It's offensive skills were honed to fine degree in the last two years of the war. Any one doubting this has only to look at the destruction of the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre in July 1944 during Operation Bagration, which was a masterpiece in operational and tactical planning. This was a far cry from the army of 1941 whose leadership had been decimated by Stalin's purges, thoroughly unprepared for modern war, demoralised by Russia's initial defeats in Finland, and essentially caught napping by Hitler's treacherous attack.

The Western Allies would have had a hard nut to crack indeed.

[Romans and diet]

Wasn't there a myth that the Roman army was primarily vegetarian? Apparently this was due to a misreading of Plutarch IIRC.

[What's the last book you read?]

"Persian Fire" by Tom Holland and "The Arab Conquests" by Hugh Kennedy. The latter book examines the meteoric rise of Islam in the 7th century.

[Regarding Roman shaving habits]

Would it be reasonable to assume, then, that Africanus may have started a trend? Because the evidence from statues and busts shows a penchant for close shaving in the later Republic.

[Regarding Roman shaving habits]

Ave

It seems that one of the things that irked Cato the Censor about Scipio Africanus was, among his other "Hellenisms", his habit of shaving his jowls very close. I read this in a Michael Grant book. Does that mean beards and stubbles were actually fashionable in the early Republic? Does anyone know? Thanks.

[What's the last book you read?]

I am now reading Michael Grant's "History of Rome".

[What's the last book you read?]

I am now reading "The Chosen People" by John M Allegro.

 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, Professor Allegro was part of the original team that translated the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

Sounds interesting. Please let me know what you thought about it when you finish.

 

I, over the past couple months, have been interested in Judaea from Alexander the Great to the destruction of the Temple, and, a little later, the Bar Kochba revolt. Right now I'm reading From the Maccabees to the Mishnah by Shaye J.D. Cohen, and when I finish that I plan on reading, Heritage and Hellenism: the Reinvention of Jewish Tradition by Erich S. Gruen, a name familiar to some, if not most, on this board.

 

The book is erudite and informative, as are most of his works, and, in spite of the academic background of the author, surprisingly readable. Depending on your point of view, you may or may not appreciate his highly critical stance vis a vis the Maccabeans and their later Zealot descendants.

[What's the last book you read?]

I am now reading "The Chosen People" by John M Allegro.

 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, Professor Allegro was part of the original team that translated the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

They actually imply that Jesus was innocent of political sedition and was executed by Roman soldiery by a Roman governor in a Roman province for violation Jewish religious law - a premise that is patently absurd.

 

Not so. One of the duties of a provincial governor was to uphold law and the native legal system wasn't replaced - the Romans merely added their own laws to the mix. The result was a difficult and sometimes delicate balancing act between needs of the occupying state and those of the culturally diverse natives.

 

Remember that the Romans didn't want revolts. One means of achieving this acceptance of their presence was to accept the native legal system. It was after all important to bring the natives on-side as Roman clients, a fundamental part of their political policies. The Romans did not supplant the native systems, merely persuaded their leaders to join the Roman side. It is simply wrong to assume that provincials were automatically romanised, even if they did enjoy some of the benefits of Roman rule.

 

Not so. As you say, the native legal system wasn't replaced. Therefore Jesus could easily have been just stoned to death for blasphemy. This is exactly what happened with Stephen and James the Just. What made the Jesus case so different?. One would think that the most important people in Jewry had nothing better to do on the eve of the greatest religious festival in Judaism than twiddle their thumbs in expectation of a trial of Jesus by a Roman governor at 3 o'clock in the morning.

And the idea that a Jew hater like Pilate, who never missed an opportunity to commit mass murder in the province, would give in to the demands of an unruly mob is doubly absurd.

These are not my theories. I am following the school of thought of prominent biblical and classical scholars. The only dissenters, AFAIK, are fundamentalist Christian scholars who simply refuse to see the anomaly in the whole story.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

Even I actually find no reason to disagree with the political nature of Jesus' crucifixion (even the Gospels did give a political interpretation) your argument is patently false. Period.

 

If you find no reason to disagree with the political nature of Jesus' crucifixion then you and I are in agreement and therefore my argument IS correct. So now YOU are dancing around the argument and you know it.

 

even the Gospels did give a political interpretation

 

The Gospels certainly do not give a political interpretation. They actually imply that Jesus was innocent of political sedition and was executed by Roman soldiery by a Roman governor in a Roman province for violation Jewish religious law - a premise that is patently absurd. But they give the game away by saying that Pilate affixed a sign on the cross saying Jesus the Nazerene King of the Jews.

 

Then, anything is politics; in this case, the number of the rebels defined it so.

 

Wrong. The fact that they took up arms against the Senate and the People of Rome defined it so.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

The original question here was on the indications for Roman crucifixions; your original statement was that there was no other reason but politics.

 

These Jews were crucified on the accusation of robbery; ergo, robbery was a valid explanation for their crucifixion, at least for the Romans (and Josephus' readers).

 

My original statement was that there is no evidence that crucifixion was used for other than political reasons. Those Jews were crucified as rebels against the empire not as robbers. The "robber" term was used to denigrate them, not to denote the nature of their crime.

 

Spartacus and his men were crucified for being rebel slaves, not political rebels. That's why bona fide political rebels of the time (ie, the men of Catilina) were not crucified.

 

The Caltiline conspirators were all Roman citizens, that is why they were not crucified. Spartacus and his men didn't just defy their private owners, they took up arms and annihilated more than one Roman army sent against them, hence their offence was political. One does not need to have a written political agenda in order for his acts to be considered political.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

For other non-political indications of Roman crucifixion, you can check on Horace and Juvenal.

 

What both Horace and Juvenal (who are both incidentally satirical writers not historians) indicate is that crucifixion was the normal method of putting slaves to death. No one denies that. Roman citizens were normally beheaded, not crucified. Neither writer specify political or non-political reasons for crucifixion.

 

For the crucified apostles , you can check on the Catholic Encyclopedia.

 

Yes. I already have. The Catholic Encyclopedia just mentions letters by Ireneus, Tertullian, and other Church Fathers in which they regurgitate preexisting legends about the supposed martyrdom of the apostles. Nothing concrete there.

Hagiography is hardly a concrete science.

Then why mention it in an intellectual discussion?

 

The Soviets and the Nazis described their enemies as "bandits" because that charge was a valid reason to punish or even execute them

 

No. The Soviets and the Nazis described their enemies as "bandits" to make it clear that they were not executing regular enemy soldiers and hence putting them beyond the pale of protection accorded to enemy combatants by international law. The offence was thus political, just as it was with the Romans.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

Besides, please check on the primary sources; Spartacus and his fellows were crucified for being rebel slaves, not for political reasons.

And how is being a rebel slave a non-political offence?

 

What I was asking you for (and you were obviously unable to find) was any quotation that explicitly states the crucifixions were exclusively done by the Romans for political reasons.

 

The absence of any such quotations does not give us the right to assume, especially with the lack of anecdotal or documentary evidence, that crucifixion was "sometimes" done for non-political reasons.

 

Additionaly, not all the crucifixions mentioned by Josephus were explained for political reasons; non-political crimes (ie, robbing) is also mentioned.

 

The word used by the author is lestai, or lestes, indicating banditry, a term he routinely uses to describe the Jewish rebels. That does not necessarily mean they were robbers. It was a political term used by a historian writing in Vespasian's palace for a Greco-Roman audience (who indeed would have considered the rebels as "bandits"). During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Communist authorities routinely described the Afghan rebels as "bandits". The Nazis used the same expression to describe the French resistance. You are obviously reading something into the text that is not there.

 

For the crucified apostles , you can check on the Catholic Encyclopedia.

 

Yes. I already have. The Catholic Encyclopedia just mentions letters by Ireneus, Tertullian, and other Church Fathers in which they regurgitate preexisting legends about the supposed martyrdom of the apostles. Nothing concrete there.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

You mean in that moment; no less than four apostles (Peter, Andrew, Bartholomew and Philip) were eventually crucified.

 

Just out of curiosity, where does it say that they were were crucified?

Just out of curiosity, should I infer you didn't find any documentary evidence on the Roman indications for crucifixion?

There are plenty. Spartacus being the most famous example. Then all the crucifixions mentioned by Josephus in Jewish Wars. All these executions were of a political nature, either armed rebellion or sedition. I haven't seen any documentary evidence of crucifixion for non-political offences.

So now, let me repeat the question - where is the evidence that Peter, Andrew, Bartholomew and Philip were crucified?

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

I wonder then if the spread of the remaining leaders was more to do with personal danger than religious zeal. The spread of christianity in the early days can't be ignored though. I see that the first ecumenical council was held in Jerusalem in ad50, on the subject of how to treat gentile converts.

 

It depends on what is meant by "Christianity". I seriously doubt the movement crystallized into a separate religion until the advent of Paul of Tarsus. Whatever writings we have available, both biblical and extra biblical, indicate that the early following of Jesus were pious Jews who followed the Mosaic Law, worshiped and sacrificed in the Temple, and were seen as fellow Jews by their own countrymen. That is, until the cataclysmic events of the 60s and the final fall of Masada. The school of thought adhered to by Paul, with its apolitical world view and its disregard for the Law and the Prophets, was the natural survivor of these happenings and finally metamorphosed into a bona fide religion.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

Unless there is documentary evidence to indicate that crucifixion was used to punish any crime it would be wise not to speculate needlessly.

Indeed, if you can show me the documentary evidence that indicates and defines exactly which infactions of the peregrini, the slaves and the barbarians were susceptible of being punished by crucifixion, we may not need to speculate.

All the known cases of crucifixion in Roman history were for sedition and armed rebellion. In the absence of evidence that the Romans crucified people for anything other than that then we have no right to assume that they did.

 

You mean in that moment; no less than four apostles (Peter, Andrew, Bartholomew and Philip) were eventually crucified.

 

Just out of curiosity, where does it say that they were were crucified?

 

But then it wasn't the movement they were after was it? There must have been other religious cults in Judaea at the time. It seems Jesus was a victim of his own behaviour. Now the Bible (naturally) glosses over that, but there are some clues that he wasn't the saintly character he's usually decribed as. That is the problem with the Bible - it's not a history book at all, nor is the NT an objective account of Jesus

That would depend on what is meant by "saintly" Of course in the Palestine of Jesus' time it wouldn't be hard for a religious teacher that preached armed rebellion against the pagan Romans to be considered saintly.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

The odd thing though is that the Romans liked to chop undesirable movements down wholesale. Yet only Jesus was crucified - not his disciples - which means only his death was thought sufficient to deal with the problem.

 

That is an oddity. It might be an index of just how seriously the Romans took Jesus' movement. When the disciples were told to sell their clothes to purchase weapons it turns out there were only two swords between them. The unit and it's commander that were sent to the Garden of Gethsemane to make the arrest are known respectively as Chilliarchos and Speiran, or Tribune and Cohort. If this cohort included auxiliary troops I cannot imagine a body of men exceeding a thousand. So if the story is true then the movement was really considered small potatoes with the authorities.

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

however, almost any crime (especially the violent ones) could have been punished in the same way

 

Unless there is documentary evidence to indicate that crucifixion was used to punish any crime it would be wise not to speculate needlessly.

Elaborating further on this theme, it isn't hard to understand why Christians as a group were so reviled and persecuted. The monstrous exaggerations of Imperial Roman propaganda notwithstanding, people back then understood something that today's moderns don't seem to realise, viz. that worshiping a crucified person was tantamount to deifying a person who must have been executed for sedition or armed rebellion against Rome. How, for example, would modern day Americans react to the presence of a sect that worshiped images of Timothy McVeigh strapped to his execution bed?

[Crucifixion and Roman punishment]

Crucifixation was a common form of punishment for Roman miscreants.

Crucifixion was a common form of punishment for a special type of offence, viz. political subversion, whether armed or otherwise. The idea that the Romans would have taken the trouble to crucify a solitary prophet extolling love and turning the other cheek is simply absurd, and neither is there any documentary evidence that "common thieves" would have undergone the same type of punishment.

[Norse influence on English]

Yes, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles definitely need to be taken with a large block of salt. I think few people realise what a close run thing Hastings was. The stalwartness of English troops in defensive combat was glaringly apparent in the battle and would continue to be so for centuries after that - all the way up to Arnhem in 1944!