Maty

I found this online and read the chapter in question, but there was nothing there describing an overland trading route from China. Any Chinese silk would have come via India and the maritime. Has anyone read the Warwick Ball article I posted on page 1 of this topic yet..? You guys believe that the Silk Road was real, but what is the evidence? I've been following this fascinating discussion with great interest. May I insert an oar here? You ask 'What is the evidence?' but as the one making the assumption (that silk did not travel overland)it is you who must supply the evidence. A priori, we can argue that the land route was the more practical, therefore if we are to believe it was nevertheless shipped by sea, you must tell us why. Let us examine the practicalities of the matter. The Chinese empire is a big place with coast and lots of harbours. But silk was mostly produced in the Chang'an district,which is deep in the western interior, near Tibet. And the easiest route from the district was not east to the coast, but west up the valley of the Wei river. From there, imperial protection was available to caravans as far as the headwaters of the Ganges. The sea route involves shipping to the coast, around the Malay peninsula and across the Bay of Bengal. This was practical for pepper and spice which started in the south China Sea but is a very roundabout route for silk. Once in North India our hypothetical merchant can either go south or west. Both journeys had hazards, but if India was in a political mess and the steppe stable (as when under the Alan hegemony) west was both cheaper in terms of tolls and quicker as one did not have to wait for the western monsoon windstopropel a merchantman. A cargo would have to go to southern India as the Periplus 46 makes clear, the crossing to Barygaza is too dangerous. With no accessible sea crossing to northern India a Roman merchant has to sail to south India and work up the coast. Alternatively once over the steppe, the Merv-Ectabana-Ctesiphon route is not only well attested, but parts of the road still exist. And the Chinese knew of the Parthians whom they called Li-jien (HHS 88) In other words we can get silk to Ctesiphon a heck of a lot more easily than we can get it to Alexandria. Finally, the 'surplus market' theory is flawed economics as it applies only to mass market goods. Precious items such as gold or silk keep their value from market to market because each local market has only a small pool of buyers. (Change the sponges to thimbles) The silk is as good as money, and is either sold locally or traded on at the same price, or even at a premium if the demand to the west is higher than locals can afford. If anything a merchant would sell locally at a discount because for him personally the effort of moving the goods west was not worth the extra profit. Anyway - that's my 2 denarius' worth.

There was a Roman general who decided to fight a battle by night because he did not like the (red) colour of the sun, but the Romans seem pretty sure that the moon was what it is - a spherical rock orbiting the earth and reflecting the light of the sun. so they don't seem to have even imagined it changing colour the way we do today. Pliny the elder explains the phases of the moon - no moon when the moon is between us and the sun, full moon when we are between the sun and the moon, and the moon reflects sunlight 'just as sunbeams reflect off water'. When we abandon the rational Pliny and look at the prodigies of Livy we get double moons (a check on the NASA website revealed that this is a rare optical effect!) and falling moons (slow-moving meteriods called bolides, probably) but the darn thing stays obstinately the same colour. And because it represents Artemis, a maiden goddess, that colour is pure white. Like you I'll be interested to see if anyone can find an exception to this rule.

"Caesar found out that his wife was having an affair." Caesar didn't find out that his wife was having an affair, because she probably wasn't. However, Caesar was then Pontifex Maximus and moving up in the world, and he wanted a wife who would reflect this and give him some political clout. So he used rumours that Clodius had infiltrated the (women only) Bona Dea festival to visit his wife as an excuse to divorce her and marry up. He famously claimed that though the rumours about her were untrue 'Caesar's wife should be above suspicion.' Pretty rich really, considering Caesar's own record with everyone from Nicomedes of Bithynia to Servilia, but apart from being sexist (in modern eyes) Roman men certainly had no trouble with double standards.

One olive pit does not make a trade route. Before the brand was available here, I recall an Australian friend who used to prevail on friends to bring cans of Fosters halfway around the world when they visited. The current story (it may have been updated) talks about 'first century BC' a time when individual Romans (and certainly one Caesar, Caius J.) visited the island. I can well imagine a Roman diplomat or Greek trader taking an amphora containing a little taste of home with him while visiting Silchester. Especially if hostelries on the south coast had their modern levels of cuisine ...

Minerva was not a triple goddess, but she was one of the Capitoline triad. As ever, Smith is a great source here. Wish someone this century was able to update his epic work. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ACL3129.0002.001/1100?rgn=full+text;view=image;q1=minerva

This is the obvious place to insert that old chestnut of Juvenal's It is that the city is become Greek, Quirites, that I cannot tolerate; and yet how small the proportion even of the dregs of Greece! Syrian Orontes has long since flowed into the Tiber, and brought with it its language, morals, and the crooked harps with the flute-player, and its national tambourines, and girls made to stand for hire at the Circus. Go thither, you who fancy a barbarian harlot with embroidered turban. That rustic of yours, Quirinus, takes his Greek supper-cloak, and wears Greek prizes on his neck besmeared with Ceroma. One forsaking steep Sicyon, another Amydon, a third from Andros, another from Samos, another again from Tralles, or Alabanda, swarm to Esquiliae, and the hill called from its osiers, [Viminal] destined to be the very vitals, and future lords of great houses. These have a quick wit, desperate impudence, a ready speech, more rapidly fluent even than Isaeus. Yup, immigrants ruined Rome. Look at what a mess the place was just four hundred years later. Among the immigrants who ruined Roman culture Cato the elder (Tusculum) Catullus (Verona) Cicero (Arpinum) Horace (Venusia) Martial (Hispania) Plautus (Umbria) Pliny the elder (Como) Virgil (Mantua) Someone should have tarred and feathered the lot of them, and ridden 'em out of town on a rail. yee-haw!

Um ... let's start by pointing out that the USA of 2012 is not the Roman empire of 407. Therefore making any comparison has to start by explaining why such very significant differences between the two items being compared do not affect the comparison. Then let's point out that the 'history' given here is a somewhat misleading summary, but even by this account, the Visigoths were actually legal immigrants. As stated, they petitioned for permission to enter and it was granted. So if we are to make any comparison with the USA it has to start with legal migrants. Also note that the problems with the Visigoths came about because of the blatant corruption of government officials. So the lesson here could just as easily be that immigrants should be properly and fairly treated. I'm not saying that the USA does not need to have a serious debate about immigration. However, a facile gloss of later Roman history is not the way to go about it.

'Judea was happenchance.' I would rate it as slightly higher than that. Judea and the Jews were firmly in the public mind because of the rebellion, and there was also a substantial population of Jews in Rome. So it was known that they had a very different and (to the Romans) esoteric set of religious beliefs. The problem with producing standard Roman oracles is that Romans knew a lot about them and how they worked. As mentioned these oracles were produced with 20/20 hindsight (as if Nero would have given five legions to a man whom Roman oracles unambiguously named a future emperor). So the problem with saying that a Roman oracle produced these predictions is the very high chance of someone saying 'actually I was there then and this didn't happen.' On the other hand, remote oracles using a tradition that was well-known but not well understood gave the Flavians a much freer hand. Especially as they had Josephus and Titus' Jewish girlfriend to make sure they got the details right.

The Brigantines did not really submit to Claudius in AD 43. For the first few decades of the conquest, the Romans had their hands full south of Brigantia, with everything from Iceni in the east to Silures in the West. So they only got around to Brigantia in AD 70 when they had the huge army handy which had been used to defeat the rebellion of Civilis and the Batavi over the channel. The marital ructions of Cartimandua provided the necessary excuse/motivation. Since the Romans adapted names they couldn't pronounce, the name of Vellocatus is more probably Romanized than Roman (what would a Roman be doing as shield bearer to a barbarian chief?). Also the 'V' to 'B' pronunciation shift you mention is generally attributed to the third century AD, so a bit late for this gent's monicker. As to why Venutius was relatively passive before AD 69 (the Romans did have to intervene earlier when he and Cartimandua had their first marital bust-up), my guess is he simply lacked the political support. The Romans were happy with Brigantia as a client kingdom, and the Brigantines were not going to take on Rome unless they had to. If Venutius had the chops to get involved, his best shot would have been during the rebellion of Boudicca in AD 60, when all that stood between him and Roman Britain were the remnants of the Ninth Legion at Peterborough. And if Venutius had gotten involved then, the fate of Boudicca herself suggests what would have happened next. Venutius was wise not to take the risk, even if Cartimandua could have been persuaded.

This recalls a series I was once meant to do for a certain publishing house. It was to be called 'Rome Reflected' and would take key moments of Roman history and show them as they were later depicted in great works of art. I would do the ancient history bit explaining the history, and an art critic would tell viewers how to look at the painting itself. In the end the idea fell through - the art critic backed out, and the publisher decided that the cost of printing full colour paintings would be prohibitive. It might work as an e-book though. I'll have to re-approach the idea when my work calendar clears a bit. Here's one of the pages we produced for the mock-up. marius.pdf

Speaking for myself, I always loved wiping the Julii off the face of the earth. Hope they will add something like the Barbarian invasion expansion pack. Once I had my combo of woolly little cataphracts and armoured archers assembled, the hordes were toast, with the western empire soon to follow.

Greece v. Persia sounds right to me. We even have a 'Thucydides trap'. Apparently the term was used by one Graham Allison of Harvard University to describe when a superpower has to deal with 'the fast rise of a rich, brash competitor'. Once we have the spelling right, Google becomes our friend

"In Rome's case this would probably have been when it started to butt up against the Etruscans and other established city-states around it in the 5th/6th centuries BC." I'd reckon that Rome was an annoyance to the Etruscans from the get-go. After all, they plonked their town across the via Salaria at the head of navigation of the Tiber. So it was more Latins butting up against the Etruscans in the seventh century. with the Duecedes conflict, my guess would be this was a misheard reference to the 'Thucydides conflict' (not du-sid-a-dees but Thu-cid-a-dees)- ie the Peloppenesian war. Duecedes is neither a Latin nor a Greek name, nor, so far as I can determine, that of any historian since.

It's not that many people don't have family trees going back to ancient Rome, it's that we trace these trees in a particular way - from father to son. Actually the further back one goes, the family tree expands exponentially so its a rare westerner who doesn't have a Roman somewhere in the mix. However to trace that descent requires, in essence, that fathers produce sons every generation for 1500 years, something that is rather unlikely. Secondly, until recently aristocratic families faced severe competition from their peers (even the family line of our own dear queen has several violent sideways jumps) which, together with wars, plague etc made it hard for a line to keep going. Everyone else lacked the means to keep records. Or the interest. How many of us today know the names of even one of our eight great-great grandfathers?

Yup, that's my present for [whenever] sorted out. Good review, though someone should point out to the journalist that the only legionnaires before the walls of Carthage were in the French foreign one several centuries later. So we can't rely on this gent for an assessment of historical accuracy. ('Don't mess with the ninth' would only be accurate if their mess hall was atrocious. Why not choose one of the real kick-ass legions like XIIII GMV?) Won't stop me conquering the world with urban cohorts (or perhaps vigiles?), and playing Roman roulette with flaming catapults. Portate! (Bring it on!)

A yellow dress did not mean a Roman prostitute any more than a red dress means one today. In fact a Roman bride wore a long veil of bright yellow on her wedding day. The common yellow dye came from a plant called Weld, and was popular with both men and women, since despite the idea of Romans wandering around draped in bedsheet-white togas, a tunic - preferably brightly coloured - was everyday wear for most men. Roman erotic wall paintings, some of which are believed to depict prostitutes, show clothes of various colours. The ancient sources tell us where prostitutes worked, what they wore, how they were licensed and when they were allowed to operate (after the ninth hour). I've never heard of a statuatory colour for their clothing. (Incidentally, the name comes from the small rooms where the women worked - stabula - from whence we also get the word 'stable'. A woman looking for trade would stand in front of the room, as a prostabula. The cheaper ones worked under archways - fornices - and their semi-public couplings were 'fornication'.)

There's another issue, which is a speciality of the internet. Let's say the US does agree to go back to the original copyright law (and as an author I'd be quite happy with relinquishing my rights after 28 years). What happens in countries with more restrictive laws but free internet access to the USA? The only solution would be another step in the direction we are already headed - the balkanization of the internet, where access to material is determined by geo-political boundaries. It would be sad if a project designed to provide access to books everywhere instead limited access to websites everywhere.

The nearest I can think of is Sertorius offering to allow Mithridates control of some areas in Asia Minor that had previously been in the Roman sphere of influence - though he drew the line at offering an actual province. Mithridates had wanted the former Pergamene kingdom that the Romans called Asia as the price for money and support for Sertorius in Spain. This proved a deal breaker, and Sertorius was killed before negotiations could resume. Note that Sertorius was a rebel against Rome at this point, and the deal did not go through, but that's still as close as I can find.

Here's one I set a class recently 'Was the assassination of Julius Caesar justified?' and another 'What were the four most crucial turning points in the development of Rome as a city?'

Then there was a guy called Cornutus in the early 80s BC. When Marius was chopping the heads off everyone he disliked, Cornutus made the hit list. His slaves picked up a random corpse (plenty to choose, Marius did not like a lot of people at this point), pretended it was their master and cremated it. They then smuggled Cornutus out of the house in a blanket and got him to safety in Gaul. given that they would have been freed by Marius if they had turned him in, this suggests that at least some slaves did not think that had it too bad.

Take a look at this link - http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=399749&partid=1 It's generally supposed to be a toy gladiator. Other examples have also been found.

If the army chose not to use drums, it was not because they did not know of them. There are several references to drums in the ancient world (the Germans were rather keen on them and the priests of Cymbele used a tambourine type drum.) I also remembered and looked up a quote about Leucippus which is totally wrong about the shape of the world (drum-shaped) but the rest of his cosmology is spot on. 'The worlds are formed when atoms fall into the void and are entangled with one another ; and from their motion as they increase in bulk arises the substance of the stars. The sun revolves in a larger circle round the moon. The earth rides steadily, being whirled about the centre ; its shape is like that of a drum. ' (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers Leucippus 6.30) Pausanias somewhere mentions that the Romans like to march to battle with trumpets, but the Spartans preferred flutes and harps. So wind and strings, but no percussion.

Might I suggest that the main criticism being directed at the Romans here seems to be that they lacked the mindset of 21st century westerners? It is a sort of back-handed compliment to Rome that no-one criticizes contemporary Germans, Africans or Persians for not having the get-up-and-go to invent windmills, steam engines or emancipated voters. Is it that the Romans were close enough to us to be considered 'civilized' so they ought to have done it properly? The fact is that human innovation does not come as a steady incremental process, but in waves. After each wave things slow down again. The waves come more much more frequently in the modern era, but after the Greek intellectual revolution a quiet period should be expected to follow. That's why the Egyptians in the two thousand years before Caesar did not progress steadily from pyramids and irrigation systems to nuclear physics. I'd argue that the fourth century Roman discovery of deep-ploughing techniques - e.g. wheeled mouldboards, heavy ploughs - allowed for the first time proper grain cultivation in the heavy clays of north-western Europe. This planted the seeds (ahem) for power in Europe to move north-west over the following centuries. That one development alone over 400 years counts as significant progress for any period of human history other than the post-renaissance era.