ASCLEPIADES
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Posts posted by ASCLEPIADES
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I have read the Caligula appointed his horse to senator and build a palace to him, therafter he was probaly mad. Because his bad reigm the preatorians killed him and appointed his uncle who was hiding behind the curtain in the same room.
Actually choosing his horse for consul (If this even ever did happen, I guess my theory would nothing but be silly if it's only a myth) is not even closely as mad as it may seem - It's merely a way to point out how worthless the consular position was by this time compared to the power of the princeps.
On the question of literature, I actually thing you would find your best evidence in Suetonius working your way back from what seems to be reasonable and what seems to be rumours. The topic sounds very interesting by the way!
A Urban Myth indeed.
Our main gossipy source, C. Suetonius T. goes no farther than suggesting that "it was said" Caius (aka Caligula) even planned to award Incitatus a consulship in the cp LV of his biography, from almost a century later.
Writing after an additional century, L. Cassius Dio told us more or less the same on his Romanika Historia (Liber LXIX, cp XIV); both authors presumably quoted from a common source (maybe Cluvius Rufus).
And of course, Incitatus never appeared on any consular fasti.
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Congratulations, Russell!
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Gratiam habeo for the crack, AC.
There are many authors who say this and that about the Wall and give reasons for this and that but do not back up their theories with fact or anything substantial.The same can be said regarding the Fall of Rome.
However, with all that said I will leave that there and any questions you may have I will do my best to answer. So feel free to fire away.....Is there any measure and/or estimation on the economic impact of the building and maintenance of the Hadrian's Wall and related defensive lines? (ie, the Antonine Wall, the Stanegate, the Gask Ridge and so on)
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Salve, Amici.
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It makes no difference. Domitian ordered him to stop and return to Rome, then offered him a triumph. What Domitian wanted to know was whether Agricola was going to be a populist threat to his rule. If there had been another border, another threat, it might have been different. But once Scotland had been conquered the war was over, and Agricola would have returned to public aclaim for completing the conquest of that mysteious island on the edge of the empire.
That explains the political view, and it explains it vis-a-vis Agricola and the first Roman advance into Scotland. It does not explain why Antoninus and Severus also left the conquest incomplete, and I believe that the economical view is correct in both these instances. The answer as to why Northern Scotland remained outside the Empire is broadly the same as that of the Arabian peninsula, or the Saharan interior of North Africa.
Bordering populated areas as Germania or Sarmatia would make a better analogy, as they always had at least the attractive of capturing valuable slaves, which desertic areas certainly had not.
Short answer is that you can't mantain conquering campaigns for ever; eventually, you would always require to fight in another front. Eg, the Flavians had to come back to deal with the Dacians, the Antonines with the Bar Kochba rebellion and the Germans, the Severans with the Persians and so on.
It's almost sure that either the whole conquest of Britain (and even Hibernia) or its evacuation would have been more efficient solutions than the expensive centuries-long permanent military border in Britannia; it seems that the Roman Emperors simply ignored such obvious strategic considerations and that their prestige was much more important in defining their "border policy".
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Salve, Amici
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No need for that.
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Gratiam habeo for your quiz, Carolyn.
It is really a nice piece of didactic work.
Merry Mithras!
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While I agree that L. Iunius Brutus was probably legendized, I continue to share M
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Salve, M
Another interesting thing about Brutus is that he was a plebeian, whereas his alleged ancestor Lucius Brutus was very much a patrician. Odd that he should have 'inherited' the name without the status.This issue has been extensively discussed on a previous thread. My own conclusion after all that: Lucius Brutus was a too mythological (ie, fictitious) figure to reach any useful conclusion regarding the patrician-plebeian social system.
In any case, the indisputedly plebeian Marcus Brutus was indeed widely accepted as Lucius Brutus descendent, MT Cicero included. And as far as I know, patrician status inheritance was not optional (just ask Clodius).
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Christianity came to Roman Britain long before the western empire fell, but when AD 410 finally did come, do you believe that Christianity continued and was passed from parents to children thereafter,
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This Cornelia Married P. Sestius and their son named L. or P Cornelius Scipio Salvitto.
Salvitto is an enigma .
Specially because, if he was the son of Sestius, why was his name Cornelius Scipio?
Here comes Caius Suetonius Tranquillus, Vita Divus Iulius, cp. LIX, sec. II:
Ad eludendas autem vaticinationes, quibus felix et invictum in ea provincia fataliter Scipionum nomen ferebatur, despectissimum quendam ex Corneliorum genere, cui ad opprobrium vitae Salvitoni cognomen erat, in castris secum habuit.
"Furthermore, to make the prophecies ridiculous which declared that the stock of the Scipios was fated to be fortunate and invincible in that province, he kept with him in camp a contemptible fellow belonging to the Cornelian family, to whom the nickname Salvito had been given as a reproach for his manner of life".
And here comes Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Caesar, cp. LII, sec. IV-V:
"On learning that the enemy were emboldened by an ancient oracle to the effect that it was always the prerogative of the family of the Scipios to conquer in Africa, he either flouted in pleasantry the Scipio who commanded the enemy, or else tried in good earnest to appropriate to himself the omen, it is hard to say which. He had under him, namely, a man who otherwise was a contemptible nobody, but belonged to the family of the Africani, and was called Scipio Sallustio. This man Caesar put in the forefront of his battles as if commander of the army, being compelled to attack the enemy frequently and to force the fighting".
And here comes Cassius Dio, Historia, Liber XLII, cp. LVIII, sec. I:
"When Caesar learned of this and saw that his own soldiers also were persuaded that it was so and were consequently afraid, he added to his retinue a man of the family of the Scipios who bore that name (he was otherwise known as Salutio)".
The orthography of his agnomen varies considerably among the diverse translations of these sources.
Nice .
Plinius, Historia Naturalis
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This Cornelia Married P. Sestius and their son named L. or P Cornelius Scipio Salvitto.
Salvitto is an enigma .
Specially because, if he was the son of Sestius, why was his name Cornelius Scipio?
Here comes Caius Suetonius Tranquillus, Vita Divus Iulius, cp. LIX, sec. II:
Ad eludendas autem vaticinationes, quibus felix et invictum in ea provincia fataliter Scipionum nomen ferebatur, despectissimum quendam ex Corneliorum genere, cui ad opprobrium vitae Salvitoni cognomen erat, in castris secum habuit.
"Furthermore, to make the prophecies ridiculous which declared that the stock of the Scipios was fated to be fortunate and invincible in that province, he kept with him in camp a contemptible fellow belonging to the Cornelian family, to whom the nickname Salvito had been given as a reproach for his manner of life".
And here comes Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Caesar, cp. LII, sec. IV-V:
"On learning that the enemy were emboldened by an ancient oracle to the effect that it was always the prerogative of the family of the Scipios to conquer in Africa, he either flouted in pleasantry the Scipio who commanded the enemy, or else tried in good earnest to appropriate to himself the omen, it is hard to say which. He had under him, namely, a man who otherwise was a contemptible nobody, but belonged to the family of the Africani, and was called Scipio Sallustio. This man Caesar put in the forefront of his battles as if commander of the army, being compelled to attack the enemy frequently and to force the fighting".
And here comes Cassius Dio, Historia, Liber XLII, cp. LVIII, sec. I:
"When Caesar learned of this and saw that his own soldiers also were persuaded that it was so and were consequently afraid, he added to his retinue a man of the family of the Scipios who bore that name (he was otherwise known as Salutio)".
The orthography of his agnomen varies considerably among the diverse translations of these sources.
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Salve, Amici
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Salve, AC
We had recently a thread on the potential relationship of the waste of valuable reources (eg Hadrian's Wall Inner Moat or Vallum) with the eventual demise of the Roman Empire.
The Vallum....20 feet wide and flat bottomed would have been built at the sae time or just after the Wall. Why? It would inhibit movement of the troops if it were built earlier.
20 feet wide and 10 feet deep with two mounds, one either side at 20 feet wide themselves and set back from the ditch by 30 feet. All this gave a 120 feet wide area which could not be crossed unwittingly or unobserved!!!
I understand the Vallun was filled just like a decade after having been built...
Any explanation for that issue?
Wasn't it a huge waste of resources?
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What would have happened to Christianity had Constantine not become Christian and that probably would never have happened were it not for his mother. Christians were a small(ish) sect. You hear of 10% of the empire when it was adopted but that's pure speculation. Archeology doesn't back that up at all. There's a lot of logic along the lines of "it dominated by the end of the fourth century, therefore it was around 10% at its beginning" or "Constantine used the Christians as a 'fifth column' (which isn't true) which means that they were sizable" or "why would Diocletian try to wipe them if they were less than that number (perhaps large in his area?)".
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alve, Amici
currently reading Niccolo Capponi's book called 'victory of the west' in regards to the battle of lepanto, about a 1/3 of the way in and so far so good, he gives alot of info on the build up to the battle which is good in the case it sets the scene, but the details of the battle, just have to wait and seeDoes anybody know if there's a Turkish account on that battle?
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Although this is going a bit off-topic, I nevertheless feel a need to clarify something here.Presumably the main current hard legal consequence of being defined as a Jew is the Israel's Law of Return from 1950, which grants automatic citizenship and benefits to any Jewish immigrant.
- by birth; any child born to a Jewish mother (regardeless of their current religious status);
Israel's Law of Return does not automatically grant citizenship to those, born of a Jewish mother, who have also chosen to convert to another religion.
-- Nephele
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Israelis are amazingly diverse from a "racial" point of view, but still Judaism it's (or was) a religion based on ancestry.
Obviously this man had the status to became consul, but it will be interesting to know if romans would have made consul somebody who was not a pagan given the religious attributes of consulship.
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A correction - Marcius adressed the Rodian Delegate .
Polybius 28.17 - "And afterwards Marcius, taking him aside, said he wondered why the Rhodians made no attempt to put an end to the present war between Antiochus and Ptolemy, as it was their business to do so if anyone's. Now it is a question whether he did this because he was apprehensive lest Antiochus should conquer Alexandria, and they should find in him a new and formidable adversary
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From the sources mentioned above there were two consuls with Jewish origin - cos. suff. 116 and his father Gaius Iulius Alexander (the grandson of the Jewish prince Alexander, before 109) .
Another source mentioned a third - "Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus, a son or a grandson of the Alexandrian apostate Tiberius Julius Alexander, consul in 117 (?)" . (The Jews Under Roman Rule By E. Mary Smallwood) .
Smallwood named the above as having "partly Jewish ancestry" . Fine with me .
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Welcome, Sas
a roman female couldt use her ius suffragi, ius honorarium, is millitae........nothing bot the ius commercii...
A fair assesment of gender status in not so many words.
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"This family had apperently let its ties to Judaism lapse but the names Alexander gave his sons indicate that his family connections were not wholly broken . Some vestigial connections with Judaism cannot therefore be ruled out..."
(Josephus and Judaean Politics By Seth Schwartz) .
Roman Battlefield Found In Germany.
in Archaeological News: Rome
Posted
Salve, Lady N