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Agrippina of the Julii

Plebes
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About Agrippina of the Julii

  • Rank
    Miles

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  • Gender
    Female
  • Location
    South Africa
  • Interests
    Ancient History
  1. Agrippina of the Julii

    Welcome and Introduce Yourself Here

    Salve citizens I'm back. It's taken 3 years and a long journey through the internet, and then stumbling on this long-neglected site while doing other research for me to get here, but I've returned from exile. My apologies for not being around but you really don't want to be bored with the details, suffice to say that I shall be more active in the future as the Romans and their history are my very favourite topic for reading, movies and discussion, of all time. Thank you to the Senate for not tearing down my villa and distributing my possessions in my absence, although the pool in my atrium did need a clean out and fresh water. All is in order again, now I need to find my slaves, if any survived the last revolt. Be back later. Agrippina (the Elder)
  2. Agrippina of the Julii

    The Primary Sources

    I love reading Suetonius - his style is like our present-day tabloids. The copy I have has the bit about Tiberius' goings-on in Latin (Chapters XLIII and XLIV) (the Loeb translation) - I got it from Gutenberg. Robert Graves did the translation which is quoted int he Gutenberg text. It is amusing to read Tacitus' take on it, he puts it far more delicately than Suetonius did. Great fun to read. Read Herodotus' History it is also a fun read, the first time I read about Xerxes lashing the water of the Hellespont for breaking his bridge, I must admit I did laugh out loud. Enjoy the reading. Please let me know how you are getting on - I am doing a final exam about the original texts in 4 weeks so I am very interested in this subject.
  3. Agrippina of the Julii

    Birthday Hails to G-Manicus!

    Happy birthday G-Manicus. From a fellow plebe.
  4. Agrippina of the Julii

    Your Hidden Roman Name

    Very interesting that and very appropriate considering all the permutations. Thank you I'll keep that one in mind.
  5. Agrippina of the Julii

    Did Julius Caesar deserve to die?

    If I may, I am only a humble under-graduate (an old one but nevertheless only a student) I would like to comment here. If we look at it from a modern perspective, nobody 'deserves' to die. However, Caesar broke the law. He deserved at the least to be arrested and tried. For the conspirators to take the law into their hands, literally, was wrong. But look at the alternative. The republic had become too powerful and was becoming more powerful by the year. Is it possible to be the ruler of the world and remain a republic? For how long can a democracy over the entire known world survive before it topples under the ambition of the 'upper' classes. Remembering that the idea of kingship was developing in other parts of the empire. And that Rome was an empire, even if it called itself a republic. How does the empire manage with the leadership of the empire changing every year? It was inevitable that the empire would need an emperor and yes, that emperor became Nero, Galba, Vitellius and Caligula but it also became Vespasian and Hadrian and (heaven forbid) Tiberius (for his sins). Any kingdom has its weak as well as its strong rulers so England had John and the Prince Regent, but it also produced the two Elizabeths. Caesar merely 'cracked the egg' as it were and the omelette that was the Empire was made. He deserved to be tried and to be given the opportunity to explain himself. Maybe be would have said what I have said above, maybe he would have claimed that he (whether through ambition or not) deserved to be the emperor. But until modern man learned how to participate in the governing of his society, it was right that the governance of the old societies had to be in the hands of the select few. Maybe I don't entirely disagree with lifetime rule to the right person. Look at the odd people that democracy has allowed to rule our modern societies.
  6. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

    From the hand of Cicero? Yes, according to Wiki.
  7. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

    A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that of Cicero's works : six on rhethoric have survied and eight on philosophy. Eighty-eight speeches were recorded, only fifty-eight survive. Interesting.
  8. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

    I will do the research on that. A lot of original speeches do exist. The Romans kept meticulous records so there are a lot of the texts. My example of the Oratorio Lugdunensis, the original does exist in a museum. And of course w have Tacitus in the Annals, his version which is interesting. My feeling is that the further back you go, the less likely you are to have original text. For instance Herodotus constructed a debate between three Persians on the merits of tyranny as opposed to democracy. When you read it is obious he was looking at it from the Greek point of view, especially since he says later on in his little opinion that freedom is a valuable thing to have. His speeches are definitely fake. Thucydides speeches, for instance Pericles' funeral oration, I have no doubt he wrote from the original text. I do believe though that a lot of speeches in the ancient text were merely a retellng of something that was said - a conversation for instance, based on hearsay. But my point is that it is a small factor in the studying of anccint text and yet here we have a whole thread debating the ins and outs of it, Something people have been doing for a very long time. Now if only I could take these arguments into the exam room with me.
  9. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

  10. Agrippina of the Julii

    Your Hidden Roman Name

    Here you go "iilblbrtvwyodyeh" - see what you make of that. Thanks for the welcome btw
  11. Agrippina of the Julii

    The Bible as a Historical Source

    I think that any assessment of the new testament as a source is always based on your own particular bias. If you are an avid christian, you will accept the its value to the extent of the depth of your faith. It is hard to be objective about the one source that validates your belief. If on the other hand you are an avid athiest you will reject the entire thing. I have two points to make, one is that there may have been more than one itinerant cleric who went around turning people away from the influence of Rome's paganism and the extreme orthodoxy of the temple. A more moderate type of propagandist if you like. My feeling is that as there are no records of a trial from the Roman point of view, and we have to remember that the Romans were almost as meticulous as the nazis about keeping records, we can assume that if a trial actually happened, it was a local event. Crucifixion was the standard Roman method of dealing with insurgents so possibly, there was a trial and possibly there was only one person. My second point is that the bible is not complete. When the books were assembled to be used as the guide to christianity, the people who decided which were going to be included and which not, could only have done exactly what publishers of early times did with every written work. How do we know for sure that was is left off at the end of Herodotus wasn't thrown away because it cast Athens is a bad light. The same thing can be said about Thucydides and other writers who have bits and pieces missing and if we go by the style of writing of the day, Suetonius' tabloid style for example, writing of the time was extremely biased in favour of the subjectivity of the writer. There were no professors to correct what was written to bring the writer back on track and to point out the lack of objectivity. So except as a source of more or less what life was like at the time, and as an example of the writing style of the time, just like all the other writers, I think the New Testament can only be used to lend credence to Josephus and Josephus to lend credence to the Bible. Sorry it's a long waffle but the answer to this question can only be that it depends on your subjectivity. For my part, I wouldn't use it unless I was researching something that was absolutely not mentioned anywhere else but then I would do it with a lot of skepticism.
  12. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

    If that's the simple answer, why are so many theses written about it. It makes sense to me but I need to know why the subject of the speeches is such a problem to historians. Maybe Tacitus used direct speech to make his book more chatty but then why did he change the words around. It seems that no one has an answer and either says, as you did that it was a literary device or they write 100 pages of waffle about it.
  13. Agrippina of the Julii

    Speeches in ancient texts

    I am writing an exam soon on the historiography of the ancient world. As any student of ancient history knows, the speeches have been dissected, anaylsed and debated for hundreds of years. No one has come up with an exact answer for the reason that some of them were written as if being quoted from a press conference. Could it be very simply that it was easier to say "Italy is not so decayed...that she cannot provide her own capital with a senate." instead of the assembly argued that Italy had not fallen into such decayed that she was unable to provide her own capital with a senate" having to deal with all the grammatical niceties of Latin. Tacitus goes on to almost rewrite Claudius' address to the Senate on the admission of the Gauls, maybe in rewriting instead of simply quoting the senate records, he thought it would be easier to read that way? Please can I have some thoughts on this. In Thucydides, the Melian Dialogue was written as in a play. Again was it not simply easier to write it that way?
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