DDickey
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Posts posted by DDickey
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Yeah, sorry. I was at work when I wrote my last response, so I didn’t have time to write anything longer.
I think the structure of the Roman world was crucial to its success. Its ability to amass soldiers following its defeat at Cannae, for example, gave them, as you said, an upper hand. Also, Roman foreign policy tended to be extremely aggressive. The true success, I think, resided in the entire Roman milieu. As Polybius wrote,
‘The circumstances of the Roman army were the exact opposite, and therefore Fabius was not able to meet the enemy in a general battle, as it would evidently result in a reverse, but on due consideration he fell back on those means in which the Romans had the advantage, confined himself to these, and regulated his conduct of the war thereby. These advantages of the Romans lay in inexhaustible supplies of provisions and men.’ (III.89)
I think that last sentence is crucial. The Roman method, if you will, provided a structure and framework on which competent generals built and refined their tactics as the need arose.
So, I guess, basically I’m agreeing with you when you said, ‘My point is that Rome's success depended not so much in each individual military genius as it was the case for other countries (let say the Lusitanians under Viriathus).’
However, I also agree with WotWotius, who said,
‘I am sorry, but these tactics and logistics of which you speak were made notable by the individual; and were much less the result of an overriding cultural mechanism. Whilst many expects dispute almost every other element of Roman society, there is no denying that Rome - most notably Republican Rome - was a highly militarised society, with war fused into almost everything. But even this only influenced Rome's perception of war, and not her ability to wage it. As in any society, the society of ancient Rome contained individuals of differing abilities, and thus many generals reacted differently in similar situations: compare, for example, Marius's campaigns again the Cimbri with his defeated predecessors. It not surprising, then, that Fabian tactics are named after an individual and not a Roman policy.’
Overall, I think, it’s a complex issue to distill so simply.
But I guess, to answer the question on its face: 'Who do you think were the greatest generals Rome ever had to offer?'
There’s too many for me to name here, but I'll give the obvious answers. Scipio Africanus and Caesar are my two favorites—keep in mind that I’m choosing to stay in the mid-to late Republic; if I were to slip outside of that time frame, I would have to put Belisarius on the list, even though some may not consider him a ‘Roman’ general, strictly speaking. But that, as they say, is not a can of worms I want to open here.
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I'm blasting through Rome in the Late Republic (second edition) by Mary Beard & Michael Crawford. It's my second time reading it, and I forgot how beautifully they distilled the essence of the Late Republic. It's a simple, wonderful overview. Has anyone read Beard's book on Triumphs or the one on Roman Religion? I've been thinking about picking one up. Any recommendations?
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It appears as though a fallacious argument has been presented and propagated here. Here, it would be called the
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Don't know if these have been mentioned elsewhere, but I saw them on Amazon and thought I'd link to them here. I'm definitely looking forward to both of them.
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy
The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland
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Justinian's Flea by William Rosen recently came out in paperback. In hardcover, the book's subtitle read: "Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe." In paperback, the subtitle has been changed, and now reads, "The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire." On the back of the paperback, in bold, red letters, it reads, "How Nature's Smallest Organism Brought Down History's Mightiest Empire."
These changes, to me, seem stunningly misleading, and I'm certain a few readers ill versed in history are going to be greatly disappointed. But, I suppose, in this day and age sensationalism sells, and that's all that seems to matter anymore.
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I'm currently reading a book, entitled "The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America," about the history of comic books culminating with nationwide censorship in the late 40's and 50's. It's a spectacular account of the birth of a specific form of pop culture and also a study of postwar paranoia and diverging cultural shifts.
It
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I don't know if this has already been posted, but I thought I'd share anyway. Hulu has available online for free The National Geographic Channel's Hannibal vs. Rome, a 2 hour popular documentary. I haven't watched it yet, so I'm not sure if it's worth the watch. Has anyone else seen it? Is it worth watching?
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Oh. Oops. I see you've been corrected already. I was answering the post earlier straight from my email, which I opened after a long time. Anyway "Revisionism" is nowadays often just a label used to do academic hatchet-jobs on people, just like "anti-Semite" or "Communist"(that was back in the fifties). The word is misused so much that people often fail to realize that it does not necessarily have to have a negative connotation. There is nothing wrong with revising orthodox or conventional concepts in history, especially when new data emerges that was not available before. It is very much a part and parcel of historiography. The problem arises when people use historical distortion in order to suit their own peculiar agenda. At any rate I don't think WWII was historically unnecessary but I fervently believe WWI was.
The run-up to the First World War, following Ferdinand
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Defining the Second World War as unnecessary is becoming all the rage lately, and it shows a profound
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Mods: Feel free to move this, but, in keeping with the last couple posts--i.e. mine
--I thought I'd post a link here to an interesting conversation about WWII revisionism. -
Delete all except "noble cause". What was so noble about the Great War? I think it was one of the most unnecessary and gratuitously destructive wars ever fought by foolish mankind.
I didn't exactly mean it in the light of a "noble cause"...but as Rose Tattoo said; "There comes a time when every man must fight".
Defining the Second World War as unnecessary is becoming all the rage lately, and it shows a profound -
The cream of Australia's population did not hesitate, but immediately volunteered to fight a war on the other side of the world, which we could just as easily have dismissed as a "European war, irrelevant to us". As far as a national identity is concerned, I'd rather have one that shows we are loyal to our brothers and willing to fight for an ideal, rather then one that shows us as disloyal cowards.
So much for remaining objective lol!
Good show Tobias! It's good to know some of us still stand up for and understand honor, duty, courage, and a willingness to risk all for a noble cause and a national purpose.
Delete all except "noble cause". What was so noble about the Great War? I think it was one of the most unnecessary and gratuitously destructive wars ever fought by foolish mankind.
Defining the Second World War as unnecessary is becoming all the rage lately, and it shows a profound
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Apparently wowio has gone global, so many of you may now have access to the books.
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This fascinates me. It's a period to which I've had little exposure. Out of curiosity, what, if any, old magistracies existed? Did they serve any functions? Or, if they did exist in this late period, were they merely ornamental? I know they lost functioning relevance during the Imperial Age, but did the old magistracies ever make any kind of comeback?
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SOFIA, Bulgaria - Archaeologists have unearthed a 1,900-year-old well-preserved chariot at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Thursday.
Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the village of Borisovo, around 180 miles east of the capital, Sofia.
"This is the first time that we have found a completely preserved chariot in Bulgaria," said Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
She said previous excavations had only unearthed single parts of chariots
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I won't reply yet to the Darwin side of the topic, until I find "better" evidence that might change your and other people's minds.
I don't understand the grammar of this statement. Either way, I
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Moving away from a subject guaranteed to cause argument and back to the topic....
Thank you. I wanted to jump in there, but I thought I'd bite my tongue instead. Oh, it was hard! Aside from that ... I've got nothing. I'm actually at work trying to kill some time, so ignore this post.
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"A mummy of a middle-aged woman dating to Ancient Greek times has been discovered in a lead coffin inside a marble sarcophagus, the first clear indication of embalming in Greece from the era when the Romans ruled there."
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Columbia Pictures has bought an adaptation of Anabasis, a memoir by Xenophon, a Greek soldier who was amongst a group of mercenaries hired by Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger to fight his brother Artaxerxes II for the throne of Persia.
What are everyones thoughts on this?
Prediction: Hollywood will butcher it and mutilate ancient history--as per usual with good ol' Hollywood.
Salve, DD.
We agree; even so, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.
Do you remember the 1979 classic Walter Hill's film The Warriors? ("Come out to plaaay-hay!"); BTW, soon to be re-filmed by Tony Scott, with a tentative release date of 2010 and now set in LA instead of NYC.
Maybe someone recalls some classical names within it (Cyrus, Cleon, Ajax).
It was loosely based in a 1965 homonym novel by by Sol Yurick, itself loosely based on the Anabasis.
In fact, one of the novel's main characters was constatly reading a comic book adaptation on Anabasis.
Anyway, the film's plot line is much closer to Anabasis than the novel: the Warriors have to get home to Coney Island by travelling through territory controlled by hostile gangs.
Yeah, it never occured to me until I read that news brief that the Warriors was loosely based on Xenophon. Makes me want to re-watch it.
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What are everyones thoughts on this?
Prediction: Hollywood will butcher it and mutilate ancient history--as per usual with good ol' Hollywood.
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This is fantastic! I want to hear more ancient jokes!
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Yes. It was a coincidence, one manipulated decades after Jesus' alleged death. Many so-called Messianic figures popped up in the first century A.D. Jesus was not unique. Messiah-mania reached a fever pitch. But Jesus remained fairly irrelevant for three or four centuries,
If early Christianity was so irrelevant why did Nero slaughter a "multitude" in the 60's? Oh, make that quotation a "vast multitude", which I believe is the more correct. Where did this "vast multitude" come from then?
And how could Pliny claim in around 110 AD that the animal market had collapsed due to lack of buyers for sacrificial animals, and also that temples were deserted because so many had converted to Christianity? More of the "vast multitude" that sure seems relevant to me. And why was Pliny killing them if they were so irrelevant? Please explain.
Have a great day, John
I didn't say Christians went unnoticed. I said they were irrelevant. There's no disputing that. How relevant were the Christians in the second century AD? Or the third century? How relevant were they during Constantine's day? Their influence grew exponentially following Constantine's decriminalization of Christianity, but they remained fairly obscure for centuries following Jesus' alleged crucifixion.
And Nero persecuted them simply as a form of political expediency following the great fire; it worked to his advantage to find villains, so to speak, in order to remove suspicion from himself.
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The Jews are still expecting the messiah!
Ah, in this case they weren't just still expecting the messiah. Not as they were in 500 BC and not as they were in 500 AD because Jews, in the early years of the beginning of the Christian era, at least many of them, interpreted the prophecies in Daniel to mean the messiah would appear at exactly the moment Jesus stepped on the stage. Quite a coincidence.
And I do hope we can keep this civil. Trying to tar Christians with the deeds of Islamic terrorists might seem insulting even to Muslims, let alone Christians who had nothing to do with it.
Hope you have a good day, John
Yes. It was a coincidence, one manipulated decades after Jesus' alleged death. Many so-called Messianic figures popped up in the first century A.D. Jesus was not unique. Messiah-mania reached a fever pitch. But Jesus remained fairly irrelevant for three or four centuries, and in many parts of the world today--two thousand years later!--his message has still not penetrated. The Messiah was supposed to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. Two thousand years on, that still hasn't happened.
The true genius of Christianity wasn't Jesus, who was an obscure, probably mediocre minister; it was Paul, and it was so for one reason: the inclusion of gentiles. (But this, I guess, is a digression.)
As for the last bit about tarring Christians, out of respect to the fine people at UNRV, I will keep things civil. But I will say that 30% of American high school biology teachers never mention the word evolution because of faith-based ignorance. Stem cell research has been crushed because of faith-based ignorance. This is a problem.
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All of Jesus' alleged fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy are fabrications.
Then why were all those Jews circa 30 AD expecting the messiah?
The Jews are still expecting the messiah!
And I agree with everything you just said. But I can be polite only up to a point. I believe the time to uniformly respect religious belief ended when 19 pious men slammed hijacked airplanes into a couple buildings.
America Votes 2008
in Hora Postilla Thermae
Posted · Edited by DDickey
Well, I voted today (I always vote). And because I like neither Obama nor McCain, I decided to participate primarily in local elections. For President of the United States, however, I chose to write someone in. Who, you might ask? Well, I wrote in Publius Scipio Africanus (yes, I am serious; I really did it). Although I take elections and politics extremely seriously, I couldn't bring myself to vote for A because I dislike B--I caution against protest votes; I think it could be dangerous. And the only other option on our ticket--I'm in Indiana--was Bob Barr running as a Libertarian. He's an idiot, so I didn't vote for him.