sylla
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That's exact and in total agreement with my original statement (post # 125 from this same thread); I defined both Syracuse and Tarentum as Roman defectors for Punic War II as a whole, not specifically at 216 BC; in Mommsen's words (3:5:608-609):I'll re-read the passage that I was refering to and make sure that I haven't been a bloody fool and mis-read. Before I do that, it was the piece referring to the immediate aftermath of Cannae."...the south Italian Greeks adhered to the Roman alliance--a result to which the Roman garrisons no doubt contributed ... Thus the Campanian Greeks, particularly Neapolis, courageously withstood the attack of Hannibal in person: in Magna Graecia Rhegium, Thurii, Metapontum, and Tarentum did the same notwithstanding their very perilous position..."
Tarentum was in fact the port where Varro concentrated the remains of his army after Cannae (presumably like the equivalent of two legions) for being exchanged for the fresh legions from Sicily commanded by the praetor Valerius Laevinus, who additionally had "a fleet of twenty-five vessels ... for the protection of the coast between Brundisium and Tarentum" (Livy), not to talk of course about the Tarentine hostages already mentioned in my previous post.
Syracuse defected to the Punic side in 214 BC, Tarentum in 212 BC. Together with Capua, they were the greatest allies of Hannibal within the Roman territory until they were both utterly crushed by the Legions (Syracuse far worse than Tarentum).
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Not in my copy of the III Book of his RJust a point of order; according to Mommsen, Tarentum remained loyal throughout -
The coin image depicted (the radiate crown and the beard) is more typical of a military Emperor from the third century, a century before Constans.
guy also known as gaius
That said, there are infrequent examples of Constantine I with a radiate crown:
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?searc...p;view_mode=1#6
And always one to hedge his bets, Constantine did have the image of the sun-god Sol regularly on the reverse of his coins.
http://www.acsearch.info/search.html?searc...p;view_mode=1#8
guy also known as guy
Constantine the Great was in fact rather eclectic in religious issues, and few of his surviving coins (arguably like 1%) show possible Christian symbolism.
The most common divinities in Constatine coins were allegoric femenine figures, especially Victory; Pax and Libertas were also common.
The Goddess Roma appeared too, and also Hercules and even Jupiter; and of course, Sol.
Even more; Constantine himself was posthumously deified in coins by his sons.
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That biblical quotation may be useful for literary purposes, as long as we remember that Paul (and presumably the other prisoners) were criminal convicts, not slaves.Ok, I would say that a guardian of some kind, probably a freedman to the owner (and perhaps one or two guards) would take a ship from Greece to Rome. Whats important to remember here is that sailing was nothing like taking a ferry today. It was much more like hitchhiking on the sea, you took one ship that would get you closer to your destination, no matter where it sailed, then take another and another again.You will find a good example of this in the bible actually (Acts of the Apostles 27-28).
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for you, who was the greatest military menace for that Empire??
p.s.: sorry for my bad english, I'm from Italy : )
I think that my answer is generally unpopular with other Romanophiles, but I tend to feel that the Germanics of the middle to later periods (Goths, Huns, Vandals, etc.) were the biggest threat; essentially because it was the Germanics who pressured the Rhine and Danube borders almost continuously, eventually driving the proverbial nail into the coffin of the western empire. Understandably, the Germanics were a collection of many differing tribes, so perhaps one single tribe (ie the Marcomanni) may not have been as menacing as the entire Parthian empire, but I am referring to a collective Germanic people.
While I agree in part with your assessment on the status of Persian/Parthian "civilization" as compared to Rome, militarily the threat was local. There was an unquestionable long-standing rivalry between Rome and it's eastern neighbors for influence in "Asia", but the core of the Roman empire was never truly threatened. Roman gains (under the likes of Corbulo, Trajan, Septimius Severus, etc.) were never permanent, but nor did the destruction of Crassus or the failure of Macrinus for example result in permanent gains for Parthia. The eastern Roman empire maintained itself against its eastern neighbors long after the fall of the west.
(Also note that my quote is only regarding the "imperial" period, therefore conveniently discounting such Republican era threats as Carthage, Seleucia (Antiochus), Pontus (Mithridates), etc.)
I'm certainly not as well versed in this area as Primus, but Alessandro Barbero in his "The Day of the Barbarians", states: "The Persians had no wish to enter Roman territory and settle there; at most, they wanted to conquer the empire's rich eastern provinces. Here the clash was not between civilization and barbarians but between two civilizations that despised each other and had fought for centuries."
Barbero argues that in the mid-to-late 4th century AD "had an ambivalent attitude toward...barbarians." While the masses absolutely feared barbarians, the government looked at them as a resource to be used for war - sparing citizens who were increasingly turning away from careers in the army - to keep them working the land and generating revenue for the empire. "The barbarians were a potential resource that should not be wasted."
A few years before the Battle at Adrianople in 378, Emperor Valens allowed a mass immigration of barbarians across the Danube. In part, the barbarians would feed Valens growing army in the East - he was preparing for war against the Persians. In short, this immigration ultimately became an invasion, Valens abandoned his war against Persia and he was ultimately killed and his army was defeated at Adrianople.
So...that's all a long way of saying that the Empire's greatest enemy really probably depends on what timeframe you review. Could one argue that the Empire's greatest enemy was Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon? Clearly the Empire felt that Persia was a great threat (or perhaps it was considered an opportunity) in the 4th Century. And it's certainly hard to argue that the barbarians, as a whole, became the greatest enemy in the later years, and perhaps the most persistent throughout the Imperial Roman period.
"Internal enemies" are difficult to asess, because it is usually hard to define which side was more "Roman" than the other; even Caesar couldn't have done what he did without the support of a huge proportion of the Roman population. In any case, Mereoveo's original question was about "other peoples".
"Barbarians" is just the Roman term for "aliens" : all aliens.
We all know that the city-state that Rome was at the early IV century BC conquered anything from the Atlantic to the Euphrates; irrespectively of their intended historical or moral justifications, that simply can' be explained by mere coincidence or perpetual self-defense.
There are very few absolutes in History, but one of them is that up to the early II century AD Rome attacked and conquered (or at least tried to) absolutely all its neighbors, including of course 100% of its allies and friends; even the Parthians were technically Roman allies (of Sulla) against Tigranes the Great.
Plainly, Rome was permanently attacking, even at the Hannibalic War.
Then, strictly speaking, it was Rome which was initially (virtually by definition) the enemy of any barbarian (ie, non-Roman), even the unknown ones.
Rome became an extremely efficient military machine quite early in its history and there is no evidence that any enemy ever became strong enough not to be ultimately defeated by the undivided attention of the Legions.
When and where the expansion of the Empire stopped, it was entirely explained by logistic reasons; the Empire was just too big and complex to grow any further (ie, the phase II of Luttwak).
Even so, there were repeated Roman attacks well beyond essentially all the established borders when and wherever the Romans were (or feel) strong enough to try, from Caledonia to Arabia Felix, at least up to Julian (not to talk about the re-conquest campaigns of Justinian, Heraclius and others).
"Germanic people" is too unspecific; virtually anything west to the Rhine and north to the Danube (or Dacia at most) from at least six or seven centuries; people then which have quite few things in common among them, besides the fact of being "Barbarians".
Instead of "Germanic peoples", we might then select the Huns, The Visigoths or the Vandals.
As military menaces and irrespectively of the specific timeframe, I suppose we may measure them by the objective damage they actually did to the Empire.
My personal choice would then be the Fourth Crusade; however, the Islamic Arab armies of the VII century were probably an even more formidable enemy.
Selecting exclusively from the Germanic peoples of the V century, I think the Visigoths did the worst damage.
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Just a small point - and I stand to be corrected on this - wasn't Thebes destroyed by Alexander the Great (apart from Pindar's gaff).
Thebes was restored by Cassander in 315 BC; in the first century AD it was just a village, mentioned by Strabo.
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I wonder if there was ever the inconsistency that roman Africans were black.not really an inconsistency but just plain ignorance
I haven't seen any such misrepresentations thus far but I do know what you mean. Perhaps The History Channel will ask Don Cheadle to play Septimus Severus!!! As I am writing this, they are broadcasting "Battles BC" with a ludicrously miscast actor playing Hannibal, plainly of sub-Saharan African descent and I do know there is an image elsewhere on this forum but I couldn't remember in which part.
Casting directors nowadays seem to think that if a certain character, such as Hannibal or Severus, is from Africa - per se - they must avoid offence by casting an actor of sub-Saharan ancestry. This, to my mind, is as offensive as Laurence Olivier 'blacking up' for his portrayal of Othello who, by the way, was a Moor and therefore of Arabic descent.
Hannibal was of Phoenician lineage and would have been of Middle-Eastern appearance and Severus was of Italian, Libyan and Phoenician mixed heritage. It doesn't seem to be realised that Roman Africa was a province in the north of the continent, populated by a mixture of indiginous peoples mixed with other ethnic groups, non of whom match those misguided portrayals.
There are so many lazy intellectual attempts in the media to portray historical characters in, what they see, as a sensitive and accurate fashion. In doing this they cause more offense to the reasonably knowledgeable than the most crass and chauvinistic representations of the past.
This is a good point. The vast majority of Africans in the empire would not have been "black."
Along this train of thought, I find it borderline offensive at how the Romans have been so thoroughly Anglicized. In so many artistic representations, they look, sound, and act like your stereotypical modern northern European. Now, this isn't entirely inaccurate, as some Romans in Gaul, Britain, and northern Spain probably did look more like northern European and less Mediterranean. But for most of Rome's history, both before and after the empire, they probably looked and sounded more or less like a modern-day Italian, Spaniard, Portuguese, or Frenchman does. I know that this is a very broad generalization, but I think that it's been drilled into the public conciousness that Romans looked sounded like Kirk Douglas Russell Crowe, when they really probably sounded more like Silvio Berlusconi. I think that it's a great disservice and insult to both Roman history and the Romance countries that the the quintessentially Mediterranean nature of the Roman people is often completely ignored in popular culture.
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So New Ulm, Minnesota has a strong German Heritage and the Hermann Monument. You can read all about them here.
Last weekend they celebrated the 2,000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg and below is the agenda of events.
One of the marquee activities is the "Cherusci Breakfast" which includes (I'm unsure of the historical accuracy of the meal itself):
...Or Thusnelda's Scrambled Eggs & Hermann Ham...
credit to the Adrian Murdoch blog for pointing this out
Talking about living history; a nice example of people embracing their cultural heritage.
Thusnelda was of course the unfortunate wife of Arminius.
Undoubtedly one of the most conspicuous German-Americans:
Dwight David Eisenhower: (1890-1969)
34th President of the United States (1953-1961)
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Just some naive thoughts: I wonder how many folks are attracted vs repelled to the Romans for their gladiator habits. I was pretty much repelled, and would hardly glance at coliseums of Rome or Pompeii. Mussolini could have put his archeology-destroying boulevard right thru the coliseum rather beside it for all I cared.
But that impression is changing if I can believe the video course I am following (won't give it any more plugs by name). Apparently it didn't focus primarily on gratuitious gore and death, but was loaded with etiquette (changing with the times). There were countless rules intended to spare lives of respectable or expensive fighters, sometimes built into what ethnic group was allowed to fight with which. Not only did emperors seek favor by sparing lives of popular losers, but listened to petitioners on other business during the spectacle, especially when democracy had otherwise shriveled. The gore was possibly secondary to some constructive social purposes, such as seeing how your (in the audience) station in life is respected by others.
Too many details to enumerate, but just thinking the Romans seem less barbaric if you follow certain academic descriptions in depth. To me their architecture/sculpture just shouts civilized refinement. If their history is sometimes stereotyped to be Nazi like, they why didn't their achitecture reflect that (like facist or Stalinist brutal architecture/sculpture)? If the modern trend is so comparatively genteel, why for example are we allowing increasing cruelty in meat processing http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/d...ory_id=14460095 . Bring back the Roman empire!
Latium antiquum a Tiberi Cerceios servatum est m. p. L longitudine: tam tenues primordio imperi fuere radices. colonis saepe mutatis tenuere alii aliis temporibus, Aborigenes, Pelasgi, Arcades, Siculi, Aurunci, Rutuli et ultra Cerceios Volsci, Osci, Ausones, unde nomen Lati processit ad Lirim amnem. in principio est Ostia colonia ab Romano rege deducta, oppidum Laurentum, lucus Iovis Indigetis, amnis Numicius, Ardea a Dana
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Even today the Romans are still interfering with the Scots favorite pastime which is producing and drinking whiskey....
IT WAS built in 142 AD to stop Caledonian tribes marching on Roman outposts. But the Antonine Wall is now stopping the march of development by putting in jeopardy plans for a new distillery and 87 jobs.
Falkirk Distillery Company (FDC) is trying to revive production of one of Scotland's most prized Lowland single malts on a site close to where the wall ran. But the plan has encountered objections from Historic Scotland and now faces a public inquiry.
The government agency says the nearby wall
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Currently reading Peter Heather's The Fall of Rome.
He basic argument conflicts with Gibbon, stating it was external factors that led to the downfall of the Western Empire and the degradation of the Eastern.
Not far into yet, but pretty good so far.
Doc
I have tried to read this book a couple of times.
I felt Bryan Ward-Perkins book: The Fall of Rome and the end of civilization, had more to offer, more concisely.
We agree; I still consider Ward-Perkins' book as the best analysis on this rather complex issue; in fact, as he ought to explain what was there before it fell, there's a lot of useful information on the late Classical Antiquity within his work. He made a prudent use of the best available evidence from both archaeology and textual sources, and in general terms his logical process is unimpeachable.
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Theodoric got some good press from people paid to do that and, as a monument to well done propaganda, it still works. Theodoric conquered Italy with war and murder, he relegated romans to second class citizens, confiscated their lands, persecuted catholicism, killed the pope and some of the senatorial elite. I fail to see his greatness.
O'Donnell addressed this. Theoderic did what any aspirant Roman leader would have done, he says, and the precendents go way back. To compare, Augustus also won his position with war and murder, relegated the Senate to a secondary role in government, confiscated some land. Like Augustus, Theoderic's big "gift" to his country was ruling for a long time without much in the way of wars, famines or mishaps. This means a lot to average subjects.
Sub idem fere tempus et ab Attalo rege et Rhodiis legati uenerunt nuntiantes Asiae quoque ciuitates sollicitari. his legationibus responsum est curae eam rem senatui fore; consultatio de Macedonico bello integra ad consules, qui tunc in prouinciis erant, reiecta est. interim ad Ptolomaeum Aegypti regem legati tres missi, C. Claudius Nero M. Aemilius Lepidus P. Sempronius Tuditanus, ut nuntiarent uictum Hannibalem Poenosque et gratias agerent regi quod in rebus dubiis, cum finitimi etiam socii Romanos desererent, in fide mansisset, et peterent ut, si coacti iniuriis bellum aduersus Philippum suscepissent, pristinum animum erga populum Romanum conseruaret.
Eodem fere tempore P. Aelius consul in Gallia, cum audisset a Boiis ante suum aduentum incursiones in agros sociorum factas, duabus legionibus subitariis tumultus eius causa scriptis additisque ad eas quattuor cohortibus de exercitu suo, C. Ampium praefectum socium hac tumultuaria manu per Umbriam qua tribum Sapiniam uocant agrum Boiorum inuadere iussit; ipse eodem aperto itinere per montes duxit. Ampius ingressus hostium fines primo populationes satis prospere ac tuto fecit. delecto deinde ad castrum Mutilum satis idoneo loco ad demetenda frumenta
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I just finished reading James O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire, and it really put Justinian through the meat-grinder. I wonder how people here feel about the history he's written.
In the first place, he makes Theoderic, the Ostrogothic ruler of Italy at the turn of the sixth century, appear to have led a stable and even enlightened government for Italy. In his view, Theoderic was pretty much a fully assimilated Roman, and his during his rule, Italy got "back to normal" for a time, living a peaceful Roman life. His long, orderly reign was the most stable period Italy had seen in quite some time.
Eastern Emperor Anastasius I also comes off well in this history -- wise, prudent, leaving an Imperial treasury to Justin and Justinian with some 300,000 pounds of gold.
Justinian is depicted as a vainglorious, imprudent and under-educated/unintellectual ruler, whose military escapades spread imperial forces too thinly and wasted lots of resources needlessly. The campaign in Italy devestated the city of Rome (it passed between the Eastern Romans and Ostrogothic rulers a few times). It left behind insufficient forces to stop the Lombard invasions, which came shortly after.
O'Donnell also thinks Justinian's "my way or the highway" approach to religious orthodoxy was also a major misstep. Justinian insisted that the Empire uniformly embrace the orthodoxy of the Council of Chalcedon, to which the monophysite Christians of Syria and Egypt just wouldn't submit. He suggests that this did much to dislodge the loyalty of subjects there, and may have made Islam (which was much closer to the monophysite/one-nature spirit than Chalcedon's confusing Christology) more appealing when the Arab invasions came.
In the end, O'Donnell blames Justinian for ensuring that Italy would not be a united polity again for more than a thousand years, and for wrecking the city of Rome and its surviving institutions. Had Justinian left well enough alone, Italy might remained a viable Roman state for much longer, O'Donnell thinks.
I don't know how many here have read the book but what do you think of this way of looking at the Justinianic reconquests?
It's easy to verify that the popularity of Justinian is going down among UNRV members, especially in comparison to the scholar consensus some years ago; some of us have even changed his position as the "last Roman" for his own general Belisarius.
I have not read O'Donnell's book, which seems interesting indeed; I tend to agree with many of his conclusions as stated here.
I also think Theodoric I was a notable Romanized ruler; however, historically "Romanized" has never been the same as "Roman" for any true Roman; period.
After all, they used the word "Barbarian" with all its connotations for any alien, and there was a reason for that; chauvinism.
My own impression of Justinian as a ruler is far better than O'Donnel's; he performed some impressive deeds well beyond his mere military career; and even on that count, his score was not bad at all.
I entirely agree that the economic deeds of people like Anastasius (or Sulla, or Hadrian) should not be underestimated when compared with the military conquests of Justinian (o Caesar, or Trajan).
I also think that the utter devastation of Italy all along the Justinian Wars had significant long lasting consequences; but analogous to the paradigmatic scorpion of the fable, that was probably inherent to the Roman nature as a whole, more than just Jutinian or any other given individual.
Arguably, the same can be said about most (if not all) Roman conquerors; from Camillus to Heraclius, no Roman conquest had ever been truly "necessary".
Justinian was hardly the only or even the most radically intolerant Christian emperor; Christianity's intolerance as a whole in all likelihood made the Islamic conquest easier, but to be fair, if any historical revolution has ever been truly unpredictable, that was indeed Islam.
As historical speculations go ("what if?"), I certainly guess that had Islam not appeared at all (essentially from incidental reasons), the Roman empire (not "Byzantium", please!) might very well have been able to recover the western lost territories after Heraclius' splendid success in the East.
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His army could not compete with Roman soldiery in a conventional fight.
A great post, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. But there's one sentence I'd quibble with, and that's the one above. As I recall Spartacus did compete with Roman soldiery in a fair fight - and beat them at least twice, and one lot of soldiery were a veteran legion from Gaul. (I'm counting the other time when he was caught between two Roman armies, and beat them one after the other as a single occasion.)
With inaccuracies in the movie, I seem to recall Crassus doing his decimating by pushing people off a bridge, which is innovative, but not what a dyed-in-the-wool conservative like Crassus would have done.
You know, this thread is about innacuracies.
As discussed in a recent Thread, our available sources are simply unanimous; the rebel army of the III Servile War (not all of them slaves) was more than able not just to compete with, but to systematically overcome the Roman soldiery in both conventional and unconventional figth from 73 to 71 BC, praetor after praetor, legate after legate and legion after legion.
Even without Spartacus they always represented a real nightmare for the Legions.
C. Cassius (the governor of Cisalpine Gaul) had at least two legions plus auxiliaries (the regular garrison) when he was utterly crushed.
The double army defeat must refer to the consecutive defeats of both consular armies for 72 BC, in fact more than once; those were definitely different battles at different times in different locations; the battles were consecutive, not simultaneous.
Stating anything else would be a huge innacuracy, as innacurate on its own as the Kubrick film itself
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I'm in fact a big fan of Prof. Lendering's work.
Being this fundamentally a methodological issue, we should probably deal with it in another thread.Priumus and Sylla,I think you'll both appreciate this article that popped into an RSS feed of mine today. Couldn't have been timed any better:
Positivist Fallacy: the assumption, often implicit, that historical sources document significant events of the past.
Like the Everest Fallacy, the Positivist Fallacy can best be introduced with an example...
For now, let just say that when Prof, Lendering gets to the core of his article (SIC):
"What scholars did wrong, is that they forgot that there are many historical facts for which we have no evidence.
Instead they focused on the facts for which positive evidence exists (hence the name "Positive Fallacy")."
From his own examples it's clear that by "no evidence" he strictly means "no direct explicit (ie, positive) textual evidence"; that's why his main "no evidence" example are the so-called Claudian Reforms (SIC):
"We have no written sources about the Claudian army reforms, but they were important."
(BTW, another outstanding contribution from livius.org; just indirect quotations from Classical sources and archaeological evidence were used).
The example quoted in the previous post is probably better fitted for the ongoing thread on the 2000 years of the battle of Teutoburg.
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Please add me to the thanking fans group of Mel for taking us with him to the fascinting archaeodetective's world; as usual, he's doing a great job .
This new article have indeed a couple of nice (almost gory) pics, but apparently little additional substance.
Mr. Score's Viking theory is perfectly plausible... as the former Saxon theories were (and still are), and undoubtedly as many other speculations.
Not a word on the textile analysis; Mr Score still infers (seemingly on his own) the victims were naked.
Trying to get any hard conclusion from the absence of "one or two heads" from the estimated 51 bodies seems a little too farfetched to me at this point.
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The ability to digest, evaluate and derive conclusions around a mix of sources for a given historical story is a skill I greatly admire. I think people are prone to want to understand history in black and white and it's hard to embrace the gray areas.
Agreed, what we miss a great deal of is simple context. One thousand years from now, people may have a very warped view of today's USA if the only surviving book is either decidedly pro or anti Obama. It's one of the things that adds to the struggle in interpreting eras with a far smaller literary scale... there is a less diverse point of view (in addition to the previously noted issues with methodology of the ancient historians).
Domitian was in fact quite popular in the public context, but history has long told has that his was a "reign of terror". Of course, this has been over-emphasized by the Catholic Church in relation to martyrdom issues, but the root of all of it was the adversarial relationship between Domitian and the Senate/Aristocracy (and Tacitus on a very personal note because of his father-in-law Agricola).
Even more, I don't think we have any objective evidence on the purported antagonism between Domitian and Agricola; in all likelihood our dear Tacitus, as opportunist as most known Roman historians, was simply adapting his work to the new rulers and drawing his line from the defeated Flavian regime that had been so friendly for him and his family.
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Is Europe about to fall due to abandoning Christianity, or due to embracing Christian guilt? Is Europe falling? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...0138906916.html found thru http://www.aldaily.com/In his reflections on Europe's slide into a sort of secular suicide, Mr. Caldwell notes the key role played by that most religious impulse: guilt.The European Union it's the biggest and the most daring political experiment of our times. The end result it's unclear but this "reflections" don't help much. The guilt part it's the most dubious and all sounds like religious propaganda to me like the one tried by Poland when they wanted to make a mention of Christianity in the Lisbon constitutional Treaty.
For sure that definition of religion it's one I agree to, but Christians, not atheists, are a majority in the EU.
Must agree with Kosmo.
BTW, Mr. Caldwell is clearly not troubled by any guilt; you can never be too chauvinist.
After all, chauvinism doesn't hurt ... enough, it seems.
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Thanks for Posting Breeze's Article Sylla, very interesting. I'm a big fan of David Breeze his writing's on Roman Britain, especially the North are always extremely informative and well written. The book on Hadrian's Wall by Breeze and Dobson is easily the best book on the Wall by far.
Of the five various reasons why Rome failed to conquer Scotland that Breeze examines.......
1. The highlanders were too warlike to be conquered.
2. The highlands were too daunting a place to conquer.
3. It was not worthwhile economically for Rome to bring Scotland into the empire.
4. The native infrastructure in North Britain was insufficiently urbanized to support the food supply for the Roman army and the imposed Roman administrative structure.
5. The political nature of the Roman empire and the geographical isolation of Britain combined with the events elsewhere prevented the conquest of the island.
Any of the given reason would be a good enough explanation why the Romans failed to conquer the North but I think Breeze's argument for number 5 is the one that's probably closest to the real reason why Rome didn't conquer the whole island.
Nice article. Thank you.You're welcome; glad you like it.
Breeze's analysis for Scotland can actually be extended to virtually any Imperial border in a limited resources scenario (Luttwak's phase II onwards); #5 better explains most of the actual choices of the Roman emperors.
Checking out on previous Roman conquests, is seems that no territory was poor or rural enough not to be conquered by the Romans, as long as they had at least come potential slaves to capture (ie, the Sahara was clearly out of the equation).
Experience suggested that if their military attention (and resources) were not diverted and their determination was strong enough, there was presumably no place too daunting nor any population warlike enough to prevent their conquest by the Romans.
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All over Norway there are in total prox 400 forts built some 2000 to 1500 years ago, and nobody seem to have a clue on what culture actually made those systems - networks - of protection and defence, at the very same time as the iron culture really took off in the highlands in this beautiful land of Vikings. In a speech and historical review hosted at the National Cultural Center of Stiklestad in September 2009, a Norwegian historian, Roy Vega, pointed to a possible impulse from the Romans, with regard to the logistics of defence, protection, transportation and commerce in times where tons of iron were brought out from the Norwegian mountains to the Romans. - I have doubts that the Romans, the most relevant consumers of iron, let this values float into their empire for many hundred years to come, without any protection of this important, strategical and comprehensive imput from the high north. We have indeed to look into this stuff, since even a lite archaeological research might bring very important history to the lime light, said Vega. - Not to mention what could appear in continental archives if we really keep focus in this directions.
One of the most central towns in the old Viking land, Levanger, will selebrate 1000 years anniversary in 2011, and since this town has a great fort dated by C14-methodes more than 2000 years way back in history, Roy Vega hopes that there will be resources to literally dig up the "Roman question" with regard both to the iron and the forts.
Some others that may have some ideas about an eventual Roman input and impulse behind the iron logistics of Norway, and the forts built in the same periode of time?
Some time ago there was some speculation about the potential presence of the Romans in Denmark, fundamentally based on a controversial Plinian quote (Naturalis Historia 4:27) and the finding of some coins.
It seems the consensus favored a more conservative explanation for such quote (eg, some islands of the Wadden Sea in nowadays Nederlands) and such coins (international trade).
Romans were well aware of Jutland at least since Strabo (early I century AD) and Jordanes described the "island" of Scandza (modern Scandinavia?) as the motherland of the Goths. The Rugii mentioned by Tacitus (late I century AD) and other authors may have corresponded to a Germanic population from southern Norway.
However, all of that are mostly speculations; the last word must come from archaeology, which as far as I'm aware remains silent on this issue.
CN was probably thinking about Pytheas (a Greek from Massalia, not a Roman).
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This posting probably falls between two stools but I think that it probably fits with Roman slightly better than world archaeology. Although the article talks things up a bit I suspect that IF there is anything of real significance to come from it Roman related we are only liable to hear about it in several months or more after full analysis has been made from the excavations.
'A farmer's field in Moray could hold the key to the Romans failure to conquer Scotland.
A major archaeological dig is drawing to a close at Birnie, near Elgin, which has revealed interesting links between the Celts and the Romans.
On Wednesday archaeologists were busy unearthing the remains of a Celtic roundhouse dating back to the Iron Age.
It is the latest in a number of fascinating finds at the site where the National Museum of Scotland has been digging annually for the last decade.
The site was first discovered in the 1980s but is still revealing the secrets of the past - one recent valuable find was a Roman brooch.
Dr Fraser Hunter of the National Museums of Scotland said: "Birnie was a major power centre 2,000 years ago. It was one of the high spots of the Moray coastal plane and because the people here were so important it drew the gaze of Rome.....'
Continued (including a video report) at:
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/north/123531-m...nquer-scotland/
The research of Dr. Hunter seems indeed promising for the fascinating analysis of the economic and social dynamics of the Caledonian frontier; unfortunately, it seems the BBC team considered a sensational heading was indispensable for the diffusion of this report.
The Roman non-conquest of Scotland is becoming another commonplace media mystery, like the Fall of the Western Roman Empire or the extinction of the dinosaurs; in any case, it seems quite likely that the local stopping of the Roman expansion, when and wherever it happened all across the Empire, would require the analysis of the contribution of multiple factors, both general and local; the potential economic relevance of the local border trade would at best be just one among many.
IMHO, the sober and well balanced analysis of DJ Breeze on this issue is still the best one.
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4th century Roman coin discovered
No real indication how valuable of a find this is. Would anyone have a guess?
A ROMAN coin dating from the fourth century has been discovered at a nature reserve in Snape.
The historic coin was found by a local archaeologist earlier this year at RSPB Abbey Farm and is believed to date from 347 AD, during the reign of Constantius II and his brother Constans.
Constans visited Britain in 343, probably to repel the Scots or Picts, after becoming joint emperor of Rome with his brother.
I have a coin very similar to this, it's the spikes on the crown that stand out.I beleive that these imperial images are a common feature of the later Roman coinage and normally described as 'radiate crown'.
That's a nice observation, because based on Doug Smith's site (linked by UNRV member Guy) and similar sites, it seems the "radiate" (or "radiant") crown was a typical pagan symbol (of the Sun God), characteristic from an earlier period and usually used in Roman minting for some particular denominations, especially the Antonianus.
I have still not found radiates in the issues of either Constans or Constantius II, who were both utterly Christian; besides, the image in the coin posted above seems to carry beard; all images I have been able to check out from both emperors are unbearded.
On the other hand, in 2006 a large hoard of cooper-alley Roman coins with bearded radiated images attributed to the Roman ususrpers Carausius and Allectus was found in the area of Suffolk too, reportedly including 347 coins from Allectus.
Just a coincidence, or a possible typo from the Evening Star team?
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We are talking here about universal traits; no country has ever pretended to go against the will of their own patron deities.
Even comrade Stalin asked for the blessing of the orthodox church for his Great Patriotic War.
That the hunger of power is the origin of the vast majority (if not all) wars has been common knowledge since the Neolithic.
However, the Roman attitude regarding this issue was, as usual, rather pragmatic; for them, religion and politics (eg, fetiales and senatorial legati) were not opposites, but complementary.
Naturally, almost always it was politics which bended or even distorted religion, not the other way.
It
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Mevadius - thank you very much. In context of the scene of the fighting that makes more sense.
I did a quick google search for maps of the battle but couldn't find much that made sense. Is anyone aware of anything online that shows the course of the battle/s (inasmuch as historians can identify where the battles took place)?
I did come across this map (for some reason I couldn't embed the image).
I remember that there used to be several good pages on a University site covering the excavations at Kalkriese a few years back, which showed the line of the fortified wall as well as the distribution of finds unfortunately I discovered a year or two ago that it had been taken down. However, the following link to Ancient Warfare Magazine has some background on the battle as well as a map of the distibution of finds which you may find interesting.
http://www.livius.org/te-tg/teutoburg/teut...-kalkriese.html
NB If I am not mistaken if you click on the 'satellite photo' (actually an aerial photograph) of the site the wavy path running horizontally across the site is actually the line of the wall [edit - which was discovered through excavation].
Actually, that "satellite photo" is a ... satellite map (not exactly what we usually understand as a "photo"); you can get an even better definition at Google Earth.
We are in no shortage on maps and material from the Kalkriese site; the special issue on "Arminius' Masterstroke" is available online at a good price, with a really nice map opening the article by Adrian Murdoch; on an open access basis, is still think Jona Lendering's page (already linked by Melvadius) is by far the best.
Here is an interesting Discussion that included Prof. Lendering; the following quotation, based in his book "De randen van de aarde" is pure gold:
Q: "... I wonder if anyone can give me an idea of the size of the forest itself?"
A: "There was no forest. "Saltus" has always been mistranslated. It means "passage" (between the hills and the bog). This is confirmed by pollen analysis".
It's a good example on how can archaeology give us a new light on our textual sources; in Lendering's own words "... if we ignore his geographical bias, Dio is a reliable author". That's indeed a great "if".
Personally, I agree that Arminius was a nice strategist, but mostly for his post-Teutoburg campaigns; the disaster of the Kalkriese "forest" was mostly explained by the naivety of Varus and the carelessness of his legionaries; there's a priori no reason why Viriathus or Vercingetoryx wouldn't have been able to do the same, given of course the case that Galba or Caesar (and their respective legions) had been as gullible as Varus and the XVII, XVIII & XIX Legiones.
The breakthrough of the Limes
in Gloria Exercitus - 'Glory of the Army'
Posted
As it was previously explained, the Barbarians preferred to invade and immigrate to wherever they had any chance; the Huns and the Germanic peoples actually attacked both Empires.
The East survived the fifth century for other reasons, presumably at least partially because Constantinople had better defenses than Rome.