sylla
-
Posts
1,011 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Static Pages
News
Blogs
Gallery
Events
Downloads
Posts posted by sylla
-
-
Had Publius Cornelius Scipio not gained control of Spain and ultimately defeated Hannibal, the evolution of Rome into the first world superpower may well have not happened. Hannibal's objective, by consensus, was to reduce Rome to a regional city state power, lacking influence beyond central Italy. If this had been the case, it would be rather pointless talking about the relative merits of Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Germanicus, Pompey or Trajan for example, because there would not have been an established Roman domain in which to develop greatness of deed and character.
Scipio possessed all the Roman virtues and the forward thinking chracter of an Philehellene. He saved Rome from disaster and gained little reward. Scipio Africanus was to Rome, the same as the RAF to England in 1940 and surely deserves recognition.
Raw experience has repeatedly shown us that no man or woman has all virtues: Scipio possessed all in our available sources because all what we have are unashamed panegyrics that tried to eclipse Hannibal's figure after the death of Marcellus. In fact, those same sources tried to eclipse any other Roman general, Scipio's own brother included (ie, Africanus would have defeated Antiochus almost alone as second-in-command). All that might have been true, but in the absence of any critical unbiased account we might rightly remain skeptical.
Ancient sources regularly considered the commander's abilities as the main and almost only factor for the battle's outcome; ie, Varro in Cannae (the patrician Paulus was suspiciously forgotten); nowadays we are well aware that there are numerous factors involved. Hannibal didn't conquer Rome mainly because of the immense collective effort from the Roman Republic as a whole. Scipio might well have been the decisive factor for the ultimate victory, but it seems quite unlikely that Carthage had any real chance after Metaurus.
A couple of unsettled questions:
If Scipio was never defeated, why did he require five full years (210-206 BC) for expelling the Carthaginians from Hispania?
If Hasdrubal Barca was so utterly defeated, how was he able to cross the Alps with so huge an Army in 207 BC?
Why didn't Scipio attack Hannibal in Italy while he was a consul in 205 BC?
And of course, Scipio died in exile after a rather dirty and turbulent political issue.
-
I think Neil was referring to our 'least fave' topics within Roman history.
Being that the case, IMHO there are no boring topics, just boring posters.
All that said, my 'least fave' topic should be Roman (cibernetic) games; just personal taste, I guess.
-
As the inclusion criterion is linguistic and not necessarily my personal taste, I must add Sebastiane (1976).
There is a full-Latin version of STAR WARS (Bellum Stellae), at least for episodes IV and V.
-
I read Tacitus annals a while ago and plan on a refrsher because I forgot alot of his annals. But from what I remember Germanicus was beloved by the Legions. He must of had some good virtue for this to be so. And I also think I remember Tactitus saying "he was beloved by the romans".paraphrase. AM I remembering my studies wrong?
By carefully quoting and critically analyzing the Annals, Ingsoc made a quite convincing case for Tacitus grossly exaggerating Germanicus' at best moderate deeds and virtues so he could abuse the supposedly jealous Tiberius; just judge by yourself.
-
Greetings
I am merely a high school student, however education in my field requires in-depth knowledge of Latin.
Is there a Tv show or a movie that is entirely in Latin?
That would help i think.
A well known case is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004); the script is mostly in ecclesiastical-like Latin plus some passages in reconstructed Aramaic and Hebrew, with English subtitles.
-
- National pride discussions from anyone that may consider his/her country (or group) as the true and only heir of ancient Rome.
- Argumentations that try to prove or disprove the existence and/or divine nature of any deity (they are funny, but in other Fora).
- Any self-conscious fallacy that pretends to survive forever on sheer force.
-
For the name of Cupid its interesting to note that in Hebrew we call him "Cupidon" which is the Latin name with a Greek suffix.
Actually, Cupidon is Cupid in French.
The Latin Cupido is a participe form of the verb cupere (to desire); French adds a "-n" to many Latin nouns ending in "-o", mostly masculine (the feminine noun Cupidone is the name of a flower).
The name of our Latin friends Fronto and Varro had a similar evolution in French (Fronton and Varron).
As far as I know, the name for our winged friendly god in Greek is always Eros or a derivative.
-
It seems the revision of Zosimus and the whole textual record on the Roman departure from Britain (the Brittia/Bruttia alternative included) is a currently ongoing event.
In any case, the available archaeological evidence (negative evidence, in fact) for the abrupt disappearance of the Roman civil and military administration from Britannia at the early V century (like the absence of new coins after 402 or the lack of references to the II, VI or XX Legions) seems to be already overwhelming and undeniable.
-
My guess is that at a certain time some German literature work(s) used the name "Amor" and not "Cupido" and from that time it's just stick as the common name for the little winged guy. in a similar way to that "Antonius" became "Antony" in the English language become of the early translation to Plutarchus.
That's an easier question:
Indo-European languages regularly add a familiar ending to imported loanwords for their naturalization, often deleting at the same time alien endings.
Latin itself usually adds "-us" to alien masculine proper names, i.e. the regular inflection for the nominative case of the second declension. Eg "Plutarch-us" for the Greek "Plutarch" (and most dog-Latin wizard names in Harry Potter's saga, BTW).
The nomen Antoni-us (itself of Etruscan origin) was naturalized in English in a most usual way, by the deletion of "-us" and the addition of a regular English ending, like "-y", actually fused with the "i" in this word. This is a rather common case in English, like "Pliny" for "Plinius" or "Livy" for "Livius.
The "-th-" of Anthony is an English prosodic transcription, sometimes omitted. This name didn't necessarily come from the works of Plutarch; an ecclesiastical source is quite likely.
Other IE languages add their respective endings; eg, "-o" for Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (Antonio).
-
....so after more then two years since i posted, any one else an idea why the germans say Amor and the english Cupid?
BTW, Amor seems to be preferred name for this god in Swedish and other Nordic languages too (Klingan's expertise is required here).
Thomas Hyde in The Poetic Theology of Love states that by the late Medieval ages a dichotomy had developed between Amor, the good virtuous divine love, and Cupid, the evil voluptuous lustful love.
My educated guess would be that these words came into the non-romance Old German via the medieval minnesang predominantly from ecclesiastical Latin, which would have been naturally biased for Amor versus Cupido.
The regular evolution for these words within the Romance languages was the divergence in their meaning; Amor was primarily reserved as the common name for the feeling, affection or passion (ie, love) while Cupido remained as the proper name for the God (ie, Eros).
Western Germanic languages (English, Dutch and even Danish) would probably have taken the latter name (presumably via French) for the God; most if not all Germanic languages seem to have used original proto-Germanic cognates for expressing the feeling.
-
From Phillip Stadter's The Categories of Ancient Biography:
"(1) Philosophical biography brought out the moral character of its subjects and the relation of their teachings to their lives.
Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, wrote on Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato.
Hermippus in the third century wrote Lives of many philosophers, as well as lawgivers and other figures.
Diogenes Laertius
-
And another lesson from Karl Popper:
"You can prove a fake, but you can't prove originals. That's an epistemological problem," Stefan Simon told...
A bit of wax was allegedly found in Nefertiti's right eye. When it was carbon-dated a few years back, scientists concluded that might be more than 3,300 years old...
The sculpture is composed of the so-called Amarna-mix, a blend of gypsum anhydride plaster applied on top of a limestone base...
"This special blend was unknown before 1912," said Simon ...
-
A nice review indeed from what seems to have been an exhaustive search on the available ancient sources; maybe it's exactly for its thoroughness that I am a bit disappointed with its findings.
Most of the examples of women at circus quoted here seem to have been closer to executed convicts; the kind of stuff you could try on your own slaves but was unthinkable for the Roman female elite, and was thus timely denounced by the pro-senatorial historians (especially Dio).
A massive execution ad bestias must have been for the contemporary professional venatores what nowadays hanged criminals are for modern acrobats.
I would have expected to find more evidence on the professional gladiatrices from the exotic-taste-prone Imperial plutocrats and mob.
-
Why all this eagerness for showing our defects to the World?
Why should we deny the World the pleasure of discovering them by itself?
-
Okay, friends, I need some more recommendations. I'm looking for some authoritative--yet affordable--books on the division of Alexander the Great's kingdom on his death. I'm ill-informed on this period and would like to correct that. Is scholarship on this period plentiful?
BTW, most of the books that I have been able to check out on this topic name the Seleucid Kingdom as "Syria".
This may be misleading; for a long time (ie, under Seleucus I or Antiochus III) this dynasty ruled over an immense Empire (presumably the biggest of its time) equivalent to the Achaemenid Empire under Artaxerxes II and including the vast majority of Alexander's conquests, sometimes even holding a foot in either Europe, Africa or India; its maximum size was in the same order of magnitude of the Roman Empire at its acme.
-
He did however have Stilicho murdered, and antagonise Alaric, who could've become a new Stilicho. We all know what followed. To what extent his hand was forced, and the emperor by that time rubber - stamped the decisions of the courtiers and administrators, is hard to say.
This seems to be a fair veredict on this unfortunate ruler from RW Mathisen:
"As for the feckless and timid Honorius, he generally took little part in public affairs. He was generally passive in nature, except when he was motivated to act by fear. He left military operations to his generals, but he did become involved in a controversy over the choice of a bishop of Rome in 418... He left no issue, which resulted in the proclamation of Johannes, the Chief Secretary, after his death. Not until 425 did his nephew Valentinian III... restore the legitimate dynasty. Even though the unity of the western empire was shakily maintained during Honorius' reign ... he left a legacy of fragmentation and feeble, lackluster leadership which eventually would result in the dissolution of the western empire."
-
Antalya?
Impressive
For me too.
-
No, but it is on my list. I agree it is interesting; seems to be a culture and daily life book for the later empire, which is a rare thing.
Both authors have remarkable lists of published works:
My error: Cameron in not the coauthor, merely wrote the introduction.
Can anyone point me to a timeline online of the Roman Empire, one that can tell me about
the events of 428 AD?
Traina's book extract and contents seem to be a nice list for me.
Traina explicitly selected a fifth century year with not too may ground-breaking events.
Arguably the most relevant events for 428 AD itself would be:
-The final demise and annexation of the centuries-long Armenian client kingdom by the Persians.
- The beginning of Genseric's reign.
- Nestorius becoming the Patriarch of Constantinople.
-
Brutus was hands down a great Roman and gets a bad rap. What he and Cassius and the others wanted was to save the republic. I think if Brutus and Cassius beat antony and Octavian people would have a different view of Brutus. Here was a Man who decided to betray one of his best friends, Caesar. Also he had the name Brutus and had that on his shoulders because it was his ancestor Lucius Brutus who killed the last king of Rome and ushered in the republic. If Brutus and Cassius came out on top I wonder how he would be veiwed. Would he still be the traitor or would he be the savoir of Rome? To bad Caesar was loved by the people. But Dictator for life? Caesar was king in all but name. His biggest error was not killing Brutus after Pompey was defeted. Instead he welcomed him back. If he executed Brutus the history could of changed. Or still Caesar would of been wcked out so to speak. Brutus indeed was a great Roman for trying to save the republic and not letting his feelings for his "Father figure" get in his way.
Cicero and many other contemporaries seem to have thought like you, and certainly so did Plutarch. BTW, Cassius was presumably as great or bad Roman as Brutus (with the additional merit of an outstanding performance against Pacorus and his Parthians after Carrhae); even so, he usually gets even worse rap than Brutus.
Anyway, I would think great figures should be defined by their performance, not so much by their intentions. As it was, Cassius and Brutus transformed the relatively balanced peace under Caesar into an even worse Civil War than the last one.
Arguably, they should probably have killed Anthony and even Lepidus; even so, there is no way to predict where the allegiance of the Legions would have fallen. If Brutus and Cassius had beaten Anthony and Octavius, they would all still be remembered as the men responsible for the greatest Roman citizen slaughter ever at Philippi.
More important, we are again probably giving too much weight to individual performances for the Republican outcome; if the centuries-long Republic was eliminated at all, it must be concluded that it lacked the support of the Roman people as a whole.
Had Brutus been executed after Pharsalus, that would have hardly been compatible with the purported contemporizing intentions of Caesar after his victory. Besides, Cassius and the other Liberatores would presumably had still been on their way to magnicide.
I have always been a Caesar fan, and agree that he is probably Rome's most famous son.More and more, as I read and study his life, Africanus is becoming my favorite Roman, though.
Quite few people ever may be compared with the original Caesar on fame's magnitude.
Just be aware the more and more we read on Scipio Africanus Major, the more we read panegyrics; virtually no critical analysis of his figure survived from Classical times; one can only guess if that was the case for the lost Plutarch's biography.
-
No.
The symbol of Byzantium can be seen in many places and is connected with the symbol of the powerful.
Nicomedia.
-
Just a comment, but if Honorius had really wanted to, he could have martialled the western armies and saved the empire. Things were still not beyond the point of no return then.
very true... i think he was more interested in hes pet chickens then the empire.
For all we know, Honorius seems to have been a terrible ruler; however, as usual, we are probably giving too much credit to the personal abilities (or the lack of them) of any Roman Emperor.
The Roman Empire (both included) has been by then a centuries-long mature administrative and bureaucratic unit that has survived from many huge threats, notoriously the III century military chaos; its government tended to thrive even under nasty rulers.
After all, Arcadius in Constantinople seems to have not been a far better ruler than his brother.
The complex processes that eventually determined the Fall of the Western Empire were presumably quite advanced by the early V century.
As Mr. Ward-Perkins suggested, there was probably no absolute point of no return until the Arab conquest of Syria and Egypt by Umar in the VII century, when the Roman Empire was definitively deprived from the economic input required for massive military movements.
-
Hmmm, could this be true?
Stone Age humans were adept chemists who whipped up a sophisticated kind of natural glue, a new study says.
They knowingly tweaked the chemical and physical properties of an iron-containing pigment known as red ochre with the gum of acacia trees to create adhesives for their shafted tools.
Read more here
The mere suggestion that seven hundred centuries ago there was something akin to empirical chemical design deliberately applied to tools' development is indeed fascinating by itself.
However, we should better still hold our horses; if I understood it rightly, a regular Paleolithic industry of tools made with the red-ochre/acacia-gum adhesive has not been identified yet; ie, the "superglue" may just have been a one-time lucky accident.
In any case, as other UNRV members I also find Mr. Wadley's commentary on Stone Age intelligence unnecessary; presumably much more time is required for any significant change on the biological basis of human cognition.
-
No. But close.
The one who made that building loved Bythnia.
Caesarea.
-
All that said, the original question was quite specific:
Now one on one. 1 cohort of Legionnaires versus 1 unit of silver pikemen. Who has the advantage? Now the cohort has mobility and the phalanx has reach. With no cavalry to support the cohort can they overcome the Phalanx? What do you think? And I am talking late republic cohorts.On the overall comparison of the military perfomance of those two tactical units, I would think the unqualified general consesus has overly favoured the Legion from the very first moment.
Now, this thread had almost immediately derived to a far more complex issue: why did the Roman Republic defeated the Kingdom of Macedonia?
In addition to the legion superiority as a tactical uniy, many advantages were evidently on the Roman side, beginning by the raw numbers; Italy was far more populated than Macedonia.
Rome had also the support of the powerful Numidian kingdom and its army, especiallly from its cavalry and elephant units, essentially the same veteran "mercenaries" from the campaigns of Hannibal.
Many Greek armies (notoriously the Etolian cavalry) fought on the Roman side too.
Probably for the first time, huge auxiliary units share the battlefront with the legions, including the famous Cretan archers and Balearic slingers; even Gaulish hosrsemen were there.
Besides, Rome had the economic and naval support from Egypt and even the subjugated Carthage.
Last but not least, commander's expertise seems to have been predominantly on the Roman side.
It should be noted that the armies of some Greek allies, integrated themselves by phalanx units, had a fair performance under Roman command and even defeated the Macedonians on their own more than once.
Even so, the Roman victory was hardly as easy as our romanophile sources want us to believe; after all, there was more than half a century between the beginning of Macedonian War I and the definitive conquest of Pella.
IMHO, by now a more interesting question would be why the Macedonians were still able to win some significant battles over the Roman legions, notoriously when Perseus routed Crassus at Callicinus.
Bolts From The Grave
in Archaeology
Posted
There's a famous skeloton from Maiden Castle (Dorset) with the head of a ballista bolt embedded in its backbone; however, this finding comes from the Roman invasion; the bolt was presumably from Legio II Augusta.
There are many reports of "bolts" in Anglo-Saxon burials, including the Wiltshire area; however it's clear most if not all of them are talking about other kind of iron devices and not ballista balls.