sylla
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Posts posted by sylla
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The original Latin passage is "SEPTEM ME NAATAM ANNORVM GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT".
There are so many tombstones of children. It is heartbreaking to read...
Thanks Ingsoc for sending us to such a nice website; it couldn't be any more didactic.
The inscription discussed on this thread is "A Traditional Roman Funerary Inscription: Aurelius Hermia & Aurelia Philematio", the eleventh link from the opening of this page.
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The Latin relevant phrase is GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT, which is translated by the museum as "(He) took me to his bosom". "Bosom" is also an euphemism here, because GREMIO is in fact an explicit genital reference.
The original Latin passage is "SEPTEM ME NAATAM ANNORVM GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT".
According to the The Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary Germium could be translated as lap, bosom; female genital parts; interior (btw the female genital parts doesn't appear in The Cassell's Latin Dictionary so it's probably wasn't common meaning) and Ipse is masculine it's has to refer to her husband hence the translation of "lap, bosom" would be the only logical translation (I also find it hard to believe that someone would choose to put such as explicit sexual references on their tomb stone...).
My impression is the he took her under his wing when she was seven years old since she had no relatives or they couldn't look after her (see also the passage which say he was like a father to her) and only later this "father-daughter" relationship changed to one of husband-wife.
"Genital" doesn't mean "*or*".
I restricted the analysis to the final half of this sentence, because the first one (SEPTEM ME NAATAM ANNORVM) is undisputed; it's an adverbial phrase of time, the age at which the action happened (note the archaic double vowel).
In the relevant phrase (GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT) the masculine reflexive pronoun "Ipse" is the subject (the husband Aurelius) who performed the reflexive action of receiving himself (Recepit) at the "Gremio" (dative/ablative object); this is a nice synechdoche, where a part is used to represent the whole (ie, the wife Aurelia). This kind of figure is quite common in poetry and anthropology.
Then, Aurelius received himself at Aurelia when she was seven years old; within the context of this memorial, it clearly implied the beginning of this couple
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It's hard for me to explain how much I enjoy watching all this cool educational material so nicely posted by you.
Thx, K
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A non-confusing prophecy sounds like an oxymoron to me.
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The passage says they KNEW each other when she was seven years old and that they were involved in some way...but was it romantic? It's hard to tell (I've heard 'embraced' used to mean something else entirely but I'm not sure this is the case here.)
I don't see what's shameful or even questionable about two people meeting- one at a very early age- and later coming to be romantically involved. While eyebrows may be raised at huge age differences between partners in modern Western countries it wasn't always that way, nor is it that way in much of the world.
This famous inscription is currently at the British Museum; please don't get mistaken by its euphemistic adaptation on Ms. Shelton book.
The Latin relevant phrase is GREMIO IPSE RECEPIT, which is translated by the museum as "(He) took me to his bosom". "Bosom" is also an euphemism here, because GREMIO is in fact an explicit genital reference.
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There were certain conditions that had to be satisfied before a legal marriage could be contracted even by citizens. One of them being that both of the parties should be pūberēs; there could be no marriage between children. Although no precise age was fixed by law, it is probable that fourteen and twelve were the lowest limit for the man and the woman respectively.
The law is quoted in the Institutiones of Gaius, 1, 22 pr.
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Ward-Perkins performed a cautious analysis on the more than 11,000 inscriptions and graffiti recorded in Pompeii; I couldn't agree more with his conclusion:
"Even though we cannot estimate the proportion of Pompeians who were literate (was it 30 per cent, or more; or perhaps only 10 per cent ?), we can say with confidence that writing was an essential, and a day-to-day part of the city
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The lower age limit for marriage was explicitly established by the Roman law for puberty, meaning the beginning of reproductive capabilities (nubilis for women); for most of the Roman Era, the limit for women was 12 years, as it is described in the first book of Gaius' Institutiones (II century AD); by the time of Justinian, this limit has been upgraded to 14 years, no doubt because of the influence of the Christian Church. At least for the Roman elite, both textual and epitaph's evidence have consistently shown that most women married between the ages of 12 and 16 (Median age = 14).
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Checking on this old thread, the uncritical acceptance of the figures from classical historians is always amazing.
The 230,000 men of Boudica's army reported by Dio, assuming extremely high mobilization rates, would have required a base population (Iceni and client tribes) of at least two million subjects; some three million under most conventional rates.
This is an optimistic hypothesis, which would require the unlikely assumption of 0% casualties from previous campaigns and 100% local recruitment (ie, no neutral or romanophile natives).
The Iceni territory was little more than modern Norfolk, (which current population is BTW some 840,000); that was like 5% of Britannia's territory.
The current average estimation for the whole Roman British population is around three millions, more or less like modern Panama or Costa Rica.
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Everyday's Latin indeed. The last answer comes from Persian via Hindi (ie, the British Raj).
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Some of this material is actually available on YouTube and similar sites; I haven't been able to check on the "Roman feast" yet.
From what I saw, Mr. Blumenthal is clearly playing with his spectator's nausea; this may have begun with some hard history and science, but it quickly became into unpolluted showbusiness.
BTW, I can't see any problem for eating ANY portion of porcine flesh; besides, both insects and bull's testicles are regular food in many countries. As most ingredients, they may be tasty (even delicious) in the right hands.
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In the light of our understanding of deep time Daniel Lord Smail argues that it is high time that the two disciplines (History and Archaeology) were reunited.
read the article Why do we have history and archeology?
...what you think?
cheers
viggen
Archaeology without History is like sailing without a map.
History without Archaeology is little more than fairy tales.
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Deep History's philosophy in a nutshell for less than a denarius; V's post is a bomb.
If we could be a fly traveling back in time and watching historical events......i bet we would be most of the time pretty much disappointed, I mean, there were no orchestra playing in the background when Caesar was stabbed to death, no different camera angles on any of the battles, no special effects, no make up, highly valued monologues of hour beloved orators would probably interrupted, by coughing, chit chat at the back seats...
It's easy to forget that we're actually always living and watching historical events; their historical magnitude is only given by years (or centuries) of perspective.
Playing the time tunnel would be incredibly boring for at least 99.9999.....% of the time; to begin with, Humanity has been sleeping for a third of History, not to mention other bodily functions. That's why the teaching of History has always required special effects, from rhetoric and footnotes to virtual perspectives and background music; Roman and Greek historians truly mastered this field.
on a site note...to the battle fields; i saw a documentary on the battle of Gaugamela, how different must have been the experience of the individual macedon soldier depending were his location during the battle was, compare the soldier who was fighing right from the beginning with Parmenion's forces on the flank, to the Peltasts who was hiding behind the cavalary getting engaged much later... i am sure both would have had told a totally different story about the battle, not even talking about Darius forces...It's the Rashomon effect exponentially raised to infinity; well beyond the wildest fantasy.
what do you think, would we all be pretty much disappointed being a fly back in time?Obviously, it would depend on our expectations.
Were we looking for breath-taking action & passion and profoundly didactic morals, the answer would most probably be
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Barbarians (please read "foreigners") were almost universally despised, and the Romans were always paranoid about them.
Alien or native, any unexplained activity was systematically considered hostile until proven otherwise.
Freedom of movement was far from being considered a universal right; in fact, most free peasants were legally bounded to their land, especially by the late Empire.
The distinction between wandering and brigandage was discretional, and the Roman state was proud of controlling both; ie, Augustus (Suetonius).
The risk of enslavement for irregular foreigners was quite real; it was the regular punishment for brigandage and related conditions (servi poenae); in fact, eluding the census was enough.
Besides, the hunters of fugitive slaves frequently kidnapped free-born citizens, as attested by the ergastuli under both Augustus and Tiberius (Suetonius again).
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Salve,
I am an iron age inhabitant of the island you call Albion.
In my language it is called Pretan.
I am related to the chief of the Dwr-Y-Tryges and we are not short of gold and land.
My kids are going on a trip to visit your capital around the year of your consuls
L. Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and C. Norbanus and wonder if they will be welcomed.
Would they need to adopt a false identity or could well to do Celts (to use your term)
visit Rome without being sold into slavery?
I'm sorry I do not wish to offend anyone but one hears stories, you know?
That's an excellent question; the juridical status that you would have been looking for was called peregrinus, meaning the citizens from any sovereign state defined as an ally by the Romans and who were then protected by a friendship convention (hospitium). Otherwise, you would have been an irregular allien without any legal right which might have protected you from enslavement or any other kind of abuse; in fact, you may very well have been considered an hostis (enemy).
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I would do but I don't have it. All we need to know is whether he specifically mentions a soft iron shank or not. By referring to a 'bending' shaft, it doesn't rule out the twin pin version. I'll dig up Michel Feugeres book on Roman weaponry tonight and see what he says. He uses a lot of archaeological evidence to back up Roman sources.
Usus autem sum, ne in aliquo fallam carissimam mihi familiaritatem tuam, praecipue libris ex bibliotheca Ulpia, aetate mea thermis Diocletianis, et item ex domo Tiberiana, usus etiam [ex] regestis scribarum porticus porphyreticae, actis etiam senatus ac populi. 2 et quoniam me ad colligenda talis viri gesta ephemeris Turduli Gallicani plurimum invit, viri honestissimi ac sincerissimi, beneficium amici senis tacere non debui. 3 Cn. Pompeium, tribus fulgentem triumphis belli piratici, belli Sertoriani, belli Mithridatici multarumque rerum gestarum maiestate sublimem, quis tandem nosset, nisi eum Marcus Tullius et Titus Livius in litteras rettulissent? 4 Publ<i>um Scipionem Afric<an>um, immo Scipiones omnes, seu Lucios seu Nasicas, nonne tenebrae possiderent ac tegerent, nisi commendatores eorum historici nobiles atque ignobiles extitissent? 5 longum est omnia persequi, quae ad exemplum huiusce modi etiam nobis tacentibus usurpanda sunt. 6 illud tantum contestatum volo me et rem scripsisse, quam, si quis voluerit, honestius eloquio celsiore demonstret, et mihi quidem id animi fuit, 6 <ut> non Sallustios, Livios, Tacito<s>, Trogos atque omnes disertissimos imitarer viros in vita principum et temporibus disserendis, sed Marium Maximum, Suetonium Tranquillum, Fabium Marcellinum, Gargilium Martialem, Iulium Capitolinum, Aelium Lampridium ceterosque, qui haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere memoriae tradiderunt. 8 sum enim unus ex curiosis, quod infi[ni]t<i>as ire non possum, ince<n>dentibus vobis, qui, cum multa sciatis, scire multo plura cupitis. 9 et ne diutius ea, quae ad meum consilium pertinent, loquar, magnum et praeclarum principem et qualem historia nostra non novit, arripiam.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the pilum used in the Cimbrian war used the two-pin style. It didn't have a bendy shaft, but a pivotting one.
You can read it in Plutarch.
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The bulk of the available evidence on Roman age for the first marriage comes from the urban population in the principate.
There is direct evidence for the elite; the early to mid-teens for women and the late teens for men.
Regarding the non-aristocrats, the evidence is almost entirely indirect, fundamentally the age at which spouses replaced parents as commemorators for young adults in epitaphs; at least in Italy and the western provinces, it was circa age 20 for women and age 30 for men.
As usual, Egypt has the best records (census): late teens for women and early twenties for men.
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Plutarch attributed this innovation in the pilums's design to Marius during the Cimbrian War.
Interestingly, Ammianus attributed Julian
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Well, the Roman style of warfare came after the Phalanx as the Romans could use their speed and mobility to break up the Hellenes. Over flat terrain the Roman would win all day long as it has the space to manouvre but if they were faced with the phalanx defending a bottle neck then the phalanx' longer reach would win.
That was indeed the conclusion of Polybius, given an even distribution of human and material resources. In practice, there were naturally additional factors that affected the battle's outcome, like the leadership, cavalry support and even the Roman elephants. In any case, the phalanx was routed by the legion in almost any battle across this period (Pyrrhus was another story).
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A nice piece about Cleopatra
Indeed; one must agree with Cleopatra's image being more literary than historical (Ms. Schiff's depiction included), but hardly with her 21 years ruling "alone". As any other of the late Ptolemies, she was a client puppet monarch, essentially a Roman pro-magistrate backed by the legions from the beginning to the end and with questionable executive capabilities, despite the Augustan propaganda.
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I agree but at least he had a source (Suetonius ?)
Nope. It was Tacitus the first one that mentioned the rumor ("the infirmities of Augustus increased, and some suspected guilt on his wife's part"). Dio elaborated on this theory and attributed Augustus' death to poisoned figs.
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"He caused us especial dismay by constantly styling himself the son of Marcus and the brother of Commodus and by bestowing divine honours upon the latter, whom but recently he had been abusing." (Cassius Dio, 76.7)
Obviously Severus "adoption" by Marcus Aurelius wasn't legit as Aurelius was dead since 180... and this move was made to give his dynasty legitimacy and popularity among the soldiers. however the thing I wondering about is how he manage to persuade the soldiers that he really was adopted by the divine Marcus?
I do believe the Senate legitimized his claim legally, whether coerced or not. Of course, anyone could see through such things if they chose to look deep enough, but we know the role of propaganda in such things. And... the legions were probably just happy with the donative of one thousand sesterces per man and ultimately to have one of their own in command.
By his own account the opportunist Dio began his literary and courtier career with a lavish treatise on Septimius Severus' dreams; it seems he had no problem in abusing his former benefactor. This passage must had been written (or edited) after Septimius' death, and we might reasonably infer Alexander Severus was not displeased by its content.
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Very well said matt. When an army has a phalanx formation it is only prudent to have either cavalry and/or light infantry on the flanks. Alexander the Great was a master at utilizing the phalanx. I do wonder if you take Alexander the Greats best army and put it up against say Pompey's best or Caesars what the outcome would be.
Unsurprisingly, Livy's answer to a related question (Alexander III versus his contemporary Romans) was definitive too; Alexander wpuld have been utterly defeated.
Valerianus as an example
in Nomina et Gentes
Posted
Why not simply one of the true Licinii?