sylla
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Posts posted by sylla
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Is there any textual evidence on Mark Anthony or Cleopatra being buried at all?
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Salvete Sylla et Omnes,
Well, I think that the Soviets claimed up to 20 million casualties during WW II. Military and civilians includes. That doesn't seem like 'minimizing casualties' much to me.
Well obviously after the war they gave much more accurate figures. However, at the start of the war when Operation Barbossa was so successful, Stalin would not tell Soviet citizens the real numbers for fear of mass panic.
ATG
The Sovietic example was quoted here because it was paramount and undisputable; the shameless manipulation of their casualty figures was standard practice and it's easy to check it out; for example, within the memoirs of marshall Konstantin Rokossovskiy.
At the end of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) Stalin was in Postdam looking for the payment of reparations and was undertandably trying to maximize his casualty figures (up to 20-23 millions); even so, it was most likely an underestimation, mostly explained by faulty registration. The current estination is around 26,600,000.
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I think we need to distinguish between literacy sources like Tacitus and Cassius Dio and official records like the fasti. while it's possible that a divorce wife would still be called a wife in the former (it's really depend on the style of the author) I think it's unlikely to happened in the later since they are considered public records and as such would probably record the legal marital status of a person.
In our case Apicatia was divorced from Sejanus for a few years and there wasn't any doubt about her marital status.
There are many potential alternatives that we simply can't exclude; for example:
Was Apicata really divorced? Couldn't Tacitus have erred or his text been corrupted? Couldn't Sejanus and Apicata have just re-married?
Why were the Sejanii inscribed in the Fasti Ostiensis to begin with? They lived and died in Rome. Were the Ostians aware of Apicata's civil status? Even more, what do we know about public records' style?
The traditionally restored phrase is "...APICATA SEIANI..."; did this formula really imply a fortiori that they were still married? Is there no other explanation? As far as I know, "Seiani" simply stated a conexion with Sejanus. How should a divorced and still unmarried woman be called? Shouldn
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Regarding Cannae and similar cases, and at the risk of overstating the obvious, big Roman casualties' figures can also have been used as Roman propaganda, irrespectively of their reliability; certainly not for Varro here, but via Hannibal for Scipio, magnifying then the magnitude of the latter's victory over the former.
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There's some Hellenic dark humor too:
"An intellectual got a slave pregnant.
At the birth, his father suggested that the child be killed.
The intellectual replied: "First murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine"."
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Contemporary: Walter Scheidel.
Antiquity: Caius Asinius Pollio.
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Judging from the trailers, the depicted Roman military equipment seems quite uniform: there are virtually no pila, only hastae; mostly loricae segmentata, with some squamata for the officers;
gladii and Gallic helmets.
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There is an article by Jane Bellemore dealing with Livillia death, base on an inscription that mention that the wife of Sejanus committed suicide eight days after his execution Bellemore identify this wife as Livilla and claim that Sejanus married her against Tiberius wishes as a mean to counter Caligula growing influence and when the emperor learn of this union he moved against Sejanus and had the couple eliminated.
Thanks for this nice piece of scholar research.
The relevant fragment of the Fasti Ostiensis depicts chronologically the deaths of five members of Sejanus' family across the late 31 AD; the third one, presumably Sejanus' wife (name erased, traditionally considered as "Apicata") commited suicide VII Kalendas November (October 26), after Sejanus himself and his older son Strabo, but before the younger children, contradicting so the only surviving report by Dio (58.11) of the children's death as the cause of Apicata's suicide. The traditional interpretation has been that Dio simply erred, a relatively common occurrence judging by the comparative parallel analysis with Tacitus' Annals.
Ms. Bellemore suggests that the cognomen Apicata couldn't have been inscribed in the Fasti, mainly because it is too long (but even if that was the case; why not in an abbreviated form? Or just her Nomen? -possibly Gavia-) and also because Tacitus indicated Sejanus divorced Apicata eight years before (but Tacitus himself called Apicata Sejanus' wife in later quotes, not to mention Dio and others).
Discarding Apicata, the author considers Livia's ("Livilla") name must have been there: Ms. B supports her thesis quoting plenty of textual references regarding Sejanus and Livia's desire to marry each other (but not one stating that they actually did it). Finally, Cassius Dio must now be wrong about Livia's demise.
IMHO, a fascinating but hardly tenable hypothesis; too scarce evidence for quite an extraordinary claim. The traditional parsimonious interpretation is far more plausible.
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Salvete Sylla et Omnes,
Then, the 1000 man trampled to death. Is that impossible ? I'd rather have a ten tonner truck coming at me (I might have a chance to get out of the way), than say 2 roman legions, 12000 heavily armoured and armed men who are running for their life. color]
You missed the point; Caesar was here so reluctant to admit the other side's merit (even in defeat) that he attributed most of his casualties to an accident (an Act of God, if you like).
If any claims were absolutely impossible, they would hardly make good propaganda.
Historical texts and figures are no dogma; we
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Granted, the numbers are probably bumped down and up respectively (another estimate is 6000 pompeian dead and 1200 Caesarians, another still is that there is confusion betweenb the two sources - 6000 pompeian legionaires died and 9000 auxillaries while 200 caesarians died and 1000 were badly wound, all sources agreeing that 24,000 pompeians were captured alive), but it still gives an indication of the massive imbalance of the casualties, which is very consistent with the way ancient battles were fought - the vast, vast majority of the casualties occured in defeat ie when one force broke and ran, to be hunted down; Caesar's Gallic veterans would have given him an advantage in what fighting actually took place, and by all accounts the battle was over very quickly, all of these lending credence to the numbers we have, which as they are the only ones we have we really have no choice but to accept, especially as they do make sense considering what we know of the battle. There's also the argument that Caesar really could not afford to make great falsifications in his accounts, but suffice to say that we can be confident that Caesar suffered relatively light casualties at the battle of Pharsalus, while those of Pompey were heavy indeed.
All sources were Caesarian; no Pompeian account survived, and there's a reason for that.
There were new recruits, auxiliaries and Gallic veterans in both sides (Labienus was the obvious example). In fact, Caesar frequently stressed his relative lack of veterans as an additional handicap; Thapsus was an excellent example, which BTW didn't prevent Caesar from the regular favorably unbalanced casualty report.
However, my favorite would be Munda (presumably Hirtius' narrative); we're supossed to believe that:
- After ruling for years 90% or more of the Roman world, the Dictator Caesar was unable to match the legionaires from the single rebel province of Hispania Ulterior (13 Pompeian legions versus 8 Caesarian).
- Even so, the casualties balance was like 30:1 (please don't ask me which side was favored).
Naturally, Caesar was not particularly original; the same applies to Scipio, Constantine and most Roman generals. There was a reason behind publicizing (and bumping up & down) battle reports: basic propaganda. We're dealing here with a literary heroic archetype older than History, analogous to the biblical Samson against the Philistines.
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Ms. Beard's article and most of what I have heard and read in the media regarding the ongoing piracy acts in the Horn of Africa seem to have been gross oversimplifications of an extremely complex situation.
The range of affected vessels has been truly global: Germany, France, Russia, Ukrania, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea (BOTH!), Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and of course US, among others.
Somalia is not only a failed state on active chronic civil war, but it's also disputed among many quasi-states (like Somaliland, Puntsland and so on).
At this very moment, the precise identity and number of the pirates is still unclear, the same as their sponsors and their relationship with the local authorities and population; then, it's hard to define who should be targeted by the retaliation measures.
MPC is right, a convoy strategy is evidently required; but at the end of the day, the real threat is not military but administrative; how and by whom should the criminals be punished?
An international intervention will be most likely required; however, the United Nations have been traditionally pretty ineffectual dealing with this kind of situations.
Under any potential scenario that I can imagine, this problem will in all likelihood worsen the already low life conditions of the Somalian population.
Now, the rather obvious differences between the current Somalian piracy and the Pompey's war of 67 BC can't be stressed enough; Cilicia was then nominally ruled by a client puppet king of the residual Seleucid Syrian kingdom, so it was essentially a Roman territory. No country or authority would have disputed Rome's right to punish its brigands within its own territory, even if someone might have had the strength to try.
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The record of Aurelianus is well known . He was a very able emperor and achieved so much in 5 years .
Have read about him a lot, there seems to be a big lacuna here .
Any detail and opinion about the murderers, their reasons, the acale of the conspiracy etc' ?
Most of the sources were remote and quite unreliable for this period, particularly the infamous Historia Augusta; the chronology is a real mess.
Regardless the details, the Restitutor Orbis was killed by his Praetorian guard, as usual for the period; the material killer was identified as Mucapor (Thracian?).
The story of a non-political conspiracy by a civilian notarius of low social status (named Eros by most sources except the HA, which called him "Mnestheus" probably because of the Greek word for notarius) might very well have been true, but it seems suspiciously convenient for the Praetorians, as both Tacitus and Probus (Aurelian's succesors) take the purported conspirators to trial and even executed at least some of them Ad Bestias, in the best Imperial tradition.
Suspects? Countless; the Senate (or at least a significant fraction) would be my first bet, mainly because:
-Aurelian had executed many senators.
-From numismatic evidence, it's possible that a damnatio memoriae might have initially been decreed.
-Aurelian's immediate succesor was a senator (the former consul Tacitus), an atypical fact for this period.
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Salve Sylla,Analogous to the Soviets in WWII, Roman casualties reports were essentially propaganda and almost always totally unrealistic .
I see. That explains why they supposedly lost only 48.000 men at Cannae.
Vale bene et nil desperandum,
Salve, FV
Analogous to the Soviets in 1941, the Romans acknowledged huge casualties only when they had no alternative, ie facing total disaster, like Carrhae or Arausio; in such scenario, there's clearly no place for propaganda.
If you have read Caesar's battle reports, you know better than that; there's virtually no reliable casualty figure within his accounts, with the relative exception of Dyrrhachium (relative, because ha pretended that of his almost one thousand casualties "the greatest part of all these perished without a wound, being trodden to death ... by reason of the terror and flight of their own men").
Vale bene et nil desperandum
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My choice would have to go to fighting with Caesar at Pharsalus, based on two factors:
- The fact that I admire Caesar, and think he was in the right in fighting the Civil War
- I'm less likely to get killed. Only some 200 Caesarians died at Pharsalus to 15,000 of the enemy. Sounds like good odds to me
Analogous to the Soviets in WWII, Roman casualties reports were essentially propaganda and almost always totally unrealistic .
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A pretty harsh accusation, right? But I personally think that in some ways, he's one of the most disastrous emperors next to Honorius and Romanus IV Diogenes.
First, when it came to his foreign policy, I feel that it was lacking in some area, and totally idiotic in other areas. While his initial policy of peace with the Persians and building up the eastern defenses was good, his ignoring of the East for his western conquests spurred the Persians into attacking again and Antioch being sacked. In his western wars, the taking of Africa may have been justified and well-thought out, but not Italy. By the time the Italian Wars were over, the place was a wreck and all of the Roman institutions of the last millenium were either gone or permanently weakened. I know that he tried to preserve the old Roman civic institutions with the Pragmatic Sanction, but the Roman Italian adiminstration was a complex organism that couldn't be turned on and off at will. The only big players left standing in Italy were the exarch and the pope, and this weakness would allow the Lombards to invade, and to prompt the Italian political division that lasted until the 19th century. Many of the old cities, including Rome, were as left burnt-out, depopulated husks that didn't recover for centuries. And the Spanish campaign was totally pointless in all ways, with a number of Spanish nobles senselessly slaughtered in the initial landing of troops. The soldiers used there and in Italy should have been on the Danubian frontier trying to keep the Slavs out. Also, Narses and Belisarius were excellent generals, but even there, Justininian couldn't help but screw up. In the initial phase of the Gothic Wars, had Belisarius been kept in Italy for another month or so, the Germanic resistance probably would have been defeated, the province would have been fully secured, and the old Roman way of life would have continued. As it was, Justinian's removal of him to the East stalled the Byzantine momentum, allowed for the coronation of Totila, and led to the devastating trench warfare that wracked Italy for another decade... The empire may have been physically bigger on Justinian' death, and had some new nice buildings, but it was strained to the breaking point both militarily and economically, and many of its people's loyalty had been severely tested. I honestly feel that had Justinian followed the more conservative policies of his ancestors, the East Roman Empire may have remained large and strong for a much longer time and the ancient Roman culture of the West may have continued.
Anyone agree or disagree?
I'm not a big fan of Justinian as a conqueror, but as a whole his foreign policy was not a failure and could hardly been responsible for the shrinkage of the Empire; chronology simply doesn't add up. The Roman Empire remained large and strong for quite a long time. The Vandal state disappeared and the Ostrogoths' defeat proved to be definitive; in any case, no Germanic kingdom ever returned to the Empire by its own choice, and the Romans had vast experience with their foedariti for expecting otherwise, no matter their "romanisation" degree. Rome, Ravenna and at least half of the re-conquered Italy were still under Imperial rule two centuries after Justinian; Africa and Sicily were firmly Roman up to the Arab conquest; and the last Roman stronghold in Italy wasn't conquered (by the Normans) until the XII century. If the Empire was eventually not able to recover its lost territories, the main explanation would be Muhammad; the powerful Caliphate was essentially unbeatable, and the Arab conquests deprived the Empire from most of their economic infrastructure.
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Is that really so suprising? The relative prosperity of principatal citizens is based on developments before Augustus as much as anything he did during his reign. Rome had expanded rapidly and had a huge surplus of labour, not to mention profitable provinces such as Egypt. There is also the question of the Augustan Franchise. He instituted the spread of new towns and cities for two reasons. Firstly, he had thirty-odd legions worth of war veterans who needed to be peaceably retired and dispersed. Secondly, he needed tax revenue. Raising taxes on exisating settlements wouldn't make him popular - not a good thing. By spreading the tax burden further he achieved the same result and encouraged them to compete against other for status, thus also encouraging growth. The tax revenue he used to stage games, pay for corn, and to 'turn Rome into marble'. He was effectively bribing the populace to remain popular, and diverting their concerns with 'Bread and Circuses'.
Augustus is often described as a brilliant politician. I don't believe that. He was a successful one however, but what exactly did he do that improved the lot of the common citizenry? He was after all buying them off shamelessly. His reign was all about staying in power, not improving foreign relations, educating the masses, or encouraging innovation to improve lives.
Augustus had the good fortune to reign after the end of the civil wars, so naturally, there was less spending on military concerns (he disbanded more than thirty legions) and military spending is always a drain on resources. The Varian Disaster of ad9 heralded a possible return to warfare and that frightened Augustus considerably. It also detered him from further colonisation of Germania and the Augustan Franchise wilted beyond the the Rhine. The fact was the Germans couldn't afford the taxes. It was one of the reasons they co-operated under Arminius to ambush Varus' column.
So whilst the areas surrounding the empire were poorer and less attractive to conquering leaders, the increased spending and limis of growth meant as time went on the wealth of the Principate was beginning to dissipate. As more money was spent on entertainment and luxury, the available coffers were becoming more depleted with fewer opportunities to replenish them. It really isn't suprising then that the Principate seems so financially successful - it was a period of propserity but one based on a system that wasn't able to meet the demand made upon it.
Was Augustus the architect of Roman prosperity? No. He took control of an empire in a good position to benefit from profitable acquisitions, and although he made efforts to improve tax revenue, his spending wasn't on sustainable growth at all, but rather short term largesse.
Augustus didn't simply come to rule when the war fortunately stopped; the century-long Civil Wars period ended precisely because Octavius won, against all odds. Augustus and his party (particularly Agrippa, Maecenas, Salvidienus, Sallustius, Tiberius and even Livia) were the architects of the most extensive administrative change by far in the whole history of Rome, regular and aptly called the Roman Revolution; the resulting system persisted for centuries and its prosperity was unparalleled across the preindustrial western world. The pertinent literature is simply too extensive; I would recommend E. Gruen and R. Syme.
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Piracy, it seems, has always been with us, and still is. Or, at least, as we've seen this last week, there are still people we don't like doing nasty things on the high seas with tragic consequences. Exactly who is to count as a "pirate" as such will always remain a matter of opinion and dispute. for 'pirates' are no more objectively defined than 'terrorists'. To most of the world, after all, Sir Francis Drake was a dreadful pirate, to the British he still somehow manages to qualify as an 'explorer'...
...opinion at the Times Online Blog of Mary Beard
The problem in defining "terrorism" is not so much semantic ("The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments") as administrative. Essentially, all the persons/groups that use force/violence consider that they are entitled to do it so. Consequently, the "terrorist" is always the other side, never oneself.
On the other hand, "piracy" is a rather objectively defined term: "robbery committed at sea". Sir Francis Drake was an officially sanctioned pirate (by Britain) ie, a corsair, and a dreadful one indeed. He was also an outstanding explorer; both activities are not mutually exclusive.
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... Despite the success of Augustus as Princeps, despite the provison of public entertainment, despite the beautification of Rome - how many more people were actually better off by the time Tiberius took over? Sure, there will have been some people who did well out the period (there always is) but the comman man? There was a large part of society that was still as poor. As for status, humans do demand it from governmensts and have done since the dawn of time - but they've had to rebel against those governments often enough to get it. Domination of the many by the few is a natural consequence of our primeval instinct. The Alpha Male/Female as it were. To regard the distribution of wealth and status as some form of universal right is nothing more than a fashionable attitude of the modern west, rather similar to the attitude of the early and mid-Roman Republic. It could change for us in the future - it did change for the Romans... Augustus wasn't building a thousand year reich or any such concept. He was running the show and wanted to stay popular. So he paid for games and boasted of it in his will. I really don't think Augustus could do any more about future planning than choose his successor.
An interesting point that only archaeology can answer; as far as I know, the overwhelming prevalent consensus in the field is that the average daily life conditions (at least for the Roman citizens) were at its overall higher point for the preindustrial western world under the Roman Empire from Augustus to the Antonines.
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The use of Scottish locations suggests that the budget was not enough for getting New Zealand.
The poor choice of Latin names for the main characters, and the apparent presence of some barbarian-like moustaches among them, suggest a limited investigation of the social background.
The use of the demonym "Pict" and Ms. Kurylenko make-up suggest that anachronisms have not worried Mr. Marshall.
As a whole, it seems that hollywoodesque action will prevail over historicity whenever in conflict.
So as a humble romanophile, I think the best one can expect is a reasonable reenactment of the legionaries tactics, equipment and weaponry.
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I think this just goes to show how much Gaius was truly hated at the end, that even his closest advisors and guard would play a helping hand in ending the young emperors life at 28 years of age.
Except his German guards, who remained loyal. If I remember right, wasn't the situation somewhat fraught immediately after his death? That would indicate there were still plenty of 'Caligulists' at large.
Anyone can be blood-thirsty, particularly across civil wars; what made Octavius/Augustus and a fistful of historical world leaders unique was their exceptionally gifted administrative performance.Blood-thirstiness is a complex subject. To some extent, people are sheep. If powerful leaders tell them to be blood-thirsty and give them absoltuion or an excuse, be it religious, racial, or political in nature, then they follow suit and rationalise what they've done even if they have lingering doubts and guilt. As individuals, without a group to hide behind, most people cannot behave in that manner (and fewer still would contemplate it).
In other words, as social animals human beings run with the crowd.
Regarding leaders, we tend to study them in siolation or in relations to their immediate associates such as family or allies. However, in an organised situation you do often find able organisers that exist in the shadows. For the most part these faceless assistants are of no great account in history (or we'd know who they were) but their influence cannot be underestimated. Augustus for instance was a typically cautious leader (one reason for his popularity - the Romans liked cautious leaders) and despite the peace and prosperity of his reign, doesn't seem to show any great flair in civic management. Granted, he did some clever things. He kept Cleopatra at arms length (what a dodgy woman she was!), reinvented the Roman legions as 'soldiers', not 'brothers', "Found Rome in brick and left it in marble", and certaibnly staged a lot of games. And so forth.
But his real success was to do as little as possible. Roman emperors who were remembered fondly often share that characteristic. By maintaining as much of the status quo as possible, fewer influential people got upset. Augustus in fact walked a tightrope in his early days (and due credit to him) and his title of Princeps demonstrates that. Yes, Agustus is in charge, but not an ego maniac like Caesar or those horrible kings we once had. In other words, he was a dictator who pretended he wasn't. You could in fact argue, as I have, that he did little more than bribe the Roman public to keep him in power, though there are are indications he kept an eye out for possible up-and-coming rivals and dealt with them in pretty much the same manner as any modern gangster might.
Now the state had to continue running. We know that Emperors struggled mightily to run it in later years, the empire was just too big for one man to control, so the ability and integrity of most bureaucrats who worked on Augustus's behalf must therefore have been somewhat better than in later reigns. They were opening up a genre of government, they had the full support of the Princeps, and had every reason to demonstrate skill and endeavour.
Later bureaucrats simply wanted a bit of status, a sinecure, and a source of income, and backscratched their way into an existing role. Some might argue that Augustus kept a close enough scrutiny to ensure his own men were doing a good job. I have to concede that possibility. In a sense, he may have been an able administrator - I would argue he was an able manager.
Status and income are universal legitimate demands from any human for any government; the real success of the Augustus' administration (on a global all-time scale) was ensuring plenty of them to millions of Roman citizens for centuries; such kind of "bribing" is what the human "sheep" might reasonably expect from the real top world leaders.
Their civic management was enough to explain why the Republic never came back, even after Chaerea butchered Caius; in fact, even among the most noble senatorial families, most of them were more comfortable as bureaucrats (some of them even efficient) under a strong regime than as petty lords under the chaos of civil war.
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The demise of the VIIII Hispana in Caledonia was considered standard knowledge some years ago, as it was based in Eboracum, there is no record of its presence in Britannia later than 109 and it was out of the legion lists at least since Marcus Aurelius' reign (161-180). In fact, this seemed to be the perfect explanation for the timing of the Hadrian
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Was this map orientated with south at the top?
No; the top is facing southeast. That was standard practice; just compare with the Tabula Peutingeriana.
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It seems that some of the experts working on the map have come to the conclusion that rather than serving as an actual map of Rome it was actually just an elaborate decorative showpiece. They argue that in fact there was probably two Forma Urbis Romae, that the other one was an actual cadastral record of Rome which was written on papyrus and stored in the records house and was easily accessible and regularly updated and the one made of marble's sole purpose was to decorate the room that stored the cadastral records of the city.
Pretty amazing really, the lengths the Romans would go to just to decorate a wall.
Actually, the main argument against an administrative function for this monument is that it was not readable at all; in place, its upper panels were some 18 meters above the floor level.
Livilla's death
in Imperium Romanorum
Posted
Women's cognomina were quite uncommon at any time, and they seem to have had few or none fixed rules; they could have been derived from their paternal (or even maternal) cognomen, from their husband's nomen or cognomen, or even from personal peculiarities.
For example, the famous empress Poppaea Sabina used the nomen and cognomen from her maternal grandfather in official epigraphy, even being a widow, after a previous divorce (from Otho) and of course after marrying Nero..
The name "Apicata" might have been a cognomen by itself, if her father was indeed from the Apicia gens, like the famous gourmet Marcus Gavius (or Gabius) Apicius; so her full name might very well have been at some time Gavia Apicata Sejana.
Nowhere have I found any hint that deleting the (rarely acquired) husband's cognomen was considered regular or required practice for divorced women at any time.