Jump to content
UNRV Ancient Roman Empire Forums

dnewhous

Plebes
  • Posts

    147
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

Posts posted by dnewhous

  1. What were the banners of the legions?  I think I saw them once on this site.  Of particular interest are the 5th legion, the praetorian guard, and the emperor himself.  I see what's on the wikipedia, and I wondered if everyone thought they were legit?

    220px-Scutum_Iovianorum_seniorum.svg.png

     

    150px-Roman_SPQR_banner.svg.png

     

    120px-Vexilloid_of_the_Roman_Empire.svg.

     

    I don't want to lead any witnesses.

     

  2. left:
    Karl Marx
    John Maynard Keynes
    Paul Krugman

    Libertarian:
    Thomas Jefferson
    David Ricardo (1)
    Andrew Jackson
    Grover Cleveland
    Warren G Harding
    Calvin Coolidge
    Ludwig Von Mises (2)
    Joseph Schumpeter (3)
    Friedrick von Hayek (4)
    Raymond Moley (5)
    Paul Volcker (6)
    Robert Reich (7)
    Marc Faber (8)



    right:
    Adam Smith
    Alexander Hamilton
    Irving Fisher
    Milton Friedman
    Ronald Reagan
    Arthur Laffer
    Larry Kudlow
    Donald Moffitt
     

  3. What does the Etruscan alphabet look like and what are its antecedents?

     

    It's hard to get a straight answer out of the wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_language

     

    It appears the best answer for the language is that it is semitic.  The best answer for the alphabet is that it is semitic as well?  But semites used ideograms!  If the alphabet is derived from Greek, let's see the symbols.

     

    If I understand correctly, semitic is a famly of languages that came to dominate the middle east after the old kingdom/new kingdom break.  I suppose it would be a transfer of dominance from Sumer to Akkad in the middle east.  The dominate semitic dialect became Akkadian, but I haven't had enough time to read everything I want to and I never will.  As Gandalf said, there is never enough time.

     

    Anyway, has anyone ever compared Etruscan to Egyptian?  I'm shooting in the dark, but so is the wikipedia.

     

    Isn't pharaoh "Great House" in Etruscan?

     

    What was the "real" title of the Egyptian ruler?  I'm going to head to the library and check worldbook.  I know it used to be there.  It starts with an 'm'?

  4. Vietnam war started with Versailles peace conference in 1919 where Ho Chi Minh showed up
    As a member of the 1991–1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by fellow Vietnam War veteran and Democrat, John Kerry,
     McCain investigated the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, to determine the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.
     The committee's unanimous report stated there was "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia."[106]
     Helped by McCain's efforts, in 1995 the U.S. normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam.  
    In January 2007, Congress approved Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for Vietnam.

    Books:
    Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist UnitJan 23, 2007
    by Eric Haney;
    Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (American Empire Project)Dec 31, 2013
    by Nick Turse

    American Conservative articles:
    McCain and the POW Cover-Up
    The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.
    By Sydney Schanberg • July 1, 2010
    Vietnam: A War on Civilians
    By Chase Madar • July 30, 2013
    The GOP’s Vietnam
    How Republican foreign policy lost the culture war—and a generation
    By Daniel McCarthy • March 17, 2013
    Vietnam And The Father Of Lies
    By Rod Dreher • July 23, 2014,

  5. I read somewhere online recently, that the problem that Christians had with gladiatorial combat was that the emperors have the power to redeem the gladiators, which goes against the central tenet of Christian faith that there is salvation only through Christ.  I am wondering, is it only the emperor's power to declare a gladiator a free Roman citizen that bothered early Christians or was it simply the authority to decide life or death for a defeated gladiator?

     

    I also kind of wonder what theologians make of the presidential pardon power.  Here in the U.S., felons are denied the right to vote and the president has the power to restore it.

    • Like 1
  6. What was Claudius' conquest of Britain, a ball game? :no2:

     

    Yes, basically, it was the ass end of the earth. And I don't know that Rome ever generated surplus tax revenue from England and Wales.

     

    But never had it been so explicit. Moreover if the recruitment of the landless poor had been going on. Wouldn't it have been to eke out legions instead of creating them en masse out of proletarii?

     

    When you move to a standing army permanently garrisoned on the frontier there is no way around the fact that you are no longer going to be able to rely on middle class people taking a break from their day job to form the rank and file of your army.

  7. Why waste time recruiting men when you have legions on standby?

    Are you suggesting the empire could have been maintained without a standing professional army? It wasn't until the 2nd Punic War that the Roman army became standing. That war brought the heyday of the Republic to an end.

     

    Why waste time sorting out which social group does what

    I simply don't believe that Rome could have continued to be successful with the continued policy of assigning specialization (like cavalry) based on socioeconomic status. That's a very medieval way of doing things, and notice that modern armies aren't organized that way.

     

    What you say about 'foreign wars' does underline the desire of Marius to make provision for campaigning as an activity in itself, rather than just defence or political necessity. Maybe we shouldn't be suprised. Rome was a chauvanistic and inherently martial society, thus when confidence and size made such warfare practicable, they indulged in a little extra-curricular seizure of land, goods, and chattel. The question then would be to what extent these wars were necessary, or biased toward profit.

    The Roman empire was amazingly risk averse when it came to conquests. Trajan is the only emperor post Julius Caesar to make any significant gains, and he gave them all up before he died because he was concerned with putting too much pressure on his successors to maintain the conquests.

     

    My own favorite causation is that skilled Greek slaves ruined the Roman middle class. But it isn't the only one.

     

    In fact, the more I think about this it is my intuition that the Marius "reforms" were recognition of changes that had already taken place. Just as the US army cheats on eligibility requirements when it becomes hard to recruit, I expect that recruiting the landless urban poor is something that was already practiced. With the twin pressures of a devastated middle class and maintaining a standing professional army on the frontier, I don't see how the reforms could have waited until the first century BC.

  8. His 3 best albums IMO were Rainbow Rising, Heaven and Hell, and Magica. With the exception of the song "Rainbow in the Dark," which still wasn't the equal of his best material with the previous two bands, I am not the biggest fan of his early "solo" material. I like Rainbow better than Deep Purple, but I think Ian Gillan was a better singer for Ritchie than Dio, but not for Tony. I think Magica is the true standout of the "Dio" labeled material.

     

    It's nice that he got to end his career with his version of Black Sabbath, which is where I always thought he belonged.

  9. It was really cool when they showed this being used in the Rome television series. I watched it on DVD and activated the commentary boxes - which emphasized that it has more power when done with the left hand. And the proper spelling is malocchio.

     

    Incidentally, Black Sabbath and Ronnie James Dio have gotten back together and are going to do a new full-length studio album. I never thought that I would see the day, truly sevil natas.

     

    This was probably prompted when Iron Maiden was on the Ozzfest bill and singer Bruce Dickinson repeatedly bashed Black Sabbath for being an embarassing nostalgia band that only plays songs from the 70's.

  10. I don't know Gibson's motivations, nor do I care. Regardless I've pointed out several times in this thread that Roman legionaries in Judaea in the early 1st century AD were largely from Italia and Cisalpine Gaul. If it was legionaries and not auxilia that beat Jesus (as depicted in the film) than it is quite appropriate that they would be depicted speaking Latin. Whether there are alterior motives or not, the speaking of Latin by mostly Italian and Gallic legionaries makes perfect sense.

     

    I feel like I am beating a dead horse, but is it possible they would have needed a translator? (Did I ask that question years ago?)

  11. The notion that Roman "decadence" caused its fall is a myth concocted by Christians in the middle ages as an explanation to the peasants for why God would allow something as horrendously bad as the fall of the Roman Empire. The notion that ethnic impurity would cause decadence is complete nonsense, the decadence was caused because they were wealthy, and they weren't wealthy because of constant warfare, they were wealthy because they had a vibrant economy. Whether constant CIVIL war had negative cultural impact is an interesting question.

  12. I was watching the end of the 100 most metal moments on VH-1. It's a 10 hour long countdown that is played for laughts. Things like Jimmy Page purchasing Alister Crowley's castle, a band of midgets forming mini-KISS, and a volcano erupting 20 minutes after shooting part of a music video at the peak for Dokken are on the list.

     

    Anyway, #3 in the countdown is the "devil horns salute" which looks identical to the "hook-em horns" sign for the Texas Longhorns. For an example of the confusion this can cause, look here

     

    http://www.roadrun.com/blabbermouth.net/ne...ewsitemID=31833

     

    Anyway, the man credited for inventing the devil horns salute by VH-1 is Ronnie James Dio, who was the singer for Black Sabbath at the time he started it. (It is mentioned that Gene Simmons claims that he did it first on the cover of "Love Gun.")

     

    Ronnie James Dio explains that he learned it from his grandmother who called it the (sounds like) mo-loik or muh-loik with the accent on the second syllable. Ronnie said that doing it in the hook-em horns style (he didn't say anything about Texas, but there's no other way to explain the image) is done to protect yourself from the evil eye and that if you point your index and pinky finger outwards you are giving the evil eye to someone (cut to Dio giving the evil eye to his audience at the end of a show). Ronnie says that he won't take credit for inventing it, but he will take credit for making it popular.

     

    I am posting here because this sounds like some sort of pagan thing, and this is one of the few places in the world that has pagan readers. Is there any more that can be learned here about the moloik?

×
×
  • Create New...