Late Emperor
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we need to remember the shock the Romans felt when they discovered the slaughter site, burying the bones of man and animal together because they were inseperable.
True but they had felt worse shocks in republican times against carthage and always fought back.
Also, and perhaps mist importantly, Roman colonisation of the German forests was all but abandoned, and former Roman towns deserted.It seems to me that it was abandoned because of Tiberius' conservative attitude about roman borders which decided to settle the limes on the very defensible Rhine river: his followers probably just realized that Germany wasn't worth the effort to conquer it (like Ireland). IMHO Tacitus in Germania describes very well how the romans viewed Germany: as a useless place. Augustus was a good emperor but trying to colonize the forested and swampy germany wasn't a great idea and it wouldn't have been (economicaally speaking) even if the germanics had been more peaceful since it wasn't a land dotted with "cities" and semi-civilized people like Gaul.
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I was actually interested in brutality against civilians after conquest/surrender rather than brutality against enemy soldiers.
I asked if christianity tamed roman military brutality against civilians because the bishop Ambrose excommunicated Theodosius after the massacre of Thessalonica, punishing him for that atrocity: I wondered if following emperors and military commanders were afraid of being excommunicated if they exceeded in brutality against civilian populations.
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Ludovicus, as I pointed out in my previous post, the arabs had access to classical culture by conquering the eastern roman territories in middle east and egypt: it means that without the eastern roman empire surviving the germanic invasions and fall of the west in the Vth and VIth centuries, the arabs would have found very few of classical civilization because a lot would have been lost.
While it's true that important scientific advances were made by medieval muslims this has less to do with the saving classic civilization and more to do with their own scientific effort and it doesn't mean that most of classic culture was saved by them.
In the following article it explain that the byzantine contribute to the revival of classic studies in Europe wasn't secondary at all (although exagerated by past scholars) and shows how few of the classic heritage was still unknown in Europe in the XVth century.
http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html
THE SCHOLARS
Thus the Greek emigres who reached Italy during the fifteenth century were by no means all scholars: they ranged from exiled royalty to carpenters and mercenaries. Yet there can be no doubt that some of them played an important part in spreading a knowledge of the classical Greek language and ancient Greek literature in Italy. There was a good reason for this: reading classical Greek and even composing in the same style were an integral part of Byzantine higher education. Whereas in the West secular education had tended to die out in the early Middle Ages, in Byzantium it was sustained. In each generation, those who took their education beyond the age of fourteen would be instructed in the works of the ancient Greek poets, historians, dramatists and philosophers. Thus any educated Byzantine in the imperial service would have had a knowledge of these works which would have been the envy of many educated Italians, who were now starting to take an interest in ancient Greek literature (Constantinides, 1-2). Manuel Chrysoloras arrived in Italy at the end of the fourteenth century. He came not as a teacher or a scholar, but as an envoy of the Byzantine emperor, charged with negotiating western assistance for the beleaguered empire. In 1391, however, while staying in Venice, he gave some lessons in Greek to a certain Roberto Rossi, who then passed an enthusiastic account of his teacher to Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406), the Chancellor of Florence. So impressed was Salutati that he decided to secure Chrysoloras's services, and in 1396 invited him to teach grammar and Greek literature at University of Florence. Chrysoloras only occupied this post between 1397 and 1400, but in that period had a tremendous effect. Among his pupils were numbered some of the foremost figures of the revival of Greek studies in renaissance Italy, including Guarino da Verona (1374-1460) and Pallas Strozzi (1372-1462). Chrysoloras was not the only one to receive such a welcome. When George Gemistos Plethon attended the Council of Florence in 1439, his lectures on the differences between the work of Plato and Aristotle were eagerly received and prompted the later comment of Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) that Plethon had brought the spirit of Plato from the Byzantine empire to Italy (Thompson, 78; Setton, 57-8; Brown, 389-90; Woodhouse, 171-88). The success of Chrysoloras and Plethon cannot have gone unnoticed by other members of the Byzantine ruling classes, eager to escape to the West, and others were soon following in his footsteps. John Argyropoulos, an official in the service of one of the rulers of the Byzantine Morea, was sent to Italy in 1456 on a diplomatic mission. He too was offered the chance to teach in Florence and he accepted with alacrity, remaining in Italy until his death in 1487. Other cities also attracted Byzantines to teach Greek: Theodore Gaza of Thessalonica taught at Ferrara, Naples and Rome, Demetrius Chalkondyles of Athens at Padua, Florence and Milan (Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West, 72-87, 91-113; Geanakoplos, 'The discourse', 118-44; Harris, Greek Emigres, pp. 122-3). Of no less importance than the teaching activity of these individuals, however, were their translations from Greek into Latin. Early in the fifteenth century, Manuel Chrysoloras co-operated with Uberto Decembrio (d.1427) to produce a Latin version of Plato's Republic, and in Rome the process of translation was specifically encouraged by Popes Nicholas V (1447-55) and Sixtus IV (1471-84). Under papal patronage, George of Trebizond produced Latin versions of Plato's Laws and, together with Theodore Gaza, of a large part of the Aristotelian corpus. The availability of these texts in Latin opened them up to a much wider readership (Monfasani, Collectio, 698-754; Geanakoplos, Constantinople and the West, 79-82; Wilson, 76-8; Setton, 78-80).
THE DEBATE OVER PLATO
In addition to teaching and translating, the Byzantine scholars were also at the centre of the debate over the merits and meaning of works of the ancient Greek philosophers, particularly those of Plato. Unavailable in western Europe for most of the Middle Ages, Plato's works were now much more accessible thanks to the Latin translations of Manuel Chrysoloras, George of Trebizond and others. Renaissance Italy was particularly receptive to the ideas of Plato because political attitudes had been changing during the fifteenth century, as interest in the values which had been used to underpin the traditional concept of citizenship declined. In the past, the highest duty of the citizen had been considered to be that of involving himself in civic affairs, a notion that is prominent is the works of Cicero and Aristotle. Now a life of contemplative withdrawal and disengagement from political life was coming to be seen as praiseworthy. Politics were to be left rather to those who had been educated to pursue them, among whom the ruler or the prince was paramount. It is no coincidence that the later fifteenth century saw the writing of numerous `mirrors of princes', such as Niccol
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I've a question: was the Roman Army of the christian era less brutal against enemy civilians than during the pagan centuries? Any source of comparison?
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I tend towards thinking that the Nazi comparisons are a little facile and lack substance. Roman brutality of this type was broadly speaking of its time.
It can be said for every age of history.
National Socialism was fudementally and at its heart a racially supremacist creed that visited its horrors upon the Jews, Slavs etc within that context.Apart their reasons ad looking at history neutrally, they weren't more brutal than soviets, allies, japanese.
They were sons of a more brutal age than ours.
Roman brutality, without my being too much of an apologist, was an acceptable expedient.This is a case where simpathy overcomes fair judgement: the romans were brutal mass killers because they were the cruelest bastards in a world of cruel bastards.
The better comparison with the Nazis if we need to look for one, might be the Assyrians who would impale or flay alive the senior amongst a conquered people and continue to rule those people with an iron fist and ruthless ferocity.The romans were ferocious too: a rebellion would be usually countered with a massacre and don't forget that the romans turned slavery into an enormous industry of sufference and death for tens of millions people.
Although there is an irresistible parallel between the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 CE, there is only one Roman atrocity, for me, that has deeply Nazi overtones. Servius Sepulcius Galba was a repugnant mixture of the incompetant and the greedy. Having won an intitial victory against the Lusitanians, he later lost 7000 to the reinvigorated tribesmen. Having been rescued by Lucullus and knowing that the primary issue with the Lusitanians was poor land, he designated a central gathering point for the tribes to gather from which they would be "resettled" to more fertile lands. He ordered their massacre at that place.There were attempts to indict Galba for "war crimes" that ultimately failed. His actions in Lusitania heralded a half century period of instability and distrust for the Romans starting with the Geurrilla warfare of Viriathus which most certainly removes this example from the category of expedient brutality.
Hmmm, weren't the conquests of Gaul and Dacia made through giant ethnic massacres like the WW2 Hitlerian eastward expansion?
The romans built their civilization on a mountain of corpses, enormous numbers of slaves and infinite sufference for the conquered people.
They were cool but not nice guys.
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Hi, what you think about Antoninus Pius? Reading his biography, it seems that he was a saint in a roman world where the average individual was like Tony Soprano but it seems difficult to believe to me.
Was he really so peaceful and enlightened or he actually committed some roman-style atrocities in his public and private life?
Is it also really true that he always ruled without never leaving Rome and visiting the border provices?
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Yes, the Byzantines held on to the works of Classical Antiquity, but they don't seems to have had much interest in them. In the West, we rediscover these ancient sources of knowledge thanks to the Arabs in Spain and then, secondarily, from refugees fleeing Constantinople's fall.
The Arabs discovered ancient culture by conquering most byzantine territories and dealing culturally with the surviving Byzantine Empire.
The survival of ancient culture in Early and High Medieval Europe happened also thanks to the Catholic Church that saved and copied the ancient sources in the medieval abbeys spreaded throughout the continent.
The european rediscovery of the ancient culture started in late medieval Italy thanks to those byzantine refugees (which left the Balkans and Anatolia since the XIVth century) which started to teach and spread it in their new motherland (which at the same time was opening the first universities).
It seems to me that while the contribute of the Arabs in transfering to us the greek-roman culture can't be discarded, it has become overrated for PC reasons.
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Caesar made the empire territorialy by enlarging it a lot and turning it from a mediterranean civilization to a truly western european one with the conquest of Gaul: without him, western european civilization which was built by the germanics above the roman one, would not have existed.
He made the empire politically starting the one-man rule of the following centuries and giving birth (involuntarily) to the idea of Empire which remained alive in Europe for all its history (even influencing far away people like the russians and their Tsars).
In the millennias after his death, he has become the symbol of Rome in popular world culture and this qualifies him as its greatest son.
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This was a punitive raid, not a campaign of conquest. The forces were not required to be any larger and given what had happened in AD9, perhaps the Romans could be forgiven for not risking their entire legion!
They had fought succesfully in Germany under Germanicus, few years after Teutoburg, defeating Arminius himself. Since Teutoburg was actually an a series of ambushes against an undeployed roman army marching in a forest rather than a real battle, then I guess that the successful Germanicus' campaign restored roman military confidence against the germanics.
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They were well organised, but often badly led, badly behaved, and only succesful when they were able to control events to their advantage.
Isn't this true also for modern armies?
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From that I gather the word was used in a very generic sense. What Pertinax says makes sense. One thing that always bothered me was the picture of legionaries and armoured auxiliaries fighting in the heat of, say, North Africa or the Judean desert in chain mail or lorica segmentata. It might very well be that some of them simply discarded their armour in these areas for simple convenience and comfort.
Fighting armoured in Italy, Spain or Greece during summer would have been exhausting too.
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Again that all sounds good in theory, but as mentioned before, carrying it out in the heat of battle is another matter altogether: changing conditions, being assailed from different directions, inadvertent compression of the of the units, resulting in an inability of the relief force to make it to the front line. I can easily see the retreating troops crashing into the relieving troops, resulting in chaos.
I will be interested in seeing what you are able to glean from that book.
Can't the re-enactors simulate if this relief system was practical or not by clashing in large numbers and beating violently each other shields with the false swords?
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If the article is correct, then IMHO the Roman Army from the Marian to the Diocletian reform could be compared to the WW2 Soviet Army: superpowerful and unstoppable thanks to its enormous numbers and fierce stubborness but of mediocre quality, kept running through brutal discipline and ready to turn in a horde of looters once discipline was relaxed by commanders in occupied territories.
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I'd really like a game similar to Morrowind and Oblivion, set in the Roman Republic/Empire.
(Without wizarda, monsters, etc... of course).
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Well, no, because the information therein was more or less OK. But look - I just don't go through life disappointed - I love programmes like this and the fact that they have an idealised actor playing the role doesn't bother me in the slightest. See - I know what Hannibal supposedly looked like, I know what he was probably kitted out with - as I would guess most people on this website do. So - why the angst?
As Mel says above, discussions like this also make me want to bang my head against a wall, but for different reasons - I've never really "got" going onto UNRV or RAT raging about the inaccuracies of a film/programme to a bunch of people that have probably seen it and already know that its inaccurate in one form or another. (well, unless its Braveheart, of course - but that's different!)
And its been said a zillion times - if it inspires kids to go and find out more, then its all to to the good as far as I'm concerned.
Cheers
Russ
There's a big difference between inaccuracy and completely twisting history: if a WW2 documentary depicted Roosevelt as a native-american, Hitler like a blonde tall norwegian and Stalin as a mongol with moustaches, then people that actually know how they looked like, would likely complain and rightly so.
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Clearly, this series was done in the style of "300" replete with all its flashy visuals, uberblood and naked man-flesh. The show is supposed to entertain and inform, right - I can't imagine anyone who had an interest sparked in Ancient History by this writing to archaeologists saying "Those coins and statues of Hannibal you've got are fake, man. Check this out..."
In this case they should call their show: Fictionary Channel.
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On some maps of the Roman Empire, the little known Bosporan Kingdom, situated on the Sea of Azov in the Ukraine, is depicted as being within the bounds of the Empire. On other maps it is left out; a similar situation arises over the status of pro-Roman tribes in southern Scotland such as the Selgovae and the Votadini. In both instances the peoples of these regions were not directly taxed, but there were very substantial cultural and trade links. Maybe, for want of more records, Ireland evolved into such an entity? Politically it had a sort of unity in that it had a 'high king', and the substantial defended harbour at Caer Gybi in Northwest Wales can only have been there to service trade across the Irish sea. It could be that the people of Ireland were indirectly taxed via this trade route? I also find the rapidity of Patricius' conversion of the Irish a bit suspicious. Maybe he got the credit for a process which had been underway for decades?
My suspicions are that if the Irish were literate in the same way that the Bosporan Greek colonists were, our maps might, just might, show Ireland in a similar ambiguous way. All speculation of course, but there do appear to be a few bits of tantalising evidence.
AFAIK the Roman Empire had an area of influence around its borders: the territories near roman borders were like imperial protectorates (The Kingdom of Armenia, the foederati germanic tribes, ecc...). Ireland could have been a roman protectorate too.
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Focusing on a small thing that a casual time traveller could have in his pockets, I think that a multi-function swiss knife would impress them too.
. . . and as if by magic, this thread appears.
I guess my swiss knife would not impress them.
I will take a bar of soap with me: that will impress the romans for sure.
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In terms of centuries, please realise that the Romans did not organise their armies in the field as we do today. In the classic era, the period that colours our opinions, the cohort was a formation that did what it says on the tin - "Mutual support". It wasn't named that for nothing. A single man on the battlefield can only handle a certain number of men in battlefield conditions before it becomes impossible and chaos ensues. The Romans, by experience, found around a hundred was the limit. The cohort existed for the centuries to support each other, and note that for that to make sense, there must be a measure of local initiative from centurions, which is exactly what our sources are telling us.
However, cordinating support amongst groups of eighty men in close proximity is one thing. Coordinating the efforts of a larger army, stretching into the distance, composed of disparate units, is another altogether. Because the Romans did not employ a formal messaging system (no-one mentions it at all), armies fought according to predetermined orders more often than not. To change an armies disposition required considerable urgency and effort. The Romans already knew this. That was why they preferred a local command emphasis. It made more sense to them.
I see: in few words the romans lost their ability to draw good pre-battle plans and the ability of their centurions to execute them correctly.
As for training, it wasn't close to what it had once been. De Re Miltaris (Vegetius) is often hailed as a manual of what the Romans did to train their troops, but what the book is about is suggesting what the Romans ought to be doing, based on practises used in former times.This means that the early and high imperial armies had actually a significant training necessary to fight successfully.
A further question: if the roman centuries had to fight autonomously, following the battle plan, due to lack of efficient communication between the units on the battlefield and between the units and the general, then why the medieval byzantine army, heir of the late imperial army, allegedly was very capable to coordinate in "real time" infantry units, cavalry archers and heavy cavalry operating on the battlefield? Did they develope an efficient signaling system in order to overcome the tactical limits of the classic roman army?
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Bear in mind the difficult terrain that the Romans and Persians faced each other across. Largely arid and relatively empty. For a large army to cross and fight at the other end was a major effort. TYrajan was a success in this respect, having reached the Caspian Sea, but notice that his successor Hadrian gave it back, partly as a political nicety to ensure the persian king did not go to war as he was threatening to (and his daughter was returned to him as well), but also because there was very little about that territory that held any real appeal to the Romans, never mind the difficulty of ruling an area that large.
The sassanids actually launched a few massive attacks against the Romans in IVth century but after checking I agree that they mostly launched small raids against the imperial borders. I guess that also Julian's defeat against them was due not only to his poor leadership but also the decline of the army tactical ability.
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Remember that Constantinople never actually looked like this, it was already well in decline by 1200.
I vaguely recall the site's author acknowledging this, but it doesn't show in the models.
Hmmm, I suppose that at least until the end of the Macedonian dinasty, it wasn't in decline at all.
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He wasn't even a north african: ethnically he was a non-arab semite middle-easterner (a phoenician) and he had been born in Spain.
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Tenth century Cordoba, in Muslim ruled Spain, was possibly even more spectular with it's
palaces, libraries, and advanced water systems. It was a leading cultural and scientific center with a population
of 500,000.
I was making the comparison with christian europe still recovering from the dark ages.
Regarding the comparison between Costantinoples (which had almost 1 million inhabitants BTW) and large medieval muslim cities like Cordoba, it seems to me that the roman taste for gigantic monumental architecture and urban organization, which survived in Byzantium, set Costantinoples apart from anything else in the medieval euro-mediterranean world.
The Ottomans called it "The City" (Istanbul) for a reason.
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@caldrail, in another thread you argued that the romans were defeated at Adrianoples because they had lost their ability to coordinate large armies on the battlefield (as a consequence of the Diocletianus/Costantine army reforms) but in this thread you write that the romans didn't actually coordinate their military units (centuries) during a battle but that they actually let them fighting indipendently from each other. Aren't you contradicting yourself?
In the same thread you argue that at Adrianoples the romans paid the price for the declined level of their infantry training but in this thread you argue that training had a secondary importance in the roman military. Aren't you contradicting yourself also in this case?
The Illyrian Emperors
in Gloria Exercitus - 'Glory of the Army'
Posted
I'm skeptic about it: IMHO since the romans (patrician senators) had completely lost the control of their empire by the IIIrd century, they could only bow down to the "barrack emperors" (military commanders) which had the army on their side, even if these emperors were just semi-barbarian romanized provincials that the senators despised.
The comtempt was probably mutual among some of these military commanders: Diocletianus had no qualms about moving the imperial capital from Rome to the provinces and later the balcanic Costantine the Great built Costantinoples as Nova Roma (New Rome). I doubt that there was no desire to further marginalize the old roman senatorial class among the reasons for moving the imperial capital away from Rome.