guidoLaMoto

A little more searching reveals:....Polybius called it "gladius Hispaniensis" but Livy used the term "gladius hispanus," consistent with Suetonius' passage. ....Either way, to translate "custodias cum gladiis hispanorum" as Spanish guards with swords rather than guards with Spanish swords is a misrepresentation of the original thought.....The real confusion comes from the word "adspicientium"- an adjective in the plural genitive case, therefore modifying hispanorum, when it should be in the plural ablative if it is to modify "gladiis."....A scribe's error perpetuated thru the ages??

https://popular-archaeology.com/article/publishing-ancient-roman-style/. -- an informative piece on the Roman piblishing industry.

Tyrennika- lost book by Claudius written in Greek on the Etruscan history, culture and language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrhenika. If found, it would go a long way to clear up many questions & mysteries about the Etruscans from whom the Romans borrowed a great deal.

The Latin in that paragraph is a little ambiguous-- note that Hispania = Spain, Hispani = Spaniards and Hispaniensis = Spanish.... As we said recently in another thread, we today commonly refer to the short, double edged sword usually used by Roman legIonaires as a gladius, but that's really just the general name for sword (cf- gladiator= swordsman). The particular sword of the legIonaires is correctly called gladius Hispaniensis = Spanish sword..... In that quote, Suetonius uses the terms custodias cum gladiis hispanorum....adspiciendium = with swords of the exposing Spaniards.....???......That's usually translated as "Spanish guards with swords exposed"....but if I were asked to translate that English into Latin, it would be "custodias Hispanienses cum gladiis adspectis." In that paragraph, Suetonius is speculating on Caesar's state of mind, that maybe he had become tired of living and his efforts were no longer worth it. "Sunt qui putent..." = There are those who may think.... I don't know what other historians wrote. Livy's actual comments are lost. I'm trying to find Dionysius of Halocanarssus' reference, but I don't do Greek, so would have to rely on translations, which can be questionable as seen above. Edit-- silly me....D of H only covered The Founding thru the Punic Wars.

Sounds kinda like "She loves you, yea yea yea" Not all ancient writing needs be deep philosophical exercises in thought to give insight into the culture. Many of those clay tablets are merely accountants' spread sheets, but even those give us knowledge of their commerce & business practices. Lists of kings tell us history. Some are students texts & work sheets. Some are are deeper works of literature. Let's hope future archeologists find more than just a dribble glass, Whoopee Cushion, an episode of World's Dummest Criminals and a Kamala Harris speech to judge our civilization by.

Good point....For comparison-- over two million cuneiform clay tablets from Mesopotamia have been found, but only ~2% of them have been translated so far, but look how much that has contributed to our knowledge of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, etc civilizations.

Suetonius addresses the plot and assassination in paragraphs 80 thru 83....then states in paragraph 86 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0061%3Alife%3Djul.%3Achapter%3D86%3Asection%3D1 that Caesar had dismissed his Spanish bodyguards ("custodias Hispanorum cum gladiis"-- guards with swords of the Spanish) No reference to timing of the dismissal....Are these equivalent to the official lictors? We have only the summary of Livy's treatment of the subject (Book 116) which is quite brief. In the days of The Republic, each consul was assigned 12 lictors who only carried the fasces without the axe blade when within the bounds of the Pomerium..... A Dictator was assigned all 24 lictors and they each maintained the bundled rods with axehead at all times.

That's one of the planet's most seismically active areas. Ground levels regularly rise or fall up to a foot a year. Modern Pozzouli -- Ancient Puteoli https://watchers.news/2025/02/18/over-550-earthquakes-recorded-at-campi-flegrei-caldera-prompting-school-closures-in-pozzuoli-italy Nearby Baiae was developed as a resort starting about 100 BC and became a favorite, decadent vacation spot for the imperial court. It began sinking in the 4th century AD....I think they found a graphitus there that reads "Quod Baiae accidit Baiae manet"

Good article . Thanks......I had to laugh reading that first known description of lead poisoning and declaring that it must be from the pipes. Apparently it has been a long established tradition in nutrition pseudoscience that correlation is equivalent to cause and effect. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/wine.html Romans generally drank wine diluted with water, and looked down upon provincials & foreigners who drank undiluted wine (merum). The boiled down wine (sapa) was a more expensive drink.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.html. Actually, IQ scores have been falling by 7 pts per generation since 1970. During that time, thanks to the elimination of Pb from gasoline & paint, airborne levels of Pb have fallen to virtually undetectable levels. ....Not to change the subject, but since the Draconian regulations concerning auto exhaust emissions went into effect, despite measurably "cleaner" air in our cities, rates of asthma & COPD have also skyrocketed....Have they done us a favor with their over-reaching regs? Our regulations concerning acceptable Pb levels/exposures are purely arbitrary, there being no systematicallly acquired body of data upon which to make an educated estimate. The only large-scale experience is based on one episode of chemical warfare committed in Iraq about 30 y/a. Pts with very high Pb levels remained asymptomatic. Symptoms only developed in those with levels several hundred (IIRC) times over levels considered "safe." In the famous case of Flint, MI several y/a, they never told us the levels of Pb found in the water. Doing an orders of magnitude estimation, if the levels were 1000x higher than the regulatory acceptable levels, a 30 kg kid (who never got any bigger nor excreted any of the ingested Pb) would have had to drink 5 gal of water a day for 100 yrs to attain blood levels above the levels considered safe....Always do the arithmetic before panicking. Environmental Pb levels probably vary with geographic location. Before becoming known as Cheeseheads, Wisconsinites were known as Badgers because lead miners in the SW corner of the state used to provide shelter for themselves by burrowing caves, like badgers, into the banks of the Miss. R. where Pb veins are very close to the surface. How does this apply to ancient Romans??? Pb pipes do not cause contamination of the water because a biofilm quickly forms inside the pipes so the flowing water does not actually contact the pipes ...Pb cooking utensils? Doubtful, because most Romans were poor, so they didn't have metal vessels, and besides, most plebs in insulae and ate at the many tabernae & popinae, doing little cooking at home.

The first census of Romans wad conducted during the reign of Servius Tullius (6th century BC) and said to be 80,000 men of military age. Allowing for kids, wives and old folks, that would probably bump the total number up to 200,000 plus.... Given, for perspective, that the area of the Palatine Hill is 80 acres, the forum < 20 ac, and the population density of Manhattan now 70,000/ sq mile (640 ac/sq mi) and nobody (except for maybe Oliver Wendal Douglas before he moved to Hooterville) grows grain or herds sheep in Manhattan, we have to wonder how accurate that census number was. Even if we consider Romans to have lived in a wider area than just the seven hills neighborhood, arch-rival Fidenae is only 10 miles away, Rome's safe living area was probably no more than a circle of radius 5 mi-- ~30 sq mi..... 210,000/ 30 = 7,000/ sq mi-- pretty dense for a farming/sheparding community.

Agreed....but while he was telling us about "270km/d" the title flashed across the bottom of the screen said "Rome to Gaul in One Day."... Maybe he considered anything north of Tuscany to be Gaul. For comparison, the American Pony Express delivered mail over a 1900 (3200km) course in 10 days....320 km/d, but they loped/galloped their horses-- very hard on the animals. Tizio's 270 figure may be a maximum, not average. The Pony express had way stations for change of mount every 10 miles. Swing stations, corresponding to stationes (sto - to stand) on the Cursus Publicum, for just a change of horse, and Home Stations, corresponding to Mansiones (from maneo - to stay/pass the night).

https://www.google.com/search?q=scripta+manent+roberto+trizio+youtube+sistema+postale&client=tablet-android-along&sca_esv=044f2881569159f1&ei=VNW4Z9gy2Z7Q8Q-QmLfxDw&oq=scripta+manent+roberto+trizio+youtube+sistema+postale&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIjVzY3JpcHRhIG1hbmVudCByb2JlcnRvIHRyaXppbyB5b3V0dWJlIHNpc3RlbWEgcG9zdGFsZTIFEAAY7wUyCBAAGIAEGKIESLOKAVCCFViQcHAEeAGQAQCYAYYCoAGTHKoBBjAuMTAuObgBA8gBAPgBAZgCF6AC0CHCAgoQABiwAxjWBBhHwgIGEAAYFhgewgIFECEYqwLCAgQQIRgKmAMAiAYBkAYFkgcGMy43LjEzoAenIA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp Sorry, but my crummy little tablet doesn't let me post YouTube links directly (search " scripta manent Roberto trizio servizio postale" if the link above doesn't work.....A nice bit about the Roman postal system. It's in Italian, buthas good illustrations. He claims it took only one day for a letter to be carried from Rome to Gail.

Gladius is the Latin word for sword. We usually use the word gladius when referring to the gladius Hispaniensis adopted by the Romans after being exposed to it in the hands of Hannibal's Spanish mercenaries in the 3rd century BC. Short, sharp and light (<2 lb), it was particularly efficient when being thrust and slashed from between scuda held in tight formation by well disciplined legIonaires.....The spatha was a variation, lighter, a little more narrow and only a little longer than the gladius Hispaniensis. The efficiency of the gladius Hispaniensis and the terror it struck in enemies newly exposed to it is attested by Livy-- Ab Urbe Condita-- XXXI: 34 line 4 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0164%3Abook%3D31

Bored today, so I'll bite-- Really two aspects to your question....Sixty yrs ago there was a best seller in the psycho-babble popular press, On Agression. One point the author made was that doing injury to an opponent with one's bare hands was more personal and psychologically difficult than causing injury with a handheld weapon, and that still more difficult than impersonally inflicting harm from a distance with a projectile. Today, warriors can sit at a computer station half way around the world and kill with an index finger on a keyboard in a completely dehumanized way. While a certain amount of strength and coordination may be required to fire a gun, it still doesn't compare to lugging around a 40 lb scutum on your left arm while flailing a 10 lb gladius for 8 hrs a day with your right arm....and don't forget that those heavy, cumbersome first firearms were only single shots, so the warrior still had a good deal of hand to hand activity to contend with. The evolution from swords to keyboard has taken a long time. Personally, I hold a black belt in the ancient martial art of Ki-Chi-Ku, wherein one takes his index & middle fingers and strategically places in them on the opponent's upper ribs near the axilla and rapdily alternates them in flexion/extension while calling out "Kitchy-Coo! Kitchy-Coo!".... It doesn't take long for the opponent to giggle himself into a helpless bowl of Jello and surrender by calling "Uncle! Uncle!"

ErIt seems to me that any list of best military strategists should include Marcus Atilius Regulus & Lucius Manlius Vulso, commanders of Rome's first naval fleet, who defeated the Carthaginian fleet, already the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean for a couple centuries.....a bigger upset than the Jets (with the help of The Mafia) beating the Colts in Superbowl III. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Ecnomus#:~:text=The Battle of Cape Ecnomus,(264–241 BC). "AI" is a deceptive term no doubt devised by a publicist as clever as the real estate agents who devised the names Mount Prospect or Arlington Heights for new housing subdivisions of flat as a pancake farmland near Chicago's O'Hare Airport. It should be called "Pre-Planned, Biased Summary of Internet Entries."

"Hundreds of lucky cats..." In Latin, feles is cat and Felix is lucky, hence Felix the Cat, Felix Feles....in Italian, felice is happy. Forty y/a, those cats were thriving throughout the Forum, Colisseum and Palatine. Viewing several YouTube "walking tours" of The Forum, I see a much more formal development of signage, walkways, railings and more excavations than back then, and of course back then it was a "take your life in your own hands situation" trying to cross the street encircling the Colisseum.

It was a capital offence in Egypt to kill a cat, even by accident, with justice often dispensed quickly by the angry mob Some interesting facts & anecdotes about cats in ancient Rome: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/cats-in-the-roman-world-the-big-and-the-small-of-it/ I haven't been to Rome in over 40 yrs. At that time, feral cats were everywhere and in large numbers. Has that changed?

WThat series ran in the70s. I was in my residency working 120 hrs/ wk--not much time for TV. FWIW- the Wiki article claims Claudius suffered from weakness, particularly of the legs, and had nervous twitches of the head-- consistent with the myopathy and tremors seen in hyperthyroidism. You're right about medical problems of the ancients, not so much that they were exotic, but that without treatment they were carried to extremes not seen often today. These days, I try to avoid watching anything shown on the Propaganda Broadcasting System.

Even that statue (↑↑↑) does not accurately depict the anatomy of the musculature, so maybe the artists just don't give us a good picture......OTOH, the coins displayed in chronological order in Guy's post above do seem to show a progression of the neck swelling over 18 yrs, consistent with Hashimoto's Disease (hypothyroidism) or Grave's Disease (hyperthyroidism, sometimes evolving to hypothyroidism, often associated with the bulging eyes of ocular involvement). I'm not up on my emperors....With untreated thyroid disorders, mental & psychiatric disorders are often serious. Anything in his history to suggest that? Apparently he was bright enough to have compiled a history of the Etruscans, unfortunately lost to posterity, and may have been among the last speakers of the Etruscan language. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrrhenika

Interesting question about the oddly shaped neck depicted......Goiter was still endemic in the backwoods of southern Italy at my last visit 45 y/a, caused by Iodine deficiency, but easily avoided by even occasional ingestion of seafood. One only needs to replace about 5 mg over the course of a lifetime. Fish was probably a regular component of an emperor's diet. Goiter from deficiency would be unlikely. Goiter from hypothyroidism is a possibility, but.... A search for "images of Claudius" shows us many statues, none of which show a goiter, but all seem to show a long neck. One can speculate on how much license the sculptors took to depict the emperor in an aesthetically pleasing way....I wonder if the coins, focusing on just the head & neck, accentuating an actually long neck, give an anatomically exaggerated view of the sternocleidomastoid muscle....explaining why that swelling is positioned so far laterally/posteriorly from where a goiter would expected? Other causes of swelling in the neck would include lymphoma, untreated often causing bulky adenopathy, with a median survival in excess of 5 yrs-- long enough to live to be poisoned later.

OK. You win. It was obviously much better to live in the filth and squalor, starving in a Romam slum, needing to rely on the public dole because jobs were taken by the slaves than to live as an enslaved bus boy in a villa on the Palatine hill. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hirt.+Gal.+6+13&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0002. "For the pleb is held almost in the place of slaves, who dares nothing for himself...."

Differences in each of those categories between north and south can be more plausabley attributed to differences in climate, urbanization, topographical & economic factors, rather than the mere coincidence that Rome had a presence in the south.

Apparently not all of us here are famiiiar with the rhetorical device of alllusion ...Beyond that... Perhaps you have a false impression of how difficult life was in an agrarian society, let alone a hunter-gstherer society. There's a reason humanity progressively self-organized into a more urban way of life, a process still going on today with generalized abandonment of the rural areas. The poor of Rome lived in six story tenements. Food was not always available. The streets were filthy. Street crime was rampant. ...Slaves lived in palaces or in the agrarian villae. Food was no doubt always available. A certsin amount of social & economic security comes with slavery.. Had they not been taken captive, those slaves, for the most part coming from the lower end of the socio-economic ladder, living in the frontier, "barbaric" regions, would have continued living their insecure subsistence lifestyle.....Perhaps giving up freedom for security was a good trade. And, to re-iterate, the jobs performed by slaves were not WPA style "make work" jobs. They were jobs that needed to be done. Someone had to do them. Without slavery, all those extra poor would have taken those jobs for low pay, then paid it back to the company store....Net flow of money the same with or without slavery.......The cotton still needed to be picked, so to speak, after 1863.

I'm not defending slavery.....I:m suggesting that freedom of choice denied by law is really no different than freedom of choice prrevented by economics. The life of a free Roman peasant was not much different than that of most slaves, maybe worse. The slave at least could count on timely meals....The Hollywood impression that slaves were regularly starved, beaten and worked to death is illogical. Is it common for a farmer to starve, beat or over work his plow horse? The original question posed was how would things be different had the Romans not used slaves....I'm pointing out that certain jobs needed to be done, and there were large numbers of people who needed work to pay for the bare necessities of life The expenses of maintaining slaves would probably have been about the same as paying wages for menial work. ...I can see how things may not have been much different had there been no slavery..... ....and is an uprising by Spartacus really any different than French peasants storming The Bastille?